Could It Be?

                             

Gazing towards the heavens

on a midsummer, star-scattered night

I wondered...

Could it be

that it is not just light

that springs from this land of stars

but life itself?

Could it be

that these pulsing beams of light

are bearers of life's essence

which fills all of space?

Could it then not be

that this life

seeds the whole universe

so that our Mother the Earth

and every star above

swims in a vast cosmic ocean?

Could it be that cosmic waves

of lights and tides and currents

stretch themselves

from star to star?

And that this cosmic life

is the inspiring force

in all the universe...

..an eternal act of creation..

an eternal breaking on the shores

of our coastline world

How inexhaustible

how inescapable then

is the urge to manifest!

I stood there in this starry night

on the shore of space

and in the deepest reverence

it dawned on me

that life is compelled to create

in its striving for completeness.

The Sun on the Stone

It is just before dawn. Around you is complete darkness, far darker than the pre-dawn glow in the world outside, for you are deep inside the underground chamber of the Irish megalithic monument known as New Grange. This particular dawn is special, because it is the dawn of the midwinter solstice on the twenty-first of December, and what is about to happen is also special.

Outside the winter sun starts to rise, and as it does a single shaft of light penetrates the long entrance corridor and begins to pierce the darkness around you. The shaft of light grows ever brighter as the sun rises, until it strikes the wall of stone behind you, illuminating the chamber, and just missing the design of a triple spiral carved into the rear wall. Then just a few moments later the phenomenon begins to fade as the sun climbs higher, and its rays can no longer penetrate the length of the straight corridor. In another few minutes you are once more surrounded by the impenetrable darkness, and all is as it was before.

The event you have just witnessed could have been seen by someone – weather permitting – on this particular midwinter dawn of any year during the last five thousand years, for that is how long this monument has existed. But there is a difference: five thousand years ago, the shaft of light which you have just seen would have struck the triple spiral in its exact centre. That it no longer does so is due to our Earth’s drift in its orbit. The planning of the original builders of New Grange was immaculate.

These ancient monuments speak to us of the sophistication of their builders, our ancestors. But even more than this, they speak of a time when the earth itself was a place of magical ceremony. New Grange has the form of a womb, with the long entrance corridor forming the birth canal. We cannot know the exact nature of the ceremonies which would have been held here and at other such sites, but that they were concerned with the fertile well-being of the earth is clear enough. Father Sun penetrates the womb of Mother Earth, and the months towards the bursting forth of new life in the spring can be counted down.

The infant Child, we are told in scripture, was born in a stable. It is an idea which now has become so fixed and familiar that it takes an effort to think of things happening in any other way. But they did. The word ‘stable’ is a misunderstanding of the original Greek texts. What was mistranslated as ‘stable’ is actually a word more akin to ‘cave’. The Child as well emerged from these mysterious realms of nurturing darkness, and a mother gave birth to the Son.

All the opposing energies – light and darkness, male and female, day and night – must be tended carefully and kept in balance with each other for things to develop and prosper, and for events to unfold as they should. And the dark earth might keep her secrets, but on special occasions the light will reach into the depths and illuminate the mysterious patterns lying at the heart of the beginnings of us all.

Tiamat’s Tears

“In the beginning…” These opening words of the Old Testament have a ringing familiarity, perhaps even to those who might seldom visit a church. But the human imagination allows for many ‘beginnings’, and each culture and belief creates its own beginning appropriate to itself. So…

In the beginning there was only Tiamat. Tiamat, the mother of all which will be, out of whose celestial womb all life will flow, fills all of space. She is the primordial salt ocean, and the rising and falling of her fertile waves are but the outward signs of the momentous acts of creation which are even now taking place beneath her surface, in the dark depths of the cosmos. At first it is as if there is only a vast nothing, a void without form. Then gradually, gradually, small flashes appear. At first they are only scattered sparks, shining briefly at random. Then come more and more, until the darkness is pierced by countless stars.

But Tiamat knows that more is needed: something to complement her own salt body. From her void emerges her husband Apsu. Her husband is also of water, but his waters are sweet. His waters are freshwater. It is this mingling of saltwater and freshwater which produces the potential for all the other gods to emerge. But in the eons to come a great sacrifice will be needed if the world itself – our world – is to be created.

The gods, who are Tiamat’s own creation, rise up and rebel against Apsu. Apsu is slain, and Tiamat, in her attempts to win justice for her lost husband, is herself torn in two. Out of this rending, this great separation, dry land at last emerges. Tiamat’s defeat and sacrifice have made it possible for life on earth to begin – and so for us to exist.

This particular ‘beginning’ myth of Tiamat is from Mesopotamia. In it we recognize many key elements of such stories: the creating Great Mother, the ‘alchemical wedding’ of opposing but complementary forces, the resulting struggle, and the need for sacrifice to drive things forward if further creative goals are to be achieved. Sacrifice is of course also at the heart of the Christian story, and it is the idea of sacrifice in such stories which also contains within it the promise of redemption. And what is redemption but an act of sacrifice with a further purpose? Tiamat’s sacrifice was needed to create the separation of land and sea, and so allow life on land to flourish.

But is there perhaps a further meaning that we can draw from the myth of Tiamat? Why was Tiamat specifically the salt ocean? Men wage war, and women weep. Strife and struggle are mingled with the salt tears of those who are left to mourn, and those who are left are the wives and the mothers who remain to grieve. Our mother is the earth, whose freshwater rivers that are the remains of Apsu always flow to be reunited with his beloved ocean. And our mother is also that ocean, containing the salt tears of Tiamat who, as mothers do, knows both the pains of sacrifice and the sweetness of redemption.   

Painting by David Bergen