Pamela Berger Shows How We Devalued the Mother Goddess, Even As We Continued To Ask For Her Help

 

The Goddess Obscured: Transformation of the Grain Protrectress from Goddess to Saint – Pamela Berger (1985)

            Ahhh, the Grain Miracle. What is the Grain Miracle, you may ask?  It is a tale as old as humanity, from a bygone time when agriculture and its yearly seasonal cycles held deeply symbolic and spiritual meanings for us humans.  The story of the Grain Miracle helped us understand the connection between the life of plants and the life within us humans, as well as the correlation between the fecundity of human females and the fecundity of the Earth under our feet.  Even long after the initial impetus for the story was forgotten, or willfully erased, the tale continued its path through the collective consciousness of humanity, altered and shaped to fit the whims of whatever organized religion rose to prominence at the time.

            The original Grain Miracle story arose from our deep past.  Initially a story about the Great Mother Goddess, the divine being that brought forth all life in our world, it was passed on through oral tradition for millennia.  The story goes thusly, The Great Goddess is being pursued, and she arrives at a field, freshly sown by a farmer.  She asks the farmer to help her by telling her pursuers that she had passed by when the grain was freshly planted.  Upon saying this, the grain miraculously grows tall and full of seed, so, when the pursuer soon arrives and is told by the farmer that the Goddess passed by when the field was freshly planted (the truth!), he sees the full growth of grain, and calls off the chase, believing the Goddess to have passed by long before.  What originally served as an allegory for the cyclical nature of growth and death experienced by the initial farming humans was adapted and reformatted to fit in with the current religious ideals, first for the pantheistic religions of ancient Mesopotamia, Europe and Greece, and then for the monotheistic Abrahamic religions.  The main character, the Earth Goddess herself, slowly morphed into a lower deity, then a sainted human, until finally the story was shaped by the catholic church to refer to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

            Humans are shaped by our pattern recognition.  It is one of the skills inherent to our over-developed brains.  We are so good at it that we see patterns where there are none! (For example, visual pareidolia is the scientific name for our ability to see visual patterns, most often faces, in what is otherwise an ambiguous visual field.  This is the “skill” utilized by anyone gazing up at cloud formations, and seeing familiar shapes within.)   This ability to recognize pattern, especially throughout a period of time, is the foundation of much of our cognitive ability.

The largest, all-encompassing pattern on our planet Earth is the yearly cycle of the seasons.  The annual progression from the dead cold of Winter to the warming Spring to the full Sun of Summer to the rains and cooling temperatures of Autumn, and back again to Winter, could not be ignored.  It could also not be ignored that Life seemingly “died” every Winter, only to be “reborn” again in the Spring.  The cycle of the seasons provided the first repeated structures of Life to early humans.  The menstrual cycle of human females provided the second repeated structure.  These two events were not seen as separate by ancient man.  Instead, they were seen as mirrors of one another, as part of the all-encompassing whole of Life.  Ancient man understood that much of the animal world matched the cycles of the plant world, with most of the creatures familiar to us using Spring to impregnate each other, allowing for babies to be born during the plentiful time of the year, and to grow big, strong and fat in time for the hardships of Winter.

With those two cycles in mind, ancient man created allegories, seeking to not only understand the cycles, but to transmit that knowledge to the succeeding generations.  The Grain Miracle arose from the very ancient rituals associated with the planting of seed after the cold Winter.  For over ten thousand years, the arrival of Spring coincided with planting and with the awakening of the natural world.  Ancient humans understood that death precedes life in all things.  They understood that in Winter, the ground “dies” and is then “reborn” once the all-powerful Sun returns in its full glory.  What we call farming was rudimentary in the extreme, and therefore required supernatural help to ensure a good crop and bountiful harvest.  The Great Goddess, symbol of all that is reproductive, was asked to bless the fields before planting. 

According to Pamela Berger’s intensive research, this “blessing” formed into a ritual which humanity carried forward and continued over millennia, all the way up to our modern day.  On the arrival of Spring, (usually sometime in February), before the fields were plowed or furrowed, a figure of the Goddess was put on a cart, and driven around the field to be planted three times, all the while the people supplicated the Goddess with song and dance in order to bless the field, bless the grain to be planted, and bless the natural world to provide good air and rain and sunlight.  Women would bare their breasts as symbols of fecundity, and once completed, the ceremonies ended with revelry, for everyone was satisfied that a great crop of food was to come. In a time before our modern meteorological knowledge, before the use of fertilizers, pest control, etc., planting a field was a seriously risky endeavor.  Birds would eat the planted seed.  Animals such as shrews and deer would eat the young shoots.  Drought, flooding, or unexpected heat or frost would destroy an entire crop, leaving families to starve.  Most families grew their own food, and if unsuccessful, then entire regions could descend into mass-starvation.  The importance of a good harvest was paramount, and the blessing by the Mother Goddess was crucial to the process.

Sometime in the past five thousand years, the matriarchal, Mother Goddess worshipping tribes of what is now Europe were invaded by patriarchal hordes, bringing with them their male, all-powerful, sky deities.  As these male-oriented religions flourished, the Mother Goddess was reduced in scope and power, and transmuted into lesser goddesses, such as Artemis, Asherah, Hera, Cybele, etc.  It was after this societal change that the Grain Miracle stories began, seeking to maintain the respect and adoration of the goddess responsible for their crop’s successes.  The tale initially referred to the goddess, pursued by one of the powerful, invading male gods.  As mentioned above, she came across a farmer sowing his fields, and asked the farmer to tell her pursuers that she had passed by at the time of planting, whereupon the planted seed would miraculously sprout and grow to full height.  This would confuse the pursuers, leaving the goddess to escape.  This became one of the stories sung during the annual procession around the farmer’s fields and served as an allegorical reminder of the past Goddess worship.

The slow demotion of the Goddess continued apace after the christian church codified its dogma and beliefs.  They could not stand to see humans celebrating what they saw as “pagan” rituals and demons.  Their extreme patriarchy and hatred of anything related to female sexuality sought to completely subvert the natural world, the world where females are the source of life, where Mother Earth was seen as a womb, providing life to the planet.  Instead of a Great Mother birthing us all, they somehow managed to get everyone to believe that a male god, and a male Holy Spirit, birthed a male son.  The role of woman was so denigrated that the church, in its never-ending willful stupidity, decided that Jesus’ mom was a chaste virgin, and that she remained a chaste virgin her entire life. (the only ”good” woman is an a-sexual one, according to those deranged perverts they call priests.)  They willfully ignore the specific passages in the New Testament that detail how Mary had to “cleanse” herself after the birth of Jesus, something done by Jewish women to prepare their bodies for the next sexual occasion and possible next pregnancy.  The fear of women from seemingly powerful men is so pathetic and pointless.  It shows just how weak, spineless and corrupt they are.

It is in this mess that the Grain Miracle was transposed from minor pantheistic goddesses to the only female worth worshipping, according to the christian theologians, idiots all.  Instead of a goddess fleeing, the protagonist of the story was changed to one of many early female christian martyrs, eventually settling on Mary. Appending the Grain Miracle to the story of the Flight from Egypt was the only logical choice, and the tale was then dispersed that as they fled Egypt, the holy family asked a farmer to tell King Herod’s men that they had passed by when the seed was just planted, but of course, either Mary, or Jesus caused a miraculous growth, fooling King Herod and his men. 

Even through the repression of the Goddess, these rituals continued, for they spoke something deep and important to the people that work the fields and raise the food we all eat.  Throughout all the changes and thematic drift of the Grain Miracle stories, the simple truths persisted.  Life is cyclical.  The world is a womb, just like all women possess.  The female is the life provider, and the male is just along for the ride (pun intended).  Weak men fear the Female aspect of life.  It is a force too powerful for them to understand.  They seek to lift themselves up by subsuming women, as if that would somehow negate the awesome life-providing continuity which the blessing of childbirth brings and for which the female body was rightfully worshipped through most of human history.  It is through the effort of people like Pamela Berger that we manage to connect history, myth, folklore, and local tales, thereby allowing us modern humans to grasp the ideals and dreams of our ancestors.  For a fairly short book, this tome manages to explore an idea vast and deep within our collective mindtime.  It is highly recommended.

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/204036/goddess-obscured-by-pamela-c-berger/ )

Geneviève Lacambre Shares Her Deep Love and Admiration for Gustave Moreau

 

Gustave Moreau: Magic and Symbols – Geneviève Lacambre (1999)

 

            Often, it is the small books that provide the most information.  Such is the case with this sumptuously illustrated volume exploring the life and art of Gustave Moreau.  One of publisher Harry N. Abrams’ “Discoveries” series, an amazing set of introductory books on Literature, Science, Art, and the Ancient World, this book benefits greatly from its erudite author, Geneviève Lacambre, previously the long-time director of the Musée National Gustave Moreau in Paris.  First-hand knowledge is awesome!  I much prefer reading the adoring words of an artist’s true admirer than the critical skewering which passes for art history these days.

            I spent 2/3 of my time at University studying for my major, Studio Art, specifically oil painting.  I spent 1/3 of my time taking classes for my Art History minor.  In all that time, I was not introduced to the work of Gustave Moreau.  What a shame! Gustave Moreau, through supreme talent, practice, and pure willpower, created a synthesis of old-world myth, christian allegory, and his own innate creativity which served as the vanguard for the Symbolist movement of the very early 1900’s.  Much like the best artists, Moreau sought not to pander to the then-current and always-fickle tastes of the populace, or to the increasingly short-sighted ideas of the established Parisian Salons.  He sought to portray universal truths and wisdom, without overtly explaining his compositions. 

            Seen as an inspiration by many younger painters, Moreau never sought direct categorization of his style and work.  Even so, the path he carved through the world of painting led to the formation of the Symbolist movement in art.  These painters, much younger than Moreau, with many of them studying under him as assistants, used his techniques of theme, composition, and color to try and pull the art world away from the two main pillars of the time, Naturalism, and Impressionism.  The Naturalists sought to portray the inherent beauty of nature, life, and the world around us without embellishment, subtext, or mytho-historical context.  The Impressionists sought to portray the gossamer, fleeting, ever-changing nature of light upon the natural world, and specifically the way that light entered the human eye to create image and form.  Neither used the classic masters as inspiration, which Moreau explicitly did.  They also never sought to create narrative works, something Moreau excelled at, imbuing his art with a deep sense of history, myth, religion, fable, and the inherent human truths those forms espouse.

            Gustave Moreau was an obsessive personality.   He made countless sketches before he sought to portray anything in oil.  Moreau was one of the first fine artists to utilize watercolor paints as a finished product, whereas most artists of the time used watercolors for preliminary sketches.  In time, Moreau’s watercolor works sold just as well as his finished oil pieces, owing to his masterful and riotous use of color.  He also chose not to sell, or even exhibit, his favorite paintings, choosing to keep them for himself.  Who else would appreciate them as intensely?  Truly a bad-ass of the highest caliber. 

            Moreau eventually began teaching art at the École des Beaux-Arts, and according to the testimony of his many students, he was an inspiring and engaging instructor.  Some of the greats of 20^th century art studied under Moreau, giants such as Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and Henri Evenepoel.  Unlike many great artists who also taught, Moreau never demanded his students follow his personal style or ideas.  He sought to have them each develop their own view, their own style, something that could never be taken from them.  This was far different from the other art professors at Beaux-Arts, most of whom were strictly academic painters, seeking to render the natural world and not the inner tumult of human experience.

            If there is a lesson to be learned from Moreau it is that an artist must seek their own internal, thematic guidance.  For writers, the dictum is “write what you know,” which is a fair one, as readers can immediately tell when an author is speaking about a topic they have no personal experience with.  I believe this should also apply to visual artists.  While many artists seek to defend their explorations, they often end up forcing a theme, or leaving their work feeling slapdash and incomplete.  Moreau loved the classical myths, and drew inspiration from them, re-purposing their symbols and allegories, combining them with christian themes and allegories, all the while portraying his subjects in a lavish way, almost overwhelming the viewer with attention to detail.  It is the exact opposite of minimalism, and his style influenced the Symbolists who followed.

            The amazing result of Gustave Moreau’s failure to sell much of his work, mostly by choice, is that upon his death, he left his entire collection, home, and studio to the country of France.  Several years after his passing, the paperwork went through, and the Musée National Gustave Moreau opened in Paris, where it remains to this day, a time capsule of, and a testament to, one of the most imaginative painters of his generation.  I hope to someday visit it, and see in person these large, impressive works of art.  Until then, books such as these will be my companion.

Kassia St. Clair Explores the History, Sources, and Meanings of Color

 

The Secret Lives of Color – Kassia St. Clair (2017)

            One of the greatest joys of my life is my ability to see color.  I delight in experiencing the vast quantity of shades and hues available to me on a daily basis.  I live fascinated by color.  Colors can affect me in ways nothing else can.  With this in mind, I found it most fortuitous to run into this great book by the columnist Kassia St. Clair.  It compiles and expands upon her weekly color column, providing intriguing details concerning the discovery/creation of individual colors, as well as describing the rise and fall of a given color’s popularity. 

            Kassia St. Clair divides her book into sections for each “color,” starting with Whites, Yellows and Oranges, then Reds, Blues, Greens, etc., all the way to the various shades of “Black” used by artists.  Within each section, she selects specific examples to focus on.  For instance, in the section on “Red,” St. Clair examines colors and color sources such as Scarlet, Cochineal, Vermillion, and Hematite, and how each color came into and out of fashion.  Humans are fickle beings, and we make up rules for everything, including color.  During the European Medieval period, when nearly every social and cultural decision was dictated by the rigidity and stupidity of Roman Catholicism, colors such as Red were reserved for a very select few, such as royalty or Bishops.  If you happened to be born into the so-called Lower Classes, your clothing color choices were minimal, and ordered by law.  Poor people were forced to wear only drab, boring colors, such as brown, tan and grey.  This is as much a function of societal control as any other law.  To keep the masses down and subjugated, one must trick them into thinking that they are worthless, and what better way to do so that by requiring them to dress in the colors of refuse. Every single color comes with such drama, and the author well explores these human stupidities.

            Another great aspect of color is the many sources humans have discovered or invented to create pigment.  Ancient man used the basic colors available to them.  These include the wide range of earth tones, reddish ones coming from hematite deposits, brown ones from specific soils, and black from the soot and charcoal created by campfires.  Such colors are found in abundance in Chauvet Cave, and other paleolithic art sites.  As humans evolved, and proceeded to make basic chemical discoveries (such as vinegar reacting with metal to form oxides), new methods of color creation appeared.  One of the most widely-used colors was Lead White, created when sheets of lead are oxidized in a vinegar bath.  The resulting white powder that forms on the outside of the Lead strips is super white, opaque, color-fast, and worked with most binders without unwanted chemical reactions.  This caused Lead White to become ubiquitous in paints, both for artists and for homes, and for makeup and cosmetic applications.  Many rich and powerful ladies gave themselves lead poisoning because of the fashion of the day, calling for the wealthy aristocrats to exhibit extremely pale complexions, a sign of high-class, as the lowly people are tanned and brown from outdoor menial labor.  Color is, and has always been, used to subjugate and divide us humans. The irony of the rich killing themselves via their own standards of beauty while demeaning those who cannot “afford” to the same is one of the many examples of the great Cosmic Joke we all reside in.

            The sources of color are as varied as the hues themselves.  Certain reds come from the crushed bodies of tiny beetles.  Some purples come from the tiny ink sacs of a specific Mediterranean snail.  Old artist paints used brown pigments sourced from thousand-year-old mummies, and yellows extracted from the urine of malnourished cows force-fed mango leaves.  Other colors arise from plants and their constituent parts, often through painstaking and difficult chemical processes.  It is a testament to the wit and wisdom of humanity that our ancient ancestors discovered these colors and how to create them.  Even to this day, the discovery of a new color can bring the discoverer untold riches, much as it did in the past for those men who discovered cadmium pigments in their personal chemical laboratories.  In fact, the color Mauve was discovered by accident by a researcher trying to synthesize quinine, a treatment for malaria.  To think that ancient man did essentially the same with lead and copper, creating pigments through chemistry, is awe-inspiring and humbling.

            Colors affect us innately.  They are used for wordless communication to this day.  Bright Reds and Yellows warn us, cautioning in their intensity.  Greens represent Nature in all its wonder.  Many cultures see Black as a symbol for mourning, while others see White as the color of grief.  Our lives are suffused with colors, with new ones appearing every day.  If there is a lesson to be drawn from Kassia St. Clair’s work it is that the emotional/intellectual weight of colors is purely created by our human experience.   There is no universal definition of any color or its meaning.  As with all things outside of our consciousness, humans force meaning where it does not exist.  The lies we tell ourselves often end up oppressing our fellow man.  Learning about the human connection to color and pigment helps us fight the delusions, and should be required reading for any artist.  It may be that we all need to understand that Life, and everything in Life, is but a process, a step forward among a marathon of concurrent and disparate steps.  The old Zen koan concerning whether a tree falling in a wood makes a sound if no one is there to hear it has always rung false.  Sound exists independent of any receptor.  It is solely the variant vibration within air, water, or earth.  Hence, sound exists whether our ears receive it.  I believe the old koan was a way to force a student to understand how miniscule and largely unimportant the human is to the workings of Mother Nature.  Colors were not invented for the enjoyment of us humans.  Colors existed for billions of years before Mother Earth spat out hominids, and will exist for trillions of years after we have forced our own extinction.  Long live color!

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Lives-Color-Kassia-Clair/dp/0143131141 )

Don S. Lemons Describes the Importance of Drawing in the Discovery of New Scientific Concepts

 

Drawing Physics: 2,600 Years of Discovery from Thales to Higgs – Don S. Lemons (2017)

 

            Small books are joyful books!  While I adore an imposingly thick reference work, dense and packed with information, I find great joy in the relatively small, concise, and engrossing books such as Drawing Physics, by Don S. Lemons.  The trick to these books is that they must be hyper-specific, or else the thread is lost and the writer loses focus.  Don S. Lemons cleverly designed this book to move forward, not only chronologically, but in the levels of scientific complexity.  The overarching idea explores the invaluable use of drawn imagery by scientists to either describe a previously unknown property of our universe, or to create a visual symbol of the scientific experiment or idea being described.  It is very clever, and builds upon itself, helping guide the reader through topics and ideas in the world of physics as they were developed and theorized, from antiquity to the modern day.

            If any book could claim to embody the old dictum, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” it is this one.  The simple drawings lead to very complex ideas.  Lemons succinctly describes each individual scientist’s life, and their educational and cultural backgrounds, providing a foundation for the amazing discoveries discussed in each chapter.  It is still eye-opening to understand how much our human ancestors managed to deduce and intuit, using just the observed details of the world around them.  We humans are a magnificent thinking creature.  Our ability to think is only rivaled by our ability to share our thoughts and conclusions.

            Whereas previously, humans only shared their knowledge orally, forcing students to memorize whole epic poems and philosophical treatises on nature, the advent of writing allowed humanity to pass on knowledge across time and distance.  The combination of drawn images and the written word?  It is likely the single greatest synthesis in human existence.  Much like the “thought experiments” used by scientists to imagine situations which are difficult to describe in words alone, the drawings in this book allow the reader to create a mental image, helping one understand the deeper meaning behind the formulas and theories described within.  Sometimes an image can provide an example of an inalienable truth of our universe, even though there are not yet words to describe the actual internal workings. 

            That is the beauty in art.  It provides communication between minds in an instant manner.  Even a simple doodle can express ideas so vast and complex that people could not understand them without the imagery.  Art also communicates across language barriers.  A beautiful painting or sculpture can be appreciated without language.  A diagram of a triangle, its angles, and the relationship between them, conveys knowledge across the centuries, much like Pythagoras and the theorem named after him.  Don S. Lemons has put together an amazing little book, valuable to anyone interested in the progress of scientific thought, and in the creative ways which scientists portray their discoveries.  I felt inspired and uplifted, in awe of the creativity and intellect of my fellow human beings.  Highly recommended.

(This book can be purchased here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262535199/drawing-physics/ )

Wolfram Eilenberger Explores the Lives, Times, and Work of Four Great Philosophers

 

Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy - Wolfram Eilenberger, translated by Shaun Whiteside (2020)

 

            “Philosophy…is the talk on a cereal box.  Religion…is a smile on a dog.” – Edie Brickell and New Bohemians.

            The years between the Great War and World War II were a time of intense change for everyone, and nowhere was that change more evident than in the world of philosophy, specifically academic philosophy in Germany.  During those years, the four men listed in the title of this book achieved groundbreaking and deeply original work, publishing books that changed intellectual discourse and sought to dig into the core of what philosophy is, and how it makes any sense at all.  Like some sort of philosophical Great Attractor, these four men, and their lives and work, reached a critical mass of ideas and thoughtful inquiry in Germany between wars.

            Wolfram Eilenberger weaves an engrossing narrative out of the lives of these four philosophers.  He is masterful as he describes the early days of each man, their intellectual developments, and how they managed to elicit support, both financial and emotional, as they sought to grapple with ideas and thoughts so obscure, so esoteric, and so NEW, that they left little room for normal, human behaviors.  Each of these men sought to, in their own words and through their own original thought, not only understand the big questions in life, (Why do we exist?  What does it mean to “be?”) but also even more primal questions, such as “How are we able to discern truth?” and “How can we describe the infinite with our finite tools of language and words?”  These were heady times.

            Philosophers deal with pure thought.  Their lives are spent inside their heads, only occasionally popping up out of their studies and libraries to face other philosophers and engage in discourse about their ideas.  The life of the mind is a brutal and lonely one, especially if one is truly devoted to it.  These four philosophers and their lives shine a light on how difficult it truly is to not only achieve gainful employment as a philosopher, but to also have the time and resources needed for original, groundbreaking work.  If there is anything a philosopher despises it is a lack of originality, whether in their work or in another’s.

            One thing that struck me as I read about these four eminent thinkers, is that, no matter how orderly or precise their internal thoughts and writings present them to be, they are actually a hot mess of dysfunction, distraction, and human folly.  Several of these men sought to understand what the primal source of knowledge is, with some arguing for language, others arguing for the idea that the language represents.  In several instances, their ideological constructions come crashing down due to an aspect of life, seemingly not important to most 20^th century philosophers.  That one thing is Love.  Whether as young men or in middle age, once these philosophers discover true Love, real Love that is not tied to status, or money, or anything tangible, their lives are upended.  They did not account for the power of Love to rewrite one’s mind, to reconstitute what is important and not important, and to provide its own inherent satisfaction.  In many cases, it is enough just to be in Love.  Once this happens, their worldview begins to change.  For some, Love itself becomes the biggest mystery.

            I must heap some praise upon the translator of this work, Shaun Whiteside.  Having read many German books in their English translations, I can honestly say that Mr. Whiteside’s translation work is exquisite.  Ensuring that the information provided is correct is hard enough, but Mr. Whiteside also manages to convey the humor and wit found in German literature, which far too often is lost in the translation efforts to English.  I kind of wish he had translated Werner Herzog’s memoir.

            Either way, and I have stated this before on the Book Journey, most philosophy is a slog to read.  I find myself either agog at the obtuse mental gymnastics that much philosophical work consists of, or enraged by my inability to speak directly to the authors to point out the inconsistencies, errors, or plain delusions involved in their philosophical arguments.  Philosophy means “lover of wisdom.”  Sometimes, these philosophers act as if they were the one and only arbiters of truth and wisdom, excluding any other. They are always proved wrong.  No one has an irrefutable claim on what is Truth, Beauty, or Love, although nearly everyone who thinks themselves as smart or gifted will wish to assure you that they do in fact know what Truth, Beauty, and Love are. 

            I believe that studying philosophy is valuable, and can lead one’s mind into uncharted territories of thought.  I also believe that pure thought is just one aspect of human Truth.  Physical action also brings about Truth, Beauty, and Love, and does so without a single shred of philosophical thought, just pure human bodily experience.  Our Universe is one of constant motion and change, for, in a very real sense, we are all living within a giant, ongoing, nearly eternal (to our limited human timeframe) explosion.  To believe that, out of the myriad of possible consciousnesses arisen from within our Universe, one has reached a kernel of absolute Truth, is ego of the highest order.  Modern philosophers have a very tough road ahead, as they must contend with, and understand, all of the current scientific advancements before they can truly offer original thought.  Back in the old days, that would have meant reading 10-15 Greek classics, perhaps some Arabic masterworks, and some Latin works of literature.  Today, the world of thought is so vast, so splintered, that absolute Truth is a ridiculous concept, much less an actual possibility. 

Perhaps that is the brutality that confronted these four great minds, for not only was their world ending, with the imminent rise of totalitarian fascism in Europe and the terrors of WWII, but the very idea that the world is fully comprehensible purely by thought was soon to be deemed irrelevant and erroneous.  Physics soon showed how the vast microscopic structures of our Universe defy logic and human rationality.  Physics also showed how miniscule our initial ideas about our Universe were, for the Cosmos is far vaster than anyone ever dreamed it could be.  In fact, the Universe is so big that much of it is too far away for us to see, having expanded faster than light can travel.  It is facts like these, corroborated by evidence and bolstered by theory, that drive philosophers insane, for these truths are not reachable by the Mind alone.  I posit that the future of philosophy will no longer consist of individual minds, perusing the Universe and providing their ideas, but an amalgam of minds and thought, capable of including as much of the natural world as possible, and allowing for the differences in individuals.  If philosophy is a slow and steady path towards Truth, then it must include everyone and everything for it to be valid.  Let us hope humanity never runs out of lovers of wisdom.

(Thanks go to Dietmar Froehlich, Associate Dean, and Professor of Architecture with the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at the University of Houston for the great recommendation.)

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/576741/time-of-the-magicians-by-wolfram-eilenberger-translated-by-shaun-whiteside/ )

Joan Halifax Elucidates the World of the Shaman for us Wanna-be's

 

Shaman: The Wounded Healer – Joan Halifax (1982)

 

            Sometimes the good books just keep coming!  Whether through synchronicity, plain coincidence, or just dumb luck, this amazing book found its way to my hands, and I am exceedingly glad it did.  Joan Halifax has managed that most-rare of feats, to write a slender volume packed with information and wisdom that is able to elucidate exactly what a shaman is, how they come to be, how their visions and experiences are seemingly universal, and how shamans themselves communicate about the experiences they endure for the betterment or benefit of the tribe around them.  It is eye-opening and quite a departure from the many other ethnographic and historical books I have read about shamanism and the role of the shaman in their respective cultures.

            In a very real and basic sense, the shaman is the one tasked with experiencing pain, death, and rebirth in order for them to understand and act upon the various otherworldly forces and powers that threaten, disrupt, or wrongly influence the tribespeople.  This is why this book is titled “the Wounded Healer.”  Only someone with the experience of death and rebirth can travel the worlds above and below ours.  Only they can talk to the spirits, travel through space and time, and come back to our mortal coil safely with their consciousness intact.

            Joan Halifax describes the various symbols which seem to be near-universal among shamans worldwide.  Some of them, such as the eagle, are emblematic of the shaman’s spirit rising to the world above.  Other symbols, such as the swan, or the water lily, serve as stand-ins for the shaman, for they not only inhabit, but thrive, in all three realms.  The Swan is just as comfortable flying in the heavens, walking around on land, and swimming on and in deep waters, just as the shaman is comfortable existing in our world, the underworld of demons and primal forces, and the aboveworld of the divine and beneficent spirits.  One universal symbol of shamanism is the World Tree, which serves as the Axis Mundi, or center of the world.  The roots of the World Tree reach down into the primordial lower world.  The trunk rises through our corporeal world, and the top of the World Tree reaches into the heavens.  It is this World Tree that shamans “climb” in their journeys and initiations.  The pictographs and artwork showing the World Tree are found everywhere humanity exists.

            One of the most profound statements in this book is a quote from an Iglulik Eskimo (Inuit) shaman told to the explorer Knud Rasmussen,

            “The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls.  All the creatures that we have to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, souls that do not perish with the body and which must therefore be (pacified) lest they should revenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies.”

            It is this truth that runs through all shamanistic activity.  If we have souls, then everything has souls, and because of that, everything has its own consciousness.  Shamans do not claim that a stone is as intelligent as a human, but they do claim that the stone has its inherent right to exist just as we do, and that it carries a form of consciousness which is far older than short-lived human creatures.  The same is true for everything we see around us, including mother Earth, and the Universe itself.

            Shamans know that the process of creation, the birth of the Universe and of Life, is always ongoing.  They also are aware that the process of destruction, of the end of things, is also constantly occurring.  They do not see Time as a linear, step-by-step process, like a recipe, or a list of Ikea furniture instructions.  Everything exists in the ever-present Now, and only our faulty human senses show the world to be past, present, and future.  This is how the energy of creation can be harnessed by the shamans, and how they lose the fear of inevitable destruction that we all experience as the fear of death.  It makes for a powerful, if lonely existence. 

Most shamans lead solitary lives, devoted to their calling, and do not interact much with the tribes they protect.  The wisdom and experience gained by their shamanistic initiations and study distance them from the everyday people they serve.  Many people fear the shaman and their powers, yet they are an invaluable and requisite part of human society.  Our modern world, with its emphasis on technology and scientific advancement, has turned its back on shamans, but even so, individual humans seek out and explore the shamanistic way.  Something in our nature is drawn to the unknown, to the rarely explored, and many of us are especially attracted to the inner life of the mind.  The shamans are still all around us, separating themselves from the day-to-day static noise we call human endeavor, exploring that which cannot be seen, and holding the forces of the universe at bay for the rest of us.