When I Was the Forest

 

When I Was the Forest

When I was the stream, when I was the

forest, when I was still the field,

when I was every hoof, foot,

fin and wing, when I

was the sky

itself,

no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever

wondered was there anything I might need,

for there was nothing

I could not love.

It was when I left all we once were that

the agony began, the fear and questions came,

and I wept, I wept. And tears

I had never known

before.

So I returned to the river, I returned to

the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,

I begged - I begged to wed every object

and creature,

and when they accepted,

God was ever present in my arms.

And He did not say,

“Where have you

been?”

For then I knew my soul - every soul -

has always held

Him.

*

– Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328)

*

Art: "Sacred Heart" by Odilon Redon

*

The Music of Silence

It was the evening of the work’s premier performance. The symphony was very well received, but it was after the second movement had concluded that something remarkable happened. The audience burst into spontaneous cheering and applause, shouting for an immediate encore. But the conductor on his podium did not react.

An assistant walked onto the stage and carefully turned the conductor around so that he at last could see the ecstatic reaction of his audience. The concert was given on the 8th of December 1813 for an audience of Austro-Bavarian war veterans who had fought the retreating army of Napoleon just five weeks earlier, and Ludwig van Beethoven, who was both the composer of the symphony and its conductor at this special concert performance, was by this time almost totally deaf.

The wishes of the audience were made clear to him, and Beethoven immediately launched into the movement’s requested encore, with the orchestra dutifully and beamingly obliging. Even today, over two centuries after these events, the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony, the allegretto, seems to have a special power to stir the souls of those who hear it, and Beethoven himself felt that it was one of his finest works.

What we are left to reflect upon is the vision of someone who, through his human will to create, overcame what must surely be the greatest setback for any composer: his loss of hearing. Others have done as much. The great Italian Renaissance artist Titian battled increasing blindness to continue painting, and the American author Helen Keller worked through her own dual handicaps of being both deaf and blind to continue her prolific and successful writing career, and so communicate to others what her creativity required of her.

We all are the children of divine spirits who move with us along our life’s path, even though that path might at first appear to be one which we would not have chosen for ourselves. But our spirits are always there, and all which they ask of us is to trust them, and to know, even in the face of what might seem to us to be ‘unfair’ odds, that we will be given the courage to do that which is required of us. And there always is the music of a blessed musical genius to give us both strength and solace. 

Portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven, created in 1820 by Joseph Karl Stieler, court artist to the Bavarian kings.

The Red Wolf

Children go missing all the time.

Sometimes it is faeries who steal them.

Other times, they trust a wolf.

Even in times of war, children are innocent to the true ways of the world. Their mothers are always wiser.

This is because mothers know that the softest people with the biggest hearts are the ones who held the truest magic of them all: purity of this kind could not be bought from the Gods themselves, and it was the greatest target of the devil-souled.

When Little Red Riding Hood went missing, a girl so beloved by her mother that she always told her she could be anything she wanted to be, her mother never ever left the place where she had grown up, hoping against hope that the trees, the woods, would one day return her child.

Every day, she stood at the end of the woods, looking into the dark, hoping to find a wisp of her forest-hearted child somewhere within the leave-strewn wild. Every day, she took a step closer to the darkness, hopelessness making her courage steadfast, stronger.

Grief makes unlikely warriors of us all.

So when she saw the two lamp-like eyes in the dark one day, she was not afraid. Instead she asked, 'Brother wolf, are you the one who has stolen my child from my arms and taken her away?'

'Not I' said the wolf before disappearing.

The next day, she took another step closer to the woods she had once searched every inch of and another pair of eyes glowed through the darkness, red like the colour of her child's cloak.

'Brother wolf, are you the one who pulled my child away from me with just a look?'

'Not I,' said the wolf before turning away.

A wolf began to visit her almost every day. And every day she would ask the same question a different way. She found herself getting closer and closer to the heart of the forest and the wolves never ever attacked her. She began to wonder if what the woodcutter had told her was true, that the wolf had eaten her child for supper.

On the day she reached the heart of the forest, she began to realise that although she had thought she had been here before, this lush, dense part of the wood was a place she had never been. There was something both familiar and unsettling about it, like a place not meant to be seen.

A lair where a thousand lamp-like eyes watched her from the fog and the dark, and even when the fog cleared away and the light came through, she found what she was looking at was enough to make her fall apart. On a throne amongst wolves of all sorts and sizes, a young girl sat. She wore a red wolf's skin on her body and two swords sheathed behind her back.

Slow recognition crept over her face. She ran to the older woman and, after hugging her, finally told her why she had never come home. 

'Dear Mother, I am sorry I never ever came home. The evil woodcutter and his friends were trying to destroy this forest world. When I came through the woods, I happened to hear all of their plans. They saw me listening, followed me to grandmother's, killed her and tried to burn her house down with me in it so they could continue their wicked plans. The wolves came to rescue me, and trained me to be one of them. I am now the Alpha and protect them from the woodcutter and his evil friends. 

Her mother promised her that she would never tell another soul where Red Riding Hood was. The secrecy was their only weapon against the woodcutter and his horde. Over and over again, Red Riding Hood and the wolves bravely defended the woods and woodland creatures from extinction. They bravely fought and her mother soon came to live with them and aid them in their battle.

So when you tell the story of Red Riding Hood, remember this too:

Her mother told her

she would grow up to be

anything she wanted to be,

so she grew up to become

the strongest of the strong,

the strangest of the strange,

the wildest of the wild,

the wolf leading the wolves.       

***

- Nikita Gill; from Fierce Fairy Tales & Other Stories to Stir the Soul. 

Artist: Marija Jevtic

                               

The Fullness of Days

Often days pass when I do not see anyone, days pass when I do not seek to see any person nor speak to him. The days pass quietly and simply. But I take care of the few things that are close to me not through their own fault. I try not to hurt them and wait for dusk to come so that I too can be quiet, lie down and rest from what I have done during the day. That's how life goes. Without great achievements, without anything special, without impressive or famous achievements and contributions to human civilization.

Because of all of this, my friends see me as worthless, a loser who did nothing important in my life, neither did I achieve the elementary things, nor the basics. Without reason, they say to me, I experienced life stealthily, I lived it in vain, going towards the common fate, death.

But if my friends knew my daily work, maybe they would change their minds, maybe they would even revise their opinions and theory.

Every day in morning I look reverently at the empty sky, I stare tenderly at the trees, regularly caress the wild flowers, listen carefully to the voices of the rivers and let the carefree calls of the birds in the sky soothe my hearing. Then I take care every day how I tread on the earth, not to damage God's insects , not to spoil the order of the gravel that the winds and chance have arranged.

I take care, then, if I meet people, to be compassionate and be disposed to forgive everything, I never fight back, and I leave when I feel I'm growing wearisome - and this happens all the time.

Generally speaking, I try daily to flow between the things and the lives of others without stopping them with my own extravagant wishes, and my own irrational demands that ask for an excessive share of pleasure.

In the evening I try to spend the night reconciled with everything and above all immersed in that feeling that constitutes the heart of life. The feeling that life is one and is not divided, that it has no small or great things, grand or minuscule but only functional spirits, thoughts, actions and things that all together unceasingly enshrine unity and shape the beautiful body of the unified life.

 ***

"Living as a Lighthouse keeper" by Giorgos Kordis

Art: Michael Peter Ancher, 1849-1927, Danish artist.

Caoin na Sídhe - Keen of the Sídhe - A Tribute

 

The Keen of the Sídhe is heard by those carrying this ancestral lineage for Sídhe beings who are transitioning from Body to Spirit.

The famous wail or keen of the Banshee holds the tradition that when the people with the blood of the Sídhe are dying, the crying woman of the otherworld will be heard lamenting with the piercing wail of grief. Its said to be an earth shattering sound. 

Yesterday morning I could feel the energetics of a massive ball of energy shattering and I heard the wail. It was like a hurricane of sorrow,  a roar of the almighty earth and the light of a thousand sun's going dark. 

I thought OK, something major has occurred.

It was last night when I heard the news of Sinéad moving into the Otherworld and I could see, feel and relate this transition to the energy I heard and felt earlier. 

The Sídhe are powerful transmitters of Sound,  Song, Voice and Word. Their Joy and Lament are the same,  Earth Shattering Light Codes that bring about Epic changes for those with hearts to hear.

This Beautiful Otherworldly Bean Sídhe was a major holder on the grid of these Sound Codes.  She came to Rock,  Dismantle and Shatter the old. She was Fae through and through, She was Original,  from the place of the Unknown. Unknown by the human paradigm and tormented and haunted by the human paradigm for expressing these frequencies but FREE in her Sídhe form. 

The wail of the Sídhe as they transition is an accumulation and release of the potent emotion and energy that these sacred keepers of sound have held and contained within the restrictions of their human vessels. Mostly they have held and contained these emotions for their ancestry and the collective. They are Grail keepers,  Cauldron holders,  Wells of Knowledge with Powerful Voices to help humanity to shift, awaken and evolve. 

When we transition from Body to Spirit there is an intense review period whereby every experience we have come through moves through us, sometimes it's images, feelings, memories etc. The  Caoin na Sídhe is this review in Sound. Sinéads release was Epic,  the Sound was Immense. May she be FREE now in her Sídhe form and welcomed into the Unconditional Love of her Origin. Resting in Peace, knowing her Sound carried us All.

All my love to you Shining One, on your journey home, Thank you for your time holding us, 

❤

Cáití Caille

The Mirror of Your Soul

 

The Mirror of Your Soul

In the everlasting heartbeat of life

there and even deeper

we are one, indivisible,

inseparable

You, standing on my shore

gazing out over my surface

you see into the mirror

of your own soul

You are so weary of the storms

that have torn through your life

so let my tides carry you

to the deepest depths

of your existence

Until you remember once more

that you and I are one

for you yourself are the ocean

and I, your eternal Mother.

Image:  me at the Oregon Coast near Neskowin, 2016 © Deborah Wright, photographer

I AM

No longer a spectator but an observer, my perception is my creation. No longer victim but creator, my creation is my act of love. No longer possessed but lover, my act of love is constant recognition.

I am old and weary, tired of the years.

Young am I, all wonder.

The beginning is me, and the end, and everything in between.

The hand that embraces me in love, is me in gratitude.

I am.

A piece of text that touched me, from the beautiful book by Hans Korteweg: "Many More Years" 

Art: Jacob's Ladder by William Blake

Chalice

CHALICE

Purify what remains impure in me

that I may be a vessel full of honey

for without your help it will remain

an unrefined nothing,

my beekeeper, my queen.

You show me the path

which leads me to your hidden garden

winding through the labyrinth of my days.

For I know that in that blessed place

I can work freely,

and when the sun is high

I will kneel down.

I mirror myself in your sweet source

and the honey chalice opens.

Everything becomes light with you,

everything is renewed,

at your word the desert will bloom.

It is what I have longed for,

what I so long have sought,

what I have hoped for all my days:

To become a room

among the many rooms 

in the Mother-house of Love.

Art: Bhramari Devi - Hindu Bee Goddess. A form of Shakti who changed into a bee to fight demons and negativity. Artist: Greg Spalenka

Ascension Day

Ascension Day comes when the season of blossoming is reaching fullness. Trees and plants, stirring upwards in growth, have been touched by the warmth and light from the blue bowl of the sky above and shower forth its blessings in color and scent. The whole of nature reaches upwards towards the heavens.

The longing of the human soul strives also upward, in unison with nature, seeking the touch of world-warmth from the sun. This mood of ascension attunes all of life to the expanses of the cosmos.

However closely heaven and earth are aligned, their relationship is not always the same. In this we see the miracle of the seasons - the breathing-in and breathing-out of the great earth soul.

At the time of the Ascension of Christ, nature celebrates the ascension of the soul of the earth. It can hardly be by chance that the forty days between Easter and Ascension coinside with the season.
Every year in the springtime, when the earth breathes out its yearning for the airy spaces above, the mystery of the Ascension of Christ, who is the Spirit of the Earth, is renewed.

And surely it must be so that as Christ has ascended to glory, in the fullness of time so too will humanity ascend, and be transfigured into what will become our soul's true and ultimate destiny.

Your Children Are Not Your Children

"Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself."

- Kahlil Gibran

A reflection

It is only human to be devoted and attached to one's family. To desire a good relationship with one's own children is probably the most genuine desire of any parent. To lose the connection, whether by death or by life, causes suffering. 

To come to peace with this loss is possible..; to lay the suffering to rest is also possible. But it is only possible when to the profoundest depths is understood that love is not an exclusive blessing for one's own loved ones, but that love abounds and permeates everything. Then the heart calms down and the surrender to what is simply follows.

⚜️⚜️⚜️

Art: Les enfants de Bretagne by Emil Vernon

The Sword of Light - Excalibur

 

The Sword of Light - Excalibur, is a gift from the inner Feminine power called the Lady of the Lake.

Merlin, Arthur's druid-like counselor, who act as mediator between the world of the court and the realm of the Otherworld, takes the young king to meet with the Lady.

Arthur rows out onto the lake to receive the sword from the Lady. This is a moment of great significance: up through the deep  feminine waters of the lake, a portal to the inner realms, the Lady raises the Sword, the masculine symbol of power for the new Sun King of the outer world. It emerges from the underworld like the first ray of the rising sun from beneath the horizon.

So does the goddess bless the king with the gift of Excalibur, a weapon of the Light with which to rule his kingdom. Inner and outer worlds come together to forge a sacred contract of divine kingship with the goddess of the land.

But the young king shows signs of the fatal dominance of masculine over feminine values, which will pervade his reign. Merlin asks him which he prefers: sword or scabbard (holder). Arthur, whom we can imagine brandishing the flashing blade in delight, replies that, of course he likes the sword best.

Merlin points out that the scabbard, clearly a feminine symbol, is more precious than the sword itself, because it magically protects the wearer's life. Merlin's advice comes from experience born of age that recognizes the deeper wisdom of the power that conserves life rather than destroying it.

But the young king's choice of sword over scabbard hints at the imbalance that contains the seeds of destruction for Logres, King Arthur's realm in the Matter of Britain, and the end of all hopes for a Golden Age of peace.

- Excerpt from Grail Alchemy; 'Swords of Light and Darkness', by Mara Freeman

Art: Sir John Lavery Triptych – ‘Madonna of the Lakes’

Tuccia and the Basket

Tuccia showing the sieve with water.
Art: Giovanni Batista Benaschi

One of the most popular and enduring goddesses in Ancient Rome was Vesta, goddess of the hearth, and it was – and in so many houses still is – the cozy hearth fire which is regarded as the central focus of family life. Vesta’s popularity endured into early Christian times, and even today her name survives (although rather commercially!) as a brand name on boxes of matches.

The temple in Rome bearing the name of the goddess was served only by those dedicated women who were chaste of body and pure of spirit: the Vestal Virgins, and it is the story of one of them which has become legend. In the 3rd century B.C. the Vestal Virgin Tuccia found herself accused of being less than the pure one which her services in the temple of the goddess demanded of her.

From one deceitful mouth to another the false and ugly rumours about Tuccia quickly spread, and the poor young woman saw herself being threatened with expulsion, and separated from the temple – and from the goddess – to which she had chosen to dedicate her life. What must she do against these cruel and baseless claims? How must she show that she was as fully worthy to serve the goddess as she ever was?

Rather than protest her innocence with words of denial Tuccia chose to keep her silence. In so many situations actions can speak louder than any words, and Tuccia’s action in her own situation was to pick up a woven wicker basket. The basket was used as a sieve, and its base was a loose open weave with many holes. She carried the sieve down to the banks of the Tiber and, silently asking a blessing from her patron goddess, dipped the sieve into the flowing waters.

The sieve held. With the wicker basket full to the brim Tuccia carefully and dutifully walked back to the temple to offer the water as a libation to the goddess. Not a drop of the Tiber’s water was spilled, and all who saw her actions were silent and astonished. They knew that only the most pure of heart, only one who was the most deserving of Vesta’s blessings, could perform such a modest miracle. And it was this that was the clear conclusion of all those who witnessed Tuccia’s feat.

How many of us have at some time suffered through injustice? How many have, like Tuccia, been forced to show that they are not guilty of the accusations against them? Sometimes words of protest are not enough, but what then? We might not manage Tuccia’s small miracle, but to remain pure of heart, to be true to ourselves even in the storm, can also be enough. That… and perhaps also to remember that small miracles can, and do, sometimes happen.

Life? Or Theatre?

Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) was a German-Jewish artist. As a young girl she lived relatively carefree until the National Socialist takeover of power in 1933. In spite of this radical political change she was almost able to complete a course at the Berlin art academy. In January 1939 Charlotte fled Berlin and travelled to her grandparents in the south of France, who had already left Nazi Germany when the National Socialists took control. In 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, her grandmother committed suicide. Only then did Charlotte learn that her mother had also taken her own life in 1926.

The twenty four year-old Charlotte assimilated this turbulent family history and her experiences as a Jew in Berlin in an extraordinary way. In her anguish she resurrected her memories of her former lover, the singing teacher Alfred Wolfsohn (1896-1962). Among other things, he told her that in order to love life fully, one may have to embrace and understand its opposite – death. She decided to save herself with the help of his ideas and to undertake "something totally insanely special" as an alternative to suicide. She withdrew completely and began to paint in an unprecedented explosion of creative activity to ward off mental disintegration. And along the way she recreated her life. She used everything she had in her: her artistry, her visual and musical memory, her insight into the personalities of her relatives, her intellectual faculties, her humor and the inspiration she drew from her love for Wolfsohn.

In a unique interplay of art forms, Charlotte Salomon depicted her life in an artwork of almost eight hundred gouache watercolor paintings with overlaid sheets full of texts and musical references. In it she introduces herself and the people around her with assumed and grandly-resounding stage names as the protagonists in a musical theater play (a ‘Singspiel’). She mercilessly scrutinizes their lives in an ingenious game veering between fact and fiction, leaving her viewers with the question of what they are actually seeing: is this life itself – or merely theatre?

As Nazi aggression escalated, the Berlin-born Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon sensed the end was near. She wrapped over 800 of her paintings in brown paper and handed them to a friend with the words "Take good care of it, it's my whole life". Miraculously, the gouaches survived.

Charlotte Salomon died in October 1943 in Auschwitz at the age of 26.

1939, painting in the garden at the Côte d'Azur, France

After the Second World War her father and his wife discovered Life? Or Theatre? in the South of France. They donated it to the Jewish Historical Museum in 1971.

 "And she saw with awakened eyes all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun and knew: she must disappear from the human surface for a while and make every sacrifice to create her world anew from the depths."

All the works are in the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam.