Dancing under the Gallows

May 4,  Rememberance Day 1945 - 2016

In honor of Alice Herz-Sommer who has been a true inspiration to me.

"Music is God. In difficult times you feel it, especially when you are suffering."
~ Alice Herz-Sommer

I first came to hear of Alice Herz-Sommer in January 2009, while I was browsing through the biography section in our local book store, and this book, written by Melissa Müller, almost fell into my lap: "Etudes of Comfort" - and inside I read the original title in German: "Ein Garten Eden inmitten der Hölle - Ein Jahrhundertleben" (A Garden of Eden in the heart of hell - a life that lasted more than a century). 

Born in 1903 in Prague during the Habsburg monarchy, Alice grew up in a liberal family where authors, philosophers, painters and actors were regular visitors, among whom were Freud, and Kafka, who was like an elder brother to Alice. As a very young girl she discovered her love for music, and at twenty she was the most famous pianiste in Prague. She travelled through Europe to play in concert halls, until the Nazi regime ended her career. When her mother was deported in 1942, Alice fell into the deepest depression. To hold on to life, she decided to study all 24 piano etudes of Chopin.

Twelve month later, in 1943, then age 39, she and her husband Leopold and their 6 year old son Raphaël were deported to Theresiënstadt (Terezín). For propaganda purposes, Theresienstadt was the only camp in which children were not taken from their parents. It was a 'show-camp' for visitors from the Red Cross, simulating a rich cultural life amongst the inmates. As Alice recounted the experience: "We had to work all day. I only played when I had a concert. Music is so wonderful, it brings you into another world. You are not here anymore."

She gave over one hundred concerts in the midst of hunger, fear and death, and so gave strength and hope to her fellow captives. For her son Raphaël she created a world which helped him to forget camp life as much as possible. Her husband, who played the violin, was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. He died of typhus shortly before the end of the war. After the war she and her son returned to Prague. When Israel was founded, Alice moved to Jerusalem with Raphaël, who became a famous cellist. In 2001 Raphaël died in Israel during a tour. "He used to come every day to eat," she reminisced, "and he was still sitting afterwards and we spoke for hours. Wonderful relationship. He learned from me, I learned from him."

Alice Herz-Sommer had seen the worst life has to offer, having survived the holocaust and owing her survival to the talent she had been blessed with. She was a world famous pianist, recognised amongst musicians like Gustav Mahler (whom she apparently described as a "difficult character"), Antonín Dvorák, Josef Suk, and Vítezslav Novák. "I played especially Czech music, and they were thankful for what I did. Everywhere in the world I played Czech music. People loved it."

Even at the grand age of 107 Alice continued to play for three hours every day: "It's the most beautiful thing I have." Her favourite pieces were Chopins études and Schumann's Fantasia in C Major, which are also the ones she found the most difficult to play. But she started with Bach – "the philosopher of music." She worked hours to learn it by heart. "Bach is the hardest thing. Extremely complicated. I write it down sometimes, out of memory." 

"I have had such a beautiful life. And life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful. Everything we experience is a gift, a present we should cherish and pass on to those we love."

Alice Herz-Sommer expressed and conducted herself in the face of death and destruction with grandeur, spirit and humor. She died in London at the venerable age of 111 years,  Februari 23, 2014

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

Ocean Murmurs

In the light where you stand

There are no boundaries

between you and me;

only the white wakes

that mark the course 

of wandering seafarers:

lines all too soon erased

by my journeying waves.

My waves dashed and roared

as ashore you built your dreams

of fire and of pain

as at night you sang your songs

of sorrow and of gain.

I am a cradle of waves

for the one who dreams,

a mirror for the one who dives

and sees her own face

reflected in my own.

And my shells sing the stories

of these two faces

and these two lives:

the one who dreams

and the one who dives.

Listen, just listen

to the ocean’s voice

which is the only voice

through which I can speak to you

which is the only voice

through which you can hear me.

Lay your head on my shore

and take your time

take all the time you need

just lay your head on my shore

and hear my waves break

bringing you far stories 

with their murmurings.

Let me caress you, calm you

as the soft breathing of my waves

shifts the thin line of foam

from ebb to flow

giving light back to your face.

And the waves break

as the ocean breathes

and my shells speak

of ages past and an age begun

when the light and the mirror 

and the dream and the dreamer

are one.

Overview - Underwater Sculpture by Jason deCaires Taylor

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

The Anointing

Mary Magdalene has become known to us as the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus. Her action in doing this is traditionally interpreted as a gesture of humility and devotion, but if we look beyond the doctrine, then other more meaningful possibilities open themselves to us. 

The Magdalene was a woman who deeply loved. She loved a man who did not just give love, but who was Love: who inspired her on her way to consciousness, to complete incarnation, and so to become his spiritual equal. She loved Jesus with all her heart and soul, and therefore placed something in his being which made him also complete, so that in him also the male and female could connect in their essence and the Kingdom would be revealed to them both.

And then the great turning point came in both their lives: the baptism in the River Jordan, for it was then that Jesus became Christ: the Anointed One. He felt the forces in him extend themselves beyond his own individuality, and he knew that another life awaited him: a life in which he had to leave the personal self behind to be outshone by something unnameable. With the act of baptism the earthly Jesus of Nazareth was united with the pre-existent Christ: the Logos, or Word, and from that moment Jesus the Christ became the vessel of universal consciousness.

Jesus and Mary remained husband and wife, but no longer in the sense of having any conventional partnership. As difficult as it must have been for the Magdalene, she knew that this was how things were meant to be. Her silent strength grew, for not only did she accept all that was, and was to come: she actively stood by – and beside – her husband. In this earthly life she was the only one who understood in depth what he was truly saying, what the innermost meaning of his words were. She knew it, she felt it, it ran through her with force and warmth.

But what equanimity was demanded of her! She sensed Jesus’ coming death, and her heart was filled with grief. How her soul must have been torn apart, how the ground beneath her must have trembled, when she stood in witness to the horrific death of her beloved. But again she stood up to meet him once more. "Hold me not", he spoke to her. And she understood. There was no need to hold him physically, for she knew that he and she were One.

Transformation is everything, and great suffering offers great transformation. Jesus into Christ. And Mary now into an aspect of Wisdom - Sophia. People came to listen to her, but they did not understand what she was telling them. With sorrow she saw the ways in which the words of her beloved were turned into stone – how the deeply-meaningful teachings of the inner mysteries became distorted by all-too literal interpretations, how groups came into being, and how schisms occurred as each group disagreed about what was meant, and what it was correct to believe. Mary/Sophia, the witness to history, saw how a church was formed.

Mary Magdalene in our time shines forth as a symbol of the lost feminine aspect in a male-dominated society – a society to which the church also belongs. But her gentle force has not been lost, for in the cosmos nothing dies, it is only transformed. The Christ-consciousness, the Buddha-nature, and the Krishna-consciousness are present in each and every one of us, and yearn for discovery. And so also the force of the Magdalene is still tangibly present in our own time, if we allow ourselves to be open to it.

And those ‘more meaningful possibilities’ of Mary’s anointing? This most special woman already knew all that was to come. Her act of anointing was notably not done with water, but with precious oil. Even then, in that house in Bethany, she had begun to prepare the body of her beloved for earthly burial, and the one who anoints is as blessed as the one who is anointed. 

   

Athena's Remorse

Pallas Athena: we know of her name from Ancient Greece as the great warrior goddess of peerless wisdom. She is often shown with an owl, the all-seeing bird of the night, and by association the owl has itself become linked with the goddess’s own qualities of wisdom. But it is unusual for a goddess to have two names, and we might wonder how this came to be. 

Once in the morning of innocence Pallas and Athena were two individuals. Pallas was the daughter of the sea god Triton, and she and Athena became inseparable friends. Being inclined to a warrior’s way of life, both of them loved to practice combat together, and these shared skills only seemed to bring them closer together. They would engage in mock battles, each vying for the upper hand and the friendly victory which followed. 

One day these fights became just a little too real, as mock fights perhaps inevitably tend to. As Pallas was about to strike the victory blow, Athena’s father Zeus intervened and tripped Pallas, causing her to stumble. Seizing her chance Athena instinctively struck her friend a telling counter-blow. In that terrible moment Pallas lay dead at her friend’s feet.

Overcome with the enormity of what she had done, and distraught with grief and remorse, Athena in that moment decided to take her dear friend’s name and place it even before her own. In such a way the goddess perhaps hoped that her lost friend would live on through her, and that by taking her name Pallas would always be a part of her. And so Athena the goddess became Pallas Athena, and the two became one.

The ancient story speaks powerfully still. Grief, regret and loss are part of the human experience. Like Athena the goddess we might strive in some way to recapture what has been lost to us. And that loss might be felt even more keenly if we feel that in some way we have been to blame, whether such a feeling is truly justified or not. How often we hear stories of someone who has survived some terrible accident or ordeal of survival feeling guilty towards the victims for no other reason than that they have survived while others have not. It is as if we owe a debt to the dead, even when we might not have known them personally.

And perhaps we do. Perhaps what we owe them is an increased awareness of the gift of life as it is lived in every moment. And that is something we owe even more to ourselves. Those who have passed out of our lives can be honoured by our memories of them. As with Athena, who chose to honour her dear friend by absorbing that fundamental part of her – her own name – into her own being, those memories become a part of us. To feel guilty or regretful about things which already have happened, particularly if those things involve loss, is natural. But we need not make ourselves prisoners of that grief. We are alive, and it surely is our duty, like the warrior goddess, to live our lives worthily and with a sense of wonder.

Painting Mourning Athena by Sandro Botticelli

Mare

Mare

On the strand

My gaze towards the sea

With you I feel at one

Words drift towards me on the wind

Then dryly fall

Dry as the sandbar in the distance.

A splash of sunlight on my shoulder

The muffled wash of incoming waves

Above which the shrill laughing

Children's voices tumble

And in the midst of all this tumult

The discovery

That stills all else to silence:

The great ocean

That seems to have no end.

Mare

A splash of sunlight on your shoulder

Your hair that shines

From the glinting, spattering water:

A mermaid.

I pick up the shell

That lies at my feet

A house, a deserted house

Of an animal:

Angel wing.

Sometimes I feel like the animal

Sometimes the house, the shell

Together with you.

Mare

Later, much later

The image drifts up once more

On the ocean of my dreams

Takes on different forms

But never, never again

As on that day

On which you and I

Formed an unshakeable one-ness

With the ocean

As in an ancient covenant.

The Young Cartographer

“Daughter,” said my father,

“You will never leave these shores!”

He meant well, I know,

but in my mind I have already left.

Even now I watch him, a small cloaked figure

receding on the shoreline,

receding in the distance.

Even now, my pen draws out my coming voyage,

leaving a stark white wake

escorted by the screech of gulls

and the writhing coils of sea monsters,

and others must follow if they dare.

I stand upon the deck of my imaginings,

bracing myself against the squalls,

against the swell of green water,

against the wave-tossed billows,

against the unknown deeps

that are my surrounding charts.

My pen creates islands, whole continents,

archipelagos and inlets, which only exist

because I have drawn them.

My outstretched hands

span trackless oceans of parchment,

at last to sight a distant undiscovered shore.

Already I have made landfall,

already I am on that shore.

Even now, without leaving my study

I set out to discover this new and unknown land

which is myself.

Painting by Donato Giancola

The Mystic Marriage

Is all which I now see around me truly the result of my brief presence on Earth? Has all this truly been done in my name? I came among you with a single intent. Not, as you seem to think, to win redemption for all of you for the sin in Eden (how could you imagine such a thing?). There was no Fall in Eden. The Man and the Woman remained unblemished. So how could there be such a thing as universal redemption when there is no such thing as universal sin? No, the only sin is the personal sin of not being true to one’s own self. That is the greatest betrayal, for if we betray ourselves, then we also betray our true Selves.

But you do not need me to redeem you, for I tell you truly that each and every one of you has the spirit to redeem yourself, because each and every one of you is me, and I am each and every one of you. Why have you forgotten this? I will tell you why: you have forgotten this because you have placed me outside of yourselves. In your frenzy to banish bronze idols you have merely replaced them with another idol. And the idol which you have created is a monster, not of bronze, but of ideas, of doctrines and of dogmas which have served only to divide you against yourselves, and therefore from me also. That idol is myself as you have created me. You have so occupied yourselves with building a towering plinth for me to stand on that you have forgotten that if I am standing high above you then we no longer can look each other in the eye.

And this is not the only idol which you have created in my name. You have built another idol to worship: an idol of words. You have transformed something that shone with the light of my being, something bright with radiant change, into something harder than stone. For even stone, which seems unyielding, changes its form over time. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide what is or is not ‘holy’, and yet I say to you now that all which is thought or said or written with a pure heart is holy in my eyes, and whether something is or is not holy to me is not something for you to decide. And yet this is what you have done. I speak with many voices, and yet how many of my voices have lain in the dust of centuries, or which you even have consigned to the flames, because of the choices which you have claimed to make on my behalf, because of your folly in believing that such choices were yours to make?

Look at the footprints I leave behind in the soil. They are the footprints left by a mortal form who wore only simple woven sandals. And yet many of the footprints left by those who deign to place themselves nearer to me have sunk deep into my earth, weighed down by the finery of their wearers. Their footprints are heavier than my own, and I tell you that their weighty apparel, their jewelled rings and resplendent robes, distances them from me more than the pure of heart who must walk barefoot, for such earthly show is a greater barrier to drawing close to me than the simplest garments worn by those who leave footprints as light as my own. The footprints of the meek have trodden where I also have trodden, and their footprints and mine are therefore the same. Lightness is a virtue, and a crown of thorns weighs less than a crown of jewels and gold, both in this world and in the one to come.

But these robes of earthly glory are not all that in my eyes truly weighs down mortal flesh. If the blood of even one individual is shed in my name, I say to you that the death of that single individual is a matter of greater weight to me than my own mortal death, which was no death but a mere revealing of my true nature, as it is for you all. And yet the lives of millions have been offered up in my name. Where is the kingdom of heaven for those who have swung the sword, or caused conversion in my name by fear or by force, or torched the pyre beneath the stake? How can it ever be attained when all which I truly am has become so misshapen?

How could it have come to pass that so many innocent young souls so precious to me have been damaged by those who actually make claim to represent me, but who in truth only represent their own darkness? I, who have entrusted to the Woman the most difficult and the most sacred task of all, and who should only be honoured, now find Her damned by you. Do you seriously imagine that I will return in triumph when so much that has been done in my name has served only to create damage and division, and even a loss of life itself? Only a fool would think that I one day shall return. The pure of heart know that I have never left.

But why did I come to you at all, if not to redeem a sin of your own imaginings? If redemption exists in each and every moment (and it does), then my descent to earth, my entry into this world of coarse matter, must have been for another reason. And it was. Such events move on a stage greater than your imaginings. They arc across all of time and space, and from time to time these events emerge into your world, become momently visible to your histories, and you create messiahs and mythologies: stories and writings which are mere faint echoes of far larger truths.

So why did I come? Why, if not to redeem, did I descend into this flesh? I had been waiting. I had been waiting for my beloved Other Self, waiting for her arrival in the world so that I might join her and so on earth complete the sacred union of soul and spirit. I came, not for all, but only for one. You, my beloved one, who in these greater realities take the form of the clear voice of wisdom, my bride Sophia, were that One. You, who are the Ocean holding all life within your sacred womb. You, who trod the soil in the same place and at the same time as my own brief sojourn. You, who witnessed my mystic death and resurrection. You, who took me as husband at Cana in a marriage that was the earthly echo of our union which already had found place in the luminous Beyond. Mary, I came for you.

Photo: Still from the film Son of God

Ephiphany

As we travel through the landscape of our lives we must be willing “to go” where the Divine Energy takes us. Often, we must be pried out of familiar surroundings, security, comfort zones, and ego identities. But the universe will move us: as old skins cannot contain new wine, and we find we are no longer able to live the old life we once found so secure. Once we arrive, temporarily to rest, with introspection we can then view back and say “Ah…now I see the Divine Wisdom in that pilgrimage.” God always allows us time to get settled into the new skins, the new view, the new unknown. His Spirit is a gentle Shepherd, gently leading, prodding, and moving us to a new heightened sense of awareness and a new view of our souls and the internal work that must be done. 

Art: The Adoration of the Magi,  by Edward Burne-Jones

A blessed and joyous New Year to all.

People wish various things for their loved ones and friends in the coming year. 

My wish to all my readers this first day in the New Year is 

that you will experience a sense of wonderment, 

in whatever form you would wish it to be, 

whether that is in a creative endeavour, 

or simply in the joy of everyday experiences. 

A blessed and joyous New Year to all.

Emma

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Painting: The Family by Sergey Ivanov