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

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

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.