Nature, World Soul & Gulf Oil Spill

“Only as the written text began to speak would the voices of the forest, and of the river, begin to fade. And only then would language loosen its ancient association with the invisible breath, the spirit sever itself from the wind, the psyche dissociate itself from the environing air.”
page 254 The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram/1997

I find myself , at this point in the journey, at a loss for words to embody the fullness of what I feel. I'm not talking about emotions. I am talking about the deep felt experience of an inner world.
Just before the Gulf of Mexico was poisoned through acts of human error (motivated by unadulterated greed). I had realized that the image of Reindeer Goddess as she presented herself to me in 2004, was an encapsulated teaching regarding the Anima Mundi or World Soul (part 1, part 2, part 3). Her image is one of the oldest images we have representing man's communion with nature. Art historian Esther Jacobson has outlined the progression of the deer goddess image in Siberian, Russian, Mongolian and European history. (Jacobson/1993) As I research through the labyrinth of art, anthropology, history and religion, I am excavating through the collective unconscious.
This is one point where words seem to fail completely.... This inner realm is so rich, so vast and so alive with Psyche's language of symbols and archetypes. I will try to say more about this in a future posting.

The environment where the the remnants of the neolithic clans who revered the Reindeer Goddess are in the modern Arctic, Alaska & Siberia. The politics of these environs are ruled entirely by the oil industry. The reindeer, caribou and their habitat are endangered by Big Oil. This brings me to the second thing where words escape me: The Gulf Oil Disaster. Having been touched by an aspect of the World Soul in her form as Reindeer Goddess/Animal Mother has put me in a very sensitive spiritual space.

Prior to the Gulf Oil Spill, I had a nightmare from which I awoke grieving horribly.
There are flashing red lights, an emergency.Suddenly a group of people run towards me from a crowd that is watching an unfolding crisis. They grab my hands and my arms, pulling toward the area that is down a slight incline that I know is at the water's edge. But I still cannot see what the tragedy is. They pull me, urgently, toward the drama. "One whose marriage you are a party in is mortally wounded!", one man says while pulling me down the hill. I KNOW that someone I am deeply connected to is dying, but it hasn't been revealed to me WHO. The crowd parts to let me through while flashing red emergency lights move through the vista. Just as they are about to bring to a clear view of the situation, I awaken.

I sit up in the night crying, not knowing which deeply loved being is so wounded. My self-centered thinking was limited to individual people in my life. It was days later that I realized the mortally wounded being was Nature and the critical incident was the Gulf Spill. Now, one doesn't usually go around thinking "I am married to Nature". I had never thought of my relationship with nature this way. Looking back through the years to my childhood, I can say it is true. The thing is: it should be true for every human being.
We are a part of nature. Yet, having an element of conscious and the ability to communicate makes us the guardians of nature. Historically, the concept of ruler-ship (Kings, Queens, & Presidents) was based on a marriage to the land. Sovereignty is a goddess of the land that the ruler has to protect and cherish. The crown upon the ruler's head is the Glory, the Light of Wisdom, the deep knowing that only communion with the World Soul can bring.
So what can be done now? How does humanity restore divinity?

Nature as mother is the World Soul. The womb for all life on our planet is the ocean.She is mortally wounded. Now is the time to remember who we really are. We need to hear the voice of the forest, the cries of the ocean, the pleas of all creatures.

Daughters of the Sun

Below is a beautiful meditation of the nature on reality written by Parmenides (5th Century BCE). Peter Kingsley translated this piece in his book Reality. No matter where I go in my inner journey, I always come back to Peter's writings. It clarifies so much for me... reminds me of how tricky our perceptions are.... reminds me that "mind" and "matter" are not separate. Clarifies, with each reading, the teaching of the Goddess whose veil we wear while we are in our bodies... for this is her world. In her world, Wisdom is what is required to skillfully navigate the sea of our illusions. (In Parmenides day, they called it metis and it means so much more than our English word "wisdom".) No matter where I get carried away to, I come back to Parmenides & Peter Kingley's Reality.

This time, I returned to the daughters of the sun while following the reindeer. Before the mares that carried Parmenides, the reindeer carried the wisdom holder while her antlers carried the sun that illuminated the darkness. The reindeer was the first domesticated animal, and mankind's first "chariot" on both the inner and outer journeys. And no matter where mankind goes, the Wisdom Teachings remain the same.


"The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach
rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary
road of the divinity that carries the man who knows
through the vast and dark unknown. And on I was carried
as the mares, aware just where to go, kept carrying me
straining at the chariot; and the young woman led the way.
And the axle in the hubs let out the sound of a pipe
blazing from the pressure of the two well-rounded wheels
at either side, as they rapidly led on: young women, girls,
daughters of the Sun who had left the mansions of Night
for the light and pushed back the veils from their faces
with their hands.

These are the gates of the pathways of Night and Day,
held fast in place between the lintel above and a threshold of stone;
and they reach up into the heavens, filled with gigantic doors.
And the keys — that now open, now lock — are held fast by
Justice: she who always demands exact returns. And with
soft seductive words the girls cunningly persuaded her to
push back immediately, just for them, the bar that bolts
the gates. And as the doors flew open, making the bronze
axles with their pegs and nails spin — now one, now the other —
in their pipes, they created a gaping chasm. Straight through and
on the girls held fast their course for the chariot and horses,
straight down the road.

And the goddess welcomed me kindly, and took
my right hand in hers and spoke these words as she addressed me:
'Welcome young man, partnered by immortal charioteers,
reaching our home with the mares that carry you. For it was
no hard fate that sent you travelling this road — so far away
from the beaten track of humans — but Rightness, and Justice.
And what's needed is for you to learn all things: both the unshaken
heart of persuasive Truth and the opinions of mortals,
in which there's nothing that can truthfully be trusted at all.
But even so, this too you will learn — how beliefs based on
appearance ought to be believable as they travel all through
all there is." ---Paramenides, translated by Peter Kingsley
from Reality pages 26-27 2003 Golden Sufi Center

Incubating Reindeer Goddess & Baby Blue

This is Blue. He is the first wild reindeer born in England since the ice age! He was born on May Day (May 1, 2010). See his story here.
Photograph: Adam Gerrard/SWNS





"Reindeer Stone with Flying Reindeer Over the Moon"

Click here to see part 1 and here to see part 2 of this story.

I apologize for not posting sooner. It seems that following the Reindeer Goddess is nothing less a task than going to the moon. I have been digging through academic texts, mythology, the internet. I have traveled to the Arctic, Alaska, Mongolia, the Russian Steppes, Scotland--- mentally, of course. The story of the Reindeer Goddess is at least 18000 years old. This means the stories are not spelled out for us. We have to perform nothing less than an excavation of the mind stream of the human race. Indeed, during this process I have dreamt of rich earth incubating life in a "mind/mine shaft". (Psyche loves puns and riddles!)

I have tried active imagination, engaging the image that came to me before the 2004 Sumatra Quake and resulting axis shift. "Keep digging." she says. "Incubate, grow this image." she replies.
I have found very little said about this mythic image. In desperation, I turned to words like "stag", "hind", "deer" and "antlered" in texts on myth, religion, Jungian Psychology, art history, and archetypes. The Scythians had an abundance reindeer/stag images on petroglyphs, clothing, gold crowns, gold pins & golden statues. But why?, I ask.

I have found that Christianity has not been kind to the Reindeer Goddess. Theories about her are not popular among academics. I do know that what little evidence there is regarding her existance shows that reindeer people of all countries were originally matriarchal. Whatever practices her priestesses had were taken over by the males shamans. (Shamanism as we know it originated in Siberia.) We have alot of writing about shamanism these days... I want to know more about what came before shamanism. Hints are left to us in the Nordic myth of Freya: she was the source of seidr - the powerful tradition of Norse magic. She gave the teachings to Odin.

There are clues to this ancient deer goddess tradition in Tibetan Bonpo teachings. From the Indus Valley we find remnants of an ancient priestess-hood that left us images of the horned goddess as tree of life. These images show us the roots of vedic alchemy, as well. Priestesses called yoginis, dakinis, and yakshas gave the sages the secrets of herbal medicine, and teachings of human transformation. After the Brahmins (a male dominated system that denigrates woman to this day) took over, these wise women were called witches, untouchables & whores. I am grateful to have encountered some of these ancient teachings in the Nyingma (Ancient Ones) texts that my own lama gave me. Of course,at the time I received the teachings and the empowerments (formal ritual of receiving) for the teachings, I had no idea where they would lead me!

In a prior post, I quoted a prophecy from Lapland. Reindeer Goddess gave humanity a warning: not being in harmony with nature will lead to our destruction. In spite of her fierce warning, there is also also the promise of regeneration. The antlers... they bear the tidings of new birth. I will talk about this more in a future post, after I incubate.

We Are PPI 2010.mpg

Watch carefully in the sequence with the four poster bed.
When PPI Jason leaves the room,
the flashlight turns on by itself.
This is in my home.
PPI was able to talk the "spirits" into doing this
on camera on four separate occasions

Following Reindeer Goddess: an Inner Journey

(This is an image of a Scythian reindeer from 5th century B.C.E.)
On March 25, 2010, I wrote a blog post about my experience with "reindeer woman".
To read that story click here.
Since posting that story, I've had a few synchronicities involving the reindeer motif. One happened when I was at a nearby Borders store in the anthropology section (which is very small). I picked up a book up at random. The title was Inside the Neolithic Mind by Davis Lewis-Williams & David Pearce. I opened to a page at random and I was very suprised to see the heading on the page that the book opened to (pg 161): Inside the Cave of the Reindeer Woman! It is a Samoyed story of the initiatory journey of a shaman. The axis mundi/tree of life was inside this cave, along with many numinous beings. In his relationship with the imaginal realm (inner world), the shaman was able to develop powers (siddhis) that enabled him to serve his community. After the initiation, he returns to the cave of the reindeer women in times of need, to access the imaginal realm an find ways to restore balance to his people.

Also through synchronicity, I discovered another connection to the reindeer goddess and the earthquakes that I wrote about in my former posting. I found the Lapp people's story about the creation of Earth in the writing of Linda Scheriese Leonard. (Creation's Heartbeat: Following the Reindeer Spirit). In this story from Lapland, the creator uses the body of his favorite creature, the reindeer doe, to create the world. He hid her still-beating heart in the centermost depths of the Earth. Here I will quote from Ms. Leonard's book:

"The vaja's (reindeer doe) heart would be the heartbeat for the earth, so that when peace and love reigned the reindeer doe's heart would beat with joy. But if hatred and greed disrupted the earth's harmony, her heart would convulse in pain and tremors would shake the earth from top to bottom." [page 30]

It seems that the reindeer goddess speaks to some of our current worldly issues. Besides the mythic connection with earthquakes, the reindeer's natural habitat is being destroyed through weather changes and the oil industry.

A very dear and close friend brought me a special gift last week, when I was too weak to leave my home: it was a handmade bracelet of reindeer antler, made by the Saami people. It has Saami runes on it. Since I've had such a powerful set of encounters with the reindeer goddess, I have decided to follow her on an inner journey and see where she may lead me. I am too physically incapacitated to travel in the outer world to follow the reindeer. Perhaps my illness is part of what enables me to mine the inner world for riches. I hope that what I may find serves others as well.