Regeneration of the Bones

In primitive times, hunters would save the bones of their prey, and plant them respectfully in the earth so that new animals would be grown from them, magically, ensuring a continuing supply of game.

Similarly, in shamanic cultures, which were of hunters or herders, at least originally, there was the mythic notion that the young shaman-to-be must be devoured, stripped of his flesh, stripped to the bones, and from these marrow-bones, a new body regrows, of shamanic substance-- crystalline, clear and shining. It is a rebirth, with a new "body of light", as a new-fledged shaman in a new world.

This myth of regrowth from the bones, in its many cultural evolutions, was widespread in the ancient world. A good, smallish book about it is Weston La Barre's Muelos: a Stone Age Superstition about Sexuality.

Recently, it occurred to me that the Romantic Movement could be seen as involving a stripping of the flesh-- a rejection of the elite, high civilization of the Enlightenment characterized by order, reason, high-flown manners, and refinement, to go back to a lower level, of the simple common-folk, with their traditional ways and wisdom, which by contrast with the artificial elaborations of the Enlightenment was like the bones of civilization-- stark, simple, yet authentic, honest, vital, even magical. And many of the Romantics could be said to be trying to regrow a new (organic!) body of civilization from this archaic stock, and get it right this time. Well, the results were a mix of the wonderful and terrible, and we're still living with them.

Now, if we see that we are, perforce, in the Age of Ecology, in which the current global civilization is obviously destroying Life on Earth, and that fundamental changes are required if there is to be any hope that an intact Biosphere and some kind of human presence will survive, then it is very like the situation at the end of the 18th century, with the Enlightenment and the Romantic Movement in opposition. In fact, our global civilization is a direct development of the Enlightenment civilization, two centuries on, as the Ecology Movement is of the Romantic Movement-- only now the stakes are drastically higher.

And I see this powerful myth of the regrowth of a new, superior body from the bones of the old one to fit our present situation, just as with the old Romantic Movement. Now we must develop-- regrow-- a new global civilization-- and it must be global, because the Biosphere is global, and not ethno-centric/nationalist like with the Romantic Movement-- and the determining, driving idea, the "marrow" of it, must be Ecology-- that is, how we can live on this planet without destroying it. It is a very simple idea, easy to see its truth, that therefore we must make a new ecological civilization, and we must get it right, which requires that we use whatever will be necessary and reject whatever is a hindrance, or harmful, which means using our intelligence, knowledge, and science as well as inspiration, intuition, and old wisdom-- everything we can bring to this terrific Work, but all with great discrimination, so that we get it right.