Her Name was Lilith

Her name was Lilith, and early Jewish folklore tells us that she was the first wife of Adam. This weaving together of folklore, legend and scripture became a way to explain the curious fact that in just the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis there are two separate versions of the creation of the first man and woman. Chapter Two relates the familiar version of Eve being formed from one of Adam’s ribs, but in Chapter One we are told that the man and the woman were created at the same time, and therefore independently of each other. This first couple remain unnamed, which is where folklore steps in and names the woman as Lilith.

Unlike Eve, who is something of a ‘second-generation’ product, from the very moment of her creation Lilith is an independent being, with equally independent thoughts and aspirations. As such she is clearly Adam’s equal, so it is unsurprising that when Adam expects his new partner to have a subservient role then Lilith is having none of it! She protests mightily both to Adam and to God himself that she is better than that, better than someone who must keep a respectful distance and walk behind her ‘master’, better than a mere servant who apparently is intended to keep Eden nicely cleaned and dusted while Adam lords it over her and busies himself with more important tasks like inventing names for all the animals.

We might imagine that both God and Adam were rather taken aback by this unexpected show of rebellion (as they saw it) on the part of the woman, and two bruised male egos must therefore have watched in dismay as Lilith stormed off into the night to begin her own independent existence. So unlike Eve who would come after her, Lilith was not expelled from Paradise, but kept the power to herself and left of her own accord. And so a new partner for Adam was created, this time out of Adam’s own flesh, and both God and Adam would make very sure that the second time around the woman would indeed be subservient to the man.

This is where the original folklore ends. So what happened to Lilith after she left Eden? What happened is that new folklore emerged, new tales were shaped, and a new Lilith was created out of them. But this was no longer the Lilith who was the strong and resourceful female. Lilith’s terrible (and as it turns out, bitterly unjust) punishment for doing nothing more than assert her equal gender rights was to be transformed by subsequent folklore from a strong, empowered and independent woman into a predatory and dangerous creature of the darkness, and there to be – quite literally –  demonized.

We now picture Lilith as a dangerous and predatory demon of the night, and, quite literally, give her horns and even fangs to the extent that she resembles a sort of female version of Satan. But this Lilith is essentially a male fantasy, an invention which almost seems deliberately calculated to put the upstart Lilith in her place once and for all. Such a pity, because it is clear that the original version of who Lilith actually was and what she really was like is a Lilith who is needed now more than ever. Perhaps this is the task of our own age: to redeem Lilith, to restore her in all her original empowered femininity, so that a measure of balance also might be restored to our own troubled times.

Eggs White and Eggs Red and The Philosopher's Stone

Peter has always tended to regard this woman as something of an upstart. That he has done so perhaps might have had to do with a simmering yet unvoiced resentment that she, a mere woman, was clearly so highly regarded by their beloved rabban Yeshua. Poor Peter; impulsive by nature, at times even hot-headed, and driven by a misplaced and oh-so-human jealousy. Eventually, as inevitably they must with him, his emotions rule his actions and he decides to press the issue and challenge Mary of Magdala, Mary the Magdalene.

Seizing the moment, Peter confronts Mary as she happens to be carrying some freshly-collected eggs in a basket. The confronting challenge is as direct as it is simple: to prove her divine worth Mary must change the pure white eggs in her basket in some dramatic and fundamental way. And there before Peter’s astonished gaze all the white eggs instantly turn a deep and vivid ruby red.

There are several variations of this story, which has been used as a charming explanation as to why we have the custom of painting eggs at Easter. We might wonder whether it was Mary’s own spiritual power that caused the miracle, or whether some aspect of the Divine stepped in to cause the change independently of her own will. Perhaps it matters little which of these two alternatives is correct, because the point of the story remains the same: Peter’s doubts about who had a claim to the Divine spirit were dispelled in that moment.

The symbolism in the story is plain enough: white is used to represent the purity of the Lamb, and red is for the Saviour’s blood shed to redeem us all. This is the accepted version – and the accepted familiar symbolism – of Christianity. But is that really all there is to this story? This post might have ended here, but this story, like all stories that have such an apparently simple appeal, contains profound and unexpected depths.

The story, like so many of these stories which embroider upon scriptural settings, appears to be medieval, and it is a medieval alchemist’s study that we need to visit to continue this more mysterious thread of our story further. The creation of that fabled treasure of legend, the Philosophers’ Stone, included three principal stages. The second of these two, known as the whitening or the albedo, was -if the procedure was followed carefully!- succeeded by the triumphant stage known as the reddening or the rubedo, which was the appearance of the blood-red Stone itself. It need come as no surprise to us to learn that this most precious Stone was symbolised by an egg, and the egg itself was said to contain all the elements united.

The white further represented the alchemist’s mystical ‘philosopher's mercury’ -representing the human soul- and the red the ‘philosopher’s sulphur’ -representing the human spirit-, and it is the constant mingling of these two which caused the treasured Stone to emerge. To possess the Stone was no small achievement, as it was said to confer the power of immortality upon its owner. And in the end, is this not the true message of Easter? Redemption offers eternal life, and Easter is nothing if not a story of redemption.

So perhaps this coming Easter if you happen to be at home or elsewhere painting eggs, you might remember that you are not merely remembering Mary’s miracle, but are also creating a replica of the fabled Philosophers’ Stone! 

Strength

In the old decks of cards known as the Tarot we come across a picture of a woman prising open the jaws of a shaggily-maned lion. In some decks the woman is alternatively shown tearing down the great columns of a building, and these two images – usually the one with the lion – still persist in decks which are produced today. The card is called ‘Strength’, and the woman certainly would need to be strong to accomplish either of these feats. What is consistent across the many Tarot decks in circulation is that the character is always a woman, and this woman always appears to be calm in her situation, accomplishing her feat of strength with little apparent effort.

The subject of Strength originally was one of the four Cardinal Virtues: those four vital qualities which it was considered essential to possess if we are to lead a virtuous life. The other three were Justice, Temperance (which we now would describe as ‘moderation’) and Prudence, and their inclusion in these old decks suggested that they were there partly for reasons of moral instruction.

But this idea of the quality of strength being expressed as physical strength, as we know so well from our own lives, is only part of the story. Casually opening the jaws of an obliging lion can seem like a minor feat when we are called upon to exert other kinds of strength which in their own ways are considerably more demanding of us than exerting mere physical strength. These other strengths can be the strength needed to cope when faced with some injustice, or the strength to shoulder personal loss, or the strength, both mental and physical, which we need to fight some form of illness or injury which might even be life-threatening in nature, or simply the strength which is needed to carry on when every circumstance seems to be against us.

Our inner strength might also be called upon when we need to cope with racial or other prejudices, or with restrictions, perhaps caused by social customs or religious practices, which forbid us to be who we truly are. We might even have to live our entire lives in such a situation, coping with the pressure of pretending to be someone other than our true selves, and with the inner strength needed in such situations going forever unrecognized and unacknowledged. In a situation in which discovery would mean being cut out of our own community, or even in the most extreme cases, actually risking losing our life, reserves of inner strength are necessary and even essential to carry us through our day-to-day existence.

All of these various kinds of strengths are strengths which we need to cope with one situation or another. But there is another strength which is more positive, and which is still a mental and emotional strength rather than a physical one. This is the strength which flows from empowerment, from the power which we give ourselves. This is the strength which we have to stand up and to make a choice. We might be faced with the choice either of continuing to see ourselves as the victim in a situation, or to own that situation and declare ourselves its master. We are the boss, but sometimes it might be all too easy to forget that, and to let a situation be the boss of us instead. To take back this power, to claim it for ourselves, is what ‘empowerment’ truly means, and in this age when it seems that at last the tide is turning, and women can claim back rights which have for so long been forced to stay in the shadows, true strength is manifesting.

And the lion? Perhaps the ‘king of beasts’ always was more obliging and more friendly than we had imagined. Perhaps, had we just asked him, he might have opened his mouth for us! 

Painting: Una and the Lion by Briton Rivière

My Strength Is Trust

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

*

Hermann Hesse 
From his 1920 Collection of Fragments, Wandering, Notes and Sketches

Beyond the Blue Seas

“Beyond the blue seas, and beyond the high mountains” is the stirring description which carries us to the world of Vasilissa the Beautiful and the witch Baba Yaga: perhaps the Russian equivalent of our “once upon a time” phrase. Vasilissa the Beautiful follows much the same themes as our own Cinderella: a story involving a cruel stepmother and stepsisters whose exploitive coldness must be contended with, a pure and beautiful young woman who arouses the stepmother’s jealousy, and the hag Baba Yaga.

As with so many of these stories, Vasilissa’s tale endures because when we read it we sense deeper stirrings of themes to which we feel powerfully drawn. Is Baba Yaga merely a one-dimensional forest witch… or does she perhaps offer us lessons for our own lives? True to tradition, Baba Yaga is grotesquely ugly, with straggling hair as white as death and whose face seems more to be a leathery mask of wrinkles. She has at her command the powers of magical flight. The fence which borders her house is made from human bones, and upon each fence post rests a human skull with brightly-glowing eyes.

The setting has all the spine-chilling attributes of a storybook evil witch, but can we really consider Baba Yaga herself to be ‘evil’? In the story she actually provides Vasilissa with the means to overcome the wicked stepmother and stepdaughters by giving her one of those fiery-eyed skulls. When Vasilissa carries the skull back to her own home, the glowing eyes burn up the tyrannical stepmother together with her daughters, and she is freed to claim back her own life.

So Baba Yaga is perhaps neither strictly ‘good’ nor ‘evil’ in any clear-cut sense, any more than a tornado which destroys a community with its ferocious power can be considered as having done ‘evil’. A torrential downpour of rain might relieve a long period of drought, but the rain is not ‘good’ in any moral sense. The forces of nature simply are. 

Unlike the stepmother, Baba Yaga feels no jealousy towards Vasilissa’s great beauty. She cannot. To Baba Yaga, her own hideous appearance is simply a part of who she is, just as Vasilissa’s beauty reflects her pure soul. We would say that Baba Yaga owns her own ugliness. But what of Vasilissa? Her encounter with Baba Yaga has worked its own changes upon her as well. Baba Yaga has long left behind any need to feel ‘beautiful’. She is who she is. Baba Yaga’s true power has been to liberate herself from herself.

In her turn, in putting up with such cruel treatment in her own home for so long, Vasilissa, by being too submissive and servile, has in a sense kept herself captive. Baba Yaga’s gift to Vasilissa has been to awaken her to her own strength. Vasilissa returns empowered. In a sense the fiery-eyed skull is a mere prop, a showy trick which distracts from what has really taken place. It is the transformed Vasilissa who does the real vanquishing, and it is the transformed Vasilissa who now is free to claim her own life back.

Illustration by Forest Rogers

Are We Still or are We Moving?

Are we still or are we moving? Even when our senses tell us that we might be keeping perfectly still, we know that we are moving, both with the Earth’s rotation through its cycles of day and night and with the movement of the Earth itself as it swims through the dark ocean of space. But to our ancestors these movements were unknown, unrecognised – and unthought-of. In those distant days, before science started to tell us otherwise, stillness was simply stillness.

But let us put science aside. If we are still, are we still moving? Supposing that we are lying ill in bed with a fever? Just as a burning fever is necessary before the healing can occur, we sometimes must undergo a critical turning point where we are turned around, inside out, undergoing a radical shift, to face a truth within. In life it is often suffering that leads us to open doors within ourselves that we probably would not have opened had we not first experienced this suffering. The suffering creates movement: a movement towards a process in which true healing can begin.

Our ancestors might not have been aware of the Earth’s movement through space, but movement for them came in other, perhaps more richer forms. For them, movement was a process: that sense of a journey which moves ever inwards and outwards once more. In mystic - and mythic - terms, a journey towards a centre is also a journey towards an edge, and it is this paradox which finds its most powerful expression in the form of the labyrinth.

And yet, such a paradox exists only in our everyday material reality, and is seen as being paradoxical only by our everyday senses. Once we are in the labyrinth and we walk the winding path which leads us inexorably towards the centre, we enter a timeless mythic landscape. Such paradoxes will then become meaningless, and the centre which is also an edge becomes a reality: a revealed truth. The labyrinth is a three-dimensional lesson offering a great and simple truth: that a movement – any movement – is a movement towards stillness, and that movement and stillness are themselves an eternal dynamic between action and rest.

Are we still or are we moving? We follow the winding path within ourselves and discover at our innermost centre, at the very core of our being, not the confines which we had imagined, but new infinities offering a true healing of the self.

At the Still Point of the Turning World

To ‘stand in truth’. What this phrase means will be different for each one of us, for we all have our own personal truth. But beyond this personal truth, we probably feel intuitively that such a place to stand is a place beyond the habitual momentum which pushes us forward, a place which is, in T.S. Eliot’s phrase, at ‘the still point of the turning world’. We feel that this is a place of peace and sanctuary, where it is safe for us to let go of all those chattering voices in us that, perhaps for years, have told us that we are ‘unworthy’, or that we ‘cannot’, or that just give us a feeling that we are ‘not good enough’.

This place where we can ‘stand in truth’ is a place where we can dare to push off from to meet new challenges, even if we feel that our legs tremble with the effort. For this place invests us with the authority of our true Spirit. 
But where is this place to stand? Anywhere where we are, we only need to take one step inside ourselves towards it, and we are there. This is because it is a place where the universe wishes us to be. We only need to show that we are willing to be there, and it will rush to meet us, and allow us to ‘stand in truth.

Painting: Saint Agnes by Edward Burne-Jones

Once upon a Time

“Once upon a time”. How familiar these words are to us, even though it might have been long years ago in our childhood that we last read them on the printed page. The words conjure forth a sense of events about to unfold for us, of ‘what is going to happen next’, and we know then that we can settle down and listen captivated to some magical story filled with heroic daring and romance. 

Beginnings are full of promise. They hold something that is at the same time majestic and delicate, grandly unfolding and yet also fragile. We might not always know what is to come, but that ‘not knowing’ is the very thing which creates a sense of tension. But because this familiar phrase finds its place at the beginnings of stories, and because these stories have already been written, we know that we are going to find out ‘what is going to happen next’. All that we need to do to find out what that something might be is to sit and listen or read further.

And so we accompany a little girl in a red cape as she goes to visit her grandmother in her cottage in the dark woods, or we journey with a mixture of courage and dread with Beauty as she nears the castle of the Beast. The variations are as infinite as the human imagination, and it is our imagination that defines these stories. 

But whatever their individual variations, these stories always begin with “once upon a time”. But so do they always end with another familiar ringing phrase as well. There waiting patiently at the end of the story like an old friend is the reassuring phrase: “…and they lived happily ever after.” Even as we experience all the adventures and setbacks with which the characters must contend along the way, we know that things will work out in the end because ‘happily ever after’ will be the story's concluding words.

Our life, as we know all too well, tends to have a rather different format from one of these stories. What our imagination cannot define, but only wonder about, is what has yet to be written down. “Once upon a time” could also be the commencement of our own lives, or of the coming year, or even of the day that is about to unfold, but whose events have yet to happen. We can guarantee that it will begin with this phrase. How our own story might end is less certain. Those words ‘happily ever after’ are so imprinted in our consciousness that they might lead us into a sense of false expectation, into thinking that this is the way that things ought to end. But perhaps the words offer something more significant than false expectations which might lead only to disappointment.

Perhaps these formulaic story phrases also offer us promise, of a sense that events are unfolding as they should, even if these events are very different from what we had imagined for ourselves. “Once upon a time” is always the beginning. And if we allow ourselves the space, and perhaps also the compassion and forgiveness for our circumstances, it is always possible that “happily ever after” will be the conclusion.

Illustration: Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs by Lidia Postma

In the Heart of Heaven

Are you feeling restful? We usually take this question as meaning that we are being asked if we feel at ease and contented, if our thoughts are peaceful and untroubled. If all is well with us then it is nice to be able to reply in the affirmative. These are the states of wellbeing in our everyday world, but supposing that we alter the question slightly.

Supposing instead the question is: are you at rest within yourself? Now there is a deeper meaning implied: something which hints at a state of rest beyond simply ‘feeling restful’. The key word seems to be ‘within’. This, we sense, is something beyond feeling merely at ease about things. It carries the promise of a deeper world that is somewhere accessible: a peace beyond even ordinary contentment. But do we even have to feel good about things to reach this inner level?

Even when the ocean is a raging storm on the surface and great white-foamed waves are tossing and rolling, we know that deep beneath those waves all is calm in the depths, where the silent blue waters remain indifferent to the fury of the weather above. So perhaps it is possible that in our own lives we can reach this deeper peace, even when the events around us are filling our every thought with stress and confusion. The storm may rage around us, but these still, quiet depths within ourselves are always there and always accessible. But how are we to access them?

In one of the Gnostic texts known as ‘The Paraphrase of Shem’ the creative Light utters the mysterious phrase:

AI EIS AI OU PHAR DOU IA EI OU

This strange phrase seems to be beyond translation: unrecognisable as a known language, perhaps it is intended as a magical incantation. But in spite of this ambiguity we need not wonder about what is being said, because the following passage in the text gives us the intended meaning: ‘I am in great rest’, is what the Light is saying. The text further explains that in this blissful state all impurities are burned away in the presence of this purest of lights, and a state of rest like no other is offered.

Perhaps only in the heart of heaven is such perfect rest attainable, although we still may taste its sweetness, perhaps through the practice of meditation, or maybe we might use our own methods, such as listening to a favourite piece of music, or reading some choice lines of poetry, or being in a particular place where we feel contented and at home, whether in deep woodlands or by the sea’s shore.

Such places, such states, might seem to be a solitary activity, but always they are a dialogue, a communion with the Divine. In such moments, and without words, the Light is speaking to us, reminding us that even when we are by ourselves, even when we are only one, we still remain, and always will be, One.

Painting by Vasily Polenov

Touch me, but don't touch me.

“Touch me, but don't touch me.” This statement might seem like a paradox. But when we examine it attentively and with compassion, what we realize is that what people want most of all is to be touched in the heart.

People wish to be touched emotionally, yes, but for reasons only they can know, they might prefer to keep some physical distance between the other and themselves: as if they have drawn a circle around themselves which protects them from an over-familiar approach by others, and which at the same time assures themselves some protection. When these signals are understood on both sides, and the boundaries are established, most people will respect these unspoken agreements.

But what happens when these signals show some discrepancy? What happens to these ‘unspoken signals’ when someone appears to be sending out conflicting signals? “Come closer - but not too close!” What happens when this yearning of the heart to be stirred or touched requires us to take a forbidding step out of our carefully-defined comfort zone? And once that step has been taken, how must we react when someone else then reaches out to us and invites us to communicate? Then we find that our precious inner space must undergo expansion and grow in the outer world if we are to be able to communicate in a meaningful way.

This step into a larger unknown might be a moment of hesitation, of withdrawal, even of fear. It is then, in that moment, that we somehow must find our way to compassion: compassion for ourselves and our incapacity to make space in our safe circle. After all, is this not what compassion is? To give space to something to just be, to give space to the other to be whoever he or she is or wants to be? It is unconditional and fearless acceptance of the other person. It is giving space without judgement or interfering with or wanting to change them. Why then should we not also apply all this to ourselves?

It can often seem more difficult to give that space to ourselves than to others. Still we should learn to look at ourselves in a compassionate way whenever we reach a point in our life where we have to move outside of our comfort zone if we wish to fulfil our heart's yearning. 

In allowing ourselves to be emotionally affected, in allowing ourselves to be deeply moved, we engage ourselves. Simone de Beauvoir wrote that the feeling of affection stems from a certain ethical attitude - an attitude in which one dares to connect with others and with the world around us. In that sense to be affected is a choice. And there is always a choice, even if we think that there is none. All we have to do is to dare: to dare to take that step into the emotional unknown, to dare to allow ourselves to be touched. For surely if we allow ourselves this greater space then others will feel this from us, and compassion will flourish and we will touch others as surely as we ourselves are touched. 

Painting: Couple by Edward Burne-Jones

The Transforming Void

Our world is full of distractions. When we feel too crowded-in, we talk in terms of ‘taking a break’, or we might even express a wish to ‘get away from it all’. We might think of such places as being away from the crowd, as offering us a longed-for solitude. But it is perhaps the case that, were we truly to find ourselves in such extreme isolation, we would long for social company, for the daily round of meeting and chatting which we had become conditioned to and which we then would miss. The security of an ‘away-from-it-all’ holiday lies in knowing that it is limited in time, and that we soon-enough will ‘get back to it all’.

But what about those who ‘get away from it all’ and then choose not to return? A previous post on my blog tells the story of Mary of Egypt, a 6th-century hermit who lived in total seclusion in the Jordanian Desert, not for months, nor even for years, but for almost five long decades. Mary was a seeker, a soul on a quest for an encounter with the Spirit, and in this sense her solitary existence was also a pilgrimage: a journey into herself across an inner void perhaps more vast than the great and unforgiving void of the barren wastelands which surrounded her. 

A woman knows this void well. In a world whose social structures, whose very belief systems, are places built upon foundations of male power, women own this inner void as part of their natural estate. From the line of succession of a monarch to that monarch’s eldest son, from a deity who is thought of as being essentially masculine to that deity’s son, from religious beliefs whose texts quite literally spell out that men are a superior creation to women, from places of worship where women must occupy a segregated space that sometimes is actually hidden from the sight of the male congregation: all conspire to drive a woman into her own inner void and claim it as her own. For often-enough it is this emptiness which is the only place that is truly left to her.

But emptiness is power, for a void is never truly ‘empty’. Perhaps we do not need to actually live in a desert or in some other isolated place to experience this sense of pilgrimage, of self-exile. If what is within us, and sometimes what surrounds us, can at times seem like a void which might lead us to bleak despair, then that is perhaps the very moment to remember that it is the seeming emptiness of a void which can be full of the potential for transformation, and that what we experience as a void in our lives is not only not empty, but actually full of promise. The difference is only in our point of view, in how we choose to see the situation.

Who knows what miraculous mandalas Mary might have glimpsed in the red Jordanian sands? When Mary crossed the Jordan to live her life of self-imposed exile she took with her just three loaves of bread. The loaves quickly dried out and became inedible but Mary still managed to survive, for bread lasts but a little while, and yet the sustaining spirit endures.

Photo credit: India Flint

We Are Made For These Times

One night in my dream I heard a clear voice. The voice was so vivid that the phrase remained with me when I awoke. It had said to me: ‘You are made for these times’.

Belief sometimes comes before understanding. I knew that the words struck a chord with me, for they voiced what I do indeed believe: that I truly am meant to be here now, in this time. But why in such a difficult time? Both in my personal life and in unfolding world events there has been much to cope with. We prefer to make decisions based upon sound judgement and known circumstances, but so often we can find ourselves in a situation where we know so little about what might happen as a result of our decision, but we have to make that decision anyway. 

We make our decision, and we do our best to adapt to the changed circumstances. Adaptation is an existential process, certainly if it is in a phase of not knowing where it all might lead to. What are we trying to adapt to? And how do we grow and bear fruit? To find this out is a challenge which we all face in this day and age. But since adaptation is something that simply 'happens', it is not always possible to play a steering part in this process.

We cannot simply decide when and in which direction we adapt. What we instead can do is to let our soul-light shine and radiate outwards - not only by trying to be 'good' and acting out those ideals we think are positive, but by allowing the intrinsic nature of our inner being to be, unfettered by judgement or opinions. As the world is going through change and transformation we also are undergoing transformation on an individual scale. Even those of us who might not even think of ourselves as being particularly intuitive must now be feeling that something big is happening around us, that we are being driven towards… well, towards what, exactly?

There are many things happening right now which suddenly seem to be moving directly against what we might have hoped for: a more peaceful, more enlightened world – which also is a world in which women and men respect each other on equal terms, and children can be children, and not under-age workers or child soldiers. Now, because of these things, it can be so easy to feel overwhelmed by events, to feel that we are powerless against such a tidal flow of negative forces. We are not.

Our personal power is something which can never be taken from us. It is our personal power that gives us the ability to transform. To realize this is to empower ourselves, and this is when our individual transformation becomes a light to those around us, and in turn to those around them, and the power of this ripple effect expands outwards and transforms the greater world. Yes, these times are difficult, but that is exactly why we are here now. This is the time and this is the place, wherever that place may be, to make our stand and let our soul-light shine, for the darker the shadows, the more fiercely this soul-light will burn. We, all of us, ‘are made for these times’.

I wish you, my dear reader, all the trust and soul-power to shine brightly throughout the coming year.

Painting by Greg Spalenka

The Voice of the Ocean

Recently I visited Cape Lookout State Park on the Oregon coast:  a large peninsula which juts out into the Pacific. Standing at the entrance to the Cape I had a view of the ocean to either side, both to the north and to the south. On the north side lies a spectacular steep-sided bay which almost, but not quite, cuts the end of the Cape into an island. Being in such a place made me feel that I was standing at the edge of the world, and what lay beyond was all unknown and still to be discovered.

Now let's imagine that this landscape is a landscape made of time - which in some real sense, it is. Let's say that the coast lying to the south is the past, and the coast to the north is the future, and where I was standing on the peninsula is the present moment. This is the familiar landscape of time in which we all stand, with the past flowing through the present moment towards the unknown future. But there is another 'time' beyond this: the 'time' of the great ocean itself. To the ocean this 'past-present-future' time is meaningless. The ocean is eternal.

In that magical place that I had stood, the world around me seemed to offer me a lesson: a reminder of the eternal - and oh, how easy it is to think of the ocean in such a way! The unhurried waves role onto the wide beach, and the waves are themselves just the surface signs of the currents and undertows which flow unseen beneath. And even though the depths of that ocean remained hidden to me, the moving waves hinted at what might be happening below its surface: migrating whales on their long journey down to the southern feeding grounds (Earlier in the week I saw them spouting offshore!) and other creatures of that watery world that live out their lives in the silence of those blue depths.

Now overhead a bright harvest moon is shining, big and pale gold, the colour of ripe grain - just the way a harvest moon should look! The seasons turn, the waves which I hear from my window as I type this roll in to the wide sandy beach, as they have done for a thousand years and more, and these reflections on my visit to the Cape can be harvested. Unseen below the surface, the great whales slowly onward under the moon. In my imagination I can hear their songs echoing from the depths like the great voice of the ocean itself, and I feel that, simply because I am thinking about them, a small part of me is journeying with them through that deep blue eternity.

On the Shore

 

Almost exactly one hundred years ago the photographer Edward S. Curtis recorded with his camera an elderly Chinook woman gathering clams on the Pacific shore. The woman, we believe, was the daughter of the great Seattle, and was known as Princess Angelina. Now a century later, just a little farther south of where that photograph was taken, I stand on that same shore gazing out over that same ocean.

That photograph which Curtis made has inspired and informed so much of my life and my own writing and poetry. It is the archetypal image of a lone woman standing on the shore. Even a short while ago and half a world away I could not have imagined that I would be standing here, but a dear friend has made it possible, and the wished-for unthinkable has happened. The pathways of our life’s journeyings, whether they are those which happen on a map or which take place inside ourselves, are in the end always unpredictable. We know this so well through experience. We make our plans and the gods smile at our naivety and send us off in another direction entirely. At times that other direction is something other than we would have wished for, and yet on other occasions – as has happened to me now – it can bring rewards the more remarkable exactly because they were unexpected.

How many other footprints have been left on this same Pacific shore where I now stand? Princess Angelina’s certainly, but also those of Sacagawea, the courageous young Shoshone woman who was the invaluable guide on the William Clark and Merriweather Lewis expeditions of exploration. It was the wish of Sacagawea to see the ocean, and – just once – she did. And what of the many 19th-century settlers who with their wagons followed the Oregon Trail west? Finally to have reached this same shore where I now stand must have seemed like a blessing indeed after facing and persevering with the many dangers and hardships of their long journey. But to those settlers the ocean also clearly defined the limits of that journey: unlike the frontiers of the land it was a frontier that was absolute. Thus far, said the Oregon shore, and no farther.

The distant waves which even now I hear from my window as I write this have rolled in from another east: from Japan, from China, from Indonesia. The ocean as well has its journeys, and the patterns of its travelling currents are more predictable than the patterns of human travels. And what of my own footprints which I leave here on this shore? They will have been washed away by those journeying waves even before today’s sun has set, and certainly long before I myself travel back home to the Netherlands. And yet I have peace and take strength from knowing that, even though our timing might be different, they at last have joined those of Princess Angelina and Sacagawea. What the waves erase so easily finds a more enduring place in the memory, and it is there that my fragile footprints in the Oregon sand will remain.

The Question

In my ears: the unceasing voice of the wind. I wonder where the figure has vanished to. Perhaps if I could just make it to the crest of this dune I might yet catch another glimpse of her. With the wind at my back, and the blown grains of surface sand stinging my ankles, I struggle up the shadowed face of the great crescent of sand. 

With the light of the fast-sinking sun flooding my face I emerge from the dune’s shadow, and in two more paces I am standing full in the orange light on the sweeping crest of the dune. I scan the view in front of me for signs of life, and notice a dark outcrop of rock emerging like an island from the sand sea. And there in the shadow of the rock I notice a movement, as if she is deliberately revealing her presence to me – which perhaps she is. Perhaps she seeks this encounter as much as I myself do, for is that not her nature: to confront the other?

A few more minutes and I am climbing over the dark rock to reach the place where I spotted her. At first I do not see her, even though she is very close. Then two orange eyes open and stare at me from the shadows. Oh, such eyes! All the mysteries of the world are contained in those twin pools of amber. Her long mane of hair blows around her shoulders like a cloak, and her body, though human-enough, seems somehow other-than-human in a way in which I cannot explain to myself.

What does one say to a sphinx? Is it protocol to wait until spoken to when encountering such a fabulous creature of legend? Such encounters are too infrequent to really know the correct form of things. I feel awkward and unsure, and if I am truthful, also rather nervous. I notice the sphinx’s dark nails grown to the length of talons.

“May I ask you a question?” I hear a voice say. The voice is my own, desperate, apparently, to break the prolonged silence. The eyes of the sphinx fix onto and hold my own. She does not speak. “I would like to ask you” I continue, “if my life has a meaning.” Still the sphinx remains silent, scrutinizing me intently. Such silence can bring anxiety, so I continue: “I mean, sometimes I feel that it does, but at other times I feel just as equally that it’s all random, and it doesn’t matter what I do or plan because things happen anyway, but then it all more-or-less turns out in the end and I’m left wondering that even if I’d planned it all, would it have been any different? I suppose what I’d really like to ask you is: is there such a thing as free will, or is it all beyond our control? Although, now I think about it, I guess we must have free will, because it was my own free will that drove me to search for you so that I could ask you the answer to such a big, big question.”

Behind me, the pale moon is on the rise. The sphinx stares at me, and I seem to notice a faint smile. That ghost of a smile is still there as the sphinx curls up in the velvet shadows and silently falls asleep.

Artwork by David Bergen

On the Silent Wings of Prayer

True prayer requires no word, no chant

no gesture, no sound.

It is communion, calm and still

with our own godly Ground.

- Angelus Silesius

On the Silent Wings of Prayer

What is it to pray? If we say the word ‘God’ to ten people in a room, then it is quite likely that in those ten different heads there will be ten different ideas of what ‘God’ actually is, and what God means to them. Perhaps prayer is like this as well. We have a general idea of what a prayer is. We think of an attitude of praying, and of reciting, either aloud or silently, either in company as part of a congregation, or in solitude, a formularized verse or passage of text. Or perhaps our prayer is in the form of a petition: we are asking for something of a higher Self beyond ourselves.

What that ‘something’ is might cover a spectrum of interests and hopes. On a rather material level, we might pray for victory in a conflict, or even success in some sporting event. On a more personal level, we might ask for help, or for strength and courage in a situation which we feel overwhelms us. We might ask to keep a dear one safe in a situation of peril, or for guidance in navigating our way through trying circumstances which bewilder us, and which leave us unsure which way to turn.

As well as the above examples there might be many more situations in which we pray, the form which our prayers take, and what we are praying for. But one thing which all these sorts of prayers have in common, whether spoken aloud or voiced silently within ourselves, is that they are all, in some form, prayers with words. We use our own familiar language in which to pray. But is this the only way to pray?

Prayer is prayer, and perhaps prayer can be reduced to intention only. Perhaps, if our intention is there, then we do not even need words to pray. In this sense, perhaps intention is the purest form of prayer: a silent connection with the Divine that not only is without words, but which goes beyond words, beyond the limitations of language to become a pure expression of the spirit. The Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore described trees as the expression of an endless striving of earth towards heaven. In this mystic striving of the forms of nature we may glimpse this wordless prayer, this intention of all things to connect with that mysterious Other, encountered in a place beyond words, beyond human language.

The other evening I watched a large flock of starlings wheel and turn in the soft light of dusk. What mysterious figures were they tracing out in the twilit sky? I could only stand in silence and wonder at the myriad pairs of wings turning in perfect harmony, describing their unknown language in the paths of their flight. I could not interpret their lace-like traceries, but in those many wings I felt that I had glimpsed a wordless prayer made visible.

Speaking in Tongues

Today is Pentecost. For Christians it commemorates the occasion when after the ascension the Spirit descended to the apostles in the form of twin flames of fire, allowing them to ‘speak in tongues’. Amazed, they realised that they could speak all the languages of the lands to which they would journey to bring the message of their new faith.

The miracle lies in the fact that the varied languages which the apostles could suddenly speak were all recognisable to the native speakers of those lands – the text mentions Parthians, Cretans, Arabians and others. This episode is related in the Acts of the Apostles, towards the end of scripture. It is near the beginning, in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Genesis, that we read of another episode about many tongues: the story of the tower of Babel, familiar even to those who have not read the story in scripture. 

In the story of Babel, all of humankind can speak one language. There is no difficulty with communication, and even strangers from far lands can readily understand one another. With a co-operative will they construct a tower so tall that it begins to reach beyond the clouds into heaven itself. This human presumption is thwarted by divine will, which at a stroke causes the many languages of the world. Communication breaks down, the tower is left unfinished, and the builders scatter to their different lands.

One story seems to mirror the other. In the Babel story, communication breaks down. In the story of Pentecost, the barrier to communication is miraculously overcome. Both stories are concerned specifically with the language barrier: one story causes it, and the other story overcomes it. My own Netherlands native tongue is spoken by a comparative minority in Europe, and at school it was standard practice for us to learn three other major European languages – French, German and English. Being multi-lingual in this region of the world can at times be a necessity, but the language barrier can be overcome, not with miracles, but with simple work and study.

In the end, it’s all about being able to communicate effectively with each other, wherever we come from. And communication does not always rely upon language. A sense of communication can come from sharing a piece of music, for surely music is a universal language beyond any limitations of speech. And sharing emotions which bring joy or simple pleasure make any language barrier meaningless. Such sharing of emotion needs no Pentecostal fire, no speaking in tongues, no miracle. It relies only upon what we feel in our hearts, and the language of the heart is universal.

Art by Iris Sullivan

Light into Darkness

I have at times found myself fascinated by the attitudes of others to ‘darkness’. So often it seems to be linked to something sinister, even evil, and I wondered why this might be so. 

In most contemporary spiritual and New Age thinking it is light which truly matters, and consideration for darkness in any form might meet only with head-shaking disapproval. Darkness is thought of as being something to be banished, even to be conquered. Light, on the contrary, is something to ‘go towards’, to be sought after, to be ‘worked with’. Within Christian doctrine the emphasis is also upon the desire for light and the striving to ‘ascend’. 

But in Greek myth it is the story of Icarus, who flew with his strapped-on wings too close to the sun only to plummet to earth, which warns us of a too-eager pursuit towards the source of heavenly light and the folly of the ego in its fixation to attain this bliss. His wiser father Daedalus flew the middle way, between darkness and light, and so landed safely back on earth. It is a simple truth that the farther we go in the direction of the light, the longer and larger the shadows become that we cast behind us.

This simple truth has long been known to the mystics, who valued both darkness and light in equal measure. Darkness was itself viewed as a powerful spiritual instrument, perhaps even fuller of creative potential than light itself. In the light we see exactly what is in front of us. But what darkness might contain is limited only by what we can imagine that it contains. It can be full of unknown worlds awaiting discovery – and perhaps it is. In our universe it actually is visible light that is only a fraction of the whole, and darkness easily predominates. At first we might imagine that the universe itself is ‘out of balance’, for should not darkness and light be in equal amounts? 

Eastern tradition speaks of the Paramatma light: that divine light invisible to matter which permeates all things. Surely this invisible light is what provides the balance, for not all things in the universe which provide this perfect cosmic balance need be apparent to our limited senses. Spiritual seekers from many ancient traditions - Celtic, Eastern, Indian, Tibetan and African - have treated the darkness as an instrument for spiritual enlightenment. The literal definition of the word shaman is 'he or she who sees in the dark'. The shaman would say that there is no such thing as darkness: only an incapacity to truly ‘see’.

Western mystics also recognized the importance and the power of darkness. The Gnostics referred to the creator as ‘Dazzling Darkness’, (see my post: Dazzling Darkness) and John of the Cross spoke of "the dark light". The idea of balance is always what lies behind these ideas: neither to concentrate on light at the expense of darkness, nor to become preoccupied with darkness at the expense of light. Spiritually, both are of equal value, and wise Daedalus shows us the course that we should follow. 

Painting: Balance is the Key by Aleister Gray

The Veiled Goddess

In the west of the Nile Delta in the times of the Pharaohs was a sacred centre called Sais. In the heart of the centre stood a temple, and in the courtyard of this temple stood a statue of the goddess. Engraved upon the statue’s plinth was this mysterious description: “I am all that has been, all that is and all that will be, and no mortal has raised my veil.”

The Greek writer Plutarch, who tells us of this inscription, further tells us that the statue was that of Isis, although the centre is now known to have been dedicated to a more ancient goddess known as Neith. The goddess Neith had associations with weaving and the loom, and this powerful creator goddess was said to have used her loom to weave the world into existence. The power of Neith was therefore not so much that she could create, but that she could create without the need of a god. Neith was complete unto herself.

It was Neith who gave birth to the life-giving sun, Ra the great, who went on to create all things in the world. Ra is so powerful, so glorious, that even now we know that we cannot look directly at his face for too long without risking damage to our eyesight. But what of Neith? The mysterious inscription tells us that no mere human has raised her veil. Is the inscription a warning? Would the sight of the face of this goddess be too overwhelming for us to bear?

This idea is echoed in the Greek myth of Semele, the mortal woman who begged mighty Zeus to reveal his face to her. The god obliged, and Semele was struck dead on the spot. But is this idea what is also intended for Neith? The fact that feminine Neith is a goddess, not a god, seems somehow to alter the picture. In the nineteenth century Neith became a favoured subject for artists who, surrounded by the growing advances of the time in science, interpreted the subject of lifting the veil of Neith as uncovering the secrets of the natural world. In this interpretation, each new discovery of science was lifting the veil of Neith just that little bit farther. It is science that is raising the veil of the goddess! But is it?

Gnosticism, which itself is steeped in such mystic ideas, suggests that there are two different kinds of mysteries: there is the kind of mystery that might not be known to us now, but will in time come to be known. But there is also a more powerful kind of mystery: the kind that by its very nature is mysterious, that always will remain an unknown. The inscription on the statue of Neith clearly tells us that the goddess is eternal, that she is beyond time. She is “all that has been, all that is and all that will be.” These are things that no mortal can know. We cannot know of things which are yet to come. We cannot raise the veil of the future. 

The veil of wise Neith remains lowered. Her features always will be hidden from us, and for that we should be grateful. In refusing to lift her veil the goddess has given us a precious gift. We cannot know what is to come, and so we must learn to live in trust.

Sculpture  Le Souvenir by Marius Jean Antonin Mercié, 1885, detail