Diving Deeper

An underground stream of spirituality: quoting Brad Kochunas

A beautifully articulated account of the qualities (astrological and elemental) of soulful spirituality, with water as a central image, from 'Elemental Spirituality' by Brad Kochunas in The Mountain Astrologer, #136, Dec./Jan. 2008

I wish to offer for consideration the possibility of an underground stream of spirituality that has been poorly articulated and frequently overlooked.  This approach, like water, moves downward toward the lowlands, the lonesome valley, the shaded glade, the dark wood, the shadowed path, the vale of tears.  This is a perspective viewed through water and earth imagery that our spiritual traditions have often ignored.  It carries more languid, meandering, sinking, and brooding images.  In contrast to the spirited yang experience, there is a more pronounced soulful, yin quality to the shape of this perspective.  Neptune, in its natural relationship to the sovereigns of earth and water (the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Pluto), reflects a harmony of purpose and  a willingness to descend to the dark abyss.  The relations suggest a more soulful spirituality reflecting attachment, humility, sensuousness, patience, realism, depth, and embodied life.

Often this path begins at a point of personal failure or catastrophe, when we no longer measure up to the fire and air values so infused in our Western culture, and we have given up the challenge of the spiritual climb.  It has been characterized as the dark night of the soul in Christian mysticism and the night sea journey into myth....In this plunge away from our well-ordered, well-lit, and well-controlled lives, we are open to the world, made vulnerable, wounded, and inferior - no longer rising and floating but, rather, falling and sinking deeper into the solitude of our being and the flow of life.

.... we ignore the invisibles of repressed and forgotten water and earth at great peril....A true materialist loves the material world and is a disciple of earth and water, cherishing the things of the world, repairing not despairing, recognizing the sacredness of a living Cosmos.  In this sense, then, it seems prudent to affirm a more soulful spirituality, one that walks in the vale, allowing us to see the necessity of tears and sorrow, to embrace the loam of mortality, and to esteem the treasures of darkness.  When our spirituality no longer promises paradise but plants us firmly in the present, and our astrology no longer predicts the future but immerses us fully in the moment, then our lives, in tune now with the rhythms of soil and sea, may truly blossom.

For more on the challenges of Neptune, see also the poem Neptune has a Heart by Sulis (Sara Firman)

Cutting words: seven poems by Sulis

The following seven poems came out of painful communications with others.  They express the often hidden violence in spoken and unspoken words.  They were a way of expressing pain indirectly when it felt impossible or unsafe to speak my truth.  Around the same time, I also came across a very powerful and courageous way of communicating developed by Marshall Rosenberg. See the end of this post for more on Nonviolent Communication (NVC).

When words turn by Sulis

When words turn
into steel-capped
precision instruments

My blood runs
cold along a shaft
of certain annihilation

Words are breathed
out on moving clouds
dancing and dissipating

They are pure ether
sparkling with heat
transforming my world

Diagnose my disease
stitch back a left arm
burned to the third degree

Your lanced judgments
more insidious by far
than streaming poetry

Severity by Sulis

Severed moon
thin as a shadow
skating on ice
marks and remarks
in invisible ink
on night's rink
scribbles
as bloodless as
paper-cut sharp
as slivered and stark
she slides
and departs

Consternation by Sulis

Constant consternation
saturnian constructs
a cryptic constellation
of crushing incompetence
colliding with careful ...
chaos.

Just have a wonderful day.
Oh, and be a good therapist!

False words by Sulis

Never lie for diamond moments
    or manipulate time's delicate day.
Wanting more to dress your
    cold skinless beauty would scream
of  mad shadow visions pounding
    out rusty worship chained up
to purple tongues in tragic
    language void of sun and heart.

The kill  by Sulis

In measured tone of piety
craftily she
shifts her smile
from phone cradle
to grave.

And you stumble into
a long pause
that knocks
the breath of certainty
far out of reach.

She comes in
for the kill
not hearing
a yes and wanting
to catch you
at no.

Caught with your
ambiguity
down around
your knees
there's nothing
to retrieve.

You're let go.

Silence by Sulis

Even a wall
of rock
echoes back

A voice
a ripple
an expansion

Swells your heart
and pumps
its puff of hope

Of holy smoke
signalling
repeating

A chant of chance.

Not this flat fall
of silence
blank as black

This ultimate
cruelty of not
knowing

When your words
fell short
and mine

Spilled over.

Burning by Sulis

Paper burns quickly,
especially when crumpled.
Falls into flimsies, dissipates,
loses irreversibly its substance.

This is how I burn,
when the words are hot.
Anger licking wounds, searing,
destroying what it once wanted.

If I were a wild seed,
this might be my initiation.
Tucked into the earth, waiting,
for the warmth I need to grow.

I know my soul-child,
she's yet to be birthed.
Waiting for the season, life,
when sweet rain puts out fire.

Nonviolent communication (NVC) - sometimes referred to as compassionate communication - involves both communication skills that foster compassionate relating and consciousness of the interdependence of our well being and using power with others to work together to meet the needs of all concerned.

This approach to communication emphasizes compassion as the motivation for action rather than fear, guilt, shame, blame, coercion, threat or justification for punishment. In other words, it is about getting what you want for reasons you will not regret later. NVC is NOT about getting people to do what we want. It is about creating a quality of connection that gets everyone’s needs met through compassionate giving.

Being a bridge: Nan DeGrove

Oh, I understand!  You were being a bridge.
Well, that's nice, bridges are important.
But you know, the only problem with being a bridge
is that you, yourself,
never get to cross over.

Nan DeGrove

I discovered this quote in Stephen Buhner's book The Secret Teachings of Plants which continues to be a revelation and inspiration to me.  The quote brought me up with the shocking lurch that indicates something significant.  I did not discover until I came to post it here, many weeks later on the eve of my birthday, that Nan DeGrove is an astrologer.  And that provided another 'ahah' moment since astrology has become an increasingly valuable source of understanding for me.  Esoteric studies of water, plants and planets converging.  Me being a bridge and yearning to cross over.

Stephen Buhner quoted elsewhere on this blog: Prairie dogs cry for rain

Watership: birthday thoughts

Wild Rabbit's Dream

Out of the labyrinthine
underworld warrens
came a lone wild rabbit.
It was dawn and a glow
on the farthest horizon
touched half-open eyes.

A blur of dew clung
to the grass glistening.
As so many water bells
this night moisture sang
of Moon and the vortex
in which she had slept.

As wild rabbit became
accustomed to new light
she saw mirrored in each
droplet faces of memory.
Like tears they shone
with love's compassion.

Wild rabbit's thoughts
were moist as dreams.
But by now Sun rose
flushing gold on the hills
burning off ancient mists
of many past sadnesses.

She watched the sky turn
into an upside-down ocean.
Wind blew swirling clouds
moving sacred mandalas
across the open blue face
of a smiling girl child.

The child sang with joy
a good morning song that
ruffled wild rabbit's fur.
Her bright nose twitching
she tapped her back foot
and leapt out into the day.

(by Sara Firman, aka Sulis, 2007)

Fire in the East

though the yellow bird
  died the sun still rises
    in the east and the India
      of my dreams wreathed
        with marigolds is the body

of a moon goddess losing
  her blue-blind shoe to
    dogged innocence and old
      gods seeding their progeny
        in the red wars of proud lions

a sure resurrection of winged
  dreams flying over cold waters
    carrying rain clouds to dry soil
      planted with babies or beans   
        fire in the east is the true gift

(by Sara Firman aka Sulis, 2008)

My mother notes that I was due on July 4 and born on July 14, 1959 in London, spanning America's Independence Day and the French Revolution's Bastille Day.  A rebel perhaps but  a reticent one - apparently I resisted that birth and have resisted a few other strong but unavoidable calls. 

When I was looking for two poems that might reflect the watershed birthday I am celebrating today, the ones above stood out.  They were actually written in 2007 and 2008, respectively ,but they were looking forward to the morning of something hopeful.

It's curious that they follow two posts about my father since he is linked with both of these too.  He read Watership Down to my siblings and me on a memorable holiday in New Zealand - I specifically remember staying in a hot springs motel at Rotorua for one reading.

Both poems were also inspired by my recent explorations of astrology as a path to self-understanding, under the tutelage of my new partner Joe Landwehr with whom I will spend this birthday and to whom I owe more than I can say.

Birthdays are Sun times: I have Sun in Cancer, Leo rising, and Moon in Scorpio*. 

Here is a personal astropoetic image for that watery rising sun: the sun's warmth lifting up billions of tiny water droplets to become soft humidity in the air which then moves further up to gather together as clouds in the atmosphere above.  Then rain.

Another image is of a sunrise over the ocean, as in the Brazilian film set in Rio de Janeiro 'Black Orpheus' when two little boys take solace and find renewed hope in their own ability to draw the sun up by playing the song dead Orpheus taught them.

In a sense, perhaps I too am drawing up my Sun by playing the song that my  losses have taught me, including the loss of my Leo-born father (Jupiter trine Sun in my natal chart).  I now need to break away from family psyche and honor that wonderful legacy at the same time.

To be in balance, my Sun requires me to move water energy (particularly emotional and creative energy) outward into some form of expression.  This is a natural part of who I am and something I have struggled with through both denial and shame.  No longer.

An intriguing dream reminded me that yoga is one form of self-expression that activates my Sun; there is a Sun-line going through India on my astrocartography map.   Just after my father died I went to India for several weeks to study with BKS Iyengar. The second poem hints at this yogic connection.

Writing has been another form of expression.  Following my Moon and it's companion Neptune, it calls for a form of Wyrd (runic) Magic through which what I write solidifies and becomes the truth I must live.  To the extent that I am bound by the past, the ambivalence of these magical planets haunts me.

These two poems, tell of my Sun and Moon and the ever-present influence of Water.  They draw me up from the underworld of past pain where I have been for the last few years.  They call me to the frontier of the half-century of my life.  They ask me to sing another song of hope.  This is my birthday wish.

* for astrology folk Sun in 12th, Moon in 3rd.

See also this link on my aquatic bodywork website about yoga: The judicious use of natural forces

For the Watery Soul

Last year, while visiting Santa Fe, and browsing in the famed book shop The Ark, my partner, Joe,  handed me a book by Martin Prechtel who had once done a shamanic ceremony for him when he lived in Santa Fe.  The dedication 'For the Watery Soul' immediately attracted me. 

The book itself took my soul by storm and I plan to read it once a year around the time of my birthday (July 14).

On the back cover it says:  'Prechtel revives a ... style of learning, which calls for uncovering five additional layers of the story and diving with the reader deep into it's aboriginal richness, to bring to the surface all that is poignantly relevant to the reader's life and the present situation in the world.'

I'm full of admiration for what he has achieved here.  The drawings throughout are Prechtel's own and they are astounding.

It's definitely a book to read aloud. Perhaps one I can suggest to the local community radio where I have yet to volunteer as a storyteller.  I've always enjoyed reading aloud or being read to.  I have a special family memory of my father reading On Watership Down to us all while we toured New Zealand on holiday. 

In The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun:  A Mayan tale of ecstasy, time, and finding one's true form, Martin writes:

To me these Mayan stories are like water.  To the Tzutujil there is only one water which rushes, puddles or is captured in a multitude of diverse forms like plant leaves, hot springs, rivers, lakes, ponds, ice, tears and streams, and like the amniotic fluid at our births, all this water is trying to get back home to the original mother of life, the Great Grandmother Ocean, the great dream pool.

Like water then, there are many, many forms of stories, more than anyone of us could ever know, but like the rivers and tears, each story contains the exact same storywater as the original "Big Story".

From Martin Prechtel, The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun, 2005, North Atlantic Books, p. 4-5.

I had planned to be in Chichen Itza (close to many Mayan sites) for my birthday but at the last minute decided it was too extravagant for my current circumstances.  I wonder?  Time to dive back into life?

See also this post on my blog Vision Spa Retreat referencing this book.


Thomas Berry, the beloved cultural historian who died last month aged 94 years, also stressed the value of story when he wrote:

It's all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it is no longer effective. Our challenge is to create a new sense of what it means to be human.

Martin Prechtel has written one such story for me.

Quetzalcoatl the bird shaman (a poem)

 

Quetzalcoatl the bird shaman (by Sulis Feb. 2009)

Gathering books like future dreams
you float above the forest trailing green feathers
a hermit bird perched
on the edge of  mysteries

Magician jester jonny gigolo
whose pantalooned dance
in homage to the moon
concealed dead serious intent to fly

Winged stalker between realms
of gravity and exploding light
god of wind and the morning star
love is inevitable

Love is a twelfth house kiss
Perhaps a part of you remembered
Teotihuacan, place of Tlaloc the water god
who let you go your way

Coatl the serpent contained you
encircled your enfolded potential
kundalini wound and earth bound
but you were only waiting

To take that unifying death-defying leap
plumes fanned out to symbolize
each manifest strength of nature -
fire, earth, water, air

A quetzal bird of rainbow plumage
and fine-fluted throat singing
you've flown high in cosmic space
and your voice carried farther than you think

A wizard-king in a jungle palace
you've been kind to mankind
fought off the obsidian jaguar of power
and stalled their gory sacrifice

But you're tired of strutting your stuff
tired of everyone's hopeless dreams
quetzal-coatl the plumed serpent
your dreams are the ones now

And if I could unfurl your wings I would

........................................................................................................................................................

For Joe, my personal bird shaman.

With thanks also to Daniel Pinchbeck for the inspiration of his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.  From Wikipedia: '[This book] examines prophecy through personal and philosophical approaches, and offers the hypothesis that humanity is experiencing an accelerated process of global consciousness transformation, leading to a new realization of time and space during this period. In 2012, he also explains the psi or extra-sensory perception research of Dean Radin, the theories of Graham Hancock, his own encounters with crop circles, a visit to calendar reform advocate José Argüelles, and his direct reception of prophetic material: the voice of the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl, began speaking to him during a 2004 trip to the Amazon in Brazil.'

The image below is one of many extraordinary crop circles - this one displaying a Mayan motif linked to Quetzlcoatl's headress - that appeared in Wiltshire, UK, this month.

More about Quetzlcoatl on Wikipedia.

The Bobcat and the Peony (poem by Sulis)

The poem below was written last year after I had the delight of seeing an adult bobcat and later a kitten at 3 pm in the afternoon while driving into the forest land where I live in southern Missouri.  Both creatures seemed quite unafraid of us or the vehicle, and we held eye contact with the very healthy adult for an astonishing length of time when we stopped beside it.

It was in an area of the forest near Flat Rock Creek (made famous by my neighbor Ken Carey's lovely book A Flat Rock Journal: A Day in the Ozark Mountains).  This area has recently been devastated by the most destructive kind of logging practice in the wake of a spring storm that brought many elder trees down.  I hope the bobcats have found somewhere safe to wait out the drama and that they will be back. 

The peony was growing incongruously (definitely not native) on the road side a short distance after I glimpsed these beautiful animals.

The Bobcat and the Peony by Sulis (17 July 2008)

An imprint flashed
its thoughts of light
between leaves of trees
and there
she was.

The long slope
of body intent
lithe with stealth
and yet
she paused.

In flank view
faced my gaze
and held
held me
in her health.

No fear in that
twitched ear.

I would have been
crushed
but for the unexpected
tameness
of a peony.

Innocent in white

and more light.

Interesting aside:  While seeking out an image for this post, searching peonies and bobcats, I came across the web page - Lore of the Cat: The White Cat - Symbol of Light and Good: The Talisman. Perhaps there is some protection for the forest in my curious double-sighting.

The talisman is a magical image which has the power to avert or repel evil.  Where the cat was believed to give powerful protection and to ward off unpleasantness of every kind, its image became widely used as a talisman when no living cat was available.  Cats carved over Theban temples gave them protection.  The Japanese used cat images to guard mortuary chambers against rats. A famous seventeenth century wood carving of a cat shows it sleeping among peonies over the door of a shrine in the temple of Nikko.  The cat was credited with having driven all vermin from the temple.

 

Sleeping cat, carving attributed to Hidari Jingoro, Toshogu, Nikko, Japan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

And now for the beautiful wild creature itself - perhaps one day I will photograph the Greenwood Forest one I was lucky enough to encounter.  The one I saw had the short tail and flicked ears but was a softer brown to match the Ozark forest terrain.