Becoming the Bridge

"If you're after gettin' the honey, don't go killin' all the bees .." - Joe Strummer

Indigenous peoples, artists, visionaries, poets, musicians, have been informing us (for quite some time now) our current cultural values indicate a loss of soul.  This idea is made even more apparent by seeing (with the heart) the images of the devastation caused by the Gulf Oil Disaster. For me, these images instill a sense of urgency within. How can we (whose hearts ache) do anything to help? Besides the obvious: raising money, calling government officials, raising awareness, we can take this opportunity to become the bridge.  We can commit to entering a soulful life. A soulful life is one that views all manifestation as part of a living energy field.  In his book The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram calls this process "reinhabitation". People "have begun to apprentice themselves to their particular places, to the ecological regions they inhabit." (pg 271)  This may sound simple. It is simple, but it is not easy. Apprenticeship means having to work. This work is nothing less than altering the collective consciousness through deliberate action. We will be moving against the stream of materialism, consumerism, and the stream of our own culture.

       In my mind, I see that if we all start at home, in our own place, and reconnect with the living energy field around us, we could create miracles. If whole communities were living this way, from an organic movement (not contrived), it would naturally follow that events like the Gulf Oil Disaster wouldn't happen. Our values would be different, so our consumer habits would change. The living energy field is the Imaginal Realm (the world of Psyche) I've talked about in past posts. (see below)  According to Abram: "By acknowledging such links between the inner, psychological world and the perceptual terrain that surrounds us, we begin to turn inside-out,  loosening the psyche from it's confinement within a strictly human sphere,freeing sentience to return to the sensible world that contains us. Intelligence is no longer ours alone but it is a property of the earth; we are in it. of it, immersed in it's depths. And indeed each terrain,each ecology, seems to have it's own particular intelligence, it's unique vernacular of soil and leaf and sky." (pg 262)

     In making a commitment to become the bridge between our current exiled (from the heart) state and the Imaginal Realm, we become a conduit for healing. Communion with our own place in the "Now" creates community, in the truest sense of the word. Start at home, honoring the soul of the home: the local Spiritus Loci (spirit of the place). Offer up just one flower in a bud vase... and next? The world.

Past blog posts regarding these matters:

Reindeer Goddess, Axis Mundi & Axis Shifts

Liminal Living- Borderlanders

Nature, World Soul & Gulf Oil Spill

What Dark Alchemy is This?

Reindeer Goddess & the Imaginal Realm

Reindeer Goddess & the Imaginal Realm

Communicating with the anima mundi, Psyche, the Soul of the World--- whatever you call her, requires a different perception than our everyday way of seeing. To quote human ecologist Tom Cheetham; "To keep our internals open, we have to learn to read or write ourselves out of ourselves, and uncurl ourselves back into the world." (1) 

He also talks about "reading the world" (2), as the Sufi's have in their dialogue with  Khidir- the Green Man, the Angel of the Earth. Khidr, says Cheetham, is a "messenger from far beyond". (3)  This realm, this "beyond", is the Imaginal Realm or mundus imaginalis. "If we recognize the realm of the imaginal as the  mediating world between the purely physical and the purely spiritual, the  schism between them can begin to heal".(4)  The outward manifestation of the this schism manifests in the battle between technology and nature. (There isn't a clearer example of this schism than the current situation in the Gulf of Mexico. Man's titanic egoism (man acting as a god) has destroyed an ecosystem crucial to the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps crucial to the World, by building a proverbial Tower of Babylon.(5))

         My own experiences with the Reindeer Goddess seem to reflect Tom Cheetham's ideas.  She is from the Imaginal Realm. She is an aspect of the World Psyche which is the matrix for our own reality. We humans don't   "have a psyche" (she is not a "thing"),  we are immersed in Psyche. This is an living energy field. The modern world is in danger of losing it's very lifeline by disconnecting itself from our very source and matrix. This is what the prophecies (6) that the Reindeer Goddess left with the people of Lapland were warning us about. In those communications from the Reindeer Goddess, it is clearly stated that she is the "heartbeat of the world".(7) 

An ancient , primordial deity has reached out to modern humanity to help them help themselves. I am  not the only person she has contacted, and she is not the only primordial deity to contact the modern world. Anyone who hears the messages, and listens, enters upon journey of the heart. They become an alchemist, a poet, a visionary, a prophet, an ecologist, an artist, a musician -- one who speaks, and hears, the language of the heart. The journey of the heart is a path to authentic living, being real. This is not at the same as being literal. Literalism is materialism. Materialism is the worship of man as god: the worship of man-created things.  

I choose HEART. 

Notes:
Painting of Deer Woman by Susan Seddon Boulet

(1) Green Man, Earth Angel, by Tom Cheetham, page 113

(2) IBID, page 114

(3) IBID, page109

(4) IBID, page113

(5) my blog post here

(6) my blog post here

(7) IBID

What Dark Alchemy is This?

"Nature be your guide; follow with your art willingly, closely."-  Maier: Atalanta Fugiens
..the alchemist is advised to co-operate with nature.." (1)

Alchemy is the ancient art of turning base materials into gold. In spiritual alchemy, we transform our every day consciousness into the gold of illumination. The Deep Water Horizon Oil Catastrophe seems to be an act of the darkest type of alchemy. In the process of extracting black gold (oil) out of the prima materia (the ocean) for the sole purpose of self-gain, BP had managed to sacrifice many lives (human and otherwise) to the dark god of greed. Somewhere in the morass of their twisted thinking, they had the right to take these lives for the cause of the almighty dollar. They even had lawyers calculating figures on the appropriate amount of collateral damage they could allow before their agenda was affected. From what I can extract from various journals and analysis, that figure has not been met yet. This means that BP has not fully felt the consequences of their folly. Obviously they are oblivious to the signs all around them.
The photos of the poor , suffering creatures in the ocean and along the Gulf Coast tells a very sad story. In alchemy the pelican is depicted piercing her breast to feed her young. This symbolizes abundance as the alchemical process reaches it's culmination. (2) The current state of the pelican in the gulf tells us that the "experiment" is a complete failure. The alligator (3) represents the mercurial sun of wisdom in the alchemical process. The current state of the alligator smothering in oily mud shows us that the "experiment" has no light.
The color black (4) in alchemy represents the process of putrefication (5): the break down of the old body to make a vehicle for the new body. Yet, BP's reverse alchemy has resulted in the purification of the the "womb of life"... the result being an environment where no transformation, or new life is possible. In alchemy, angels represent the movement of air or breath which is the spiritualised product of the alchemical process. With BP's resultant smothering dark ooze, no breath can be taken... no beautiful wing can take flight.....

Dare we even label this catastrophe an act of the Dark Alchemy?




(1)A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, by Lyndy Abraham, page 11
(2)Ibid, page 143
(3)Ibid, page 48
(4)Ibid, page 26
(5)Ibid, page 26
(6)Ibid, page 7