NUMINA: Spirit
of Place, Myth and Pilgrimage
By Lauren Raine MFA
"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 1
The Romans believed that special places were inhabited by
intelligences they called Numina,
the "genius loci" of a particular place. I personally
believe many mythologies may be rooted in the actual experience of “spirit of
place", the numinous, mysterious, felt presence within a sacred landscape.
To early and indigenous peoples, nature includes a “mythic
conversation”, a conversation within which human beings may participate in
various ways. Myth is, and always has
been, a way for human beings to become intimate and conversant with what is
vast, deep, and ultimately mysterious. “Mything place” provides a language
wherein the “conversation” can be symbolically spoken and interpreted, as well
as personified. Our experience, and
our relationship with Place changes when Place becomes "you" or
"Thou" instead of "it".
In the past,
"Nature" was not just a "backdrop" or a "resource";
the natural world was a vast relationship within which human cultures were
profoundly embedded and interactive. The gods and goddesses arose from the powers
of place, from the powers of wind, earth, fire and water, as well as the human
mysteries of birth and death.
In India, virtually all rivers bear the name of a
Goddess. In southwestern U.S., the
“mountain gods” dwell at the tops of mountains like, near Tucson, Arizona where
I live, Baboquivari, sacred mountain
to the Tohono O’odam, who still make pilgrimages there. This has been a universal human quest, whether
we speak of the Celtic peoples with their legends of the Fey, ubiquitous
mythologies of the Americas, or the agrarian roots of Rome: the landscape was once populated with intelligences
that became personified through the evolution of local mythologies.
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| "The Desert Spring", mask from 2013 performance with Ann Waters |
The Romans called these forces “Numina”. Every valley,
orchard, healing spring or womb-like cave had its unique quality and force -
its Numen. Cooperation and respect for the Numina, the
animating intelligences of place, was essential for well-being. And some places were regarded as imbued with special
power, they were special places of pilgrimage.
With the evolution of patriarchal monotheism and religions
that increasingly removed divinity from Nature and from the body, and, in the
past century, the rapid rise of industrialization, we have increasingly looked
at the world from a "users"
point of view instead of a participatory one.
This overview tends to view the natural world as an object to be used or
exploited, forgetting indeed that virtually all pre-industrial human cultures
have rich traditions that teach that the
world is alive and responsive. From Katchinas
to the Orisha, naiads to dryads, the Australian Dream Time to Alchemy's Anima
Mundi, every local myth reflects what the Romans knew as the resident “spirit
of place”, the Genius Loci.
In those reverent traditions, sacred places may be locations where
the potential for revelation, healing, or transpersonal experience is
especially potent, and many contemporary places of pilgrimage carry on this
mythos. It’s well known that early Christians built churches on existing pagan sacred
sites. An example would be the numerous
sacred wells that are dedicated to a Black Madonna in Europe, or a Saint in
England, in much the same way the Oracle of Delphi was dedicated to Gaia, the
primal Earth Mother of Greek mythology, and later to the God Apollo.
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| "Gaia", 2013 performance with Ann Waters |
Contemporary Gaia Theory 2 proposes that the Earth is a
living, self-regulating organism, utterly interdependent and always evolving. A system of relationships. If one is sympathetic to Gaia Theory, it
follows that everything has the potential to be “conversant” in some way, whether
visible or invisible. Ancient Greeks
built their Oracle at Delphi because it was felt that it was especially
auspicious for communion with the Goddess Gaia, and undoubtedly it was a site
that was sacred to prehistoric peoples prior to the evolution of Greece.
There is a geo-magnetic energy felt at special places on our
planet that change consciousness, and can catalyze insight, healing, or visionary
experience, perhaps even, as the Oracle of Delphi believed, prophecy. Before they became contained and mythologized
by religions or designated by prehistoric monuments, these sites were
intrinsically places of numinous power and presence in their own right.
They touch all who visit, and ultimately, no
particular belief system is needed for them to have a transformative effect,
although human architecture and the accumulation of human psychic energy and
visitation may amplify this effect.
Roman philosopher Plinius Caecilius commented that:
"If you have come upon a grove that is thick with ancient trees
which rise far above their usual height and block the view of the sky with
their cover of intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest and the
seclusion of the place and the wonder of the unbroken shade in the midst of
open space will create in you a feeling of a divine presence, a Numina."3
Many years ago I lived in Vermont, and one fall morning I
stumbled down to the local Inn for a cup of coffee to discover a group of
people about to visit one of Vermont's mysterious stone cairns on Putney
Mountain. Among them was Sig Lonegren 4,
a well-known dowser and researcher of earth mysteries who now lives in
Glastonbury, England. Through his
generosity, I found myself on a bus that took us to a chamber constructed of
huge stones, hidden among brilliant foliage, with an entrance way perfectly
framing the Summer Solstice.
No one
knows who built these structures, which occur by the hundreds up and down the
Connecticut River, but approaching the site I felt such a rush of vitality it
took my breath away. I was stunned when
Sig placed divining rods in my hands, and I watched them open as if I had antennas, quivering as we traced the
“ley lines” that ran into this site. Standing on the top of the somewhat submerged
chamber, my divining rod "helicoptered", letting me know that this
was the “crossing of leys”; a potent place geomantically.
Months later friends gathered in the dark to sit in that
chamber and watch the Solstice sun rise through its entrance way. We all felt the power of the deep, vibrant
energy there, and awe as the sun rose illuminating the chamber. None of us knew what to do, so we held hands
and chanted. We were all as “high as a
kite” when we left.
Earth mysteries researcher John Steele 5 wrote in the 1989 book EARTHMIND (in collaboration with Paul Deveraux and David Kubin) that
we suffer from "geomantic amnesia". We have forgotten how to “listen to the Earth”,
to engage in what he called "geomantic
reciprocity"; instinctively, mythically, and practically, to our great
loss. We disregard for short term
economic gain places of power, and conversely, build homes, even hospitals, on
places that are geomagnetically toxic instead of intrinsically auspicious. Remembering, re-inventing, and re-claiming what inspired early peoples may be important not only to contemporary pilgrims, but to creating future human
societies that can be sustainable.
The act of making a pilgrimage to a sacred place is among the
oldest of human endeavors. The Eleusinian Mysteries combined spirit of
place and mythic enactment to transform pilgrims for over two millennia. One of the most famous contemporary
pilgrimages is the "Camino" throughout Spain, which concludes at the
Cathedral of Santiago at Compostella.
Compostella comes from the same root word as "compost", the fertile soil created from rotting organic
matter - the "dark
matter" to which everything living
returns, and is continually resurrected by the processes of nature into new
life, new form. As researcher and
mythologist Jay Weidner has pointed out, pilgrims
finally arriving in Compostella after their long journey are being 'composted'
in a sense. Emerging from the dark
cathedral, and the mythos of their journey, they were ready to return home with
their spirits reborn.
In 2011 I visited the ancient sacred springs of Glastonbury,
the Chalice Well and the White Spring as well as participating in the international
Goddess Conference there. Making this
intentional Pilgrimage left me with a profound, personal sense of the
"Spirit of Place", what some call the "Lady of
Avalon". Pilgrimage opens one to blessing
and vision, and can take us out of the ruts of our daily lives into
transpersonal communion.
Sacred Sites are able to raise energy because they are
intrinsically geomantically potent, and they also become potent because of
human interaction with the innate intelligence of place, the Numina. “Mythic mind” further facilitates the
communion. Sig Lonegren, who is a dowser, has spent many
years exploring sacred places, and has commented that possibly, as human
culture and language became increasingly complex, verbal, and abstract, we
began to lose mediumistic consciousness, a daily Gnosis with the "subtle
realms" that was further facilitated by symbolism, mythology, and ritual.
With the gradual ascendancy of left-brained reasoning, and with
the development of patriarchal religions, he suggests that tribal and
individual Gnosis was gradually replaced by complex institutions that rendered
spiritual authority to priests who were viewed as the sole representatives of God. The “conversation” stopped, and the language
to continue became obscure or lost.
Perhaps this empathic, symbolic, mediumistic capacity is returning
to us now as a new evolutionary balance, facilitated by re-inventing and
re-discovering the mythic pathways to the Numina.
References:
1 Foster, R.F., The
Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (London: Allen
Lane/Penguin Press 2001)
2 The Gaia
hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle,
proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to
form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the
conditions for life on the planet. The hypothesis, which is named after the
Greek goddess Gaia, was formulated by the scientist James Lovelock and
co-developed by the microbiologist
Lynn Margulis in the 1970s.
3 C. Plinius Caecilius
Secundus minor, Epistula 41.3, from Nova Roma, www.novaroma.org/nr/Numen
5 Steele, John, Earthmind: Communicating with the Living World of Gaia, with
Paul Devereaux and David Kubrin (Harper and Row, 1989)
