littanies, 2009

magic man, leaves all to happen as it may.
litany of the infinite kitten, he say.

death and what comes from it, part 1

through the conscious connection with my death - my hades - my underworld - i am rooted and feel more real, grounded. the ego is capable of such heroics but without the touchstone of death it feels unreal to me. like losing touch with something fundamental.

demeter
________

ge/gaia
_________

chthon


demeter, (she is also cthonic, of the earth, and pre-olympian. the roman equiv. is ceres) bringer of corn/grains, thus hope for better in this life and the next. preserver of marriage, bringer of seasons. earth and above. also destroyer of all life. so powerful that she could cause hades to bring her daughter persephone up from the underworld.

gaia, or ge, a primordial goddess, (cthonic, of the earth, and pre-olympian. the roman equiv. is terra). personifying the earth. the earth itself. she brings forth the sky, uranus. rooted in aia, indo-eurpoean, meaning grandmother, thus grandmother earth. jung suggested that the archetypal mother was a part of the collective unconscious of all humans. such mother imagery underpins many mythologies, and precedes the image of the paternal "father". this helps explain the universality of such mother goddess imagery around the world.

chthon, not a god but a greek word for within the soil itself. in, under or beneath the earth. of the earth. subterranean. fertility, abundance and the grave. related to a form of ritual sacrifice, often at night. in jungian psychology, the term chthonic was often used to describe the spirit of nature within, the unconscious earthly impulses of the self, one's material depths.

the quaternity, what is squared?, part 2

so this has me thinking about something similar. the egyptians had it flipped so that the male, paternal figure was earthly and the mother image was celestial, of the sky. geb and nut. she was the real deal, the sun and moon moved through her body at night. the earth, or geb, actually translates to 'weak one'. i can see a lot of connections to more recent belief systems, coming right out of that area, like the more modern christian view. but now the father becomes everything and we are given a trinity. life after death, as with the egyptians, is paramount. ascension, no false idols, 'only thorough me' etc. but excavations of pre-isrealite and later settlements still find thousands of female figures, fertility images, and goddesses. they were obviously not released by people just because there was a new system on the block. they were worshiped and held right alongside the new almighty. they were not of some hereafter but of the earth itself.

so the trinity:


holy ghost
_______

son
_______

father


plus the other three-in-one:


feminine
_______

body
_______

shadow


the trinity, the familiar triangle, plus the body, the shadow, the feminine, as one, and we have a quaternity. a square, or squared off circle, something whole, rounded. the development or evolution of spirit needs the earthly base, comes from the ground up. we cannot ascend without rootedness, or if we do it is at great cost and risk. perhaps like icarus? and after all, where was icarus' mother?

for my yogis

that's it, the twists and turns in high def. i've never seen an x-ray of my spine but this kind of blows my mind. it's called idiopathic scoliosis, or 'without known cause'. it's genetic, but what isn't?

a challenge, march and april, 2009

i finished a 30 day challenge in yoga yesterday. having only done 4 or 5 days in a row previously it really was a challenge and opened my eyes, perhaps in a new way, of what the body-heart-mind is capable. this yoga is a very special process, not unlike the process of individuation itself, or the process of a flower, or of light moving across the floor. it is regular and grounded and attends both the details and the disparate. physically i feel more solid, more able than i ever have in my life. after wringing myself out, reforming, letting go and returning for day upon day what is left feels more essential, and more expansive. process is work. we may see the river as joy, or power or eternal or suggestive of something else but it is doing the work of river. i didn't do the 30 days, i realize now, to accomplish that feat or say i did the 30 days, but to attend to the work of self. to recognize the simple, fundamental work of river as it carves it's way to the sea.