Composting with Ursula Leguin

"I do what the poet Gary Snyder calls "composting" — You let everything you do/learn/think/read/feel sink down inside yourself and stay in the dark, and then (years later maybe) something entirely new grows up out of that rich darkness. This takes patience."

Ursula K. Leguin

As an artist, I've been feeling dull as a brick lately, in contrast to the influx of inspiration that came to me from my trip to England this summer.  Well, being knee deep in renovation and repair of my home, and family responsibilities, can do that. Should I get depressed about the contrast, the seeming loss at present of those elevated insights and just plain sights?  It's harvest time now, almost Mabon, and I'll gather apples in grateful celebration among the (construction) debris.  Composting.......composting the house at the moment.  What I experienced this past summer will surface, in time, it's voice isn't lost.

I love the biological magic, and poetic metaphor of Composting.  There's the  Great Round every time I take my left overs to the compost pile - everything gets transformed, broken down and remake, rots and gets seeded again, including me.  When I was younger the so-called dry periods were almost unbearable.....I had to be in full creative intensity all the time, or there was something wrong, I didn't measure up.  Gratefully, I can say I'm glad that has been replaced with patience, and a tiny bit of wisdom I've gathered over the years, knowing that my creativity is part of the Round as much as anyone, or anything, else.  While my art "composts" along with the rest of me,  I reflect on a few more good words from my favorite writer, Ursula Leguin:  

"Writing is my craft. I honor it deeply. To have a craft, to be able to work at it, is to be honored by it."

"One of my favorite things the poet Shelley said is, "The great instrument of moral good is the imagination."

"And while I'm quoting quotes, Socrates remarked, "The misuse of language induces evil in the soul." That's a good one to remember when listening to a politician or reading an advertisement."

And of course I can't resist bringing in the Black Madonna when I reflect on the Great Round of the Sacred Compost Pile, because I see Her magic there in the rich, teeming, transforming soil every time.   I've shared it before, but I never get tired of the  overlay, the mythic "songlines", that trace the ancient pilgrimages to the Black Madonnas of Europe (which are still going on).  One of the most ancient, and significant, was the famous journey that concluded at the Cathedral of Santiago at Compostella,  the endpoint of "The Camino", the traditional pilgrimage still made by thousands today across Spain.

Pilgrimage routes to Compostela

It's believed that the earliest pilgrimages were made to the "Black Madonna of Compostella", a very ancient effigy. Compostella comes from the same root word as "compost". Compost is the fertile soil created from rotting organic matter, the "Black Matter". The alchemical soup to which everything living returns, and is continually resurrected by the processes of nature into new life, new form. Matrix/Creatrix. Matter. Mater. Mother.

"From this compost -- life and light will emerge. When the pilgrims came to the Cathedral at Compostella they were being 'composted' in a sense. After emergence from the dark confines of the cathedral and the spirit -- they were ready to flower, they were ready to return home with their spirits lightened."

~~ Jay Weidner

"Life After Life" - the Movie

 I belong to a group called the Tucson Friends of IANDS  that meets at Unity church to share and discuss NDE's and related phenomena - they also bring speakers to Tucson.  They are affiliated with a much larger organization called the International Association  for Near-Death Studies. Recently they brought to my attention an award winning movie recently made about the subject by filmmaker  Peter Shockey (I take the liberty of copying from the website some bio about him and also Raymond Moody, the physician whose books about people who have died and been revived, and the experiences they share, have had a huge following for over 30 years.)

I hope to have a chance to view the film soon.  I find it fascinating, and encouraging, to see the continuing popular dissemination of this research, which not so very long ago were consigned to the fringe arena of the occult, or viewed as heresy by religious interests.  A recent film, Hereafter,  with Matt Damon and directed by Clint Eastwood, explores the subject in drama form.

Imagine a world without the fear of death?  I have a brother who has been in a vegetative state, on life support, for three years now - because of legal issues, and my family's terrible fear of death, I am not able to let my brother's body die, although I am certain that his spirit is no longer within it.  One of the reasons I belong to IANDS is because I believe this research is of great importance to our world and time, and our ability to grasp the interconnectedness of all life.  

"The LIFE AFTER LIFE film is the result of an ongoing labor of love - the amazing collection of real-life testimonials were selected from thousands of cases, and are the culmination of years of research, publications, books and specialized media-training by a broad spectrum of contributors."

 Dr. Raymond A Moody is the leading authority on the 'Near-Death Experience,' or NDE - a phrase he coined in the late seventies. Dr. Moody's research into the phenomenon of the NDE had its start in the 1960's, following an electrifying story told by a university professor (that professor, Dr. George Ritchie is one of the gentlemen interviewed in the LIFE AFTER LIFE film).

Peter Shockey is the producer, director & screenwriter of LIFE AFTER LIFE. His own true story - of how he responded to his father's terminal diagnosis - became the narrative for the film, in which Peter appears as himself.

The trailor for the  movie is also available at:  http://vimeo.com/1188776
 

Life After Life Trailer from Peter Shockey on Vimeo.

Talking with the Gods & Sacred Places

"Australian dream time seems strange to us because we distinguish stories from places.  For the aborigines places are stories:  song-lines.  To "settle" a wild place means to create not only houses and farms but also the stories that make them a home.  For native Australians, their deserts are home because they are verdant with stories."

David Loy, The World is Made of Stories

A few last thoughts on sacred sites (well, not last, but as I return to the many lists, calendars and responsibilities of my current life, I must put aside my passion for a little while).....this time thanks, once again, to spiritual dowser Sig Lonegren, who has spent many years exploring  sacred places, in England, Europe, and in the U.S.  I find his premise fascinating.  

As a dowser myself, I've experienced shifts in energy - which means also shifts in  consciousness and perception -many times when visiting areas that are geomantically potent, be it the henge of Avebury,  or the labyrinth at Unity Church in Tucson. Sites are able to change consciousness (raise energy) because they are intrinsically geomantically potent, and/or  they also become potent because of human interaction with the innate intelligence of place, what the Greeks called "genus loci".  Geomantic reciprocity - as human beings bring intentionality, reverence and focus to a particular place, building sacred architecture, or engaging in ritual.  The conversation becomes more active as place accrues myth, story in the memory of the people, and the memory of the land.   Sacred places have both an innate and a developed capacity to transform consciousness.  And the power of myth is important if we wish to engage the numinous presence, to  "talk to the Goddess and petition the Gods".

"To the native Irish, the literal representation of the country was less important than its poetic dimension.  In traditional bardic culture, the terrain was studied, discussed, and referenced:  every place had its legend and its own identity....what endured was the mythic landscape."

R.F. Foster

Why would the ancient people who built Stonehenge spend generations hauling monstrous (and apparently specific) stones hundreds of miles to pose them in  circles, laid  in various alignments with the skies, seasons, and land?  

According to Sig, who references psychologist  Julian Jayne''s controversial book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, possibly because, as human culture and language became increasingly complex,  we began to lose mediumistic consciousness,  a daily, conversational Gnosis with "the One".  We became more individuated.  With the gradual ascendancy of left-brained reasoning he suggests the ancients developed a concern with how to continue contact with the gods, the ancestors, the numina of the land.  Stonehenge was a temple on a sacred landscape - according to Sig, it may also represent a "last ditch effort" to keep in touch with the spirit world, to enhance communal experience.   As the rift between personal gnosis and spiritual contact deepened, and especially with the later development of patriarchal institutions, gradually the tribal and individual Gnosis was replaced by complex religious institutions that removed individuals from the earlier tribal mind, and rendered spiritual authority to priests who were often viewed as  the sole representatives of  the  Gods or God.

Perhaps this capacity is returning to us, a new evolutionary balance. As crisis engulfs us, we need, once again, to re-member how to  "speak to the Earth". 

"I have been arguing for decades that these (sacred) spaces were special places that enhance the possibility of connection to the other side - to the One.  Please judge what follows in that context. You may well find that it challenges some of your paradigms you hold about the past.  It combines two separate lines of investigation that support the perception that these spaces really “did what’s on the box.”  The gods came to earth.  And us humans in great numbers communicated directly with them.  (I end with a counter argument just to keep things in balance.

Since the mid-seventies when I began work on my Masters’ degree on Sacred Space, one of the major themes I have chewed on has been the shift from the dominance of that more intuitive right brain in prehistory to the analytical left brain brought to us by (IMHO) the increase of influence of the Patriarchy.  The book that really turned me on initially was The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes, first published in 1976 (see "Works Cited" at the bottom for all book references).  

 I must say that this has been one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking books I've ever read, and is a must in the development of consciousness studies.  I don’t agree with some of what he has to say, for example, his choice of a particular word to describe how our prehistoric ancestors received their right brain information - "hallucinations."  I don't think that's what they were, and later on, I'll go in to why I think so.  But on the whole, I found his thesis most useful in forming my perception of this shift in consciousness. 

It began with the Neolithic Revolution - the increasing use of agriculture rather than hunter gathering.  It facilitated a shift in consciousness.  My understanding was that the driving factor in the construction of purpose-built sacred spaces in prehistoric times was the loss of the ability of more and more of humanity to connect on a conscious level with the world of spirit.  I felt, and still do, that the archaeoastronomy, sacred geometry and Earth Energies all enhanced the ability of this connection as we became more and more left-brain/rational.  I wrote about this at great length in my first book, Spiritual Dowsing, initially published in 1986."

Sig Lonegren
www.geomancy.org
www.sunnybankglastonbury.co.uk

--------------------------------------------------
Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. (Available from Amazon Books.)
Lonegren, Sig. 2007. Spiritual Dowsing. Glastonbury, England: Gothic Image. History of the earth energies, healing and other uses of dowsing today. A book for the spiritual pilgrim. Initially published 1986. ISBN 978-0-906362-70-9.  (Available from Amazon books).

Leonard Cohen on a Plane

"There's a crack in everything - that's how the Light gets in."

Leonard Cohen

A PROMISE

I will never
return
the Holy Grail
to its
"rightful owners."

BASKET

You should go

from place to place

recovering the poems

that have been written for you,

to which you can affix your signature.

Don't discuss these matters

with anyone.

Retrieve.  Retrieve.

When the basket is full

someone will appear

to whom you can present it.

She will spread her wide skirt

and sit down

on a black stone

and your basket will bounce

like a speck in sunlight

on the immense landscape

of her lap.

WISH ME LUCK

a fresh spiderweb
billowing
like a spinaker
across the open window
and here he is
the little master
sailing by
on a thread of milk
wish me luck
admiral
I haven't finished anything
in a long time

Leonard Cohen, from The Book of Longing

                                             Harper Collins, 2006

Stonehenge and a Dragonfly

 "We are living IN the Body.  Not ON the Body, but IN the Body." 

Rachel Rosenthal

Soon to return to the States, and the "states of mind" that are part of returning to the familiar world, I decided to visit the Chalice Well a last time.  The sense of elemental Presence, of the Goddess, of countless pilgrims before me, of  genus loci, is so potent there.  I took some water to carry back in a flask, and thanked the Chalice as I drank,  engaged in what I realized was a private Communion ceremony.  Then walking up the hill on the path, I ate an apple of Avalon.

"My Body, My Blood"....... and my body, my blood,  the holy well travels as my own essence, nourishing my body and my thoughts.  How strange, to remember my long, long ago Episcopalian Communion services, here at the Red Spring. But, why not?  I am sure I would offend many Christians for saying it, but isn't this the true source of that communion?  In it's highest meaning, taking in the "blood and body" of Christ means taking in that spiritual essence that is identified as holy, the Light, Christ consciousness.  For me, that gift of wholly light flows from the ground in abundance, hangs round and sweet from the trees, offering, always offering me not "salvation", but a reminder of my  Inclusion in the circle. 

I found a bench to sit on, and a great abundance of apples.  Being blissed out, it took a little while to notice a Dragonfly - just one - that seemed to be buzzing me.  It darted in front of me, then forward, back again, then forward.  After a while, laughing, I said "ok, Dragonfly, let's pretend you want me to follow you."  At which point, darn if it didn't become even more excited, darting down the path, and then back.  So I got up, and followed the Dragonfly down the inlaid stone trail.  At intervals, the stones are inlaid into spirals or stone circles.

Darting ahead, the Dragonfly came to rest in the exact center of the circle in front of me.  And so, amazed, I sat down on the path (fortunately, no one was behind me) and contemplated this lovely encounter.  After about 5 minutes, Dragonfly flew off and disappeared.

"The word Dragonfly has its source in the myth that Dragonflies were once Dragons." 

the Dragonfly Site ***

I've often written about what I like to call the conversant world.....but here was an encounter that left me breathless.  And like all real Communion, there are many layers of meaning.  But what this gift means to me is to always remember, coming from that place of personal pilgrimage and "en-lighten-ment".........to hold to the center,  to re-member.  I'm leaving, returning to my daily life soon.

Detail, mural near Glastonbury Goddess Temple

I think I was given a perfect blessing and a  reminder for the future.  May I always return in spirit to that Holy Well, to remember, to be re-freshed. 

*******************

 Of course, no trip home could be complete without visiting the great stone monuments of the sacred landscape that is the Salisbury Plain.  5,000 year old Stonehenge, mysterious and awe inspiring, surrounded with its huge circle of worshipful, camera snapping tourists, and then the equally amazing, 1,000 year old stone and glass Salisbury Cathedral.

Having spent so many years in Circles, and read so many fantasy books as well that included imagined Pagan rites in places like Stonehenge...........I had to laugh at the intensity of hundreds of  tourists, dashing out of the many nearby thundering  buses, to encircle the mighty circular henge of the stones, worshiping them with snapping cameras and brightly colored umbrellas.  "I'll be darned", I thought.  "Services are still going on here!"

As the tour guide reminded us, Stonehenge sits in the center of a sacred landscape, that includes the many barrows, and not so far away, the henge and avenues of Avebury.  If you include in the picture the idea of energy leys that dowsers and geomancers speak of, tracing the "Dragon lines of ancient wizards" the visible and invisible add greatly to the picture.  Stonehenge is awesome, although I must say Avebury impressed me more with it's sweet sense of the elemental powers, the ancient stones honoring those forces, and somehow including me, and wandering sheep, into the picture. 

Last, just a few pictures of the beautiful Cathedral just 9 miles from Stonehenge, in Salisbury.  I was fortunate to visit while a service was going on, to hear the pipe organs an a choir.  Gorgeous.  I have nothing to add, as the pictures say it all.

Except, right, the bronze "sorrowful Madonna", a contemporary sculpture that greets you on the way to the entrance.  The Madonna's hand has been rubbed to a bright finish, from all the people who touch her in prayer and sympathy........I found that moving.

Salisbury Cathedral

Faces (gargoyals?) on exterior of Cathedral

Archangel Michael, window over memorial for war veterans.

***   For my own insight, I wanted to copy here some interpretation of Dragonfly from "The Dragonfly Site", which I greatly enjoyed reading.  Particularly, I thought of the fact that dragonflies are creatures of water, and also, they were once, mythically speaking, Dragons.  Of course the Dragon is entwined in Arthurian legend, and the stories of the two wells, the red and the white, may well be the source of the tale of Merlin and the two underground Dragons.  Dragons are also  the "dragon lines", the Earth mysteries and ancient Earth Mother.

• "The dragonfly, in almost every part of the world symbolizes change and change in the perspective of self realization; and the kind of change that has its source in mental and emotional maturity and the understanding of the deeper meaning of life.  The traditional association of Dragonflies with water also gives rise to this meaning to this amazing insect. The Dragonfly’s scurrying flight across water represents an act of going beyond what’s on the surface and looking into the deeper implications and aspects of life. 
•  
• Defeat of Self Created Illusions
  The dragonfly exhibits iridescence both on its wings as well as on its body. Iridescence is the property of an object to show itself in different colors depending on the angle and polarization of light falling on it.   This property is seen and believed as the end of one’s self created illusions and a clear vision into the realities of life. The magical property of iridescence is also associated with the discovery of one’s own abilities by unmasking the real self and removing the doubts one casts on his/her own sense of identity. This again indirectly means self discovery and removal of inhibitions.

• Focus on living ‘IN’ the moment
  The dragonfly normally lives most of its life as a nymph or an immature. It flies only for a fraction of its life and usually not more than a few months. This adult dragonfly does it all in these few months and leaves nothing to be desired. This style of life symbolizes and exemplifies the virtue of living IN the moment and living life to the fullest. By living in the moment you are aware of who you are, where you are, what you are doing, what you want, what you don’t and make informed choices on a moment-to-moment basis.
• 
  The opening of one’s eyes
  The eyes of the dragonfly are one of the most amazing and awe inspiring sights. Given almost 80% of the insect’s brain power is dedicated to its sight and the fact that it can see in all 360 degrees around it, it symbolizes the uninhibited vision of the mind and the ability to see beyond the limitations of the human self. It also in a manner of speaking symbolizes a man/woman’s rising from materialism to be able to see beyond the mundane into the vastness that is really our Universe, and our own minds. "                               
  
  
  
   .....from the Dragonfly Site  
     

Videos from the Goddess Conference

We thank you for bringing the waters of your land
We welcome you here to the Isle of Avalon
We bless the waters you bring from your seas, lakes and springs
And together we make a great medicine of love.

"

"Waters of the World"   poured into the river.

The Chalice Morris Men

  

Here's a jolly group I literally ran into while having a drink at a Pub - the Chalice Morris Men. Here's what they have to say about themselves:

"Nobody is sure of the origins of Morris dancing, but we believe that it was based on pre-Christian fertility dances.  It has elements of circle dancing, resurrection and death and ritual combat deriving from our earliest pagan forebears.  The fertility dances (necessarily male) would have taken place on such ancient feast days as the first day of spring, the solstices or midsummer's day.  When the Christians took over the old festivals they would have danced on "high days and holy days". 

During the 19th century, when most villages had their own Morris side, the custom started to wane.  This has left only a few places with an unbroken tradition of dancing.  

In 1989 Cecil Sharp started to collect and record Morris dances after seeing the Headington Quarry men dance.  Although most of the dances that you will see were collected by Sharp, they, and the music, have evolved over the years.  The world of the Morris is clearly indebted to Sharp and his work.  

People always ask about the bells, sticks and hankies.  the bells and waved hankies are supposed to ward off evil spirits while the sticks represent ritual combat. 

We like to think it works!"