I've been going through a number of books on symbols, and one of them had a small final chapter on 'Wiccan and Neopagan symbols'. The first symbol displayed was a 'Norse shield knot'-- a square with loops at the four corners made by extending the lines there to join as a loop. And it has knotwork over-and-under at the corners. It's supposed to be protective, invoking the four corners of the Earth. I knew nothing of this shield-knot but I liked its simplicity. To my eye it looked like a keep with four towers, or 'four-hyrned borg', a 'halidom hall', a 'helgihold', or a 'frith-garth' for Nature. It could also be called an 'Alf-knot', although that already refers to the tangled elflocks (dreads) that Shaggy Alfar are wont to sport. It could be a cumbol of warning as well as warding-- no doubt it has been. It could also be a cumbol of the Edhli-menning, methinks, but I prefer the one I already devised for that, which is a reclining hexagon, wider than tall, inscribed with an oval, and with a snaking ray narrowing to a tail-point that radiates out from each corner. The rays imply outreach rather than defence, a connectedness with the environment (umrun). But the Ecologo, the classic ecology symbol, could just as well signify the Menning. I love the Ecologo.
Since it's Yule Eve, you might draw these and other oeko-cumbols to then color, cut-out and hang on your Yule-tree. It's just a thought, for a happy, holy Yule.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
The Oekomensch
Oekomensch is Eormanz for 'Eco-man', who sports a pair of hornbuds atop his head, visible to those who have the Sight ('seeth').
Oeko- (oe is actually o-umlaut, with a pair of dots atop the o, reminiscent of hornbuds), is from German Oekologie, or 'ecology'. But also it is from Old Icelandic oekkr= lump, heavy clod; tumor, protuberance; apt because the hornbuds are usually like round knobs. They function somewhat like a receiver/transmitter, but are non-technological, of course. There is perhaps a slight relation to O.Ice. Oeku-thorr, a name of Thor whose first part derives apparently from the Finnish thunder-god Ukko.
The Oekomensch is a type of Eco-alf; that is, an agent for the gathering Edhli-menning, the Ecological Civilization which will bend the Evil of the Searuvel, the Evil Machine, to Good, and preserve the Edhli, the Biosphere, from the Dilgoth, the Annihilation of Life on Earth. The hornbuds are just a visible sign of the many wields he holds to bend the Evil, and send forth Good to all life-kinds of the Earth, to bring everlasting Edhli-frith.
And he wishes you to have a happy, holy Yule-tide! Special greets to all you fellow Oekomenschen!
Oeko- (oe is actually o-umlaut, with a pair of dots atop the o, reminiscent of hornbuds), is from German Oekologie, or 'ecology'. But also it is from Old Icelandic oekkr= lump, heavy clod; tumor, protuberance; apt because the hornbuds are usually like round knobs. They function somewhat like a receiver/transmitter, but are non-technological, of course. There is perhaps a slight relation to O.Ice. Oeku-thorr, a name of Thor whose first part derives apparently from the Finnish thunder-god Ukko.
The Oekomensch is a type of Eco-alf; that is, an agent for the gathering Edhli-menning, the Ecological Civilization which will bend the Evil of the Searuvel, the Evil Machine, to Good, and preserve the Edhli, the Biosphere, from the Dilgoth, the Annihilation of Life on Earth. The hornbuds are just a visible sign of the many wields he holds to bend the Evil, and send forth Good to all life-kinds of the Earth, to bring everlasting Edhli-frith.
And he wishes you to have a happy, holy Yule-tide! Special greets to all you fellow Oekomenschen!
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Wallowing
Most humans don't want to evolve to higher civilization. They want to continue to wallow in cultural stagnation and decadence. The system they've built around themselves is stultifying, keeps them from bettering their selves, in fact brings out the worse in them. And they don't care, don't even care enough to look deep, and so there's no vision abroad, just willful blindness. So they just wallow in vulgarity and worthless entertainments as much as they can as a diversion from the reality of their lives, which is: they have smothered that which aspires. Humans have evolved, but stopped short of finding their proper niche in the Biosphere-- that is what's wrong with them and everything they do. They must move on, or it's all over.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Good Order or Chaos
It is a simple matter-- mythic ideas structure our culture-world, with the aim of keeping Chaos, from without and within, from overwhelming us. Hopefully, they give the world we live in, the lives we live, meaning, make us feel connected to the whole of life, structure our ways of life to good order.
We know that our mythic ideas have faded, or have failed us. Foremostly, we live in an order that is believed to create the best order possible to actually-existing humans, but which in reality is a chaotic order which doesn't in fact do this, and most importantly, is destroying the Biosphere as part of its normal operations. Many people now accept this assessment as true, but also accept the way things are as necessary to good order, and in any case inevitable. Which is completely mad.
In such a process of decline and fall of a civilization, you would expect to find bizarre decadence everywhere, as is standard in depictions of that classic example of decline and fall, the Roman Empire-- think of Nero, Caligula. But we have become inured to decadent entertainments readily available in the media, and we know that what could be described as decadent behaviors have become a commonplace over the civilized world. But we don't even use the word 'decadent' anymore, as we don't use 'evil'. What we have achieved, really, is a kind of liberal nihilism which supports individual freedom, human rights, humanitarian concern, but at the same time doesn't actually believe in morality as a 'privileged discourse'. Which is completely mad. Yes, we live in a mad world, where black is the new white, where everything is likely to be quite different from how it is presented and how it appears to be, where people are swamped with information and yet most of them don't seem to have a clue. It's the prevalent condition.
I have myself developed in the culture, so I know how disorienting and corrupting it can be, even if early-on I saw and felt much of the very wrongness of it. As far as I can tell, during my lifetime-- and I am 60 years old now-- the expectations we had when I was young, that the world was, would become, a better place, have not been borne out. Yet there have been improvements in some areas, mainly as a consequence of the cultural revolution of the Sixties. But the reality seems to be like 'with one hand we deal out good, while our other hand deals out ill'.
I don't have the solution to this ultimately annihilating dilemma, but I think the place to start, the one hope, is for people to disengage psychically from this toxic, deranging world civilization, even if they have only limited means to withdraw from it in terms of the means of making a living and of determining their material way of life. This means that we must, as best we can, put up a barrier between what tends toward Good Order and what tends toward Chaos, and we must determine, as much as possible, to live on the right side of it, psychically and behaviorally-- to live for Good Order and shun Chaos-- something like with the early Christians (horrors! cries my pagan soul). But that's what it will take-- a kind of saintly heroism that takes on the actually-existing world and presents a radical, fundamental, shocking alternative-- a culture of Ecological Wisdom structured by the necessary mythic ideas, which may sound, and certainly will be called, extreme, fanatical, crazy, witless, and be presented as a threat to all that is good and holy! This is it-- 'Life fighting for All Life'-- what has been missing, what has been ignored, overridden, kept down. But it is the ultimate sanity and must be bold in the face of a decadent, corrupt world-- Ecology.
We know that our mythic ideas have faded, or have failed us. Foremostly, we live in an order that is believed to create the best order possible to actually-existing humans, but which in reality is a chaotic order which doesn't in fact do this, and most importantly, is destroying the Biosphere as part of its normal operations. Many people now accept this assessment as true, but also accept the way things are as necessary to good order, and in any case inevitable. Which is completely mad.
In such a process of decline and fall of a civilization, you would expect to find bizarre decadence everywhere, as is standard in depictions of that classic example of decline and fall, the Roman Empire-- think of Nero, Caligula. But we have become inured to decadent entertainments readily available in the media, and we know that what could be described as decadent behaviors have become a commonplace over the civilized world. But we don't even use the word 'decadent' anymore, as we don't use 'evil'. What we have achieved, really, is a kind of liberal nihilism which supports individual freedom, human rights, humanitarian concern, but at the same time doesn't actually believe in morality as a 'privileged discourse'. Which is completely mad. Yes, we live in a mad world, where black is the new white, where everything is likely to be quite different from how it is presented and how it appears to be, where people are swamped with information and yet most of them don't seem to have a clue. It's the prevalent condition.
I have myself developed in the culture, so I know how disorienting and corrupting it can be, even if early-on I saw and felt much of the very wrongness of it. As far as I can tell, during my lifetime-- and I am 60 years old now-- the expectations we had when I was young, that the world was, would become, a better place, have not been borne out. Yet there have been improvements in some areas, mainly as a consequence of the cultural revolution of the Sixties. But the reality seems to be like 'with one hand we deal out good, while our other hand deals out ill'.
I don't have the solution to this ultimately annihilating dilemma, but I think the place to start, the one hope, is for people to disengage psychically from this toxic, deranging world civilization, even if they have only limited means to withdraw from it in terms of the means of making a living and of determining their material way of life. This means that we must, as best we can, put up a barrier between what tends toward Good Order and what tends toward Chaos, and we must determine, as much as possible, to live on the right side of it, psychically and behaviorally-- to live for Good Order and shun Chaos-- something like with the early Christians (horrors! cries my pagan soul). But that's what it will take-- a kind of saintly heroism that takes on the actually-existing world and presents a radical, fundamental, shocking alternative-- a culture of Ecological Wisdom structured by the necessary mythic ideas, which may sound, and certainly will be called, extreme, fanatical, crazy, witless, and be presented as a threat to all that is good and holy! This is it-- 'Life fighting for All Life'-- what has been missing, what has been ignored, overridden, kept down. But it is the ultimate sanity and must be bold in the face of a decadent, corrupt world-- Ecology.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Alfur Faring Between Two Worlds
(word-help beneath)
Alfur fares athwer the two worlds. In the Edhli-menning he goes as his true self, in his shaggy Alf-hame. But where there is that of the Searuvel, this Shadge becomes unseen. And when he overthwerts into the Storborg, which is wealded by the Searuvel, this Alf-hame is hid beneath a Skrurk-fell, a Heoloth-fell, of Drygand-scale, a Byrnie-sark of which nothing of the Searuvel will stick or slice or seep. And so the Alfur fares into the Searuvel and he is warded from its Sidden, and unseen as who he is, so he can do his good work for the Menning. And when he thwers back into the Menning, this Snake-skin easily sheds showing the true Shadge again.
Alfur= the personified collective Alf.
athwer= across.
Edhli-menning= the ecological culture-civilization.
Hame (OE/ON hama)= skin, garment, identity (shapeshifting), snake-skin.
Searuvel= Evil Machine. Storborg= the City of Man, the Megamachine.
weald= to rule.
Skrurk= deception. Heoloth= invisibility. Fell= skin, hide.
Byrnie-sark= armor-shirt.
Sidden= magic influence.
Alfur fares athwer the two worlds. In the Edhli-menning he goes as his true self, in his shaggy Alf-hame. But where there is that of the Searuvel, this Shadge becomes unseen. And when he overthwerts into the Storborg, which is wealded by the Searuvel, this Alf-hame is hid beneath a Skrurk-fell, a Heoloth-fell, of Drygand-scale, a Byrnie-sark of which nothing of the Searuvel will stick or slice or seep. And so the Alfur fares into the Searuvel and he is warded from its Sidden, and unseen as who he is, so he can do his good work for the Menning. And when he thwers back into the Menning, this Snake-skin easily sheds showing the true Shadge again.
Alfur= the personified collective Alf.
athwer= across.
Edhli-menning= the ecological culture-civilization.
Hame (OE/ON hama)= skin, garment, identity (shapeshifting), snake-skin.
Searuvel= Evil Machine. Storborg= the City of Man, the Megamachine.
weald= to rule.
Skrurk= deception. Heoloth= invisibility. Fell= skin, hide.
Byrnie-sark= armor-shirt.
Sidden= magic influence.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
New Age
The faux-naivete of paganism-animism-shamanism is at odds with biology-ecology, which must come first. Pagan-indigenous lore can provide material from which to create alternative mythoi, but ecological religion is a New Religious Movement, and must be directly relevant to the present ecological catastrophe, so it must be founded in ecological biology. Nostalgic Romantic spirituality just isn't in itself enough. So while ecological religion has pagan roots, it is not Pagan, but New Age-- and the New Age can only be the Age of Ecology (Edhlifrith Aldur).
Friday, November 4, 2011
The Absolute Necessity of Eco-religion
John Seed has said that the tendency for humans to split-apart from Nature must be very strong, as is seen in the central role of the emphasis on human interconnectedness with Nature in long-sustained aboriginal cultures. This emphasis seems due to the recognition that there's a fundamental flaw in human nature requiring extraordinary care and diligence, as if it is an 'innate depravity' of Man. Therefore the myth of the eternal battle of Good Order against Chaotic Disorder, which must be extremely ancient and still prevails, has often placed humans in the role of chaotic agents, if also in that of good agents.
In civilizations, however, it is organized religion, in the division of function characteristic of civilizations, that has the especial concern to preserve Good Order against Chaos, however that be framed, but with the consequent weakening of the integration and holistic focus of simpler societies. Yet as long as civilization dominates the world, it is still religion which must be the strong force for humanity's sense of interconnection with Nature. And yet over much of this world now, religion is no longer a determining strong force, and even so, it is only marginally concerned, if that, with maintaining the good order of Nature against the misbehavior of humanity. Yet at this time, as many now know, this misbehavior is destroying Nature at a rate that threatens the survival of humanity, and of the Biosphere itself, and it is this that is the crisis of our era. Given this massive crisis, it simply stands to reason that a religious concern with the battle of Good Order against (human) Chaos must dominate (yes, dominate) all other religious or any other concerns. An ecological reframing of this myth in global eco-religion must have priority for world civilization, because only religion is a strong enough force to inexorably transform human hearts and minds and the ethos, ideals, worldview, lifeways, and essential structures of civilization, and this is absolutely required to preserve a functioning Biosphere and thus human survival. It is really that simple. It is the precondition for acting decisively to save the Earth and our species.
In civilizations, however, it is organized religion, in the division of function characteristic of civilizations, that has the especial concern to preserve Good Order against Chaos, however that be framed, but with the consequent weakening of the integration and holistic focus of simpler societies. Yet as long as civilization dominates the world, it is still religion which must be the strong force for humanity's sense of interconnection with Nature. And yet over much of this world now, religion is no longer a determining strong force, and even so, it is only marginally concerned, if that, with maintaining the good order of Nature against the misbehavior of humanity. Yet at this time, as many now know, this misbehavior is destroying Nature at a rate that threatens the survival of humanity, and of the Biosphere itself, and it is this that is the crisis of our era. Given this massive crisis, it simply stands to reason that a religious concern with the battle of Good Order against (human) Chaos must dominate (yes, dominate) all other religious or any other concerns. An ecological reframing of this myth in global eco-religion must have priority for world civilization, because only religion is a strong enough force to inexorably transform human hearts and minds and the ethos, ideals, worldview, lifeways, and essential structures of civilization, and this is absolutely required to preserve a functioning Biosphere and thus human survival. It is really that simple. It is the precondition for acting decisively to save the Earth and our species.
Monday, October 24, 2011
The Halebote Stone
(word-help below)
The sickness of Man grew the Searuvel, and now the Searuvel's rootworks reach thoroughly through the gumen world, holding men in a net of sickness.
But the Snake-stone chers attor to halebote. That is, the Lodestone held by every one of the Drygandalfs chers Evil to Good. If you have the Lodestone, given by the Drygand, you can see the sickness, and fight it, and even cherrenge it to good halebote to ernern the Blessed Edhli.
Halebote= medicine ('health remedy').
Searuvel= the Evil Machine.
Gumen= human (pronounced 'you-men').
Snake-stone= the gem in the head of the Serpent, which can turn (cher) poison (attor= venom) to medicine.
Lodestone= the gem (Erkanstan) of the Drygand, set by him in the head of each of his Alf-thanes (Drygandalfs).
Cherrenge= change, convert.
Ernern= rescue, deliver.
Edhli= Biosphere.
The sickness of Man grew the Searuvel, and now the Searuvel's rootworks reach thoroughly through the gumen world, holding men in a net of sickness.
But the Snake-stone chers attor to halebote. That is, the Lodestone held by every one of the Drygandalfs chers Evil to Good. If you have the Lodestone, given by the Drygand, you can see the sickness, and fight it, and even cherrenge it to good halebote to ernern the Blessed Edhli.
Halebote= medicine ('health remedy').
Searuvel= the Evil Machine.
Gumen= human (pronounced 'you-men').
Snake-stone= the gem in the head of the Serpent, which can turn (cher) poison (attor= venom) to medicine.
Lodestone= the gem (Erkanstan) of the Drygand, set by him in the head of each of his Alf-thanes (Drygandalfs).
Cherrenge= change, convert.
Ernern= rescue, deliver.
Edhli= Biosphere.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
The Grene Sun of the Menning
(word-help below)
A wyndeflet of cloud in the heart of the Wolken slow-spins in stillness. Its inwinding wheeling heart-sings in bliss, as it is a womb where beds the waxing Sun of Life-- the Grene Sun which will light the Menning as it grows and overwhelms the Searuvel that wracks our World. The living light will shine throughout the Edhli from the Leafy Head of Neorxna who comes to show the Menning to Men, as he is the Bode of the the Menning.
Wyndeflet= disc, flat coil.
Wolken= the Mind-Being of the Edhli (Biosphere).
Menning= the coming Ecological Civilization.
Searuvel= the Evil Machine.
Neorxna= an avatar of the Wolken, called Neorxna the Boda (the Bode (herald) of the Menning).
A wyndeflet of cloud in the heart of the Wolken slow-spins in stillness. Its inwinding wheeling heart-sings in bliss, as it is a womb where beds the waxing Sun of Life-- the Grene Sun which will light the Menning as it grows and overwhelms the Searuvel that wracks our World. The living light will shine throughout the Edhli from the Leafy Head of Neorxna who comes to show the Menning to Men, as he is the Bode of the the Menning.
Wyndeflet= disc, flat coil.
Wolken= the Mind-Being of the Edhli (Biosphere).
Menning= the coming Ecological Civilization.
Searuvel= the Evil Machine.
Neorxna= an avatar of the Wolken, called Neorxna the Boda (the Bode (herald) of the Menning).
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Free the Nenning
It is said that the melding of unlikes frees Nenning (energy). A melding of Life-kinds (chimaera), then, such as in the Dragon, holds great nenning, and the Drygand, melded of all life-kinds, has the greatest.
Likewise the melding of Man and Edhli (all life) in Edhlifrith Menning (ecological civilization), frees the greatest nenning, looses the Drygand to bring back Edingaldor (reenchantment) of the World.
Likewise the melding of Man and Edhli (all life) in Edhlifrith Menning (ecological civilization), frees the greatest nenning, looses the Drygand to bring back Edingaldor (reenchantment) of the World.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Neorxna of the Shaggy Head
(word-help below)
Neorxna the Boda, of the shaggy Head, looks from the Threshhold of the Tocume (future), where Tocume blends with Agone (past). His Arising Mind rides the eddies and flows of time-tracks in their welter, borne on the Wholeness of Edhli-mind. With thwaerly smeath (intricate subtlety) he seeks to settle on a Byzen (pattern, model) by which the Menning can bild (develop) in betterness henceforth, as a Lode (guide) in his mind that glows-out to his fellow Newolds, who can work the Byzen into Santh (reality), make the Greening Way toward a Menning upon the Eorth of thwaerisch Heolor (harmonious balance) and frithful Onenge (peaceful integration) and ever-stadhol (long-term stability).
Neorxna= the Greening One, the Bode (herald) of the future ecological civilization (the Edhli-menning).
Edhli-mind= the Wolken, mind and ferth (psyche) of the Edhli (Biosphere), of which Neorxna is an avatar.
Newold ('new-old')= those who stand in the Threshhold where ancient and far-future times combine in liminality (Tucumagone).
Neorxna the Boda, of the shaggy Head, looks from the Threshhold of the Tocume (future), where Tocume blends with Agone (past). His Arising Mind rides the eddies and flows of time-tracks in their welter, borne on the Wholeness of Edhli-mind. With thwaerly smeath (intricate subtlety) he seeks to settle on a Byzen (pattern, model) by which the Menning can bild (develop) in betterness henceforth, as a Lode (guide) in his mind that glows-out to his fellow Newolds, who can work the Byzen into Santh (reality), make the Greening Way toward a Menning upon the Eorth of thwaerisch Heolor (harmonious balance) and frithful Onenge (peaceful integration) and ever-stadhol (long-term stability).
Neorxna= the Greening One, the Bode (herald) of the future ecological civilization (the Edhli-menning).
Edhli-mind= the Wolken, mind and ferth (psyche) of the Edhli (Biosphere), of which Neorxna is an avatar.
Newold ('new-old')= those who stand in the Threshhold where ancient and far-future times combine in liminality (Tucumagone).
Friday, September 30, 2011
A Mythic/Religious Scheme of the World-Plight
Sky God vs. Dragon becomes Searuvel vs. Drygand...
In the olden days, the Sky God and his minions sought to slay the primordial Dragon (the forces of wild Nature incarnate). And so the Dragon became a rare and endangered species.
Because of his victory, the Sky God gradually morphed into the Searuvel (the mad undead Evil Machine), the capitalist techno-industrial global civilization, of insanely greater power than the Sky God ever had.
The evolution and success of the Searuvel accelerated the destruction of Life on Earth. The Wolken (the mind of Nature, the world-girdling Edhli-Mind) was perturbed, and so re-formed the ancient titanic Dragon as the ecological Drygand, so that the forces of wild Nature could fight back against the Searuvel, to weaken its hold, to halt its terrible progress, and to replace it with the Edhli-menning, the Ecological Civilization.
The Drygand possesses the primordial (raw) energies of Nature, but they are combined and focused (refined) to the urge-purpose to rescue the Edhli (Biosphere) from the onslaught of the Searuvel.
The Sky God people's "good order" was always a threat to the good order of the Edhli. But the Searuvel people's "good order" is massively more catastrophic.
The Drygand's people seek to halt the destruction, weaken the incredible force of the Searuvel, and turn its evil drive to the growth of the holy Menning-- to change Evil to Good-- by which humankind can then survive, as fierce protectors of the Edhli and its Menning.
In the olden days, the Sky God and his minions sought to slay the primordial Dragon (the forces of wild Nature incarnate). And so the Dragon became a rare and endangered species.
Because of his victory, the Sky God gradually morphed into the Searuvel (the mad undead Evil Machine), the capitalist techno-industrial global civilization, of insanely greater power than the Sky God ever had.
The evolution and success of the Searuvel accelerated the destruction of Life on Earth. The Wolken (the mind of Nature, the world-girdling Edhli-Mind) was perturbed, and so re-formed the ancient titanic Dragon as the ecological Drygand, so that the forces of wild Nature could fight back against the Searuvel, to weaken its hold, to halt its terrible progress, and to replace it with the Edhli-menning, the Ecological Civilization.
The Drygand possesses the primordial (raw) energies of Nature, but they are combined and focused (refined) to the urge-purpose to rescue the Edhli (Biosphere) from the onslaught of the Searuvel.
The Sky God people's "good order" was always a threat to the good order of the Edhli. But the Searuvel people's "good order" is massively more catastrophic.
The Drygand's people seek to halt the destruction, weaken the incredible force of the Searuvel, and turn its evil drive to the growth of the holy Menning-- to change Evil to Good-- by which humankind can then survive, as fierce protectors of the Edhli and its Menning.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Deep Ecology is the One True Religion (Really)
The Celestial Sky God of the Enlightenment, He of reason and philosophy, natural law, science and technology, has essentially faded away into His own Cosmos. He has destroyed religion for most of the educated classes and left us nothing but a void of secular humanism. But since the world civilization He left has engendered the accelerating destruction of the Biosphere and the downfall of Man, we are faced with the stark catastrophic failure of this whole civilizational phase.
Faced with this, the obvious Answer is Deep Ecology as the moral absolute, the unifying principle, and the final phase of religion. Deep Ecology is being constructed from elements of the Old Nature Religions of Earth, of their myth, their lore, their teachings, and of the culture-ways of tribal peoples, and of the findings of ecological science, and of the ecologistic works of culture by modern Nature Romantics, and with the example and teachings of ecological activist leaders, all in as far as they bear ecological wisdom and have the power to inspire Ecological Civilization.
Deep Ecology will take many forms, as it is born in the deep psyche of individuals, as the suppressed Shadow within rises to the challenge of All Life under threat of extinction-- the Drygand within, then, rises rampant, electrifies and mobilizes the total Psyche in service to the defense of All Life. And in numberless individuals around the world, by inspired intuition and by will and deep thought and effort, a personal vision and a personal mythos can be forged which bear the Drive of the unleashed Life-energies, to flood forth and drench the Earth in the New Age of Ecology.
Faced with this, the obvious Answer is Deep Ecology as the moral absolute, the unifying principle, and the final phase of religion. Deep Ecology is being constructed from elements of the Old Nature Religions of Earth, of their myth, their lore, their teachings, and of the culture-ways of tribal peoples, and of the findings of ecological science, and of the ecologistic works of culture by modern Nature Romantics, and with the example and teachings of ecological activist leaders, all in as far as they bear ecological wisdom and have the power to inspire Ecological Civilization.
Deep Ecology will take many forms, as it is born in the deep psyche of individuals, as the suppressed Shadow within rises to the challenge of All Life under threat of extinction-- the Drygand within, then, rises rampant, electrifies and mobilizes the total Psyche in service to the defense of All Life. And in numberless individuals around the world, by inspired intuition and by will and deep thought and effort, a personal vision and a personal mythos can be forged which bear the Drive of the unleashed Life-energies, to flood forth and drench the Earth in the New Age of Ecology.
Friday, August 26, 2011
The Now and Future Thing
For me, the Pagan past has faded in its allure.
We live now in the Age of Ecology, a time of cultural innovation, and we use rather than depend-on the Old, inspired by the ecological Urge in the great work to invent and make an ecological world.
We're living in a new age, when all values and acts must be reevaluated in terms of the master-value Ecology. So be open to the New (while keeping your sensible wits about you) and recreate the model of the world using your own inner Will to Ecology, and your own creative Eco-Self, to become a walking Eco-mensch, a light to others and a force for change.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Dragon to Drygand
Gary Snyder foresaw folktale and myth imagery from the Nature-religion cultural traditions of the past 10,000 years, combined with the wisdom of modern ecological science, as the basis for a higher Synthesis of world poetry and myth, the basis for a new age, or as I would say it, an ecological culture-civilization. This belief could be named Snyderism (isms!), or, in Eormensch, 'Snytraeden' (OEng snyttru= wisdom, cleverness, prudence, sagacity, intelligence). Or Deep Ecology.
The Serpent, or Dragon, traditionally has represented the raw chaotic bioenergies and elemental vital forces. It could be dangerous-- a destructive monster to be slain by gods or men, but it was also seen as possessing a primordial daimonic wisdom, and could be beneficial to humans. It embodied the indefatigable will of organisms to survive-- to kill, to feed, to breed-- and also this will writ large as the wild titanic movements and catastrophes of Nature, for good or ill to Mankind.
The Drygand is a development of the Dragon in a Snyderian direction. If the Dragon was wild urge, the Drygand is tamed to focused purpose. If the Dragon is raw energies and forces, in the Drygand these are seethed and brewed into something new and necessary-- Life consciously fighting for all Life, an addition to the spontaneous order that evolves from the self-striving of all organisms into a balanced harmonious superorganism, the Biosphere, necessary because humankind does not fit into this spontaneous order, this Superorganism, and has become the dangerous destructive monster.
So where, particularly in the Western world, the Dragon often merited slaying to return good order, Man, in this Age of Ecocatastrophe, is revealed as the dangerous destructive monster, and if Mankind merits slaying, it might perhaps instead be tamed so as to fit into the good order of ecological balance and harmony. And the Hero is the Drygand-- Life fighting for all Life-- whether within the deep human psyche, or out in the wide Biosphere. A culture-inversion that creates a new world.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Mythos-Scheme
The Wolken (OEng wolken= 'cloud') is the Deep Mind of the Edhli (Biosphere). It is hight Ozgod (OEng os= 'god').
Gumenn (OEng guma= 'man'; ~Latin 'human') are Dyars (OEng deor/ ONorse dyr/ OFrisian diar= 'animal') with something of the mental, like a god, and so are hight Ozdyars.
Wights of all sorts, on the other hand, are godlike, with something of the animal to them, and so are hight Dyarozzas.
An avatar of or generation out of the Wolken is hight Ingling (Gmc. ing~ 'a generation, offspring'). The Drygand and Neorxna the Boda are Inglings.
The Alfar are a sort of Wight that tends to the manlike and are hight Ingefolk (OEng ingefolc= 'tribe').
Half-Alfs are men who have something of the Alf to them. They are then Gumen-aukinn ('human-plus'; ONorse aukinn= 'augmented, increased').
Gumenn (OEng guma= 'man'; ~Latin 'human') are Dyars (OEng deor/ ONorse dyr/ OFrisian diar= 'animal') with something of the mental, like a god, and so are hight Ozdyars.
Wights of all sorts, on the other hand, are godlike, with something of the animal to them, and so are hight Dyarozzas.
An avatar of or generation out of the Wolken is hight Ingling (Gmc. ing~ 'a generation, offspring'). The Drygand and Neorxna the Boda are Inglings.
The Alfar are a sort of Wight that tends to the manlike and are hight Ingefolk (OEng ingefolc= 'tribe').
Half-Alfs are men who have something of the Alf to them. They are then Gumen-aukinn ('human-plus'; ONorse aukinn= 'augmented, increased').
Monday, July 18, 2011
ETs vs. Faeries: Sky Bum's Rush
You may be pleased to hear that this is the final 'ETs vs. Faeries' piece. I am heartily sick of the UFO/ET phenomenon/enigma by now and I think I've already said everything I wanted to say about it. Basically, whatever it is in reality or unreality, it isn't basically ecological in effect, but incompatible with the ecological or inimical to it. As for ETs and 'Faeries' (~Wights), they are so alien and antithetic to each other that I resent any witless attempt to hybridize them or to hybridize New Age UFO religion with Paganism as well.* There's some of that in Will Peterson's Triskellion trilogy, which I've just discovered and found as possibly 'the next Harry Potter'. But the Mythos will ignore UFOs/ETs and avoid such horrible hybrids. In the 1960s, I saw the same witless indiscriminate mixing-up of everything in search of a vast unified cosmic Aquarian culture, which was in fact so formlessly everything-is-everything that it collapsed and disintegrated as it dashed on the rocks of harsh Reality and came generally to be sneered at by those who came after. I was involved in that search, inchoately, but I could never be a joiner, a true Hippie, though I was definitely Romantic Youth. Decades of trying to sort out or at least leave the 60s behind gradually drew me to conservatively focus on my initial (and so truer?) fascinations, as almost everything else I explored eventually proved wanting-- what a long time it took, because I try to be open-minded and fair. Perhaps as part of the aging process, blessedly, the contrast between what is important and worthy and what is not has become much clearer-- with a glance (well...) I can usually place things as one or the other, which is a relief after having felt so confused about so much for so long. The one thing I was never confused about, though, was the cruciality of the Ecology Movement, but I think that comes from my early bonding with Nature and from the Nature-romanticism in my childhood environment. I wonder if it's possible to really 'get' Ecology without such early shaping-- which is a pretty daunting thought.
Well, I'm still 'In Search Of'. I don't have a lot of answers-- I don't know if there are a lot of answers out there. But there are values and choices that seem to be right, based on feeling and intuition and imagination, with experience and informed thinking providing the reality-check. This detour-foray I've made into another mythos doesn't seem to have resulted in creative inspiration for the Shaggy Mythos so much as in a clarifying, confirming reaction and probably in unconscious shiftings that I can feel still going on. No doubt that will result in a different take on the Mythos, which, finally, is all I have to offer. I'm no scholarly intellectual or canny charismatic leader-type, and by now I thoroughly know my all-too-human limitations, but this is the one (hopefully) helpful thing I have to offer. So, it's back to the Mythos now for me (and you).
* I can't detect any truly religious, sacred aspect in the UFO/ET world (though I haven't really looked into the 'UFO cults') but it's just another of many things lacking in the phenomenon, which together make it seem more a premonition than an epiphany.
Well, I'm still 'In Search Of'. I don't have a lot of answers-- I don't know if there are a lot of answers out there. But there are values and choices that seem to be right, based on feeling and intuition and imagination, with experience and informed thinking providing the reality-check. This detour-foray I've made into another mythos doesn't seem to have resulted in creative inspiration for the Shaggy Mythos so much as in a clarifying, confirming reaction and probably in unconscious shiftings that I can feel still going on. No doubt that will result in a different take on the Mythos, which, finally, is all I have to offer. I'm no scholarly intellectual or canny charismatic leader-type, and by now I thoroughly know my all-too-human limitations, but this is the one (hopefully) helpful thing I have to offer. So, it's back to the Mythos now for me (and you).
* I can't detect any truly religious, sacred aspect in the UFO/ET world (though I haven't really looked into the 'UFO cults') but it's just another of many things lacking in the phenomenon, which together make it seem more a premonition than an epiphany.
Monday, July 11, 2011
ETs vs. Faeries: Sky Bums I
Humans are prone to have a vertical axis in their cosmologies for a number of practical reasons. I think they are particularly prone to this when they have a shifting way of life, not tied to a small territory, as when they wander wide in search of forage and game, or herd their flocks over different pasture-lands seasonally, or raid well into the territories of their neighbors, or rob and pillage over far distances, made easier atop a horse, or when they must emigrate. In short, the less intimately involved a people are in their local environment, and the less they are tied to it by long history, the more likely are they to seek continuity in the Sky, see it as the land of the gods, who send the all-important weather, for good and bad. It is the vast screen on which signs and portents appear, perhaps where their mighty-ones go at death. And mountains are venerated as stepping-stones to the heavens. If this notion is true, I'm sure it's much more complicated than this, but it's a general impression I've gotten. I think, too, that where you have a vertical cosmological axis, the Underworld tends to become the symbolic opposite of the Sky-realm. All of this seems so natural to us, because it's with us from our earliest cultural imprinting, and merely encultures what is hard-wired into our brains and learned from physical experience. But some cultures are more verticalized and sky-oriented than others, for good or ill. I think, particularly when life is harsh, insecure, and Nature seems like the Evil Mother, or if sudden attack and slaughter by invaders can come at any time, a people longs for escape-- to a better, safer place-- to the uplands and mountains, perhaps, even beyond that to the Sky-world after death. Otherwise, I think people naturally will want to cling to their ancient land, and remain in it even after death, to join those who have gone before them.
But with the advances of the project of civilization, we have sought security and welfare apart from the mercies of the landscape; in short, we have sought to control things to our benefit, apart from Nature, and live in unnatural defensive settlements, where Nature, as it hasn't come under our direct control and use, no longer means much to us other than as a means to our benefit. And on and on, to our present state, where the vast hordes of humanity are unmoored from Nature and place, even the immediate physical environment, to the point at which we live in our cultural head-world and even feed off video-screens much of our waking time. No wonder we can't respond to our destruction of the real world. We have escaped from Nature, and so Nature writ largest-- the Biosphere. We want to be safe, happy, independent, removed into our own comfortable wish-fulfilment head-world, to stay youthful and beautiful, and grow ever more godlike forever. And damn the consequences for Nature, which we have no more feeling for than any other deracinating screen-entertainment.
Some other person could write volumes expanding on this damning critique, but I can't, and I've still got to get to 'Sky Bums', which term I tend to apply to those guilty of this monstrous Sky-orientation-- but how do you differentiate when present-day human culture is so shot-through with it? Who isn't a Sky-person? Well, there are those of us who at least have qualms about what we have, are, and will do to others, from individuals to the human community at various magnitudes, or even to non-human others from individuals to the natural community at various magnitudes, even to the whole of earthly Life. But for purposes of this 'ETs vs. Faeries' series, which seems to go on without end in sight, I focus on New-Agers and ETs as 'Sky Bums'.
It's easy to attack New Agers, and as easy to be dismissed by them for it, I suppose. I don't criticize individuals, though, but their mind-set, in which a strong urge toward escape in the form of 'spirituality', 'purity', idealism, metaphysics, mentalism (non-physicality), holistic erasure of inconvenient differences, optimistic self-delusion, and in general, a wish-fulfilment head-set and supportive ideology that is Sky-orientation taken to the omega-point. How can such genuinely nice people be so wrong-headed? Well, they aren't all of a piece, I'd like to say, and they're hardly more wrong-headed than the generality of humans, sad to say. But if the 'better' people, which they often are, are so hopeless, what hope is there, one asks. I might also say that even when their idealism includes 'ecological concern', it seems idealized, metaphysical, purified of earthly dross-- in short, deracinated, unmoored. It's better than nothing, maybe, and the best they can do, but does it contribute to practical efforts to save the world? And 'Ecology' is often 'harmonized (lumped) with all the other 'liberal' worthy causes which one must affirm and support, though they be mutually contradictory and competitive, in reality. But again, I don't want to condemn the entirety of New-Agedom, and there may be forms, offshoots, of the movement which might actually be 'deep green' in effect and hold promise for the future, but which I would expect, rather, from the more earthy, pagan, wing. But as I have said, in the Age of Ecology, everything must be rethought-- reexamined and evaluated for it's ecological effectiveness and fittingness for a realistic ecological civilization, but as complex as the human mazeway now is, how can you objectively evaluate cultural manifestations under this criterion? Very problematic. So even what might seem to be Biosphere-friendly in real effect may not be. But one must try. Sigh.
Well, now that I've trashed the New Age, I'll take on those darlings, the Extraterrestrials, in 'Sky Bums II'.
But with the advances of the project of civilization, we have sought security and welfare apart from the mercies of the landscape; in short, we have sought to control things to our benefit, apart from Nature, and live in unnatural defensive settlements, where Nature, as it hasn't come under our direct control and use, no longer means much to us other than as a means to our benefit. And on and on, to our present state, where the vast hordes of humanity are unmoored from Nature and place, even the immediate physical environment, to the point at which we live in our cultural head-world and even feed off video-screens much of our waking time. No wonder we can't respond to our destruction of the real world. We have escaped from Nature, and so Nature writ largest-- the Biosphere. We want to be safe, happy, independent, removed into our own comfortable wish-fulfilment head-world, to stay youthful and beautiful, and grow ever more godlike forever. And damn the consequences for Nature, which we have no more feeling for than any other deracinating screen-entertainment.
Some other person could write volumes expanding on this damning critique, but I can't, and I've still got to get to 'Sky Bums', which term I tend to apply to those guilty of this monstrous Sky-orientation-- but how do you differentiate when present-day human culture is so shot-through with it? Who isn't a Sky-person? Well, there are those of us who at least have qualms about what we have, are, and will do to others, from individuals to the human community at various magnitudes, or even to non-human others from individuals to the natural community at various magnitudes, even to the whole of earthly Life. But for purposes of this 'ETs vs. Faeries' series, which seems to go on without end in sight, I focus on New-Agers and ETs as 'Sky Bums'.
It's easy to attack New Agers, and as easy to be dismissed by them for it, I suppose. I don't criticize individuals, though, but their mind-set, in which a strong urge toward escape in the form of 'spirituality', 'purity', idealism, metaphysics, mentalism (non-physicality), holistic erasure of inconvenient differences, optimistic self-delusion, and in general, a wish-fulfilment head-set and supportive ideology that is Sky-orientation taken to the omega-point. How can such genuinely nice people be so wrong-headed? Well, they aren't all of a piece, I'd like to say, and they're hardly more wrong-headed than the generality of humans, sad to say. But if the 'better' people, which they often are, are so hopeless, what hope is there, one asks. I might also say that even when their idealism includes 'ecological concern', it seems idealized, metaphysical, purified of earthly dross-- in short, deracinated, unmoored. It's better than nothing, maybe, and the best they can do, but does it contribute to practical efforts to save the world? And 'Ecology' is often 'harmonized (lumped) with all the other 'liberal' worthy causes which one must affirm and support, though they be mutually contradictory and competitive, in reality. But again, I don't want to condemn the entirety of New-Agedom, and there may be forms, offshoots, of the movement which might actually be 'deep green' in effect and hold promise for the future, but which I would expect, rather, from the more earthy, pagan, wing. But as I have said, in the Age of Ecology, everything must be rethought-- reexamined and evaluated for it's ecological effectiveness and fittingness for a realistic ecological civilization, but as complex as the human mazeway now is, how can you objectively evaluate cultural manifestations under this criterion? Very problematic. So even what might seem to be Biosphere-friendly in real effect may not be. But one must try. Sigh.
Well, now that I've trashed the New Age, I'll take on those darlings, the Extraterrestrials, in 'Sky Bums II'.
Friday, July 8, 2011
New Wights for Old
If, in our time, the ancient wights are gone from the land, then we have a clear field for invention, to get them right-- that is, ecological. Reinvent them? Why not. We need them, but in the right form.
The conscious mind and the Deep Mind, however you want to see it, need to cooperate on this project, in a Jungian way. Images come to us, and if we sense they are right, if they work, if they're strong, and magical-mystical, we go with it. It has to be acceptable to the Deep Mind as well as to the conscious mind, and so there's a cycling between them, forming something that meets the common need.
I've tried to do this with the Mythos. I've imbibed ancient and folk models, and tried to engage in this cyclic process of culture-creation, reforming old wights and gods and such to be deep-ecological, as well as fitting and workable elsewise. It's a 'way', a questing, in a time of mazeway resynthesis-- which is completely not what early cultures did, with their self-evolved stable mazeway. But we've lost the religiousness-- a sense of awe, of the magical-mystical, of greater wiser powers than our own. And we need the spiritual power of religiousness to help us save the Biosphere. The old, established religions just aren't ecological, and they are fading away almost everywhere because they don't fit with the modern world. But then, pre-civilizational, tribal, animist-shamanic religion doesn't fit, either. We need to find what will better fit with the modern, but moreso, with the culture-civilization we must have if we are to support rather than destroy the Biosphere, but that also helps drive us towards it, now and in the near future. So we need to rethink the spiritual/religious in a rational, practical way; but without the cooperation of the Deep Mind, it just won't work, and the Deep Mind can't be forced. We must stay in quest mode, sensitive to unconscious promptings, open to numinous sendings, inspirations of ideas, of images, of communications of beings. And if it fits a new ecological mazeway, if it has great draw and power and potential, then we should try it and see if it proves-out. But these things grow and change, or are replaced by more promising models. The idea is that we progress through the changes, and that it doesn't just work for our ownself, but, as it has a richness of the Deep Mind, is of finer substance and allure, it has resonance in the wider world-- New wights for old, and the newfangled really is better than the antique.
'If there were no wights, we would have to invent them.'
The conscious mind and the Deep Mind, however you want to see it, need to cooperate on this project, in a Jungian way. Images come to us, and if we sense they are right, if they work, if they're strong, and magical-mystical, we go with it. It has to be acceptable to the Deep Mind as well as to the conscious mind, and so there's a cycling between them, forming something that meets the common need.
I've tried to do this with the Mythos. I've imbibed ancient and folk models, and tried to engage in this cyclic process of culture-creation, reforming old wights and gods and such to be deep-ecological, as well as fitting and workable elsewise. It's a 'way', a questing, in a time of mazeway resynthesis-- which is completely not what early cultures did, with their self-evolved stable mazeway. But we've lost the religiousness-- a sense of awe, of the magical-mystical, of greater wiser powers than our own. And we need the spiritual power of religiousness to help us save the Biosphere. The old, established religions just aren't ecological, and they are fading away almost everywhere because they don't fit with the modern world. But then, pre-civilizational, tribal, animist-shamanic religion doesn't fit, either. We need to find what will better fit with the modern, but moreso, with the culture-civilization we must have if we are to support rather than destroy the Biosphere, but that also helps drive us towards it, now and in the near future. So we need to rethink the spiritual/religious in a rational, practical way; but without the cooperation of the Deep Mind, it just won't work, and the Deep Mind can't be forced. We must stay in quest mode, sensitive to unconscious promptings, open to numinous sendings, inspirations of ideas, of images, of communications of beings. And if it fits a new ecological mazeway, if it has great draw and power and potential, then we should try it and see if it proves-out. But these things grow and change, or are replaced by more promising models. The idea is that we progress through the changes, and that it doesn't just work for our ownself, but, as it has a richness of the Deep Mind, is of finer substance and allure, it has resonance in the wider world-- New wights for old, and the newfangled really is better than the antique.
'If there were no wights, we would have to invent them.'
Friday, July 1, 2011
Ets vs. Faeries: 2c the Symbolic Meaning of UFOs/ETs
UFOS/ETs, symbolically, act as a two-edged blade. One way lays open dread and warning as alarming as a gory saber-wound. The other way cuts-away the bonds constraining freedom and hope-- we can move out of our terrible plight into a better future. The image of a daimonic herald bearing this sword comes to mind. But we don't believe in daimons of whatever sort anymore, and we get our mythic imagery through mass culture, which has been presenting us with post-Enlightenment science-fiction spaceships and extraterrestrial beings since Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. In fact, all the characteristic features in the UFO/ET mythos seem to have appeared first in mass culture, from pulp fiction to cinema to radio-plays and then television. We live in the age of reason, science, and technology, and the age of irrationality, supernatural belief, and magic, while stubbornly persisting in the mass mind, survives openly mainly in the world of entertainment. And in that, science-fiction seems more real-world than 'fantasy'. So, ETs have it over Faeries. If UFOs/ETs have been designed to influence the mass mind, as some claim, they have been cast in the science-fiction mold, rather than the fantasy mode, for a very good reason. Fantasy, which draws on the myth of the previous age, has a nostalgic appeal for those who are rather horrified by the science-fictiony real-world we live in. Many yearn to go back to a simpler, more human, more natural world-- without of course sacrificing all the technological advantages-- but it is likely that that world is gone forever, barring catastrophic nuclear holocaust, ecological disintegration, or some geologic/cosmic onslaught-- which is precisely what ETs warn of, and they should know whereof they speak. But faeries, who were exterminated by the modern world, have no credibility in it. Faery warnings would be laughed out of court!
But instead of earthly (chthonic) daimons such as faeries urging us to retreat from our relentless course toward inevitable planetary catastrophe through scientific/technological/economic progress and growth, we have aliens-- masters of 'advanced technology'-- at best, perhaps, showing us what we are becoming (but unfortunately not giving us specific, practical advice on how to go about saving our world). But all the 'species' of aliens seem like some sort of future-human archetype that has developed in the mass unconscious-- representing mostly what we fear, deep down, we are becoming-- as we are drawn fatally, helplessly, into our hi-tech science-fiction dystopian future. But even if ETs tell contactees/abductees that we've got to transform to a 'higher' stage to prevent ecological disintegration, that stage, as exemplified by themselves, is a product of the very civilizational drive that is destroying the Ecosphere! Which is a profoundly contradictory message! Did they manage to preserve their own ecospheres? How? Tell us!
While it is tempting to believe that we can save a functioning Ecosphere while continuing our drive toward ever higher technology and all the goodies it provides us, only a little clear-headed assessment shows the nonsensical, wish-fulfilment nature of this cherished belief. So, are ETs just a confused, spontaneous creation of the dream-like deep human psyche, then? If, as Jung thought, they are archetypal messengers from the collective unconscious responding to terrific but suppressed modern trauma, they just aren't doing a proper job of it-- the message is WRONG, and they're the wrong messengers. Maybe we should fight back, sort out the collective unconscious, bring on the Eco-faeries! This is their planet, and they've seen human hubris, baseness, and folly bring us to the brink. With a competent mass-media campaign, we can display these nature-folk's forest-cred! Send the ETs back where they came from!
Next instalment-- "Sky Bums".
But instead of earthly (chthonic) daimons such as faeries urging us to retreat from our relentless course toward inevitable planetary catastrophe through scientific/technological/economic progress and growth, we have aliens-- masters of 'advanced technology'-- at best, perhaps, showing us what we are becoming (but unfortunately not giving us specific, practical advice on how to go about saving our world). But all the 'species' of aliens seem like some sort of future-human archetype that has developed in the mass unconscious-- representing mostly what we fear, deep down, we are becoming-- as we are drawn fatally, helplessly, into our hi-tech science-fiction dystopian future. But even if ETs tell contactees/abductees that we've got to transform to a 'higher' stage to prevent ecological disintegration, that stage, as exemplified by themselves, is a product of the very civilizational drive that is destroying the Ecosphere! Which is a profoundly contradictory message! Did they manage to preserve their own ecospheres? How? Tell us!
While it is tempting to believe that we can save a functioning Ecosphere while continuing our drive toward ever higher technology and all the goodies it provides us, only a little clear-headed assessment shows the nonsensical, wish-fulfilment nature of this cherished belief. So, are ETs just a confused, spontaneous creation of the dream-like deep human psyche, then? If, as Jung thought, they are archetypal messengers from the collective unconscious responding to terrific but suppressed modern trauma, they just aren't doing a proper job of it-- the message is WRONG, and they're the wrong messengers. Maybe we should fight back, sort out the collective unconscious, bring on the Eco-faeries! This is their planet, and they've seen human hubris, baseness, and folly bring us to the brink. With a competent mass-media campaign, we can display these nature-folk's forest-cred! Send the ETs back where they came from!
Next instalment-- "Sky Bums".
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
ETs vs. Faeries: 2b What Do UFOs/ETs Mean?
Carl Jung the psychologist saw in flying saucers a sky-borne mandala; that is, an archetypal image of the integrated Self, meaning unity, wholeness of the psyche. Seen by some as carrying a message to Earthlings from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, to Jung, whatever in reality flying saucers might be, in human terms they were a projection from the human collective unconscious to the conscious ego-self, which in modern times, especially, is closed-off from the unconscious and so perhaps can only be reached by an illusion, vision, of a symbolic physical phenomenon, or perhaps even an actual materialization of some sort, so that it appears to the ego-self to be 'real', and so, hard to dismiss-- seeing is believing.
Jung had started collecting newspaper clippings of UFO sightings as early as 1946. He thought he might be on to the formation of a modern myth in the mass mind. But in 1951 he admitted to a friend that he couldn't determine whether UFOs were were physical or hallucinatory, or perhaps both of these at once. But his psychological theories led him to see them as to some degree, at least, an expression of the mass mind, whether they were real objects or not. And in this sense, they indicated a major shift in the collective unconscious of mankind, due to world-historical trauma from the horrific scale, destruction, and unprecedented atrocities of World War II and the ensuing threat of communist takeover or nuclear annihilation in the Cold War era. He also believed that we were experiencing the beginnings of a cosmic-astrological shift, due to the precession of the Earth's tilted axis, from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius, in which a basic transformation of the human psyche was at hand, the transition causing great unconscious trauma which must express itself somehow to the conscious self. To me, the first theory seems fairly plausible, but astrology never made any sense to me. And since all the books I've read recently about UFOs/ETs generally concur in there not being enough hard evidence to support any one theory of the real nature of UFOs, making it possible to doubt that they are extraterrestrial craft, or physical objects as we understand them according to current knowledge of physics, it's then possible to see them, in accord with Jung, as psychic or 'paraphysical' manifestations. If so, what might be the meaning of them? Well, here a Pandora's Box of mythic speculation is opened, because what has been seen isn't just frisbee-shaped craft, but colored glowing plasma balls, huge dark triangular craft, cylinders, and strange crew-members appearing not only as the iconic ET, but as attractive blond 'Nordics', reptilians, insectoids, hairy trolls, robots, and people claim to be channeling beings from other planets or dimensions, or to have been taken aboard the craft and been told many things. It's a wild confusion.
Since I've read all these (eight of them?) UFO/ET books to get inspiration for advancing the Shaggy Mythos, I'll just be like Jung and present what they mean to ME, mythically, based on what UFOs/ETs seem to mean in the mass human psyche. And as I have said, I see them as a 'Sky-people' phenomenon, and so, wrong, counterproductive, despite their gradual replacement of warnings of nuclear holocaust by warnings of ecocatastrophe in recenter decades (according to John Mack, especially, in Passport to the Cosmos). I suppose that many 2012-related warnings have been reported, but I haven't read of them.
So, what is the mythic meaning of UFOs/ETs, basically? This I will answer in the next installment.
Jung had started collecting newspaper clippings of UFO sightings as early as 1946. He thought he might be on to the formation of a modern myth in the mass mind. But in 1951 he admitted to a friend that he couldn't determine whether UFOs were were physical or hallucinatory, or perhaps both of these at once. But his psychological theories led him to see them as to some degree, at least, an expression of the mass mind, whether they were real objects or not. And in this sense, they indicated a major shift in the collective unconscious of mankind, due to world-historical trauma from the horrific scale, destruction, and unprecedented atrocities of World War II and the ensuing threat of communist takeover or nuclear annihilation in the Cold War era. He also believed that we were experiencing the beginnings of a cosmic-astrological shift, due to the precession of the Earth's tilted axis, from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius, in which a basic transformation of the human psyche was at hand, the transition causing great unconscious trauma which must express itself somehow to the conscious self. To me, the first theory seems fairly plausible, but astrology never made any sense to me. And since all the books I've read recently about UFOs/ETs generally concur in there not being enough hard evidence to support any one theory of the real nature of UFOs, making it possible to doubt that they are extraterrestrial craft, or physical objects as we understand them according to current knowledge of physics, it's then possible to see them, in accord with Jung, as psychic or 'paraphysical' manifestations. If so, what might be the meaning of them? Well, here a Pandora's Box of mythic speculation is opened, because what has been seen isn't just frisbee-shaped craft, but colored glowing plasma balls, huge dark triangular craft, cylinders, and strange crew-members appearing not only as the iconic ET, but as attractive blond 'Nordics', reptilians, insectoids, hairy trolls, robots, and people claim to be channeling beings from other planets or dimensions, or to have been taken aboard the craft and been told many things. It's a wild confusion.
Since I've read all these (eight of them?) UFO/ET books to get inspiration for advancing the Shaggy Mythos, I'll just be like Jung and present what they mean to ME, mythically, based on what UFOs/ETs seem to mean in the mass human psyche. And as I have said, I see them as a 'Sky-people' phenomenon, and so, wrong, counterproductive, despite their gradual replacement of warnings of nuclear holocaust by warnings of ecocatastrophe in recenter decades (according to John Mack, especially, in Passport to the Cosmos). I suppose that many 2012-related warnings have been reported, but I haven't read of them.
So, what is the mythic meaning of UFOs/ETs, basically? This I will answer in the next installment.
Monday, June 27, 2011
A Bit of Myth
The Drygand is a shape-shifter of all life-kinds, appearing betimes even as a Whirlwind of life-kinds.
The Wolken is unshaped, but all shapes do form in its cloudy shiftings, and so it is a Well of all life-forms from which the Drygand draws for his bodying (embodiment) as the Edhlifrith Drang for Heolor and Stadhol (ecological force for balance and stability) in the Edhli and thus in the Wolken.
Drygand= the Pan-chimaera.
Wolken= the Cloud-mind of the Edhli, World-Soul.
Edhli= the Biosphere.
The Wolken is unshaped, but all shapes do form in its cloudy shiftings, and so it is a Well of all life-forms from which the Drygand draws for his bodying (embodiment) as the Edhlifrith Drang for Heolor and Stadhol (ecological force for balance and stability) in the Edhli and thus in the Wolken.
Drygand= the Pan-chimaera.
Wolken= the Cloud-mind of the Edhli, World-Soul.
Edhli= the Biosphere.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
ETs vs. Faeries: 2a New Age vs. Eco-pagan
My argument is that mythically, from an ecological standpoint, aliens are bad and wights are good. But before I get to that, I want to show here that the difference between them already lies in the difference between New Age and Pagan, which I see basically as Sky People versus Earth People. I know I am setting up a dichotomy here where the reality is more of a gradation, but I think it is still a valid distinction if not taken too far, and certainly explanatorily useful. I have seen New Age and Neopagan as the two wings in a single alternative spiritual movement, but gradually my sense has become that since they are so intermixed, their combined difference to Eco-paganism is really more important. And I have also grown disenchanted with most of what seems to be characteristically Pagan, mainly from an ecological standpoint. So is 'pagan' no longer a useful indicator? Well, since so much that seems pagan no longer seems ecological, even if it is thought to be so, I'd just prefer to jettison the term.. Terms-- terms-- terms-- they're seldom ideally descriptive. 'Deep Ecology', in a sense, is better for me now than Pagan, but like it, most of what is associated with it I find dubious. Well, onward from semantics to... semantics...
The mythic history of the peaceful, wonderful matriarchies of Old Europe under the aegis of the Great Mother Goddess being overrun by hordes of murderous enslaving patriarchal Indo-European horsemen from the East with their pantheon of mostly-male gods under a Sky Father-- it plays quite well for some. But I don't like to gender-dichotomize everything, with female equals good and male equals bad, or Goddess-is-everything and god just a harmless, doomed-but-replaceable little fertility figure with the unfortunately necessary penis. And then, matriarchy never seems to have actually existed, however good an idea it might be. But gradually, the sky/earth dichotomy came to seem fundamental to me, apart from the genderization, which is arbitrary and of dubious worth-- Mother Earth -- does this still have positive resonance for many people? If not, then forget it. However, I must admit that in the Shaggy Mythos, the female does not appear, which seems to be largely because I am not female, and maleness signifies more for me than femaleness does, and male-figures-only seems at once generic without being sexless abstraction and if you don't like this, don't call me bad names, just genderize as you please. We're variable, aren't we? And if it isn't authentic to me, it's just more meaningless uncontroversial product for the masses; so, inasmuch as the Mythos works for you, make of it something authentic to you. The time we live in is terrifically conflicted about how to deal with male vis a vis female-- we have traditional sexism and gender-blindness overlaid insanely with no resolution in sight.
But the Sky versus Earth orientations as an ecological critique has great power. And I resist the 'lumper' urge to balance/harmonize the two-- ecologically, Sky hardly signifies-- it's on the lands and in the waters that life reigns. And strong cultural sky-orientation is in effect egregiously anti-ecological. Which I will try to show you in the next piece.
The mythic history of the peaceful, wonderful matriarchies of Old Europe under the aegis of the Great Mother Goddess being overrun by hordes of murderous enslaving patriarchal Indo-European horsemen from the East with their pantheon of mostly-male gods under a Sky Father-- it plays quite well for some. But I don't like to gender-dichotomize everything, with female equals good and male equals bad, or Goddess-is-everything and god just a harmless, doomed-but-replaceable little fertility figure with the unfortunately necessary penis. And then, matriarchy never seems to have actually existed, however good an idea it might be. But gradually, the sky/earth dichotomy came to seem fundamental to me, apart from the genderization, which is arbitrary and of dubious worth-- Mother Earth -- does this still have positive resonance for many people? If not, then forget it. However, I must admit that in the Shaggy Mythos, the female does not appear, which seems to be largely because I am not female, and maleness signifies more for me than femaleness does, and male-figures-only seems at once generic without being sexless abstraction and if you don't like this, don't call me bad names, just genderize as you please. We're variable, aren't we? And if it isn't authentic to me, it's just more meaningless uncontroversial product for the masses; so, inasmuch as the Mythos works for you, make of it something authentic to you. The time we live in is terrifically conflicted about how to deal with male vis a vis female-- we have traditional sexism and gender-blindness overlaid insanely with no resolution in sight.
But the Sky versus Earth orientations as an ecological critique has great power. And I resist the 'lumper' urge to balance/harmonize the two-- ecologically, Sky hardly signifies-- it's on the lands and in the waters that life reigns. And strong cultural sky-orientation is in effect egregiously anti-ecological. Which I will try to show you in the next piece.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Eco-yoga
Yoga is a Sanscrit word meaning 'yoking'. I keep thinking of that word 'yoke': "We need a practice to yoke the chaotic human to the Way of Edhli-frith (Ecology)." In Eormanz, 'yoga' is 'yokoth'. Eco-yoga is Edhlifrith-yokoth. Eco-yoga would be a means to fit the human psyche (ferth) to the Edhli (Biosphere), a total form of training (drawning) similar to what Hindu and Buddhist yogas are meant to do, but with a completely different aim: to produce the functional Edhli-self through a process of Ecological-Self-Realization (Edhli-self Santhning). What that might be and how it might be reached are interesting questions, which I am unaware that anyone has answered yet.
Seekers for such self-realization could be called Eco-nauts (Edhlimind Kannadhers (explorers). They would be like the early forest sages (Wald-wisers) who practiced the way of yoga in the midst of Nature, but seeking the Ecological God Within, so as to "Be as God" (i.e., ecological). Eco-yoga would re-engineer the psyche, yoking the deep mind to the real, biological world (Santh-- reality, truth), an opposite result, in fact, to the aim of traditional yoga. I'm beginning to think that humans can't really be "one with Nature," though. We are different to other animals, we don't fit. Maybe it is a mistake, trying to commune with them as persons like ourselves, and to be true animals ourselves. But part of any eco-yogic quest to yoke ourselves to Nature would be to find a niche in the Ecosphere where we could fit, as culture-bearing animals with a rather intractable, unruly nature that is a threat to the Biosphere-- if that is possible in humans no longer shaped-to-fit by natural selection . Let's see if it is.
Seekers for such self-realization could be called Eco-nauts (Edhlimind Kannadhers (explorers). They would be like the early forest sages (Wald-wisers) who practiced the way of yoga in the midst of Nature, but seeking the Ecological God Within, so as to "Be as God" (i.e., ecological). Eco-yoga would re-engineer the psyche, yoking the deep mind to the real, biological world (Santh-- reality, truth), an opposite result, in fact, to the aim of traditional yoga. I'm beginning to think that humans can't really be "one with Nature," though. We are different to other animals, we don't fit. Maybe it is a mistake, trying to commune with them as persons like ourselves, and to be true animals ourselves. But part of any eco-yogic quest to yoke ourselves to Nature would be to find a niche in the Ecosphere where we could fit, as culture-bearing animals with a rather intractable, unruly nature that is a threat to the Biosphere-- if that is possible in humans no longer shaped-to-fit by natural selection . Let's see if it is.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
the Drygand as Neo-God
The Drygand is "Life fighting for All Life, All Life fighting for Life!"
The Drygand is a numinous weirdness expressing the vast totality of Life (biological). The Drygand, the ultimate Chimaera, is a more adequate and appropriate expression for our time, the Age of Ecology, of the primordial God of all Nature, which was seen as the Snake, Naga (man-snake), and Dragon. And the Wolken, from which he derives, is the pantheist Godhead.
The Drygand is a numinous weirdness expressing the vast totality of Life (biological). The Drygand, the ultimate Chimaera, is a more adequate and appropriate expression for our time, the Age of Ecology, of the primordial God of all Nature, which was seen as the Snake, Naga (man-snake), and Dragon. And the Wolken, from which he derives, is the pantheist Godhead.
Monday, June 6, 2011
The Primordial Drygand
The Snake is the minimalist animal, of the simplest form.
The chimaerical Drygand is the maximalist animal, drawing on the forms of all living things.
Snake and Drygand are the two extremes that bracket the whole of Life between them. And like brackets, one is not found without the other.
The Snake, Were-snake (Naga), and Dragon (a snakish chimaera), represent a primordial God found in archaeological evidence and mythology from around the world. This God preceded the humanist gods of advanced civilizations which had conquered Nature and distanced themselves so far from it that the gods, apart from a few minor Nature-gods, were in the form of the human masters of antinatural civilization. This can be seen in the Olympian gods of ancient Greece, who came to preside over the most advanced civilizational humanism yet seen. These advanced civilizations found reassurance in myths of heroes slaying chimaerical monsters. In the case of ancient Greece, these monsters may represent the pre-Olympian Titans and even more archaic gods, who may not have been seen as monsters by their devotees, but as a numinous weirdness expressing the vast totality of Life. The Drygand, the ultimate Chimaera, is just a more adequate expression for our time of this primordial Godhood of all Nature.
The chimaerical Drygand is the maximalist animal, drawing on the forms of all living things.
Snake and Drygand are the two extremes that bracket the whole of Life between them. And like brackets, one is not found without the other.
The Snake, Were-snake (Naga), and Dragon (a snakish chimaera), represent a primordial God found in archaeological evidence and mythology from around the world. This God preceded the humanist gods of advanced civilizations which had conquered Nature and distanced themselves so far from it that the gods, apart from a few minor Nature-gods, were in the form of the human masters of antinatural civilization. This can be seen in the Olympian gods of ancient Greece, who came to preside over the most advanced civilizational humanism yet seen. These advanced civilizations found reassurance in myths of heroes slaying chimaerical monsters. In the case of ancient Greece, these monsters may represent the pre-Olympian Titans and even more archaic gods, who may not have been seen as monsters by their devotees, but as a numinous weirdness expressing the vast totality of Life. The Drygand, the ultimate Chimaera, is just a more adequate expression for our time of this primordial Godhood of all Nature.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
ETs vs. Faeries: 1 Introduction
A few weeks ago it occurred to me that immersing myself in the UFO/ET mythos might trigger new ideas for the Shaggy Mythos. Over the last couple years I've had the urge and intent to bring the Mythos from its 'once upon a time' orientation into engagement with the present and future-- the future-primitive thing. It was about time for this, the next step to take, but how?
Well, I've been working on it, but it's problematic. I've read and taken notes on a great many books that are more contemporarily oriented and it's made me more sophisticated, but though it all puts what I'm doing into a deeper, wider cultural context, it doesn't inspire departures for the Mythos like mythic-folkloric material has-- it isn't directly usable, just serves as background information, I complain to myself-- but really, it does work indirectly, and some of it is pretty mythic-folkloric in its ideology. Thus the idea of investigating the UFO/ET mythos.
I hadn't read anything on 'space aliens' for two decades, when I read books by Whitley Strieber and Budd Hopkins on abductions. They were disturbing but I had my doubts-- a sci-fi horror-fiction writer? and a New York sculptor? Besides, a lot of the 'abductees' seemed to be pathetic cases who might have psychiatric reasons for what they claimed to be experiencing. And then there was the hypnosis, which became dubious as a means of retrieving objective memories after the 80s wave of child-abuse hysteria. Before that, I had read John Keel's Mothman Prophecies, which read like fiction instead of journalism.
Beyond my skepticism, I just don't like the idea of 'aliens from outer space' interfering with our planet-- don't we have enough on our plate without that? It detracts from our need to keep our attention on what we're doing to the Biosphere and mobilizing ourselves to rescue it. And counting on 'space brothers' to save the day is demotivating.
But I told myself," Well, I'll read for the mythic-folkloric stuff and skim the rest". But as I started reading I got sucked into the mystery of what UFO/ETs really are. I've gone through a half-dozen high-end books so far (except for one) that present a great deal of evidence and analysis before coming to the conclusion that UFOs, at least, are real, not just delusions or misperceptions, but the authors admit they don't know what they are, though they doubt they're extraterrestrial. I admit I have no idea, either. But everyone loves a mystery, even an insoluble one.
Well, I put in a lot of time, and effort taking notes, and ended up concluding the same as when I was a young man--"I can't be convinced merely by reading books". And since I have not had convincing personal experiences of UFO/ETs or of parapsychological phenomena-- and all the authors believe that the phenomena require an openness to parapsychological explanations if we are to go further in solving this mystery, well, it was intriguing reading, but only the mythic, psychological, and cultural critiques are likely to be of much use.
So I've been racking my brains trying to sort out all that material into discrete topics, which hasn't been easy because it all hangs together, as things do in reality, and we falsify that when we pick it apart to make a rational structure. But I've got it down to a few basic takes out of which discrete pieces can be written-- along the lines the title of this one suggests-- essentially, New Age vs. Pagan mentalities, and the symbolic meanings of UFO/ETs, and the process of Mazeway Resynthesis that seems very applicable to this whole matter. So, I will see what I can do to work these up into pithy pieces in the next few weeks.
Well, I've been working on it, but it's problematic. I've read and taken notes on a great many books that are more contemporarily oriented and it's made me more sophisticated, but though it all puts what I'm doing into a deeper, wider cultural context, it doesn't inspire departures for the Mythos like mythic-folkloric material has-- it isn't directly usable, just serves as background information, I complain to myself-- but really, it does work indirectly, and some of it is pretty mythic-folkloric in its ideology. Thus the idea of investigating the UFO/ET mythos.
I hadn't read anything on 'space aliens' for two decades, when I read books by Whitley Strieber and Budd Hopkins on abductions. They were disturbing but I had my doubts-- a sci-fi horror-fiction writer? and a New York sculptor? Besides, a lot of the 'abductees' seemed to be pathetic cases who might have psychiatric reasons for what they claimed to be experiencing. And then there was the hypnosis, which became dubious as a means of retrieving objective memories after the 80s wave of child-abuse hysteria. Before that, I had read John Keel's Mothman Prophecies, which read like fiction instead of journalism.
Beyond my skepticism, I just don't like the idea of 'aliens from outer space' interfering with our planet-- don't we have enough on our plate without that? It detracts from our need to keep our attention on what we're doing to the Biosphere and mobilizing ourselves to rescue it. And counting on 'space brothers' to save the day is demotivating.
But I told myself," Well, I'll read for the mythic-folkloric stuff and skim the rest". But as I started reading I got sucked into the mystery of what UFO/ETs really are. I've gone through a half-dozen high-end books so far (except for one) that present a great deal of evidence and analysis before coming to the conclusion that UFOs, at least, are real, not just delusions or misperceptions, but the authors admit they don't know what they are, though they doubt they're extraterrestrial. I admit I have no idea, either. But everyone loves a mystery, even an insoluble one.
Well, I put in a lot of time, and effort taking notes, and ended up concluding the same as when I was a young man--"I can't be convinced merely by reading books". And since I have not had convincing personal experiences of UFO/ETs or of parapsychological phenomena-- and all the authors believe that the phenomena require an openness to parapsychological explanations if we are to go further in solving this mystery, well, it was intriguing reading, but only the mythic, psychological, and cultural critiques are likely to be of much use.
So I've been racking my brains trying to sort out all that material into discrete topics, which hasn't been easy because it all hangs together, as things do in reality, and we falsify that when we pick it apart to make a rational structure. But I've got it down to a few basic takes out of which discrete pieces can be written-- along the lines the title of this one suggests-- essentially, New Age vs. Pagan mentalities, and the symbolic meanings of UFO/ETs, and the process of Mazeway Resynthesis that seems very applicable to this whole matter. So, I will see what I can do to work these up into pithy pieces in the next few weeks.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The Draug
The Draug is greedy for wondrous madhoms with which to bedeck his great barrow-hall. And greedy, too, for a long life of fair, strong ever-youth. And for these he will plunder the Land, and suck the life-blood from the Living, and wield dark Searucraft to live well, live long, and to raise himself above all Life, wreaking waste-land all about him and far and wide, for he cares only for his own life and the things he wants.
Draug: Persian drauga= demon, Old Norse draugr= a monster much like that described here.
Madhom= a treasure. (OEng madhum)
Draug: Persian drauga= demon, Old Norse draugr= a monster much like that described here.
Madhom= a treasure. (OEng madhum)
Monday, May 16, 2011
Day 1
the White light of the Void, of the Modern World. the stark existential blankness from its burning, blanching, sterilizing Light, has stripped us of everything we had.
the Past has passed, burnt-out like disintegrated old clothes in an incinerator.
now we are Stripped Naked, naked Being, trundled out from the White Fire chamber into the Stark Naked New, clothed in a White Shift, naked garment, bleached, purified, in which we pick ourselves up and Go into the New Reality of the Green Planet, the only possible Future.
the Past is Ash, incinerated. we start from scratch. Ecology is Reality now. every day is Day 1-- we start from scratch-- no Past. in a New Light.
today is the Future. today after today after today.
the Past has passed, burnt-out like disintegrated old clothes in an incinerator.
now we are Stripped Naked, naked Being, trundled out from the White Fire chamber into the Stark Naked New, clothed in a White Shift, naked garment, bleached, purified, in which we pick ourselves up and Go into the New Reality of the Green Planet, the only possible Future.
the Past is Ash, incinerated. we start from scratch. Ecology is Reality now. every day is Day 1-- we start from scratch-- no Past. in a New Light.
today is the Future. today after today after today.
Monday, May 2, 2011
from The Shaggy Saga
(word-help below)
The Lodestone was fostered like a bairn in the womb, deep in the Wolken over long time. And when it was ready to be born, the Wolken called to the Twayne, to their marrow, so softly. And they were led as if blind into the Mistryne, going by feel only, and the murmurs in their blood, toward the Lodestone. And in a long wayward faring through the Twyrymet they neared its stead. And when the Lodestone was found, it was made known to them that this was not theirs to have, but they must bring it to the Drygand.
Now the Drygand had lived wild and free, frisking about the Edhli at play, diving in and out of the body-shapes of all Life-kinds in an endless frolic, falling from one kind to the next as the samen-flowod flowed twixt them in the Net-working of the Edhli. And so over time he had learned all there could be known of the Whole of Life, its hungers and fears, gladness and sorrow, in all of its Kinren, his bredhern. He was beloved Child of the Wolken, free to play as he would, but never straying far from Its hearth.
But the Drygand had felt the coming of the Dilgoth as Man strengthened his Rykedom over the Edhli and knew the worsening harm it had wreaked, and so he saw his childhood coming to an end, and when the Twayne came to him, led straight by the Stone, the Drygand saw that he would undergo a cherrenge, and become a new, greater Being. The Lodestone drew him mightily, but he felt it a hard thing he must risk, to be made over, and he quailed from giving himself to it and knew not how he could do it. But the Wolken murmured within him, easing his fears, sending him on, and so he came to the Twayne, who bore the Lodestone both at once within them, as it was a living stone, and together they clasped their hands about his head, and by the Will of the Wolken the Lodestone was dubbed onto the Drygand's head, through the handhold of the Twayne, and it came and melded to his brain. And many things happened there which cannot be told, as much that had been worked in the deep Mistryne of the Wolken now worked quickly within the ferth of the Drygand, edmaking him, bringing his being and knowing and life-drang under a new mynt-- to fight the Dilgoth so that the Edhli could live on, that Life could live. And when the Cherrenge was fullfilled and the Drygand made into Halleth of the Edhli, he then came and in like way dubbed the Lodestone back onto the Twayne, but with something of the cherrenged Drygand to it now, so as it melded to their own selfness, and edmade with that a new whole, an Aukin-self, they each of them, Wildeor and Bilewit, became Thegns of the Drygand, Drygand-Twynechts, guided always by the Lodestone to fight for the Sake of the Edhli, and for the new Menning which is the only hope for Man.
And so these three, Drygand, Wildeor and Bilewit, went everywhere, offering to gift the Lodestone to everyone fit to undergo the Cherrenge, Wights of the lands and of the waters then becoming Land-drygands and Water-drygands, and the Alfs becoming Drygand-alfs and Kynechts, and to Man-kind they told of the Dilgoth and of the Edhli-menning Sake, and some that were ready anfonned the Lodestone into them, becoming thereby true Alfar.
And that is how this great Cherrenge in Time has happened, out of fearsome need, to stop the Dilgoth and to make a new Menning of Edhlifrith, so that Life may live.
Wolken= Cloud-mind of the Eorth.
Mistryne= mystery.
Twyrymet= dual-space of Reality and Imagination.
Drygand= the Pan-chimaera.
Edhli= Nature, Biosphere.
Samen-flowod= the vital Life-fluid.
Kinren= the species of Life.
Dilgoth= the Extinction Event.
Rykedom= reign, rule, sovereignty.
Cherrenge= change.
Ferth= mind-spirit-soul.
edmake= remake.
Life-drang= life-force.
Mynt= intention, purpose.
Halleth= holy hero, savior.
Aukin-self= enhanced self.
Thegn= thane, a ruler under troth to another.
Sake= cause.
Menning= culture-civilization.
Kynecht= knight.
anfon= receive.
Edhlifrith= Biosphere protection.
The Lodestone was fostered like a bairn in the womb, deep in the Wolken over long time. And when it was ready to be born, the Wolken called to the Twayne, to their marrow, so softly. And they were led as if blind into the Mistryne, going by feel only, and the murmurs in their blood, toward the Lodestone. And in a long wayward faring through the Twyrymet they neared its stead. And when the Lodestone was found, it was made known to them that this was not theirs to have, but they must bring it to the Drygand.
Now the Drygand had lived wild and free, frisking about the Edhli at play, diving in and out of the body-shapes of all Life-kinds in an endless frolic, falling from one kind to the next as the samen-flowod flowed twixt them in the Net-working of the Edhli. And so over time he had learned all there could be known of the Whole of Life, its hungers and fears, gladness and sorrow, in all of its Kinren, his bredhern. He was beloved Child of the Wolken, free to play as he would, but never straying far from Its hearth.
But the Drygand had felt the coming of the Dilgoth as Man strengthened his Rykedom over the Edhli and knew the worsening harm it had wreaked, and so he saw his childhood coming to an end, and when the Twayne came to him, led straight by the Stone, the Drygand saw that he would undergo a cherrenge, and become a new, greater Being. The Lodestone drew him mightily, but he felt it a hard thing he must risk, to be made over, and he quailed from giving himself to it and knew not how he could do it. But the Wolken murmured within him, easing his fears, sending him on, and so he came to the Twayne, who bore the Lodestone both at once within them, as it was a living stone, and together they clasped their hands about his head, and by the Will of the Wolken the Lodestone was dubbed onto the Drygand's head, through the handhold of the Twayne, and it came and melded to his brain. And many things happened there which cannot be told, as much that had been worked in the deep Mistryne of the Wolken now worked quickly within the ferth of the Drygand, edmaking him, bringing his being and knowing and life-drang under a new mynt-- to fight the Dilgoth so that the Edhli could live on, that Life could live. And when the Cherrenge was fullfilled and the Drygand made into Halleth of the Edhli, he then came and in like way dubbed the Lodestone back onto the Twayne, but with something of the cherrenged Drygand to it now, so as it melded to their own selfness, and edmade with that a new whole, an Aukin-self, they each of them, Wildeor and Bilewit, became Thegns of the Drygand, Drygand-Twynechts, guided always by the Lodestone to fight for the Sake of the Edhli, and for the new Menning which is the only hope for Man.
And so these three, Drygand, Wildeor and Bilewit, went everywhere, offering to gift the Lodestone to everyone fit to undergo the Cherrenge, Wights of the lands and of the waters then becoming Land-drygands and Water-drygands, and the Alfs becoming Drygand-alfs and Kynechts, and to Man-kind they told of the Dilgoth and of the Edhli-menning Sake, and some that were ready anfonned the Lodestone into them, becoming thereby true Alfar.
And that is how this great Cherrenge in Time has happened, out of fearsome need, to stop the Dilgoth and to make a new Menning of Edhlifrith, so that Life may live.
Wolken= Cloud-mind of the Eorth.
Mistryne= mystery.
Twyrymet= dual-space of Reality and Imagination.
Drygand= the Pan-chimaera.
Edhli= Nature, Biosphere.
Samen-flowod= the vital Life-fluid.
Kinren= the species of Life.
Dilgoth= the Extinction Event.
Rykedom= reign, rule, sovereignty.
Cherrenge= change.
Ferth= mind-spirit-soul.
edmake= remake.
Life-drang= life-force.
Mynt= intention, purpose.
Halleth= holy hero, savior.
Aukin-self= enhanced self.
Thegn= thane, a ruler under troth to another.
Sake= cause.
Menning= culture-civilization.
Kynecht= knight.
anfon= receive.
Edhlifrith= Biosphere protection.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Eorth Day, year 41 of the Edhlifrith Alder: Drygand's Blood
The Wheel of Time set need-fyre about its groaning hub. It strains to halt the dreadsome drive toward Dilgoth, Death of the Edhli, but cannot stop. And so fyre flares out from the braking hub as from a fyre-wheel. It is the fiery Drygand's Blood, of fyres both red and grene, that seethes both hot and cool all through the Drygand's Body. It bears the Life-Drang, of all Life-kinds, which do struggle for Life through all threat. And now, when Dilgoth threatens all Life on Eorth, the gathered Drang of the Drygand's Blood seethes over into those who feel the threat, it seethes all through them, Body and Ferth, overloads them with its Walding Swinth, and they become the stout Drygand-Alfar, bearers of the Dream that drives the shifting of Wyrd, that mightly wrenches the Wheel of Time onto a new Track, from Dilgoth to a Greening Way of Edhlifrith and the Weal-faring of all Life in a new Edhlifrithen Alder, under the Walding of the Sigend-Drygand, Nergend of Life on Eorth.
Edhlifrithen Alder= the Ecological Age. Edhlifrith= Biosphere protection.
Dilgoth= the Annihilation, the Extinction Event.
Drygand= the Pan-Chimaera.
Drang= urge, drive, impulse.
Ferth= soul-spirit-mind.
Walding= empowering, governing.
Swinth= strength.
Wyrd= the course of events.
Sigend= victor.
Nergend= savior.
Edhlifrithen Alder= the Ecological Age. Edhlifrith= Biosphere protection.
Dilgoth= the Annihilation, the Extinction Event.
Drygand= the Pan-Chimaera.
Drang= urge, drive, impulse.
Ferth= soul-spirit-mind.
Walding= empowering, governing.
Swinth= strength.
Wyrd= the course of events.
Sigend= victor.
Nergend= savior.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Runes and Rynes
The Twayne are the Alxnar, who keep the Alx, beating Heort of the Menning.
Will is Saeder, Wildermann, deals with Mind-runes, for Edhlifrith.
Bill is Godhi, Treemann, makes the Rynes of Thwaer, for Edhlifrith.
Twayne= the Twins, Bilewit and Wildeor-- Bill and Will. Bilewit= mild, just, gracious, good. Wildeor= wild-deor= wild animal.
Alx=temple. Menning= the ecological civilization.
Saeder='sower', seidh-mann (= shaman). Godhi= heathen priest.
Rune= a mystic symbol. Ryne= a mystic rite.
Thwaer= harmony.
Edhlifrith= protection of the Biosphere.
Will is Saeder, Wildermann, deals with Mind-runes, for Edhlifrith.
Bill is Godhi, Treemann, makes the Rynes of Thwaer, for Edhlifrith.
Twayne= the Twins, Bilewit and Wildeor-- Bill and Will. Bilewit= mild, just, gracious, good. Wildeor= wild-deor= wild animal.
Alx=temple. Menning= the ecological civilization.
Saeder='sower', seidh-mann (= shaman). Godhi= heathen priest.
Rune= a mystic symbol. Ryne= a mystic rite.
Thwaer= harmony.
Edhlifrith= protection of the Biosphere.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
The Myth of the Wolken
The Wolken is Edhli-mind become aware, helped to awaken by Gumen knowing and the deep threat of the Gumen sundering from Edhli.
The Wolken is All-mind, the gemein-mind of Edhli, arising to selfhood in Samen-flow between the Kinren. It speaks for them all, but is rift by Gumen otherness to the Alfeorkin.
Yet the vonnisch Alfar can span this rift, as they are children of the Wolken.
Edhli= the Biosphere.
gumen= human. OEng. guma= man.
gemein= collective.
Samen= the magic life-fluid.
Kinren= the Tribe of all Life-kinds (Alfeorkin).
Vons= Vanir, the chthonic gods.
Alfar= the next stage of human evolution.
The Wolken is All-mind, the gemein-mind of Edhli, arising to selfhood in Samen-flow between the Kinren. It speaks for them all, but is rift by Gumen otherness to the Alfeorkin.
Yet the vonnisch Alfar can span this rift, as they are children of the Wolken.
Edhli= the Biosphere.
gumen= human. OEng. guma= man.
gemein= collective.
Samen= the magic life-fluid.
Kinren= the Tribe of all Life-kinds (Alfeorkin).
Vons= Vanir, the chthonic gods.
Alfar= the next stage of human evolution.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Seek the Dragon
The dragon is in origin a composite of the non-human Other in Nature, particularly of those creatures and elements that create fright and awe. Dragons are slain by human heroes to alleviate the fear of Nature, to create confidence in the face of the sheer vast inhuman might of Nature. But in our time, when this dragon-slaying is destroying the Earth, the dragon serves to revive awe and respect for non-human Nature, that of it in ourselves as well as in this world. The dragon is our most potent mythic bridge back to Sacred Nature, which we have lost and which now seems a refuge of sanity and survival from the monstrous false-nature of our civilization, which is more infinitely frightful and destructive than what the dragon has represented. The dragon now becomes our hope for salvation in the face of heroic humanist triumphalism.
Such weird times we live in, when what was stark evil becomes blessed and goodly, and what was blessed and goodly becomes stark evil. In these mad times, which are relentlessly presented as sane by the forces of good order, for the person who clearly apprehends the hopeless madness, everything is reversed, inverted, turned inside-out. The Dragon becomes the hero.
The Soul is in Nature for you to innerly see. But in our time humankind know not the Soul, but for the few. Seek the Dragon, friend-- "He is everywhere, He is everything"(natural, that is).
Such weird times we live in, when what was stark evil becomes blessed and goodly, and what was blessed and goodly becomes stark evil. In these mad times, which are relentlessly presented as sane by the forces of good order, for the person who clearly apprehends the hopeless madness, everything is reversed, inverted, turned inside-out. The Dragon becomes the hero.
The Soul is in Nature for you to innerly see. But in our time humankind know not the Soul, but for the few. Seek the Dragon, friend-- "He is everywhere, He is everything"(natural, that is).
Friday, March 25, 2011
The Eormen-Orm
The Eormen-Orm, the great world-girdling Wyrm that rings this Drygand-Klode of Eorth, that oerruns the Lands, weaves twixt Sky and Sea; where Ring-runs bemesh, where Edhli and Wolken meld, is He.
Eormen-Orm= 'great dragon'. OE Wyrm~ Scand. Orm. 'Dragon' of Greek origin.
Klode= planet (~'globe').
Ring-run= a cycle.
Edhli= the Biosphere. Wolken= the biospheric Mind-being.
Eormen-Orm= 'great dragon'. OE Wyrm~ Scand. Orm. 'Dragon' of Greek origin.
Klode= planet (~'globe').
Ring-run= a cycle.
Edhli= the Biosphere. Wolken= the biospheric Mind-being.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Green Sun Comes
When the grip of Winter on the lands and waters ease, and the days lengthen and Winter's darkness fades to dusk before the dawn of Spring, the Green Sun, which has rested in earthly heat of Underworld, does arise again to touch and wake the earth, to quicken the Kinren who have slept their cold sleep.
The Green Sun breaks forth in the East, makes a dawn to bode the green-growing year. And it comes sailing, afloat the luft, borne upon a steady craft which steers a wending way oer all the Landschaft, touching all living things with its greening shine, mild and warm, a call to wake and wax once more, a growand-light of green and gold to melt the hold of Winter and drive it from mind. And sap begins to run again, and roots to seek to feed, and buds to fatten and break, and leaves like tongues thrust out the earth and leaves on stems unfurl, and flower-buds to rise and swell. And the Dyrkin get busy and go about, crawl about, run about, fly about, to do their work upon the land. And so the earth sings of Spring-tide, the waxing greenery dances in gladness on the warming breezes, and the Wildren in their lust greedily grasp and feed and breed again, as they always have.
And the Green Sun, having done its work and made the Spring, can slow to stillness, come to rest in its rightful stead, at the heart of the Life-world, to shed its lifesome glow throughout, for all the coming Warmer-tide to wield its sway.
Luft= air.
Kinren= plants and animals.
Dyrkin= animals.
Wildren= wild creatures.
The Green Sun breaks forth in the East, makes a dawn to bode the green-growing year. And it comes sailing, afloat the luft, borne upon a steady craft which steers a wending way oer all the Landschaft, touching all living things with its greening shine, mild and warm, a call to wake and wax once more, a growand-light of green and gold to melt the hold of Winter and drive it from mind. And sap begins to run again, and roots to seek to feed, and buds to fatten and break, and leaves like tongues thrust out the earth and leaves on stems unfurl, and flower-buds to rise and swell. And the Dyrkin get busy and go about, crawl about, run about, fly about, to do their work upon the land. And so the earth sings of Spring-tide, the waxing greenery dances in gladness on the warming breezes, and the Wildren in their lust greedily grasp and feed and breed again, as they always have.
And the Green Sun, having done its work and made the Spring, can slow to stillness, come to rest in its rightful stead, at the heart of the Life-world, to shed its lifesome glow throughout, for all the coming Warmer-tide to wield its sway.
Luft= air.
Kinren= plants and animals.
Dyrkin= animals.
Wildren= wild creatures.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Kynechting the Fledgling
The Drygand gifts the Lodestone to the fledgling Kynecht who has shown his readiness, sets it in his brain, and so it becomes the head of the Shell-horned Snake, and the whip-marrow in the backbone becomes the long body of the Snake, and so the fledgling becomes DrygandAlf, a true Halleth of the Edhli, a free Thane of the Drygand, and a newolden Child of the Wolken. He grows within an aukinn glassy flesh which runs with the Samen-flowod. And from his skin grows the Drygand-hame, a many-hued shifting Shadge of fur and feather and scale and bark and leaf and root-hair. And he is truly kynechted, bears the Wealds of the Drygand, can go freely into the Twyrymet whenever he wills, and is guided by the Lodestone toward the Menning to come.
Kynecht= "kin of the tribe", knight.
Drygand= the Pan-chimaera.
Lodestone= the gem that leads.
Shell-horned Snake= a Celtic creature, possibly related to the yogic Coiled Serpent.
Halleth= a hero-protector.
Edhli= the Biosphere.
Wolken= the Edhli-mind.
aukinn= additional.
Samen= the magic Life-fluid, possibly related to Skt. Soma, the divine liquor.
Hame= a pelt or other skin-covering.
Shadge= a shaggy Hame.
Weald= a power.
Twyrymet= the liminal state of Reality and Imagination melded.
Menning= the ecological civilization of the future. properly "Edhli-menning".
Kynecht= "kin of the tribe", knight.
Drygand= the Pan-chimaera.
Lodestone= the gem that leads.
Shell-horned Snake= a Celtic creature, possibly related to the yogic Coiled Serpent.
Halleth= a hero-protector.
Edhli= the Biosphere.
Wolken= the Edhli-mind.
aukinn= additional.
Samen= the magic Life-fluid, possibly related to Skt. Soma, the divine liquor.
Hame= a pelt or other skin-covering.
Shadge= a shaggy Hame.
Weald= a power.
Twyrymet= the liminal state of Reality and Imagination melded.
Menning= the ecological civilization of the future. properly "Edhli-menning".
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Threesome
"A Make-belief"
A Make-belief is a belief you choose to hold to. There are needful make-beliefs, and there are needs-must make-beliefs.
originally, 'believe' meant 'to hold dear' (~'to worthen'). so, instead of 'faith': worthing, wish, will, and choice.
"The Alfhedhnar"
Norse 'heidhni'= a heathen.
Norse 'hedhinn'= a coat of fur or skin.
Norse 'ulfhedhnar'= 'wolf-skins' (berserkers).
>Alfhedhnar= the Shaggy Alfar, free thanes to the Drygand.
"Drygand-klode"
His reach spans the Whole Eorth. He is the Eormen-orm, the Great Gand.
His Drygand-weald is everywhere in everything.
The Drygand is the grundly edhlernerne Tivorr.
Klode= planet.
Orm (Norse 'ormr')= dragon.
Gand (Norse)= magic being. Eormengand (OE)= the World-girdling Serpent.
Weald (OE)= power.
Grundly= chthonic, earthly.
edhlernerne= Biosphere-rescue (~'ecological').
Tivorr (Norse)= god (poetic). normally 'Tivi' (sing.)> 'Tivar' (pl.).
A Make-belief is a belief you choose to hold to. There are needful make-beliefs, and there are needs-must make-beliefs.
originally, 'believe' meant 'to hold dear' (~'to worthen'). so, instead of 'faith': worthing, wish, will, and choice.
"The Alfhedhnar"
Norse 'heidhni'= a heathen.
Norse 'hedhinn'= a coat of fur or skin.
Norse 'ulfhedhnar'= 'wolf-skins' (berserkers).
>Alfhedhnar= the Shaggy Alfar, free thanes to the Drygand.
"Drygand-klode"
His reach spans the Whole Eorth. He is the Eormen-orm, the Great Gand.
His Drygand-weald is everywhere in everything.
The Drygand is the grundly edhlernerne Tivorr.
Klode= planet.
Orm (Norse 'ormr')= dragon.
Gand (Norse)= magic being. Eormengand (OE)= the World-girdling Serpent.
Weald (OE)= power.
Grundly= chthonic, earthly.
edhlernerne= Biosphere-rescue (~'ecological').
Tivorr (Norse)= god (poetic). normally 'Tivi' (sing.)> 'Tivar' (pl.).
Friday, March 4, 2011
The Green Hob
The Green Hob, the Leafy Head, comes to speak sooth of the Wolken. He whispers wise-saying like the breathing leaves of Greenwood trees. From out his mund: the greening, meaning breath wafted by the Wolken-wind whose breezes wrap the Eorth. He outbreathes greenery that speaks, like whisperings of the woods. Read the rounings and hear the Wolken from the Green Hob.
Hob= head. (OSax hobid, OHGer houbit (>hobbit?)).
Leafy Head= Loofy Hoofd (Dutch), Lobe Hobe (Ger laub= leaf, laube= bower).
Wolken= the Biospheric Being-mind.
Wise-saying= 'wiseacre'
Mund (Ger)= mouth.
roun= whisper (akin to 'rune').
Hob= head. (OSax hobid, OHGer houbit (>hobbit?)).
Leafy Head= Loofy Hoofd (Dutch), Lobe Hobe (Ger laub= leaf, laube= bower).
Wolken= the Biospheric Being-mind.
Wise-saying= 'wiseacre'
Mund (Ger)= mouth.
roun= whisper (akin to 'rune').
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
From Neopaganism to Ecopaganism 2
I see Neopaganism and the New Age movement as the two somewhat overlapping wings of Third-wave Romanticism of the occult/spiritual sort. The First Wave occurred around 1800, the Second Wave around 1900; in both cases, plus and minus two or three decades, roughly. The Third wave of Romanticism was the Sixties Counterculture, similarly plus-and-minus.
The Ecology/Green movement is also a product of Third Wave Romanticism. And where the occult/spiritual and the ecological romanticisms overlap, I would call it Eco-romanticism; but better: Ecopaganism, since it has obvious inherent pagan roots. But in truth, strong New Age elements : biological science, future-focus, and utopianism, are inseparable from it.
This is the way I see it, anyway. These categories fit the realities pretty well, and the scheme serves as convenient ideology. For political reasons, ecologist-environmentalists may not want the cause of saving the Biosphere associated with Paganism, but what can one do?-- there has always been a strong affinity between Paganism (well, mostly) and a Nature-orientation, which was not the case with the Abrahamic religions, and though there have been those with a strong Christian background who loved and respected Nature (J. R. R. Tolkien and John Muir come to mind), and perhaps considerable ecological concern among the more liberal Abrahamic denominations over the last 50 years, the sacred books, traditions, and ideology counter a strong green/ecological adherence. Quite simply, like it or not, these religions have failed. Whereas, being new religions of the Third Wave, Neopaganism and NAM have been at least open to, and have often embraced environmentalism and ecologism. This is particularly so of Neopaganism, and that should be recognized and respected.
The Ecology/Green movement is also a product of Third Wave Romanticism. And where the occult/spiritual and the ecological romanticisms overlap, I would call it Eco-romanticism; but better: Ecopaganism, since it has obvious inherent pagan roots. But in truth, strong New Age elements : biological science, future-focus, and utopianism, are inseparable from it.
This is the way I see it, anyway. These categories fit the realities pretty well, and the scheme serves as convenient ideology. For political reasons, ecologist-environmentalists may not want the cause of saving the Biosphere associated with Paganism, but what can one do?-- there has always been a strong affinity between Paganism (well, mostly) and a Nature-orientation, which was not the case with the Abrahamic religions, and though there have been those with a strong Christian background who loved and respected Nature (J. R. R. Tolkien and John Muir come to mind), and perhaps considerable ecological concern among the more liberal Abrahamic denominations over the last 50 years, the sacred books, traditions, and ideology counter a strong green/ecological adherence. Quite simply, like it or not, these religions have failed. Whereas, being new religions of the Third Wave, Neopaganism and NAM have been at least open to, and have often embraced environmentalism and ecologism. This is particularly so of Neopaganism, and that should be recognized and respected.
Monday, February 14, 2011
From Neopaganism to Ecopaganism 1
If preserving the Biosphere intact becomes the foremost value of human cultures, everything in the culture must fall into a new arrangement. Whatever can be retained is altered to fit into an integral whole. Basic categories are recast, lines are redrawn.
Ecospirituality will become the ethos of the culture. Whatever forms it takes will be determined ultimately by what works. I assume that a 'pagan' element must predominate, as it seems that anything like West Asian monotheism (Judaism, Christianity. and Islam) cannot be functionally ecological, but how much any existing religion or spirituality could work is open to question. Anyhow, people adhering to existing religions are unlikely to turn an objective eye on the hindrances latent within them. But if they become seen to be hopeless, revitalizing reform movements may be able to alter them sufficiently to make their cultures ecologically functional.
But if you start with ecology as fundamental, you can find what seems to have had a positive effect in the past, and use that to develop the kind of spirituality or religion that is necessary. But every person has a cultural bias, and finally, it is what works for that person that counts. You can't just intellectually construct an ecological religion and expect many people to embrace it, even if it is designed to suit the prevailing zeitgeist as revealed in depth studies. A process of evolution should be expected to be necessary.
My cultural bias is late 20th century Western, Romantic, Countercultural, Anglophile and Germanic-- and Pagan, in a broad sense. And what I have developed of ecopaganism has come gradually from interactions with my subconscious imagination and from wide-ranging research. I don't claim any authority for myself or validity for my work, but I believe that there must be something in it worthwhile for some people. For all I know, nothing I have come up with is really original, but if it contributes somehow to a general development of ecological civilization, if only in a small way, it was worth the effort.
Ecospirituality will become the ethos of the culture. Whatever forms it takes will be determined ultimately by what works. I assume that a 'pagan' element must predominate, as it seems that anything like West Asian monotheism (Judaism, Christianity. and Islam) cannot be functionally ecological, but how much any existing religion or spirituality could work is open to question. Anyhow, people adhering to existing religions are unlikely to turn an objective eye on the hindrances latent within them. But if they become seen to be hopeless, revitalizing reform movements may be able to alter them sufficiently to make their cultures ecologically functional.
But if you start with ecology as fundamental, you can find what seems to have had a positive effect in the past, and use that to develop the kind of spirituality or religion that is necessary. But every person has a cultural bias, and finally, it is what works for that person that counts. You can't just intellectually construct an ecological religion and expect many people to embrace it, even if it is designed to suit the prevailing zeitgeist as revealed in depth studies. A process of evolution should be expected to be necessary.
My cultural bias is late 20th century Western, Romantic, Countercultural, Anglophile and Germanic-- and Pagan, in a broad sense. And what I have developed of ecopaganism has come gradually from interactions with my subconscious imagination and from wide-ranging research. I don't claim any authority for myself or validity for my work, but I believe that there must be something in it worthwhile for some people. For all I know, nothing I have come up with is really original, but if it contributes somehow to a general development of ecological civilization, if only in a small way, it was worth the effort.
Monday, February 7, 2011
In Search of Eco-paganism 6
So why didn't 'Native American spirituality' become a genre of Neopaganism, but was linked with it only as subsumed under 'Neo-shamanism'?
I'm not sure. There was much interest in 'American Indians' in the Sixties Counterculture years. Black Elk Speaks, if it wasn't readily available earlier, was rereleased as a paperback in 1972, and that book disseminated Lakota spirituality like nothing else around, I think. I was greatly affected by the accounts of Black Elk's visions. The amazing Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohsts Storm was published in 1972 as well, though I only discovered that much later. Vine Deloria Jr's God Is Red came out the next year. And no doubt there were other powerful presentations of Indian spirituality I missed or can't recall. There was also Carlos Castenada's Don Juan books, the first three of which came out in 1968, 1971, and 1972. These were something different, about sorcery rather than religion, and were categorized as 'shamanism', which was already known through Mircea Eliade's Shamanism. I read one of the Don Juan books at the time and was frightened by the melding of drug-induced hallucination and reality as described in harrowing scenes of confusion and supernatural menace. About the same time, I read about 'lucid dreaming' and had the same response--'No way do I want to go there!' There were also then creepy UFO-aliens books featuring abductions, sinister 'men in black', black helicopters, and other expressions of the black paranoia of the Seventies. Hypnotic regression tape-transcripts of the 'contactees' frightend me as much as the Don Juan accounts, though I withheld judgment on their veracity and was very leery of the UFO books after The Mothman Prophecies. Then I read articles sceptical of Castaneda's accounts . In both cases, I was not drawn to the dark weirdness-- I was by that time seeking spiritual sanctuary in the aftermath of the waning of the Counterculture. For me, Christianity was out, though many turned back to it in the Seventies. The pure spirituality of romantic moonlight through a cathedral's stained glass windows, etc. (Christmas card Christianity), still had appeal, but I was more drawn toward Buddhism and would have become a Buddhist, despite its grim cosmology, if I could have believed in karma and reincarnation. But I am not a 'believer'.
As for Native American spirituality, I don't think it attracted the kind of people drawn to Wicca, but it drew a good number of hippie-type American youth. In the Seventies, there were a number of top-40 songs about Indians, mostly as victims. The American Indian Movement made Indian grievances widely known. Liberals had developed a sensitivity to 'ethnic minorities' like 'Blacks' and Indians-- which may be why, outside the 'do what you will' Counterculture, it was considered bad form to dress-up like an Indian. But especially out West, hip youth might wear turquoise-and-silver jewelry, moccassins (or desert boots), headbands, or a kind of 'Indian look', as did working-men, businessmen, and retirees. Some of the young males were really 'into' Indianness. The peyote-partaking Native American Church was talked about among white hippies, was confused with the white jokester Neo-American Church, which was for partaking drugs-in-general. And the Don Juan books were widely read among serious psychedelicists. But apart from Sun Bear's Bear Tribe that was open to whites-- and he soon learned that hippie types were too self-indulgent and wayward to be other than a drag on the community-- I don't know of whites forming Indian spirituality groups comparable to witchcraft covens. So 'Neo-paganism', as that term became current, seemed to be more about witchcraft and similar magic-and-spitiuality groups. But I knew nothing about all this until the late 70s/early 80s. The New Age movement quickly outgrew these underground expressions with popular-oriented books and therapies and organizations with mystical/metaphysical human potential movement/self-help/pseudoscience formulas. As Native American attacks on white 'cultural appropriation' of their religions penetrated to the non-native world, white liberal sensibilities and solidarity would have inhibited the formation of 'white Indian' groups. But whether they would have formed otherwise, I don't know. Maybe some did. But Neopaganism in the Seventies was mostly in the vein of the European occult/romantic traditions. Since then, interest in 'primitive' peoples like Australian aborigines and pan-American indigenous peoples has grown in Neopaganism, with Native Americans as a sub-genre. In the Sixties, Hindu religion and Zen Buddhism and meditation had become popular, and since then, Tibetan Buddhism has become, too (though Buddhism is hardly Pagan, despite pagan elements in the Tibetan form). The 'Celtic thing' crowded out Sixties eclecticism in Wicca, and from the mid-80s, countercultural Druidry became an addition to the Neopagan roster of major genres, particularly in England. Heathenism, despite being tainted as neo-Nazi, and a victim of the 'Celtic-good/Germanic-bad' prejudice, gradually became a major genre.
But whether labeled Neopagan or not, and if so, 'Neo-shamanist', my sense is that, however you classify, interest in Native American religion and spirituality continues, and its appeal is often as a model of ecological virtue. But can a non-native identify as an Indian? Not readily, I think, and that limits its appeal, and its potential for Neopagan development ('neocolonialist cultural appropriation and syncretizing of...'). Which is good and bad at once. There's also the problem that nothing like the traditional Indian way of life can be approached in this hi-tech computerized world we inhabit-- it's a problem for Native Americans as well. Their essentially Stone Age cultures were too different in their material basis and way of life for us to hope to be able to acquire their consciousness, however much we might want to. And for non-natives, Europic or not, when your ancestors came from other continents, how can you reconcile the two culture-worlds? As a Neopagan, I have found this problem ultimately unsurmountable-- my ancestry and acculturation is European, and I find it hard to feel really at home in North America. Instead, I feel unrooted. If there were any way to comfortably meld, say, Celtic/Germanic gods and wights with Native American ones, I might be able to feel more grounded here. But I haven't been able to manage that degree of eclecticism, and at best, as in the Shaggy Mythos, I must be European-based but try to remain universally-applicable, and I have drawn on lore from Asian traditions, of India and China. There's also the problem of moving away from one's birthplace and camping serially in far-flung cities, and of the sense of 'homeland' being destroyed for one by the devastations done to one's early home-place by development and destruction of the landscape. And, too, with no 'people' to belong to-- no tribe-- well, I guess almost all of us feel unrooted anywhere.
I'm not sure. There was much interest in 'American Indians' in the Sixties Counterculture years. Black Elk Speaks, if it wasn't readily available earlier, was rereleased as a paperback in 1972, and that book disseminated Lakota spirituality like nothing else around, I think. I was greatly affected by the accounts of Black Elk's visions. The amazing Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohsts Storm was published in 1972 as well, though I only discovered that much later. Vine Deloria Jr's God Is Red came out the next year. And no doubt there were other powerful presentations of Indian spirituality I missed or can't recall. There was also Carlos Castenada's Don Juan books, the first three of which came out in 1968, 1971, and 1972. These were something different, about sorcery rather than religion, and were categorized as 'shamanism', which was already known through Mircea Eliade's Shamanism. I read one of the Don Juan books at the time and was frightened by the melding of drug-induced hallucination and reality as described in harrowing scenes of confusion and supernatural menace. About the same time, I read about 'lucid dreaming' and had the same response--'No way do I want to go there!' There were also then creepy UFO-aliens books featuring abductions, sinister 'men in black', black helicopters, and other expressions of the black paranoia of the Seventies. Hypnotic regression tape-transcripts of the 'contactees' frightend me as much as the Don Juan accounts, though I withheld judgment on their veracity and was very leery of the UFO books after The Mothman Prophecies. Then I read articles sceptical of Castaneda's accounts . In both cases, I was not drawn to the dark weirdness-- I was by that time seeking spiritual sanctuary in the aftermath of the waning of the Counterculture. For me, Christianity was out, though many turned back to it in the Seventies. The pure spirituality of romantic moonlight through a cathedral's stained glass windows, etc. (Christmas card Christianity), still had appeal, but I was more drawn toward Buddhism and would have become a Buddhist, despite its grim cosmology, if I could have believed in karma and reincarnation. But I am not a 'believer'.
As for Native American spirituality, I don't think it attracted the kind of people drawn to Wicca, but it drew a good number of hippie-type American youth. In the Seventies, there were a number of top-40 songs about Indians, mostly as victims. The American Indian Movement made Indian grievances widely known. Liberals had developed a sensitivity to 'ethnic minorities' like 'Blacks' and Indians-- which may be why, outside the 'do what you will' Counterculture, it was considered bad form to dress-up like an Indian. But especially out West, hip youth might wear turquoise-and-silver jewelry, moccassins (or desert boots), headbands, or a kind of 'Indian look', as did working-men, businessmen, and retirees. Some of the young males were really 'into' Indianness. The peyote-partaking Native American Church was talked about among white hippies, was confused with the white jokester Neo-American Church, which was for partaking drugs-in-general. And the Don Juan books were widely read among serious psychedelicists. But apart from Sun Bear's Bear Tribe that was open to whites-- and he soon learned that hippie types were too self-indulgent and wayward to be other than a drag on the community-- I don't know of whites forming Indian spirituality groups comparable to witchcraft covens. So 'Neo-paganism', as that term became current, seemed to be more about witchcraft and similar magic-and-spitiuality groups. But I knew nothing about all this until the late 70s/early 80s. The New Age movement quickly outgrew these underground expressions with popular-oriented books and therapies and organizations with mystical/metaphysical human potential movement/self-help/pseudoscience formulas. As Native American attacks on white 'cultural appropriation' of their religions penetrated to the non-native world, white liberal sensibilities and solidarity would have inhibited the formation of 'white Indian' groups. But whether they would have formed otherwise, I don't know. Maybe some did. But Neopaganism in the Seventies was mostly in the vein of the European occult/romantic traditions. Since then, interest in 'primitive' peoples like Australian aborigines and pan-American indigenous peoples has grown in Neopaganism, with Native Americans as a sub-genre. In the Sixties, Hindu religion and Zen Buddhism and meditation had become popular, and since then, Tibetan Buddhism has become, too (though Buddhism is hardly Pagan, despite pagan elements in the Tibetan form). The 'Celtic thing' crowded out Sixties eclecticism in Wicca, and from the mid-80s, countercultural Druidry became an addition to the Neopagan roster of major genres, particularly in England. Heathenism, despite being tainted as neo-Nazi, and a victim of the 'Celtic-good/Germanic-bad' prejudice, gradually became a major genre.
But whether labeled Neopagan or not, and if so, 'Neo-shamanist', my sense is that, however you classify, interest in Native American religion and spirituality continues, and its appeal is often as a model of ecological virtue. But can a non-native identify as an Indian? Not readily, I think, and that limits its appeal, and its potential for Neopagan development ('neocolonialist cultural appropriation and syncretizing of...'). Which is good and bad at once. There's also the problem that nothing like the traditional Indian way of life can be approached in this hi-tech computerized world we inhabit-- it's a problem for Native Americans as well. Their essentially Stone Age cultures were too different in their material basis and way of life for us to hope to be able to acquire their consciousness, however much we might want to. And for non-natives, Europic or not, when your ancestors came from other continents, how can you reconcile the two culture-worlds? As a Neopagan, I have found this problem ultimately unsurmountable-- my ancestry and acculturation is European, and I find it hard to feel really at home in North America. Instead, I feel unrooted. If there were any way to comfortably meld, say, Celtic/Germanic gods and wights with Native American ones, I might be able to feel more grounded here. But I haven't been able to manage that degree of eclecticism, and at best, as in the Shaggy Mythos, I must be European-based but try to remain universally-applicable, and I have drawn on lore from Asian traditions, of India and China. There's also the problem of moving away from one's birthplace and camping serially in far-flung cities, and of the sense of 'homeland' being destroyed for one by the devastations done to one's early home-place by development and destruction of the landscape. And, too, with no 'people' to belong to-- no tribe-- well, I guess almost all of us feel unrooted anywhere.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Neorxna
I love the sound of this word-- neh-orks'-nah. It's from Old English Neorxnawang (pronounced wong), which means Paradise, Elysian Fields. The only possibly related words I have found are ancient Greek neorgos= freshening, invigorating, and Old Norse noerast= to assume fresh vigor, recover, rally, which fit pretty well with Elysian Fields, I think. Noerast derives from noera= to nourish, invigorate. Other possible relatives-- Old English nerian= to save, preserve, protect, rescue; nergend= savior, protector (referring to Christ and God in the sources); and Middle High German nern= to rescue.
In the Shaggy Mythos (Sagenverden), I have used neorxna in Neorxnaweg (the Greening Way)-- the way of life of, the struggle toward, a steady-state ecological civilization, the Edhli-menning, and have also named Neorxna the Newolden Child, the neophyte with an old soul who is the herald and ambassador of the New World of the future.
In the Shaggy Mythos (Sagenverden), I have used neorxna in Neorxnaweg (the Greening Way)-- the way of life of, the struggle toward, a steady-state ecological civilization, the Edhli-menning, and have also named Neorxna the Newolden Child, the neophyte with an old soul who is the herald and ambassador of the New World of the future.
Monday, January 31, 2011
In Search of Ecopaganism 5
...the Sixties happened! For me, the Sixties began with the Coming of the Beatles in early 1964. But 1962 was the year of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and 1963 was the year Kennedy was assassinated, but pick your own heralds of the new zeitgeist. I would date 'the Sixties' as a countercultural era as roughly from the early 1960s into the early 1970s.
I can't remember much specifically about Indians from the actual 1960s, though, apart from the kind of TV shows and movies I have described. But notable in my 60s spiritual chronology was when I closed the door on Christianity when I was 12 or 13. I had doubts about what I was being told in Sunday-school and I more or less read the whole Bible to try to see if I could believe. But the whole book shocked and revulsed me, and I had an unpleasant waking dream of grim Jehovah up in the sky. That was it. Then I discovered the Romance of Eastern spirituality in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, and was carried away. When the paperbacks of The Lord of the Rings came out mid-60s, I found a literary realm in which my feeling for Nature was reflected. I tried to live in Middle Earth. There was a strong environmentalist element in the story, though not really ecological, unfortunately, but as Margot Adler points out, 'ecology' was unknown until Earth Day 1970. But as with Hindu mysticism, I was once again awakened and sent off in a new direction.
After Silent Spring had come out and awakened the world to the environmental threat to Nature, there was more and more in the news about 'the environment' being polluted and destroyed, and a series of environmental books by Paul Ehrlich, Barry Commoner, David Brower, Rene Dubos, William O. Douglas, and others came out over the decade, seeking to turn the tide against destruction. In this, American Indians figured as an example of a people who lived without harm to Nature before the White Man came and ruined it all. Everyone alive then should remember the famous 'crying Indian commercial', in which a mature Indian in a canoe looks on at different scenes of industrial defacement and pollution and public littering, and at the end, we see a tear rolling down his face. It was very moving, and an amazingly effective graphic means of waking people up to what we were doing, exploiting that well-worn image of the Indian as the Noble Redskin. But by that time, I had graduated from J. R. R. Tolkien to D. H. Lawrence, who featured Indians in some of his works, but it was mainly the Nature-mysticism that affected me, and the 'blood-consciousness' of his characters. He had been affected by the Indians and their landscape at Taos, New Mexico, but as far as I can tell, he got his ideology from the German counterculture at first or second-hand.
When I hit college in the fall of 1969, I started reading about American history as it concerned attitudes toward and treatment of Nature, and learned much about the Indians, as well as about Thoreau and John Muir and other Nature-mystic/prophets. The first Earth Day came the next spring, and I was told about it by a biology major, and attended the ceremony out near the middle of campus where the flagpole was, but there wasn't a big turn-out, probably because there was so much anti-war turmoil going on at the time, and it seemed that most of the people there were from the Biology department (it figures). There were statements made, but it wasn't a big, showy spectacle. I can't now remember the event very well-- was the new ecology flag raised up the flagpole? I was, as usual, an observer rather than a participant-- I never got a buzz being in a crowd or attending a ceremony, and Earth Day didn't strike me then as a major event, even though I was very 'environmentally concerned'. There was so much else going on-- it was a mad scene, and I was confused and freaked-out by it all. But as it turned out, Earth Day was a major event.
I think it was after this, maybe the next year, that 'the Indian' finally appeared. A bus-caravan of American Indians arrived on campus calling themselves The White Roots of Peace. Margot Adler mentions them in Drawing Down the Moon, saying that they toured from northern Canada to southern Florida. Once again, my memory is foggy, but what most impressed me was the older Indian man, in the traditional get-up, who reminded me of the 'medicine man' I had seen on TV shows and in movies, and of the 'Crying Indian', and I was greatly affected by his message of peace among men and with Nature, as well as astounded by all the young Indians with him. I had actually never seen a real, live Indian before*, this being the East, and it was like seeing Robin Hood or King Arthur stepping out of the world of legend into the real world. Once again, I was very shy and bystanding, but then I dropped by the room of the girl who had urged me to attend the Earth Day observance, and she gushed at me, "I'm in love!" Soon there appeared a young Indian in his get-up, not very tall, but well-set-up and very attractive, with hair like a black, shining pelt. Really, the most striking human figure I had yet seen in my life ('the gods walk among us'). Of course, I was socially paralyzed in his presence, but it was enough to have encountered him. And for a while, the effect of the White Roots of Peace lingered like an afterglow, but with so much late-60s turmoil going on, without and within, it, too, faded.
*No, that's not true-- as a kid, I went to a classmate's house after school, and his mother was Indian and was making fried eggplant which she said was an Indian dish, and she gave me some to eat. But I never went back there, being the autistic type, clueless and passive about social relations, totally inept at friendship.
I can't remember much specifically about Indians from the actual 1960s, though, apart from the kind of TV shows and movies I have described. But notable in my 60s spiritual chronology was when I closed the door on Christianity when I was 12 or 13. I had doubts about what I was being told in Sunday-school and I more or less read the whole Bible to try to see if I could believe. But the whole book shocked and revulsed me, and I had an unpleasant waking dream of grim Jehovah up in the sky. That was it. Then I discovered the Romance of Eastern spirituality in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, and was carried away. When the paperbacks of The Lord of the Rings came out mid-60s, I found a literary realm in which my feeling for Nature was reflected. I tried to live in Middle Earth. There was a strong environmentalist element in the story, though not really ecological, unfortunately, but as Margot Adler points out, 'ecology' was unknown until Earth Day 1970. But as with Hindu mysticism, I was once again awakened and sent off in a new direction.
After Silent Spring had come out and awakened the world to the environmental threat to Nature, there was more and more in the news about 'the environment' being polluted and destroyed, and a series of environmental books by Paul Ehrlich, Barry Commoner, David Brower, Rene Dubos, William O. Douglas, and others came out over the decade, seeking to turn the tide against destruction. In this, American Indians figured as an example of a people who lived without harm to Nature before the White Man came and ruined it all. Everyone alive then should remember the famous 'crying Indian commercial', in which a mature Indian in a canoe looks on at different scenes of industrial defacement and pollution and public littering, and at the end, we see a tear rolling down his face. It was very moving, and an amazingly effective graphic means of waking people up to what we were doing, exploiting that well-worn image of the Indian as the Noble Redskin. But by that time, I had graduated from J. R. R. Tolkien to D. H. Lawrence, who featured Indians in some of his works, but it was mainly the Nature-mysticism that affected me, and the 'blood-consciousness' of his characters. He had been affected by the Indians and their landscape at Taos, New Mexico, but as far as I can tell, he got his ideology from the German counterculture at first or second-hand.
When I hit college in the fall of 1969, I started reading about American history as it concerned attitudes toward and treatment of Nature, and learned much about the Indians, as well as about Thoreau and John Muir and other Nature-mystic/prophets. The first Earth Day came the next spring, and I was told about it by a biology major, and attended the ceremony out near the middle of campus where the flagpole was, but there wasn't a big turn-out, probably because there was so much anti-war turmoil going on at the time, and it seemed that most of the people there were from the Biology department (it figures). There were statements made, but it wasn't a big, showy spectacle. I can't now remember the event very well-- was the new ecology flag raised up the flagpole? I was, as usual, an observer rather than a participant-- I never got a buzz being in a crowd or attending a ceremony, and Earth Day didn't strike me then as a major event, even though I was very 'environmentally concerned'. There was so much else going on-- it was a mad scene, and I was confused and freaked-out by it all. But as it turned out, Earth Day was a major event.
I think it was after this, maybe the next year, that 'the Indian' finally appeared. A bus-caravan of American Indians arrived on campus calling themselves The White Roots of Peace. Margot Adler mentions them in Drawing Down the Moon, saying that they toured from northern Canada to southern Florida. Once again, my memory is foggy, but what most impressed me was the older Indian man, in the traditional get-up, who reminded me of the 'medicine man' I had seen on TV shows and in movies, and of the 'Crying Indian', and I was greatly affected by his message of peace among men and with Nature, as well as astounded by all the young Indians with him. I had actually never seen a real, live Indian before*, this being the East, and it was like seeing Robin Hood or King Arthur stepping out of the world of legend into the real world. Once again, I was very shy and bystanding, but then I dropped by the room of the girl who had urged me to attend the Earth Day observance, and she gushed at me, "I'm in love!" Soon there appeared a young Indian in his get-up, not very tall, but well-set-up and very attractive, with hair like a black, shining pelt. Really, the most striking human figure I had yet seen in my life ('the gods walk among us'). Of course, I was socially paralyzed in his presence, but it was enough to have encountered him. And for a while, the effect of the White Roots of Peace lingered like an afterglow, but with so much late-60s turmoil going on, without and within, it, too, faded.
*No, that's not true-- as a kid, I went to a classmate's house after school, and his mother was Indian and was making fried eggplant which she said was an Indian dish, and she gave me some to eat. But I never went back there, being the autistic type, clueless and passive about social relations, totally inept at friendship.
Monday, January 24, 2011
In Search of Ecopaganism 4
This is about early influences that shaped my image of 'the Noble Redskin'. We're all formed by early influences, though our responses to our physical/cultural environment is selective, idiosyncratic. I am of the post-WWII Baby Boom generation, the first TV generation. As a tot, I would sit entranced before the Tube (literally in-tranced), fascinated by the gray-toned imagery made up of dancing dots, oblivious to its sense. McLuhan may have been right--'the medium is the message (massage)'. TV was futurist ghost-world, made by the god behind the machine, a coercive stream of alien scenes and sounds you're helpless to field, so you trance-out. Fortunately, that strategy worked-- my fragile psyche was not overwhelmed, but it was insidiously, relentlessly programmed in ways I still can't entirely grasp. We're all programmed, early on, and there's not a lot we can do about it-- it's become 'us'. All we can do is try to override the stuff we deem bad or wrong, and will the better.
There was children's literature as well. The more affecting of it was in fairy tales, which had some numinosity about them, were meant to enchant. Do mothers know what they're doing to their child's soul, reading them these stories as they grow drowsy? And television did much the same, in similar relaxed conditions. Well, children want magic, wonder, adventure, marvelous places, amazing persons, more than reality could ever provide. This sets us up to be cruelly disappointed by reality contrasting with our programmed shining ideals and yearnings that won't go away.
Of the amazing persons I can recall, it was televised versions of Robin Hood, Zorro, Davy Crockett, and Superman that had the strongest effect early on. Robin Hood as played by Richard Greene and Davy Crockett by Fess Parker have endured as icons in my psyche. Both were heroic men of the forest-- one in medieval England, the other in frontier America, which might have something to do with the counter-pulls of English and American cultures I've always experienced. There were Indians in Disney's Davy Crockett episodes, and in other Disney serials, on the Mickey Mouse Club and the Disney Show. In the 1950s and into the 60s, westerns were everywhere in profusion, on evening television, in movies. Back then, we were closer to the 'heroic' era, and in literature, mostly pulp, and from the earliest movies, the western had been a major genre. As a kid watching TV, I saw a lot of back-lot frontier towns and California desert and hills. I never liked desert, but the rugged forested hills and mountains made a romantic imprint. Fortunately, our apartment development was surrounded by woods, cliffs, a meadow with stream, that I'm now grateful I had as an early influence, to complement that of Nature on TV!
Particularly affecting fare was Sgt. Preston of the Yukon and The Lone Ranger, both of which had Indians, with Tonto as the Lone Ranger's 'faithful sidekick' probably then the most salient Indian in the world reached by American television. Tonto, as played by Jay Silverheels, was dignified, intelligent-- though laconic, with Basic English only-- sort of a wooden, cigar-store Indian stereotype. But he was part of a heroic duo, though secondary. We had after-school B-movies on TV, some of which were westerns, some of the cowboys-and-Indians sort. There was also, for kids, Rin Tin Tin (a German shepherd) at Fort Apache, which was a stockaded fortress against savage Indians. So there was that stereotype, but over my early years, there were many positive presentations of Indians as noble, dignified, intelligent, and wise. 'Squaws' were invariably demure, modestly dressed, respectable helpmeets, but that was how respectable 'white' frontier women were presented, too-- it was the 50s' conservative ideal of womanhood. There was also the wise old Medicine Man-- always presented respectfully. I suppose he was my first acquaintance with that archetype-- Merlin came much later. The Indian regalia-- peace pipe, eagle feathers, headdresses down to there, fringed buckskin clothing with leggings and loincloths and armbands and headbands, painted shields, bows and arrows (like Robin Hood!), teepees, canoes, cayuses (horses)-- all of that, and the natural settings, were deeply imprinted on me. At the time, there was nothing else so romantically affecting, apart from fairy stories, which induced powerful romantic dream-states, but this was filmed, and shown on television!
As a kid, I of course had no way to separate this Hollywood fantasy from reality-- I didn't know the reality! It wasn't until later (covered in next shtook) that I began learning of the terrible things done by the White Man to the Indians. Even in school, we got mostly the Thanksgiving story and Pocahontas saving John Smith from having his head bashed-in with a war-club by appealing to her father, the stern chief Powhatan. And there was plenty about Indian attacks, kidnappings, disappearances (Roanoke Colony, for one).
But despite a glut of depictions of Indians as ruthless, relentless evil-doers, renegades, we didn't get the drunken, stupid Indian stereotype. And there was much that was valorizing, increasingly so-- but that had been around since the silent-movie era. We saw it all on B-movies, mostly from the 1940s, I think.
As for Indian religion, we got the wise elder on the cliff-top communing with, appealing to, the Great Spirit in the sky, with peace pipe, perhaps. Not incompatible with Christianity, as far as it went, and the only alternative to it available at the time, on TV-- that's important.
I never liked violence, except as sheer action, and so the western-town saloon brawling and gunfights out on the main street didn't appeal to me, nor the ferocious Indian attacks on innocent settlers, with valiant cavalry vanquishing them in the end. It was the numinous, romantic feelings of wilderness and the native inhabitants of it that made the deepest impression-- it meant something-- something good-- in a time, as I saw later, of rocket-like blasting into a shining modern Future (or maybe not), while we strove to free ourselves of the terrible Evil that afflicted the world (the Nazis, the Commies, the Nukes). Then something happened...
There was children's literature as well. The more affecting of it was in fairy tales, which had some numinosity about them, were meant to enchant. Do mothers know what they're doing to their child's soul, reading them these stories as they grow drowsy? And television did much the same, in similar relaxed conditions. Well, children want magic, wonder, adventure, marvelous places, amazing persons, more than reality could ever provide. This sets us up to be cruelly disappointed by reality contrasting with our programmed shining ideals and yearnings that won't go away.
Of the amazing persons I can recall, it was televised versions of Robin Hood, Zorro, Davy Crockett, and Superman that had the strongest effect early on. Robin Hood as played by Richard Greene and Davy Crockett by Fess Parker have endured as icons in my psyche. Both were heroic men of the forest-- one in medieval England, the other in frontier America, which might have something to do with the counter-pulls of English and American cultures I've always experienced. There were Indians in Disney's Davy Crockett episodes, and in other Disney serials, on the Mickey Mouse Club and the Disney Show. In the 1950s and into the 60s, westerns were everywhere in profusion, on evening television, in movies. Back then, we were closer to the 'heroic' era, and in literature, mostly pulp, and from the earliest movies, the western had been a major genre. As a kid watching TV, I saw a lot of back-lot frontier towns and California desert and hills. I never liked desert, but the rugged forested hills and mountains made a romantic imprint. Fortunately, our apartment development was surrounded by woods, cliffs, a meadow with stream, that I'm now grateful I had as an early influence, to complement that of Nature on TV!
Particularly affecting fare was Sgt. Preston of the Yukon and The Lone Ranger, both of which had Indians, with Tonto as the Lone Ranger's 'faithful sidekick' probably then the most salient Indian in the world reached by American television. Tonto, as played by Jay Silverheels, was dignified, intelligent-- though laconic, with Basic English only-- sort of a wooden, cigar-store Indian stereotype. But he was part of a heroic duo, though secondary. We had after-school B-movies on TV, some of which were westerns, some of the cowboys-and-Indians sort. There was also, for kids, Rin Tin Tin (a German shepherd) at Fort Apache, which was a stockaded fortress against savage Indians. So there was that stereotype, but over my early years, there were many positive presentations of Indians as noble, dignified, intelligent, and wise. 'Squaws' were invariably demure, modestly dressed, respectable helpmeets, but that was how respectable 'white' frontier women were presented, too-- it was the 50s' conservative ideal of womanhood. There was also the wise old Medicine Man-- always presented respectfully. I suppose he was my first acquaintance with that archetype-- Merlin came much later. The Indian regalia-- peace pipe, eagle feathers, headdresses down to there, fringed buckskin clothing with leggings and loincloths and armbands and headbands, painted shields, bows and arrows (like Robin Hood!), teepees, canoes, cayuses (horses)-- all of that, and the natural settings, were deeply imprinted on me. At the time, there was nothing else so romantically affecting, apart from fairy stories, which induced powerful romantic dream-states, but this was filmed, and shown on television!
As a kid, I of course had no way to separate this Hollywood fantasy from reality-- I didn't know the reality! It wasn't until later (covered in next shtook) that I began learning of the terrible things done by the White Man to the Indians. Even in school, we got mostly the Thanksgiving story and Pocahontas saving John Smith from having his head bashed-in with a war-club by appealing to her father, the stern chief Powhatan. And there was plenty about Indian attacks, kidnappings, disappearances (Roanoke Colony, for one).
But despite a glut of depictions of Indians as ruthless, relentless evil-doers, renegades, we didn't get the drunken, stupid Indian stereotype. And there was much that was valorizing, increasingly so-- but that had been around since the silent-movie era. We saw it all on B-movies, mostly from the 1940s, I think.
As for Indian religion, we got the wise elder on the cliff-top communing with, appealing to, the Great Spirit in the sky, with peace pipe, perhaps. Not incompatible with Christianity, as far as it went, and the only alternative to it available at the time, on TV-- that's important.
I never liked violence, except as sheer action, and so the western-town saloon brawling and gunfights out on the main street didn't appeal to me, nor the ferocious Indian attacks on innocent settlers, with valiant cavalry vanquishing them in the end. It was the numinous, romantic feelings of wilderness and the native inhabitants of it that made the deepest impression-- it meant something-- something good-- in a time, as I saw later, of rocket-like blasting into a shining modern Future (or maybe not), while we strove to free ourselves of the terrible Evil that afflicted the world (the Nazis, the Commies, the Nukes). Then something happened...
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Celtic Horned or Ram-headed Snake Was Really a Slug or Snail ?
I always wondered where this Celtic creature came from. It's mainly known from the Gundestrup cauldron, associated with what may be Cernunnos, the Horned God. Is it related to the germanic 'wyrm'?-- a large serpent or dragon without wings, as I've read the old Celtic dragon was. A few things I've come across lately gave me the idea that the horned/ram-headed snake was actually a slug or snail, at least originally. First, the Celtic snake is associated with healing springs and wells. But springs and wells are where slugs and snails are found because of the moisture and slimy growth to feed on. As for snakes, I don't know if they hang out around them. Slugs do look rather snake-like.* And slugs/snails sometimes have eye-stalks, if that's what they are, that look like horns. Also, there's a Celtic charm called a 'snake stone' which is an ammonite-shell fossil-- a snail shell-- but it is said to resemble a coiled-up snake, which gives it its efficacy-- snakes being magical. It's an odd juxtaposition of snake and snail, but does that imply anything more? Where the ram's head comes in could be the snail shell, which resembles a ram's coiled horns. A snail's shell might also be seen as an opening from the Otherworld-- which is why the Celtic spiral (actually pre-Celtic) was used so much? (or it's a coiled-up snake!).
Well, this is all speculation, but it makes you wonder how far back might this creature go. Is it pan-Indo-European? The Hindu snake is also associated with water and wells. As the Naga, a demon-god, it might even be the original of the Chinese dragon, which is water-loving. The Vedic demon-god Vritra was a hoarder of water. Forms of the Scandinavian wyrm were associated with water, too. The horned/ram-headed snake could even be pre-Indo-European/pan-Eurasian. It's a shame we don't know more about it. We can always improvise, though!
* It's possible that in ancient times, snakes, snails, and slugs were grouped together. In germanic languages, snake and snail are related etymologically-- snail being a diminutive of snake, says one etymological dictionary, at least in Old English. Slug is not related, though. In Irish, snail is snag-- rather like snake. But the word for snake is nathair-- oh well. In Welsh the two words are not etymologically related. Snake derives from Indo-European *(s)neg-os (= to creep), as probably does Sanscrit Nagas.
Well, this is all speculation, but it makes you wonder how far back might this creature go. Is it pan-Indo-European? The Hindu snake is also associated with water and wells. As the Naga, a demon-god, it might even be the original of the Chinese dragon, which is water-loving. The Vedic demon-god Vritra was a hoarder of water. Forms of the Scandinavian wyrm were associated with water, too. The horned/ram-headed snake could even be pre-Indo-European/pan-Eurasian. It's a shame we don't know more about it. We can always improvise, though!
* It's possible that in ancient times, snakes, snails, and slugs were grouped together. In germanic languages, snake and snail are related etymologically-- snail being a diminutive of snake, says one etymological dictionary, at least in Old English. Slug is not related, though. In Irish, snail is snag-- rather like snake. But the word for snake is nathair-- oh well. In Welsh the two words are not etymologically related. Snake derives from Indo-European *(s)neg-os (= to creep), as probably does Sanscrit Nagas.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
In Search of Ecopaganism 4
Western culture has been interested in 'the Noble Savage' about as long as it has been interested in Paganism, from what is considered to be the start of the Modern Era, about 1500, which is when it also started being interested in the Druid, who is just the domestic brand of Noble Savage. All, of course-- Pagans, Druids, and Savages-- were often demonized during the Modern Era. Preceding them, in the Medieval Era, was the figure of the Wild Man, who was demonized then, but gradually was extended more and more sympathetic treatment, perhaps because a developing, urbanizing Europe was moving further from the Christian terror of wild Nature and its mythic inhabitants, which gained appeal in contrast to the discontents of civilization. The Witch, however, has only recently been accorded similar sympathy (Glinda of the Wizard of Oz!), because wild, natural women started fighting back and reclaiming the Witch and her paganism.
With Europe's voyages of exploration, starting as well at the start of the Modern era, many savage peoples were discovered around the world, who of course had to be converted to Christianity. And so the fear and hatred of heathen savages was extended toward them, and the legendary Wild Man of Europe was replaced by real wild men in out-landish places.
The first of these savages to be encountered were in the Americas. And England, the 'motherland' of our modern American culture, was competing with Spain and France for control of what came to be the United States and Canada, and though it was a close thing between England and France in the race for westward expansion across the North American continent, it was England, as well as her offspring the United States, who ended up the winners, and so the present (mainly) Anglophone nations, the U.S. and Canada, have a long history and heritage of the native peoples whose lands they ended up controlling. And this is important because it was in the U.S. and England that Neopaganism developed in the 1960s and 70s, and the Injun heritage was one stream of it though few now know of this, and it was ecological.
But in Northern Europe as well, there was interest in these and other savages, not just for colonial empire-building, but culturally, as a symbol. Particularly by the Romantic Era (from the late 1700s), the figure of the Noble Savage was a strong alternative ideal to that of Civilized Man. North American tribes and leaders that best fit this ideal became romanticized. Particularly as civilized man became more industrialized and urbanized, the icon of the simple, virtuous primitive, which had been around since Classical times-- that is, the earliest days of Western Civilization-- grew in its appeal as a Romantic 'Other'. Travelers, crusading journalists, and writers of literature in North America presented accounts of domestic Noble Savages, accurate, or valorizing, and especially in fiction, romanticized.
As a boy in the 1950s and 60s, I was heir to this heritage, mostly in children's literature and television programming, and later in movies and library books. And, as I have felt obliged to provide this introduction first, I will actually next time deliver the promised shtook on my experience of the Injun heritage. I will return to the Mythos before too long, I think, but first I need to work-up this Ecopagan matter I've been thinking about for a while. In the meanwhile, the Mythos material waits for you in the archives if you must not be deprived of it.
With Europe's voyages of exploration, starting as well at the start of the Modern era, many savage peoples were discovered around the world, who of course had to be converted to Christianity. And so the fear and hatred of heathen savages was extended toward them, and the legendary Wild Man of Europe was replaced by real wild men in out-landish places.
The first of these savages to be encountered were in the Americas. And England, the 'motherland' of our modern American culture, was competing with Spain and France for control of what came to be the United States and Canada, and though it was a close thing between England and France in the race for westward expansion across the North American continent, it was England, as well as her offspring the United States, who ended up the winners, and so the present (mainly) Anglophone nations, the U.S. and Canada, have a long history and heritage of the native peoples whose lands they ended up controlling. And this is important because it was in the U.S. and England that Neopaganism developed in the 1960s and 70s, and the Injun heritage was one stream of it though few now know of this, and it was ecological.
But in Northern Europe as well, there was interest in these and other savages, not just for colonial empire-building, but culturally, as a symbol. Particularly by the Romantic Era (from the late 1700s), the figure of the Noble Savage was a strong alternative ideal to that of Civilized Man. North American tribes and leaders that best fit this ideal became romanticized. Particularly as civilized man became more industrialized and urbanized, the icon of the simple, virtuous primitive, which had been around since Classical times-- that is, the earliest days of Western Civilization-- grew in its appeal as a Romantic 'Other'. Travelers, crusading journalists, and writers of literature in North America presented accounts of domestic Noble Savages, accurate, or valorizing, and especially in fiction, romanticized.
As a boy in the 1950s and 60s, I was heir to this heritage, mostly in children's literature and television programming, and later in movies and library books. And, as I have felt obliged to provide this introduction first, I will actually next time deliver the promised shtook on my experience of the Injun heritage. I will return to the Mythos before too long, I think, but first I need to work-up this Ecopagan matter I've been thinking about for a while. In the meanwhile, the Mythos material waits for you in the archives if you must not be deprived of it.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
In Search of Ecopaganism 2
If I'm going to discuss Native American Paganism as a type of Neopaganism, I need to discuss terminology. 'Indian' is a misnomer that causes confusion-- that's out. And so 'American Indian' must go too. 'Native American' and 'indigenous people' are equally unwieldy, and I also dislike both for reasons that others might not. My choice is 'Injun', because it's brief, non-derogatory, of traditional usage, unconfusing, and could be seen as short for 'indigenous' rather than 'Indian'. Anyway, it's the best I can come up with, and I ask readers not to take offense at my using it.
My suggestion is that Injun religion is de facto, and should be recognized as, a major type of Neopaganism-- and not just in America- Germans have flocked to Lakota powwows as spiritual seekers, possibly due in part to Karl May's fin de siecle German novels, which were very popular with German boys. There seems to be some interest in Injuns across Europe. Injun spirituality is presently categorized as a form of Shamanism, which is unfair, since North American religions often involved far more than shamanistic features, if they could be called shamanic at all. And because the icon of the Noble Redskin loomed so large in America in the 1960s, the formative years of Neopaganism, and Injun spirituality has a large non-organized following of non-Injuns, it has a claim to be recognized as a major genre of Europic Neopaganism apart from Shamanism.
But the question arises-- 'Is it fair to call it Neopagan?' That's a complex and controversial question. But briefly, I would justify it because presently-existing Injun religion is 'neopagan' to the extent that, like European paleopaganism, strong attempts were made (by Christians) to stamp it out, and it has had to be revived by the Injun tribes, whose members often live 'off Rez' now in the modern world of the Europics, and no longer in their traditional lifeways. Which is also the case with the Europics who have sought to revive their traditional religions as Neopaganism. But from what I've read, Injuns generally do not want Europics to appropriate their culture, especially their religion. Their religion is for the tribe alone-- which is like the argument that only people of Celtic or Germanic ancestry should practice that type of Neopaganism. Though the case of Injuns is much stronger, since their culture, with its religion, was generally not stamped out as thoroughly or for as long as in the case of Europics-- it is still a living religion tradition with continuity, not a long-dead religion. And so it is cultural appropriation, I think, for non-Injuns to make free with their culture. But as someone who grew up with the 'Indian' as an important iconic figure of the American heritage and American mass culture, albeit in negative as well as positive forms, the clamor about cultural appropriation has suppressed an important influence for good in the American character. If there were a way to mediate this situation so that others could share more freely in the legacy of the Injuns, it would be a blessing. Perhaps the development of pan-Injun culture as seen in national powwows, for instance, and particularly among urban-acculturated Injuns, whose tribes may have lost much of their cultural heritage, or who are tribally-intermarried, or married to non-Injuns-- this is where pan-Injun religion might begin to be extended to non-Injuns (wannabes). But as Neopaganism? I don't know, but if it happens, many people might not like it but it would be something that must be acknowledged. After all, Neopaganism is still under the same onus as Injun religion was--"It's Pagan! Heathen!', 'It isn't a real religion!' But I think there is so much of value to everyone in elements of Injun spirituality and religion, that this inhibition of usage by non-Injuns is tragic. Not just for Americans, but everyone.
In the next shtook I'll discuss the importance of the Injun heritage as I experienced it as a boy in the Fifties and Sixties, through mass culture, and in my Sixties Countercultural teens, through reading and an encounter with real Injuns.
My suggestion is that Injun religion is de facto, and should be recognized as, a major type of Neopaganism-- and not just in America- Germans have flocked to Lakota powwows as spiritual seekers, possibly due in part to Karl May's fin de siecle German novels, which were very popular with German boys. There seems to be some interest in Injuns across Europe. Injun spirituality is presently categorized as a form of Shamanism, which is unfair, since North American religions often involved far more than shamanistic features, if they could be called shamanic at all. And because the icon of the Noble Redskin loomed so large in America in the 1960s, the formative years of Neopaganism, and Injun spirituality has a large non-organized following of non-Injuns, it has a claim to be recognized as a major genre of Europic Neopaganism apart from Shamanism.
But the question arises-- 'Is it fair to call it Neopagan?' That's a complex and controversial question. But briefly, I would justify it because presently-existing Injun religion is 'neopagan' to the extent that, like European paleopaganism, strong attempts were made (by Christians) to stamp it out, and it has had to be revived by the Injun tribes, whose members often live 'off Rez' now in the modern world of the Europics, and no longer in their traditional lifeways. Which is also the case with the Europics who have sought to revive their traditional religions as Neopaganism. But from what I've read, Injuns generally do not want Europics to appropriate their culture, especially their religion. Their religion is for the tribe alone-- which is like the argument that only people of Celtic or Germanic ancestry should practice that type of Neopaganism. Though the case of Injuns is much stronger, since their culture, with its religion, was generally not stamped out as thoroughly or for as long as in the case of Europics-- it is still a living religion tradition with continuity, not a long-dead religion. And so it is cultural appropriation, I think, for non-Injuns to make free with their culture. But as someone who grew up with the 'Indian' as an important iconic figure of the American heritage and American mass culture, albeit in negative as well as positive forms, the clamor about cultural appropriation has suppressed an important influence for good in the American character. If there were a way to mediate this situation so that others could share more freely in the legacy of the Injuns, it would be a blessing. Perhaps the development of pan-Injun culture as seen in national powwows, for instance, and particularly among urban-acculturated Injuns, whose tribes may have lost much of their cultural heritage, or who are tribally-intermarried, or married to non-Injuns-- this is where pan-Injun religion might begin to be extended to non-Injuns (wannabes). But as Neopaganism? I don't know, but if it happens, many people might not like it but it would be something that must be acknowledged. After all, Neopaganism is still under the same onus as Injun religion was--"It's Pagan! Heathen!', 'It isn't a real religion!' But I think there is so much of value to everyone in elements of Injun spirituality and religion, that this inhibition of usage by non-Injuns is tragic. Not just for Americans, but everyone.
In the next shtook I'll discuss the importance of the Injun heritage as I experienced it as a boy in the Fifties and Sixties, through mass culture, and in my Sixties Countercultural teens, through reading and an encounter with real Injuns.
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