In Alchemy, direction matters. Up and down. In and out. But these directions aren’t necessarily ones that would show up on a compass. You can’t find alchemical up and come back to it by turning your feet the right way. Up today isn’t necessarily up tomorrow. Rather, existence is like an Escher print, with directions changing depending on whether you are looking with your eyes or your heart.
Rather than learn which direction is kept where, we must learn to recognize paths wherever they appear. Paths have flavors and textures. Directions are also places that have denizens to meet, activities to do, special foods and even architectural styles. You don’t learn where a path is, but what it feels like, what it tastes like.
What is Down? Down under earth, the roots plough through the dark dirt. They branch, and branch again, blindly reaching out. At the tip of each root end, is a cluster of hard cells that can press through bedrock. But along their sides, the skin of the roots are open to the world, drawing in nutrients: nitrogen and potassium, phosphorus and magnesium. Roots are opportunistic. They do not plan ahead and contrary to popular perception, they do not grow towards water or food. Instead they take the path of least resistance, using what is already available such as cracks in the soil, worm tunnels, and old root channels. When they find a resource in abundance, they proliferate, but such a discovery is always a happy surprise rather than the result of a deliberate plan.
What is Up? Leaves open, airy, light gathering. So short a life span, just a year or less, while the tree lives for years and years. Evergreens shed all year round keeping their canopies continuously intact. Evergreen means always shedding leaves, a continuous sacrifice. Leaves are high up, sometimes hundreds of feet above the roots. they create the outer edges of the tree. They grow at the foremost edges of trees, creating a field of energy collection. The leaves themselves work to shed rainfall down to the ground where it will be absorbed by the roots and brought back up through the trunk. The real purpose of the leaves is to collect sunlight energy. To receive. And here, at the other edge of the being, we find another kind of absorption. The absorption of light.
This is one example of the Up and the Down.
Showing posts with label mazes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mazes. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Monday, April 2, 2012
7 Signs It's Time to Take a Bath
1 - Your sister calls out of the blue and spends ten minutes telling you a mutual friend has been seriously ill before she tells you that he also died.
2 - The world crashes in, all loud and obnoxious. Horns and yells of “bitch!” or the far crueler judgment “nice”, spoken with a vengeful irony. That bicyclist didn’t even realize he ran the stop sign and he almost slams into your car. And your adherence to the rules of the road warrants the condemnation. People always think they have the right of way, shame you for moving through the world as if you deserve it. And you do. You move and get by and stay true to yourself, but it hardens over the loud day.
3 - Other people turn away, keep their distance. You’re not sure if you actually smell, or if they just see the sweat, fresh and clean, from your run, where you pushed yourself that last mile so that your legs tremble and you know they will be sore the next day.
4 - The hotel room has a tub with jets.
5 - The fungus between your toes is so think it spreads your toes. Your shoes don’t even fit anymore. Your socks are lumpy. The feathery strands of orange poke through the argyle. It smells of compost water, the dark brown tea of aging leaves.
6 - The cold seeps into the bones, the muscles are tight and cramped, having forgotten what it means to be touched. The skin slides over the lonely muscle, a shield and a curtain of shame to hide the separation of self and world. In the steamy warmth of the bath, salty as tears and ocean, fragrant of orange blossom and vetiver, the spine uncoils, remembering darkness.
7 - The layer of dust on your eyelids has grown so thick you cannot see your graying hands, cannot see the veins that have become such emboldened roads. Soak it all in the warm, steamy wet and let the drip of humid dreams block out the silence.
2 - The world crashes in, all loud and obnoxious. Horns and yells of “bitch!” or the far crueler judgment “nice”, spoken with a vengeful irony. That bicyclist didn’t even realize he ran the stop sign and he almost slams into your car. And your adherence to the rules of the road warrants the condemnation. People always think they have the right of way, shame you for moving through the world as if you deserve it. And you do. You move and get by and stay true to yourself, but it hardens over the loud day.
3 - Other people turn away, keep their distance. You’re not sure if you actually smell, or if they just see the sweat, fresh and clean, from your run, where you pushed yourself that last mile so that your legs tremble and you know they will be sore the next day.
4 - The hotel room has a tub with jets.
5 - The fungus between your toes is so think it spreads your toes. Your shoes don’t even fit anymore. Your socks are lumpy. The feathery strands of orange poke through the argyle. It smells of compost water, the dark brown tea of aging leaves.
6 - The cold seeps into the bones, the muscles are tight and cramped, having forgotten what it means to be touched. The skin slides over the lonely muscle, a shield and a curtain of shame to hide the separation of self and world. In the steamy warmth of the bath, salty as tears and ocean, fragrant of orange blossom and vetiver, the spine uncoils, remembering darkness.
7 - The layer of dust on your eyelids has grown so thick you cannot see your graying hands, cannot see the veins that have become such emboldened roads. Soak it all in the warm, steamy wet and let the drip of humid dreams block out the silence.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
About That Elephant...
Imagine that you had never seen an elephant and didn't have a word for it. Now imagine that you see one and you have to describe it to other people who also have never seen and don't have a word for it. Imagine that you don't have words for "trunk" and "tusk" either. How would these people respond to your description? Some might believe you. Some might think you're crazy.
Now imagine you meet other people describing something they've seen. They call it something else. They use different words to describe the tusks and the trunk, but slowly you realize that they are in fact describing the same thing.
That is the whole divine world. We all go get a glimpse and come back and talk about it with each other, but we don't have the same words. Slowly, tho, if you look at all the spiritiual systems around the world, you can start to see that we are all seeing the same thing. It's just that we are blind and the elephant is really, really big.
Now imagine you meet other people describing something they've seen. They call it something else. They use different words to describe the tusks and the trunk, but slowly you realize that they are in fact describing the same thing.
That is the whole divine world. We all go get a glimpse and come back and talk about it with each other, but we don't have the same words. Slowly, tho, if you look at all the spiritiual systems around the world, you can start to see that we are all seeing the same thing. It's just that we are blind and the elephant is really, really big.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Meet Aphrodite Epistrophia
turn towards
turn your eyes or mind
to a thing,
regard
turn round, turn about,
constantly turning, as if to look behind
turned to gaze on something
a lion retreating
curve, twist, distort
of hair, curl
of a tree, crooked
of fir-needles, bent
turn about, turn round
put an enemy to flight
wheel about
of a wild boar, turn
upon the hunter
go back and forwards
wandering over the earth,
observing, studying
turn to the place
of the sun, revolve
wheeling about
tossing, of a restlessness
renewed assaults of ills unnumbered
wheeling through a right angle
of ships, putting about, tacking
have a relapse
turn from error, correct,
exact, strict, severe,
be converted, return,
conduct oneself,
behave, earnest,
vehement
bring into action
flexible, supple,
modulated, varied
of strands, twisting
of a bow, bending
of a river, winding
of a bay, curve
cause to return to the source
of Being,
pay attention
that by which all the revolving
spheres are turned
thus turned about, changed
returned to yourself
This is a found poem. I found its phrases among the examples given in Liddell & Scott, the preeminent dictionary of Ancient Greek, for the family of words that begin with epistroph-, the root for Epistrophia, one of Aphrodite's epithets.
Pausanias* tells us that Aphrodite Epistrophia had a sanctuary at Megara. In Pausanias’ passage about the goddess, epistrophia is translated as “she who turns men to love.” This is a translator’s best guess as to what the epithet means, but the family of words in which we find epistrophia has little to do with love and everything to do with turning. Aphrodite Epistrophia is “she who turns men’s minds,” and because the she who is doing the turning is the goddess of love, love has to be in the equation somewhere. We are, however, left with the question unanswered whether she is turning minds to love or with love.
[*Pausanias 1.40.6]
turn your eyes or mind
to a thing,
regard
turn round, turn about,
constantly turning, as if to look behind
turned to gaze on something
a lion retreating
curve, twist, distort
of hair, curl
of a tree, crooked
of fir-needles, bent
turn about, turn round
put an enemy to flight
wheel about
of a wild boar, turn
upon the hunter
go back and forwards
wandering over the earth,
observing, studying
turn to the place
of the sun, revolve
wheeling about
tossing, of a restlessness
renewed assaults of ills unnumbered
wheeling through a right angle
of ships, putting about, tacking
have a relapse
turn from error, correct,
exact, strict, severe,
be converted, return,
conduct oneself,
behave, earnest,
vehement
bring into action
flexible, supple,
modulated, varied
of strands, twisting
of a bow, bending
of a river, winding
of a bay, curve
cause to return to the source
of Being,
pay attention
that by which all the revolving
spheres are turned
thus turned about, changed
returned to yourself
This is a found poem. I found its phrases among the examples given in Liddell & Scott, the preeminent dictionary of Ancient Greek, for the family of words that begin with epistroph-, the root for Epistrophia, one of Aphrodite's epithets.
Pausanias* tells us that Aphrodite Epistrophia had a sanctuary at Megara. In Pausanias’ passage about the goddess, epistrophia is translated as “she who turns men to love.” This is a translator’s best guess as to what the epithet means, but the family of words in which we find epistrophia has little to do with love and everything to do with turning. Aphrodite Epistrophia is “she who turns men’s minds,” and because the she who is doing the turning is the goddess of love, love has to be in the equation somewhere. We are, however, left with the question unanswered whether she is turning minds to love or with love.
Epistrophia \eh-'pis-tro-fee-a\ She who turns.
[*Pausanias 1.40.6]
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Reading Lessons
In Alchemical writing, any description of a process can mean one of three things: an actual chemical process, a psychological process, a way of being. Some authors state that they obviously mean for you to understand their statements in a particular way and all the people who say they mean something else are really just showing how ignorant they are. Other alchemical writers don’t specify which way you should interpret their descriptions. Do I really mean you should stoke some antimony in some kind of fire? Hmmm? Let me get back to you on that.
People who are inclined to physical directness tend to gravitate toward the hard science-style physical descriptions. They build stills and ovens, are careful with their crucibles, and their glassware collection is something to see, but not necessarily drink out of. (John French, in his treatise on distillation goes so far as to describe a method of mending cracked glass with beaten egg whites.) Something about seeing a metal go through a process of sublimation allows them to open to the mysteries of the universe. The way some metals change colors during redox reactions is a kind of proof that the Laws work outside of any lamentably subjective human perspective.
Others find that the processes described in alchemical texts make more sense if understood as colorful descriptions of psychological processes. In this approach, the idea that alchemists are trying to create some kind of physical stone through primitive chemistry seems a bit silly, and psychological alchemists are quick in defense of their favorite writers. Of course the ancient alchemists were not so naive as to think they could actually turn lead into gold, they laugh. That wasn’t the point of real Alchemy at all! The writers who talked as if they were actually making a stone were either real alchemists being metaphorical or pretenders too afraid to integrate their shadows into a more fully actualized Self.
Still others find that the truth of alchemy lies in the body itself. The process of digestion is the ultimate act of transformation. The work is to transform the Self, usually considered to be the mixture of the fixed (physical) and the volatile (spiritual) together through the taking in of food. We eat the dumb cow and turn it into human flesh. In this view, psychological alchemy is woefully incomplete and physical alchemy is merely a diverting illustration of principles.
Each of these approaches has its hand on the elephant. In this case, the elephant is a holographic universe in which any piece contains a picture of the entire universe. The problem with holograms is that although you keep the whole image no matter how tiny you make the pieces; the smaller the pieces, the fuzzier the picture. If you’ve only got the one hand on the elephant, you may get a view of the whole universe, but it’ll be hard to make out what anything is supposed to be.
What you can always have your hand on are your psychological processes and your physical well-being. Those are two pieces of the elephant and for now, the psychological and physiological are all you need to start seeing what the universe is like. All that is required is your conscious attention.
Homework: learn about fermentation by allowing yourself to veg out watching t.v. all day while eating homemade kimchee.
People who are inclined to physical directness tend to gravitate toward the hard science-style physical descriptions. They build stills and ovens, are careful with their crucibles, and their glassware collection is something to see, but not necessarily drink out of. (John French, in his treatise on distillation goes so far as to describe a method of mending cracked glass with beaten egg whites.) Something about seeing a metal go through a process of sublimation allows them to open to the mysteries of the universe. The way some metals change colors during redox reactions is a kind of proof that the Laws work outside of any lamentably subjective human perspective.
Others find that the processes described in alchemical texts make more sense if understood as colorful descriptions of psychological processes. In this approach, the idea that alchemists are trying to create some kind of physical stone through primitive chemistry seems a bit silly, and psychological alchemists are quick in defense of their favorite writers. Of course the ancient alchemists were not so naive as to think they could actually turn lead into gold, they laugh. That wasn’t the point of real Alchemy at all! The writers who talked as if they were actually making a stone were either real alchemists being metaphorical or pretenders too afraid to integrate their shadows into a more fully actualized Self.
Still others find that the truth of alchemy lies in the body itself. The process of digestion is the ultimate act of transformation. The work is to transform the Self, usually considered to be the mixture of the fixed (physical) and the volatile (spiritual) together through the taking in of food. We eat the dumb cow and turn it into human flesh. In this view, psychological alchemy is woefully incomplete and physical alchemy is merely a diverting illustration of principles.
Each of these approaches has its hand on the elephant. In this case, the elephant is a holographic universe in which any piece contains a picture of the entire universe. The problem with holograms is that although you keep the whole image no matter how tiny you make the pieces; the smaller the pieces, the fuzzier the picture. If you’ve only got the one hand on the elephant, you may get a view of the whole universe, but it’ll be hard to make out what anything is supposed to be.
What you can always have your hand on are your psychological processes and your physical well-being. Those are two pieces of the elephant and for now, the psychological and physiological are all you need to start seeing what the universe is like. All that is required is your conscious attention.
Homework: learn about fermentation by allowing yourself to veg out watching t.v. all day while eating homemade kimchee.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Your Body Loves You
In modern society we have so much baffling between the parts of ourselves that think and the parts of ourselves that are head-over-heels in love with g*d (whatever that is). Our minds race mazes. We can think of something, think about what we've just thought, about how we feel about what we've just thought compared to what we would have thought when we were twelve, and then spend some time thinking about how we've just spent 10 minutes thinking about our thinking rather than doing something with our lives. We are all quite insane.
Our bodies, the physical parts with all the excesses and things exuding out, all the odors and tics, everything that drives you up the wall, everything that embarrasses you at parties or public speaking engagements or first dates, that's what is most in love with the divine (that means you.)
To really love, you must allow your body to teach you how.
Our bodies, the physical parts with all the excesses and things exuding out, all the odors and tics, everything that drives you up the wall, everything that embarrasses you at parties or public speaking engagements or first dates, that's what is most in love with the divine (that means you.)
To really love, you must allow your body to teach you how.
