Walking the Path: Scavenger Hunt!

So I don't consider myself to be a Jungian in any sense of the term (I shudder at the gross over-generalizations of archetypes); however, today was filled with some rather interesting correspondences that may or may not be meaningful.

Despite having only just brushed the surface of my ADF Introduction to the Druid Path, and having spent only about 12 total minutes doing visualization work, and even though I have barely even begun to do the research and study required to truly understand my hearth culture, I decided that I really, really wanted to establish my home altar/shrine. I tend to jump the gun on things like this. Maybe I am just ready to stop thinking and start doing. Over-thinking has had a paralyzing effect on me in the past, and was one of the main reasons why I stopped practicing any path altogether. I have also been impressed by the commonly repeated notion in the ADF that paganism and druidry are far more about "doing than believing." I'm down with that!

So of course I read up on and refreshed my understandings of the basics. I knew I'd need a "cauldron," a "fire," and a "tree," or symbols thereof. Ok, cool. Gotchya. I tried to hunt down two of what I affectionately call "Woo Woo Stores" in my area, only to find that both were closed. Alright then. I decided to settle for Pier 1 and Home Goods. Who cares if said "cauldron" was originally intended as the centerpiece for a soccer mom's outdoor patio table? What matters is intent, not origin*.

So I gathered the raw materials, excited as much by the steps I was taking as by the opportunity to do some shopping and gather "pretty things." (I'm a red-blooded American. Capitalism is as much my religion as Christianity ever was, I'm sorry to say.)

I brought my items home and set them up on the plastic set of drawers currently set in front of my window, for lack of a better space. This is the time to mention that I rent a room in someone else's house, and my room is small. I'd love to use her fabulous backyard setting (complete with an area that would be perfect for ADF ritual), but I doubt she'd appreciate that use of her space. Or, maybe I'm just to nervous to ask!

I checked back in with the ADF guide about how to go about making this sucker (said altar) sacred. (Did I mention I'm sometimes just a little spiritually tone deaf?) Where should the water for the cauldron come from? What kind of "Tree" should I use? The guide suggested I gather the water from three different sources - preferably all from natural, running streams.

Ok. Whoah. Time out. I live in Southern California. There is no running water. If I tried to gather "free water" from three different sources, I'm afraid someone would come up and try to tax me for it. Thankfully, I happen to live in a town with a watershed running through it. There's a pleasant little stream in a little gully that bisects a local park. It was getting close to sunset, but I figured that this was magic time, and I could make it a kind of pilgrimage to gather water from the stream. I haven't gone out to walk in a while, being both out of shape and depressed, so I appreciated the challenge to get outside my comfort zone.

As soon as I stepped out of the house, things started to correspond. Two ravens cried at me as I walked out onto the sidewalk. Now it's Southern California. There are always ravens. But it seemed opportune, considering the grove I joined is called Raven's Cry, and I have  started to form a connection with Odin, whose familiars, Hugin and Munin, were both ravens.

I walked through the neighborhood, happy for once to have my headphones out and my eyes open to the natural beauty around me. Then, in the midst of my path, a freshly dead raven. The ants had just started to get to it. I wondered what it could mean. It didn't shock me, and I didn't immediately take it as a "Bad Omen." *Lightning Crashes in the Background* Rather, I was reminded of the reality of death and change. According to Norse myth, even Odin will die one day, at the Ragnarok. I didn't know why the raven had died, but I was also reminded that most animals in urban and suburban areas die as a result of human impact. If non-human animals are also our Kindreds, then this could have served as a reminder of our responsibility to them, and our failures.

I walked on, and reached the park. The sign stood out to me as another correspondence. Norwegians.

Now, the first Norwegian settlers in the area, whose descendants founded my alma mater and current place of employment, were primarily Lutheran Christians. I started out as a Lutheran Christian. It was one of the reasons I attended that school (just down the road from the park) in the first place. But before that, the ancestors of these settlers (and my own!) worshiped many Gods, acknowledged many Realms, and honored the relationships between them all connected by the great World Tree, Yggdrasil, nourished by the Well of Urd, or Fate.

I passed the sign into the park and down into the gully, where I found a shady spot, not to be interrupted. Of course, the nice man watching his daughter play on the swings on level ground above wanted to say hello and chat. I had to stop and remind myself that humans are my Kin too. I must make space for them and offer hospitality. I opened the bottle I had and prepared to gather the waters.

Earth Mother, you offer up your waters to nourish us all.
Forgive us humans for taking more than our share. 
Let these waters cleanse, sanctify, and nourish me 
As they cleansed, sanctified, and nourished our ancestors. 
Let these waters be for me as the Well of Wyrd.
In them let me see my fate unfold, 
Let me see the unfolding Wyrd and shape my life accordingly.

I placed my bottle under a tiny fall created by a lifted root, and filled it with the surprisingly clear water. Then I braced myself against a tree, whose tangled roots were visible and which was nourished by the stream.

World Tree, Yggdrasil, you connect all the realms.
You shade, support, and center all creatures.
Offer us a path between the realms, 
That we might have fellowship with all the Kindreds.

Further on my walk, I gathered plants and flowers I knew I'd offer to the Nature Spirits later. Two different kinds of lavender, some red seeds from a tree I don't know the name of, a pine cone, a sprig of ivy, and, go figure, a raven's feather.

But it was starting to get dark and I had a long walk home. I started to worry, "What the heck am I going to use as a World Tree?" Well, it was a good thing there was a Trader Joe's on the way home! I bought a tiny potted rosemary plant (small space, remember?). It was no "World Tree," nor was it a stately pole with the face of a God carved into it, but it was green, alive, and fragrant. Good enough for me!

I returned home to assemble my pieces. I have decided to wait until tomorrow to continue, as the ADF has an extensive hallowing rite that I want to be able to complete when my mind is fresh. It looks fairly good, if I might say so. Of course, intention and work are what matter, not flashiness or aesthetics. Michael J. Dangler of the ADF wrote about his first home shrine, constructed in his college dorm room, out of "three bowls and a stick." I am sure that the quality of Michael's devotions more than made up for the simplicity of his altar; perhaps his Gods admired his frugality! I don't know whether my own devotions and meditations will be pleasing to whatever Gods and/or Spirits are out there, Odin, Frigga, Baldur, Eris, Athena, Dionysus, or whoever else wants to show up. I only hope that it can serve as a space in which I can learn to kindle in my own heart a true fire of hospitality.

*Notes: Edited. I flipped the two! Fixed!

Walking the Path

Now that I've decided to embrace an Order, future posts here at Shrewd Speculations will tend to focus on my observations and reflections on the Dedicant Path. The path ahead is long (I definitely can't see the end of it from here, nor the stumbling blocks!) so I anticipate quite a few posts on this topic.

Stay Tuned!

(I promise not to disappear this time.)

A New Year, a New Path (Or how the Goddess of Chaos tailgated me until I moved over into the right lane.)

Wow. Why did I abandon this blog? Possibly because I had Tumblr for a while, then I fucked up so badly that I left under a cloud of ignominy. I felt thrashed by the unfortunate situation that caused me to leave, and spent a lot of time agonizing over it. I did not then realize that those events, which I could only see as disastrous at the time, were in fact important omens of things to come.

During graduate school, I had been introduced to the Mysteries of Eris by a good friend. The Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric (or POEE) and the Principia Discordia seemed at the time to be silly and just for fun, even if they also offered up a particularly apt and helpful way of understanding Reality. I found appeals to Eris and Discordian philosophy to be helpful as I made sense of the challenges of graduate school, the collapse of my ego after PhD program rejections, and the unique, exquisitely painful realities of adjunct teaching.

I've been teaching undergraduates as an adjunct lecturer for one and a half years now. During that time, the seeds of doubt and confusion planted in me during graduate school began to blossom. I've studied religion for eight years, I told my students, but I still don't a) really know what it is, nor do I b) actually know what I believe. I started out as a Lutheran Protestant. Then, through an academic exposure to Greek & Coptic Orthodoxy, I fancied myself a mystic with a deep appreciation for High Liturgy. (I mean, hey, who doesn't appreciate High Church liturgy?) Discordianism, Existentialism, Process philosophy/theology, and a few attempts at teaching World Religions then spun me around so fast I hardly knew which way was up.

While I taught, many things changed: I had to stop and actually check in with myself, rather than flutter about in the realm of intellectual potentiality. I finally figured out my sexuality. (Asexual!) By extension, my gender-identity came into question. (Agender? Gender-Queer? IDFK.) I suppose the religion question was due to come back around eventually.

Enter Eris.

A few days ago, I made use of Discordian metaphors in a comical, cultural-critique performed at an eclectic artists' salon in Los Angeles, put on by San Peña Producciones. According to the feedback I got after the show, it worked. It worked really well. Not only was I actually funny (go figure!), but they got it. I started to feel that Eris' chaos-power was a useful way to think and talk about the absurdity of claims to the objective truth-value of particular models of the Order of Reality. Orders (or paradigms, or models, etc.) are never objectively verifiable or "True," but they can be evaluated - by their effects. Some Orders are more beautiful than others. Some are more likely to lead humans to responsible, ethical behavior than other models.

Suddenly, I didn't feel so anxious about picking a model.

Sometimes, it takes an experience of Chaos to push (poke, prod, provoke, prick, etc.) us into adopting more authentic, more genuine, more beautiful models of Order. Sometimes, Chaos bites us in the ass if we linger too long between Orders, refusing (out of laziness) to adopt one. Refusing to adopt an Order doesn't make you more "tolerant" or more "enlightened" than anyone else; it casts you adrift; it removes you from a context; it leads you into apathy; it disorders your relationships with others an the world. Order is as necessary as Chaos. Chaos isn't evil, nor is Order. I tend to value Chaos over Order, generally because I associate Order with domination or control. But this doesn't need to be the case. Only shitty and ill-conceived Orders/Frameworks/Paradigms lead to Domination. The trick is to recognize that Order and Chaos are not separate "things," but potentialities inhering in all human beings. We are the bridges between Chaos and Order, and with those two powers we can make the world. But we most do so carefully, with a deep sense of responsibility for the consequences of that Order, for ourselves as well as for others - human and non-human, as well as for the planet.

....

So what is the Order for me? What Framework will I adopt as I step out onto a new Path, one hopefully characterized by careful, well-intentioned steps, a clear goal, and a sense of responsibility?
I love Christianity. Truly. If this seems in doubt, realize that I've spent the last 8 years studying it, and four of those were spent almost exclusively obsessed with MONKS. Really. I learned two dead languages to try to better understand these amazing people from the past.

But as I've been kicked about by Chaos and its many minions, as I have started to integrate the vast amount of data I have accumulated about religion over the years (that's going to take a while!), I have found that the monotheistic, creedal paradigm just doesn't work for me anymore. I don't know if it ever really did, or if I was just fooling myself. (As a counterpoint, Eris would fart in my face and chortle: "You're ALL just fooling yourselves!")

I had the great pleasure to attend two rituals held by my local Druid grove, affiliated with Ar nDraiocht Fein, or ADF. I went out of sheer academic curiosity during Imbolc and had a ball. The second time was for their Skirophoria ritual, a Greek "first-fruits" celebration. This second ritual happened the day AFTER my Discordian-themed rant at the San Peña salon. A friend of mine from graduate school and her BF were there as well. Unlike me, they have long identified with neo-pagans.

In the midst of the dance offering, one of the offering bowls to the omphalos (axis mundi/World Tree) was overturned. An apple was kicked aside, and I swear, when that apple rolled, it was like a flash bang. It knocked me back, blinded me, deafened me; but in that dark silence there was a ringing in my ears then a faint laughter. Gotchya Bitch! ... Thanks, Eris.

If you know anything about the myth of the Apple of Discord, the apple was the equivalent of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand for the ancient Greek world. It helped kick off the Trojan War. The instant I picked up the apple, I shared a horrified look with my friend. HOLY SHIT. Was this a sign?

Now, if you know me, you know that I don't put much stock in "woo woo" stuff. Really. I'm pretty skeptical. I also happen to be spiritually tone deaf. But in this moment, when the Gates were open and the Sacred Space centered us all within a truly meaningful Cosmos ... I felt connected.

So you know what? Maybe Gods and Goddesses do exist. Maybe they don't. But what I do know is that in my initial studies into the cosmology and assumptions held by the ADF, I finally feel like I've found an Order that centers me. So I'm going to read my ADF guide. I'm going to work with and support my local Grove. I'm going to pray, which is something I haven't done in nearly a year. Not just that, but I'm going to follow the ADF's Order of Ritual for the Solitary as I pray. This former-Protestant is going full Catholic Pagan!

You know what? I'm actually excited. For the first time in a while, I've got a path. Why not walk for a while, enjoy the scenery, and see where it goes?

Why Myths Matter

Jenny and Tommy, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in a baby carriage! That’s not all, that’s not all, then ….
Someone does something rhyming with –all.

I bet you predicted that. If you grew up in public schools in the United States (can’t speak for other places), and no one ever sang this annoying jingle at you or a close personal friend, then you’re extraordinarily lucky.

This post is about the importance of myth or story in the construction of our cultural episteme. This matters because the episteme isn’t just a body of available knowledge, it’s the apparatus by which we judge what ideas are and are not acceptable “Truths” within our particular cultural context. The jingle above is annoying and extremely catchy (two values young children seem to treat as gospel), but it also represents accepted ideas within our cultural episteme in a way that young children can internalize and repeat without even knowing they’re doing it.

Any child exposed to this jingle and others like it will undoubtedly concurrently be forming expectations about the typical format of opposite gender interaction (and unless playgrounds are becoming more friendly places to be, opposite-gender relationships are being reinforced as normative). There’s a reason why sexual education in schools simply cannot keep up with the norms already repeated and enforced on the playground, and I think that reason has everything to do with the method by which those norms are conveyed. A jingle someone heard on the playground in third grade, or better yet, a circulating rumor, has a stronger and longer impact on a child’s mind than some pedantic lecture about their bodies, given in dry, scientific language.

Why is this? I have no true cognitive science background, aside from some investigation into the relationship between cognition and religion, but I think it’s safe to say that images and narratives are easier to process than abstract, subject-specific language. For example, I think one of the reasons so many people find it hard to let go of the Genesis narrative, as the defining “picture” of the origins of the planet, is because the evolutionary model is just that, a scientific model. It isn’t a story. I think it has started to take on some narrative elements in popular discourse, but the danger is that the intentionality that is often ascribed to actors in a story causes misunderstandings about the theory itself, which puts scientists’ teeth on edge (for good reason).

I read a fantastic chapter today by Richard Valantasis on spiritual guides of the 3rd century (in various contexts), in which he proposed that semiotic analyses were required to truly understand the “underlying structures (the mutually understood context) which makes communication possible” in the ancient texts which describe a spiritual teacher from the perspective of the student.(1) He explored ancient semiotic theory, which was a way to search for underlying meanings within a text, utilizing theories of language and interpretation. (2) Aristotle’s poetics “explored ‘the nature of meaning and metaphor and the relation between literal and non-literal discourse.’”(3) For Valantasis’ purposes, a semiotic study “[discovers] … cultural systems that lie behind communication.”(4) These cultural systems are the “keys” which allow us to decode the underlying systems which allow the multilayered literal and non-literal images and “signs” within texts to signify meaning; that is, a particular meaning understood by both writer and reader, because of their shared access to an underlying meaning-system.

What was striking and alluring about Valantasis’ chapters was the fact that the communication of a student about his spiritual teacher was so “encoded,” that cultural and religious (or esoteric, as in the case of Hermeticism) fluency were absolutely necessary for “decoding” the deeper meaning of the text or oration. Those that shared this fluency were “insiders,” who were able to perceive the deeper “truths” the speaker wanted to convey about the signified, the guide, by correctly interpreting the signifiers which constituted that characterization within text, because of their concurrent fluency and engagement with a larger, shared episteme of meaning.

All of this complex jargon helps, in my opinion to explain why stories and myths are extraordinarily effective, efficient, and “capacious” teaching tools. I say “capacious” because stories/myths are able to “hold” an enormous amount of meaning because of the relationships between language and culture which allow for a multiplicity of meanings contained within the “vessel” of a single story. (For a great example of this, The Prologue to Origin’s Commentary on the Song of Songs is helpful)

This evening at our weekly symposium, my fellow graduate students and I discussed the problems of post-modern deconstruction, especially as regards the devaluation and elimination of meaning, value, and truth. My friend So (whose blog you can find listed on the right sidebar, “That Green Stuff”) and I arrived at the notion that post-modernism is a tool like any other, and what can be deconstructed to its most basic elements can also represent or “signify” a plethora of other meanings within a number of contexts. What post-modernism deconstructs, ecological theories of emergence, complexity, and novelty can help to flourish and expand according to its own internal logic, pressing on in a non-linear growth pattern that cannot be predicted by its original conditions.

Myths and stories matter because they can function as cultural “short hands” for accepted notions of morality, social cohesion, virtue and self-development, the purpose of knowledge, cosmogony and anthropology. But because these myths can also help reinforce particular “norms,” great care must be taken when it is recognized that they no longer adequately function as descriptors of the human experience and self-understanding in a given context, or if they are exposed as promoting an unhealthy vision of self and society. If these occur, the myths must change.

What myths do we assume as “normative” for our Western, hetero-normative, primarily Christian context? What myths have fallen from their meta-regulatory status because they no longer suit the self-understanding of people in a post-Christian world? These are questions to ponder.

I was going to cite more examples of how stories engage in the kind of signifying described by Valantasis above (Spencer’s Faerie Queene came to mind), but any story that has achieved the status of “national literature” would work just as well. Milton, Shakespeare, and Dickens do more to explain what it means to be English than any cultural study on English norms and customs, but only to “insiders” who share the cultural “reference-text” that allows them to recognize the signifiers of meaning in the texts and decode them. This is why I think academics really need to start writing more stories. So much of academic research is lost on those who would truly benefit from the findings because the information is caught up within language that does not signify to casual readers because they do not share the experience of academic “training” which gives them access to the vocabulary limited to those who have experienced the same paraskeuhv (practice, preparation, arrangement, training, etc.). I’m not talking about boiling down Foucault into a children’s book (readers age 17 and older only, please), but rather about recognizing that (important point!) the multiplicity of meanings that can be “carried” within the vessel of a story or myth allow for an implicit portrayal of the problem of multiple meanings explored by post-modern theory. In a text read in light of its possible underlying, symbolic associations, multiple meanings are free to coexist alongside one another, regardless of their compatibility. The form of the myth (or poem, for that matter) contains all of the essences that can be possibly signified by the particular signifiers within the text.

This is an extraordinarily difficult thing to accomplish once you’re thinking about it and concerned about all of the processes and details. Since semiotics is descriptive rather than prescriptive, I’m hoping much of this comes naturally to us, as we are myth-making creatures. I will be keeping this in mind as I attempt to start crafting my own myths, in order to signify truths of my own experience in a way that is truly multivalent and “makes room.” If we apply emergence and complexity theories to literature and the processes of conveying meaning, then construct myths that are accessible to a wide and imaginative audience, how much more competent (and comfortable) will we become in our navigation of a world in which multiple meanings coexist side by side?

(1) Richard Valantasis, Spiritual Guides of the Third Century: A semiotic study of the Guide-Disciple Relationship in Christianity, Neoplatonism, Hermetism, and Gnosticism (Harvard College, 1991) 6.
(2) Ibid. 7
(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid., 9

A New Story

I'm moved by the need to tell a new story. Or maybe just tell our current story differently. The conflict of worldviews (or perceived conflict) seems to be my constant ideological companion as I traverse the realm of graduate literature. Even in my Inter-Religious dialogue class, our studies of conflict resolution and overcoming cultural differences seems to take on that old, familiar, stomach-sickening binary cast; individualist vs. communitarian, diffuse vs. specific, high-context vs. low-context. Individualists aren’t prone to service and are not concerned about their communities. The trend toward the specific is scientific and objective, while those who engage in a diffuse communication style are more holistic, more organic, and more in touch with spirituality.


These are generalizations, and to be fair, the author of this particular text continually reinforces the notion “that all individuals are multicultural, sharing identities and meanings with people from a range of other groups, and that cultural generalizations are not manifested evenly within groups or across times but change with specific context…”(1) Still, it is easy to see how this conceptual binary has infiltrated our shared cultural imagination. I take issue not only with the fact that these categories are never completely appropriate or applicable, but also with the underlying assumption that an individualist perspective is theoretically inseparable from its “origin,” the Newtonian scientific worldview, and that the underlying framework for all individualism is an atomistic, determined, objective reality.
I take issue with these binaries (individualism vs. collectivism, science vs. spirituality, specificity vs. diffuseness, mechanical efficiency vs. aesthetic quality), which are in my opinion simply symptoms of one all-encompassing, flawed super-binary, because I do not think that the problem lies in the fact that we see reality in many different ways, but in the fact that we think these views are incompatible, or even that they are two different ways to see the world.


A metaphor from LeBaron’s book might help. Akio Morita, a founder of Sony, provides an illustration of the difference between specificity and diffuseness (categories LeBaron is using to help explain sources of conflict in cross-cultural communication). He likens the specificity view to a bricklayer, and the diffuse to a stonemason. The bricklayer has a closed set of specific tools and materials, which he arranges according to a predetermined plan. The creation of the bricklayer emerges in a predictable, orderly way. The Stonemason, on the other hand, “chooses stones that approximate the general size and appearance desired and then chisels them until they fit together perfectly.”(2)


What are the two products of these approaches? A brick wall, or some other rigid, linear structure, and a beautiful cathedral, monument, or other more aesthetically pleasing construction.


The Bricklayer is mechanistic, determined, specific, and follows an orderly and predictable plan. What comes out of this? Nothing exciting, but at least something dependable.


The Stonemason is diffuse, artistic, visionary, non-linear, and aesthetically driven. What emerges? Something beautiful, awe-inspiring, and atypical, though usually through an inefficient and fairly unpredictable process.


It’s a great setup, but it’s ultimately misleading. Stonemasons are just as mathematically and scientifically informed, driven, and restricted as bricklayers. What differs in these two stories is the material, not the process. Bricks have predetermined shape, stones don’t. Realistically, the Stonemason and the Bricklayer follow very similar sets of physical and mathematical rules.


Here’s where the fun, symbolic stuff starts. And this is why I love Freemasonry.
The Stonemason’s craft can function as a symbol of the unity of physical/mathematical rules and the aesthetic drive to create something beautiful, unpredictable, and undetermined.


Here’s the kicker: following a set of rules and guidelines (“laws” if you will), whether physical, mathematical, or moral, does not produce a deterministic set of results.


Look at the physical laws of the universe (and forgive me, for my scientific literacy and fluency nominal at best), and then look at the universe. Does the product shaped by these “determined” forces look mechanical, at all? No, I don’t think so either. The universe is a beautiful, dangerous, chaotic, illogical, diverse, constantly changing place.


The Stonemason is bound by the determining rules of geometry and physics, and yet creates breathtakingly beautiful buildings. Even more importantly, the awe and power of these constructions, especially in their aesthetic appeal, would have been impossible to achieve without those rigid, determining rules.
Thesis: deterministic “laws” do not prevent the emergence of variety.
Back to the binaries. I stated above that the problem with the binaries was “the fact that we think these views are incompatible, or even that they are two different ways to see the world.” The premise that the Stonemason and the Bricklayer follow fundamentally different processes was flawed. Stonemasons are just as rigidly constrained by the same mathematical and physical rules as the bricklayer. The difference is in scale.


Building a wall is not that complicated. A brick house is higher up the scale, but there’s not much you can screw up there. Building a cathedral is enormously complex. There are multiple kinds of labor, materials, spaces, etc. to consider, but one still has to follow the same basic rules as the bricklayer. Proportion of height and weight, gravitational forces, wind resistance, stress factors – all of the mathematics are the same. Kicker #2: the farther up the scale of complexity you go, even operating with the same rules, the more variety, difference, and (dare I say it?) freedom you have.


The freedom of aesthetic expression is a high-level function of the determining laws that provide order, stability, balance, and a certain amount of predictability. Therefore, both “fundamental views” of reality, interpersonal/communal relationships are two sides of the same coin. You cannot understand one without the other, nor is one superior to the other. Both must be recognized and allowed to operate. Aesthetics and diffusion are not antithetical to determinism and specificity.
Here’s where the “new story” comes in.


I keep running into these two different ways of weaving the story of reality and it’s starting to bother me. I’m getting tired of it. So in a time honored Existentialist tradition, I’m going to re-tell the story. I’m going to weave the tapestry of reality as I see it and cast it like a net into the world. These aren’t just the mad ramblings of my own brain, of an isolated individual; all of my own thoughts are shaped by my interaction with other minds. Relationality is hugely important to me. I hardly know what I think until I have shared a few whispers of thought over a glass of wine or coffee and watched those whispers slowly gain form in the matrix of conversation.


The story is already taking shape and will likely take mythic form, as I feel that’s the best way to convey meaning in a non-linear, non-imposing way without making ultimate truth claims. This (I think) is the same principle behind the Freemasonic use of drama and ritual in their instructional ceremonies and degrees.


Stay tuned for the next installment!




1 Michelle LeBaron, “Bridging Cultural Conflicts,” p. 54.
2 Ibid. 67

The Rod of Asklepios

The great thing about this blog is that it gives me a forum to post some original poetry, without the added frustration of critiques/platitudes offered by my entire Facebook friends list. This poem was an inspired response to one of Faun's posts over at That Green Stuff.

Faun's post inspired some of my own reflection on the desire for transformation, both physical and spiritual. Unfortunately, our outsides don't always reflect our internal states and this experience of internal/external dissonance can be extremely disheartening and make one feel profoundly at odds with oneself, dissonant, and misplaced. The human endeavor towards creation, which I define as the crafting externally discernible expressions of the internal imagination, allows us to shape something outside of ourselves, whether that is artistic work or a whole worldview, in ways that mirror or resonate the deepest yearnings of our inner selves.

There are two (three?) symbols referenced in this poem. I've kind of collapsed them into one, as I feel that they can come to represent the same basic yearning for a transformation of self that leads to wholeness that comes from the full expression or disclosure of the yearnings of the imagination. The Rod of Asklepios was an ancient Mediterranean symbol of healing. The single snake wrapped around the staff alluded to the snake's supposed regenerative power (symbolized by the shedding of its skin) and its potent venomous properties. The staff is also a symbol of the traveling healer. Its other name in the poem, "Nehushtan" refers to the bronze serpent which healed the Hebrews during the Exodus. (Parsing out the connections between the Greek Rod of Asklepios and the Hebrew Neushtan is beyond the scope of this post and my own meager Hebrew skills).

The winged Caduceus, a symbol inappropriately applied to the medical profession, was the staff of Hermes, a trickster and messenger god. It is also connected to Tiresias, the blind hermaphroditic prophet who counseled Oedipus, Odysseus, and others. The Caduceus symbolizes the attributes of Mercury (Hermes), which in alchemical lore signifies dual stability and fluidity, two properties held at once in the same substance, and the process of transformation.

The Rod of Asklepios
Death evading serpent,
You slide among the rocks,
And leave your troubles behind,
Along with your cast-off skin.

Envy strikes like fangs at my heel.
I’m doomed to walk, encased
In this unbending skin
That never seems to fit quite right.
My mind stretches and the soul groans
To escape this limited shell,
But I cannot slough it off so easily.

Oh liberated rival,
Nehushtan, Askelpios,
I’ll set your bronze body
On a pole to carry aloft
And harness your transformation
A magic wand, a prism for imagination,
To vivify impotent words with the
Panacea of meaning,
To craft such signs as will carry
The blossoming of my inner life
out past the walls of this fickle shell
And press upon the wax of the world
The seal of my inner transformation.

Rebirth!

Big changes (and new posts!) are on the horizon! Teaser: sustained reflections upon the discussions of a gaggle of religious studies grad students sandwiched into a back corner of a little pub....