Solstice - Pax Gaia

 

"Only now can we see with clarity that we live not so much in a cosmos (a place) as in a cosmogenesis (a process) -- scientific in its data, mythic in its form."  

~ The Universe Story by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry  

The Winter Solstice was perhaps the earliest universal holy day, celebrated in different ways  throughout the world from the earliest days of human culture. When language was young, when even the gods and goddesses had not yet taken human forms in the human imagination, but ran instead with deer in the forest, flew with the wings of crows, or were glimpsed nameless from the awed depths of every numinous pool........ even then, this was a holy day, a day of celebration. 

This is an extraordinary Solstice, with a full lunar eclipse.  

Long ago ancestors lit fires to welcome the "shining god" who was the sun returning from mysterious underworld depths. They built stones or made circles or created doorways to be aligned with the sun's pathway. They lit fires as sympathetic magic, fires to light and imitate the Sun's passage (which is why we still light candles, and Christmas lights, today). 

Photo by Lewis Meyer (2010)

Welcoming the Sun, they left offerings of food to show their gratitude, and invented songs or danced throughout the longest cold night, encouraging, helping the Sun on its  difficult journey to the promise of new life.

I remember today that holy days begin among our most ancient, instinctual roots, taproots that reach down, deeply entwined within the visible and invisible web of  Gaia's life. Planet Earth turns her face toward her star again, circling in brilliant orbit, bearing every evolving, responsive, living, infinitely intertwined be-ing within her fragile, exquisite azure skin on her long journey.   

Perhaps we sense, as the sun rises,  that pre-verbal, instinctual knowing, found hidden beneath the pages of any book written with five fingered hands, beneath each inscribed layer of words, signs, hieroglyphs, pictures in jet or ochre or sepia, luminous beneath the oldest pages.  A veneer peels away, revealing a pentimento, an ancient heartbeat, shared again with all beings that keep vigil on the long night of the winter Solstice.  

The light is returning again.  
(2009)

Here's from a recent entry from Macha's Blog  about what her community does  at the Solstice:

"In my tradition, we gather on the beach at sunset on the longest night of the year, and as the Sun goes down over the waves, we all plunge into the ocean as a ritual purification; then return to warm up at the big waiting bonfire in the sand.

Later we return to homes, often lots of us in one home, where we sing Yule carols, light candles, drink hot brews. We feast and eat Sun cookies the children have baked. We gather near the fireplace telling and listening to stories, playing games, perhaps doing divination.

As dawn approaches, we go outside and gather in the high places around the Bay Area and sing and sing and sing up the Sun – often in the rain, but always we can see the lightening skies.

When we perform these acts – when we sing the carols, trim our trees, light candles – we reenact the things our ancestors did, we reconnect with them, and we honor our heritage. Celebrating Midwinter together allows us to reaffirm the continuance of life."

I pledge allegiance

to the soil of Turtle Island,

and to the beings

who thereon dwell

one ecosystem in diversity

under the sun

With joyful

interpenetration for all.

Gary Snyder

Amaterasu and the return of the Sun

Mana Youngbear  (2004)

 

Hail and Awake!
Children of the blue, brown and green Earth
I have come from my shining abode in Heaven
I am Amaterasu Omikami  - Great Woman Who Possesses Noon

Here is a gift for you:
A mirror, to draw you from your cave of sleeping
To see yourself in all your wonder:
Allow me to introduce you - to yourself!

Mary Kay Landon

A wonderful story for the Solstice comes from Japan, the tale of Amaterasu,  Goddess of  the Sun.

Angered by her vulgar, violent brother Susanowa,  god of storms,  Amaterasu Omikami fell into despair about the ugliness and the ignorance of the world.  She retreated to a cave, and refused to  come out. And so, deprived of her warmth and light, the world began to die.

All the deities and spirits came to the mouth of her cave, and begged the goddess to come out. But Amaterasu Omikami, withdrawn into her dark musings,  would not, and all the pleas of those gathered could not persuade her to return to the world.

At last, the little goddess Uzume placed a mirror at the entrance to the cave.  Then Uzume, known for her high humor, began to dance. Her dance was so bawdy, so absurd.......that everyone gathered had to laugh, in spite of their dire circumstances. They laughed and laughed and laughed!

At last, with so much raucous laughter, even Amaterasu's dark thoughts were interrupted with sheer curiosity.  She opened the cave door just a crack, and peeked out.  And at that moment, her radiant,  face was reflected in the mirror. At that very moment, she saw how beautiful she was - and rememberd how much joy and laughter there still was in the world.  And that is how Amaterasu left her cave of dark despair, forgot about her anger and disillusionment, and joined the dance, shining again in all of her glory.  

There are caves of darkness into which we all retreat. For a day, a month, too many years, perhaps a lifetime. Sometimes, we have to be tricked away from abysses of the heart in order to see how beautiful, how valuable, how important the light in each of us really is.   Then we find the the will to rejoin the hilarious, heartbreaking dance of life - and once again,  be the Sun.

 

Laura Janesdaughter (1999) 

A Poem for Light

The Solstice is about the return of the light and so I thought I'd find poems, stories, and images that talk, one way or another, about Light.

The Buddha’s Last Instruction

“Make of yourself a light,” 

said the Buddha,
before he died.

I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal – a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.

An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.

The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.

No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire –
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something 
of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Elemental

I'll be reading a paper again at the annual Conference on Pagan Studies at Claremont School of Theology in January - I always leave so inspired by the people I meet there.  I wish that the Pagan movement was not so marginalized by our society, because every time I go, I remember how very urgent the work of re-weaving our spiritual identity back into not only human community, but the  community of Gaia, Mother Earth, really is. When I think of it, most of my numinous and magical experiences happened in the wild, within the Great Conversation.

EARTH, WIND, FIRE AND WATER

Stone, rounded in my hand
tell me your story - the secret waters
that shaped you,
veining and coursing into darkness
humming their songs
of bones, pottery shards,
stones smoothed past memory or telling  
be my teacher.

Hawk,  tell me what you see. 
Small on the ground, I am blind. 
In widening circles you write an
incantation for the far journey
in the sky.  Be my teacher.

Fire, speak, if you will.
Illuminate the shadows
filling this careful house of sticks
I have built.  Burn me empty and full,
teach my feet to dance.
Fire, you be my teacher.

Rain, tell me.  I am listening.
Your voice is a multitude, 
your story grows
in the telling.  Into the mouth
the mouth of the ocean,
this song you sing. 
Rain, you will be my teacher.

(1993)

    ~My help is in the mountain~

    Where I take myself to heal
    The earthly wounds
    That people give to me.
    I find a rock with sun on it
    And a stream where the water runs gentle
    And the trees which one by one give me company
    And so I must stay for a time
    Until I have grown from the rock
    And the stream is running through me
    And I cannot tell myself from one lone tree.
    Then I will know that nothing touches me
    Nor makes me run away.
    My help is in the mountain
    That I take away with me.

    Earth cure me.  Earth receive my woe.
    Rock strengthen me.  Rock receive my weakness.
    Rain wash away my sadness.  Rain receive my doubt.
    Sun make sweet my song.
  
      ~Nancy Wood~

White Tara (2)

Om Tare, Tu Tare,
even in the darkest prisons, you offer your hand
Your touch cools hatred and grief.
From you, the demons of delusion fly
Praise Tara, whose fingers adorn her heart
Light radiates from a wheel in Your hand.

Valerianna mentioned Jewell in her recent comment, which is magical, as I had just written this entry which talks about energy work Jewell facilitated.   I've been reading "Journey of Souls" by Michael Newton recently, and I felt like sharing a very important vision I had in 1997, a vision that became the inspiration for all the masks I made dedicated to the Goddess Tara.  It was a profound gift.

In 1997 I was finally divorced, and all ties were severed between us.  The ending of the marriage did not bring out the best in either of us, and I felt a great deal of remorse, emotional confusion, and grief.  In my effort at growth that summer, I went to a well known energy healer in Massachusetts,  Jewell.  She put me on her table, and I went almost immediately into a trance state.

I found myself watching what seemed like a "clip"  from a movie - each scene was rapidly replaced by another scene.  I still remember some of these "vignettes" vividly - a ceremonial room decorated with thousands of orange marigolds;  an emaciated old black woman lying on a dirty bed;  a heavyset white man with glasses, bundled up in a kind of fur parka;  African drummers, drumming with passiona around a fire, and more.  Gradually,  I felt myself "pulled back", so that I seemed to be watching these scenes from a greater distance, as if they formed a patch-work quilt.  I remember thinking how incredibly beautiful it all was from that perspective, a work of art.

Then I became aware of an immense energy - a being that radiated (there's no other way to describe it) tremendous compassion.   She had no form, just white light.  The only thing that seemed identifiable was that I felt the Being was female;  and I felt she was communicating something like "Don't take on so, Lauren, look at all of this.  You'll meet again.  You can move on now."  I might add that she also radiated an equally huge sense of humor;  I felt  like a child getting a hug from an angel.  If that makes any sense........

And then I came to on Jewell's table.  After we spoke, I learned that Jewell often began her sessions with a prayer from the 21 Praises to Tara, a Tibetan prayer to the Goddess Tara.  To me, that visitation was White Tara, Goddess of Compassion, manifesting to help me move forward to a new stage of life.  I've revered her ever since.

Manna Youngbear as "White Tara" (2004)

White Tara

           
           WHITE TARA

            I went to meet that savage creature
            I have run from, lifetime after lifetime
            the shape within the shadows
            a creature of smoke and bared fangs.

            I went to meet it at last

            It took me into its vast arms,
            and I kissed its terrible face.

            And I thought I would die.
            I thought I would be swallowed,
            but I was not swallowed.

            For that creature I thought
            would devour me
            returned my embrace.

            I looked into eyes
            soft and liquid, filled with tears
            the eyes of a lonely child,
            my own lost child,
            my brother, my sister,
            my lover, my mother.

            And with great tenderness
            Fear lay upon my breast, and slept.

            What bound me for so long
            flowed out of me,
            my heart expanded,
            and I found I could hold

            the world entire
            in my open arms.

            I will make my arms a circle
            I will make my heart a circle

            I will walk all my sorrows,
            all my fears Home.

            I will walk
            circles around them
            until at last I find
            that bright and spacious center

            Come with me. Take my hand.
            We will do it together

            We will walk Home.

                         (1997)

Prema Dasara and the 21 Praises to Tara

I wanted to write about the Goddess TARA from Buddhist Tibet, and share a story about my own "encounter with Tara".  But I feel before I do that, I'd like to share the work of an extraordinary woman who has devoted her life to bringing the Blessings of Tara to literal life, in dance and in prayer.

 Prema Dasara has traveled throughout the world, creating devotional dances based upon the Tibetan Prayer, the "21 Praises to Tara".  It was my privilege to attend one of her teachings in Portland last spring (hosted by Lena Grace, her assistant,  and her husband Jack).  Prema and her students are bringing the Blessings of Tara to many places with their prayers that are  mandala dances devoted to the 21 different aspects of the Divine Tara. It's powerful work, and I greatly admire Prema, Lena,  Jack, and their Friends I was privileged to meet while I was there.

Please visit Prema's website to learn more, and find out about her schedule for the coming year.