Category Archives: spirituality

Fertility Rites

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Eastra, the doll of the season, was telling me the other day that in ancient times the beginning of spring at or about the time of the vernal equinox was celebrated with fertility rites which were meant to encourage a general fecundity among all living things animal and vegetable.

Many cultures had gods and goddesses honored in these rites; there was Artemis in Greece, Cebele in Phrygia, Diana in Ephesus and Attis the god of ever-reviving vegetation who was believed to have been born of a virgin and who died and was reborn annually.

I was trying to imagine what these rites might have been like. They probably involved a lot of fertilizing of various seeds and things and to get everyone into the mood, to get their energy up, to really get into the re-generation mind set there probably was a bit of strong drink, wild dancing and singing.

I found out Cebele the Phrygian Earth goddess was honored with a procession involving wild, high pitched flute music and drumming, scattered rose petals and clouds of incense followed by priests and priestesses scourging themselves with sharp knives.

But that was mild compared to the cult of Ishtar that may have involved child sacrifice, ritual copulation and virginal girls dancing around large male genitalia.

Whatever the rites involved the celebrants must have thought it worked. Besides the great fun had by all (excepting the sacrificial victim) animals reproduced, babies were born and crops grew. It does seem pretty magical and I guess it was hard for most people to take for granted the resurrection of the dormant (or dead) without providing some sort of penitential assistance even though we all know Mother Earth is a gigantic incubator and really doesn’t need that kind of help.

I think I’ll celebrate Mother’s magic with a nice contemplative walk in the woods.

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Beyond Space and Time

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Free-thinking Frank was telling me the other day about this group-a movement really-of skeptics dedicated to the task of debunking all things paranormal like ESP, UFO sightings, conversing with the deceased, telekinesis, and anything else they see as magical thinking.  They’re a conscientious bunch, Frank says, avoiding generalization and attending to the particular, which means they pretty much take all claims seriously.

Employing the scientific method these skeptics seek out verifiable data and eye-witnesses with consistent, non-contradictory accounts but for the most part are seeking normal and natural explanations for the anomalous phenomena thought of as paranormal.  Frank said these skeptics find religious claims dubious as well but aren’t inclined to consider them for analysis since they rely so heavily on non-falsifiable premises.

All in all, Frank said he thought the skeptics are on the right track attempting as they are to clear the air of the fog of magical thinking, you know, putting people on the path of verifiable truth.

As I thought about it, I wasn’t so sure; I found myself skeptical of the skeptics.  It seems to me science has relinquished its claim to the ground of truth these days.  The space-time continuum among other things has really messed with our intuitive sense of the cosmos.  Do our processes of thought even correspond to the structure of nature?

So, for me, it’s time to re-examine the paranormal.  The first thing I’m going to do is dig out my birth chart and see what the stars have in store for me.


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Thoughts on Death

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I’ve been thinking about death lately.  I know, I know, but it’s winter what can I say.  Anyway, I was thinking if one is healthy and death suddenly appears it really has little effect on the suddenly deceased other than the fact he/she is dead, but, minimal pain is involved; healthy life, then extinction.

But, when I think about dying, anticipate it, I face the existential dilemma of no longer being here, in this my familiar environment which may not be perfect but certainly has pleasant aspects that I will surely miss, which is the reason, I guess, that thoughts of death are generally not thought of  in a positive light.

Which then leads me to wonder what’s next; the idea of a descent into nothingness is pretty hard for most of us to bear, which explains the various incredibly complex explanations and anticipations of preternatural existences man has thought up over the millennia.  There’s the heavenly realm, a Zanadu-like ideal city and Valhalla, the home of the gods. And then there are the more new-agie notions of rejoining the Collective Consciousness and the ancient Hindu notion of reincarnation leading eventually, if one is lucky, to re-unity with the Atman.

I guess some would call this fantastic, even delusional, but when I think of the absurdity of maintaining a sense of our individual significance in a world of billions of people and dolls in a limitless universe I guess entertaining thoughts of an after-life isn’t so terrible.

Mysterious Burial

Mysterious Burial

Medieval Vision

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Have you ever had a supernatural experience?

It could have been something you dreamed was going to occur that, later, seemed to really happen.  Or maybe you saw something that you were pretty sure couldn’t really exist in the world as we know it.  Or, as you sat contemplating things a message from beyond seemed to pop up out of nowhere, maybe from an incorporeal being.

Apparently this sort of thing happened to people living in medieval times pretty regularly; the difference for them was they had a more fluid idea of what constituted the real world then we do today.

I was reading the journal of three 12th century monks who set out to find the ‘terrestrial paradise.’  As they traveled to the east they encountered little people ‘no more than two feet high’ and went through a mountain region where there were basilisks, unicorns and dragons.  They passed through a region of constant darkness where ‘mournful shrieking came from sinners drowning in a sea of serpents’ and ‘a giant chained between two boulders’ was being tortured with fire…..  Well, the account goes on and on, one extraordinary event after another.

In my rationalistic way of thinking it all seems very imaginative.  They simply were encountering things they had never seen before and were interpreting them in terms of the magical world in which they lived.

I don’t know if I should be happy in my understanding of the natural world or sad in my inability to realize a truly magical kingdom.

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At the Marae

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Do you think that there’s any chance there may truly be a unifying essence or ground of being that is shared by all mankind?  You know, something buried deep within our psyches that we’ve somehow lost track of these days when divisiveness seems so prevalent.

I was thinking back recently to a time a few years ago when I was among the Maori people in Aotearoa (the long white cloud) which is the name the Maori have for the islands of New Zealand.  Before these folks were inundated with western materialism and capitalistic pursuits (not to mention Christianity) they basked in the natural beauty and mana (what they call spiritual power) around them.

The mana the people inherited from their revered ancestors extended to Tangaroa (the sea) and Tane (the forest) and all of nature in a beautiful Cosmic Unity.  As long as tapu was respected everything went along pretty well.

Tapu is spiritual power like mana that everyone has and some objects and places have but some people and places have more tapu then others.  Everyone understands that when strong tapu is encountered it is important to act with deference so as to keep you spiritually strong and not upset the delicate cosmic balance.

While in Aotearoa I was allowed to visit a Marae, which is a sacred meeting place were tapu is particularly strong.  Upon entering tribute was paid to the ancestral spirits in recognition of the origins of the mana or life force shared by everyone in the iwi (all the people).

So, after thinking about it, I’m just wondering, if we’ve lost track of the mana around and within all of us and the tapu of our neighbors and acquaintances, maybe we should be searching for a sacred place where we can all come together and find our common ground.

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Numinous and Ineffable

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Have you ever thought about or had the desire to escape the mundane and sometimes harsh realities of everyday existence?  I don’t mean simply taking a road trip to Disneyworld but to actually transcend existence, leave the physical world behind and enter the realm of the numinous and ineffable.

Of course one problem might be that even if one could figure out how to get there this extra-physical place might not be all that pleasant, it being numinous and ineffable and all, but I was thinking, if I could go there it certainly would help put things into perspective.  I could view problems that seem to be so important and urgent in the here and now in a detached manner that, it seems to me, might be beneficial to my well-being as well as to finding solutions to those problems.

I was reading that certain shamans can make such a journey; they enter into an ecstatic state and actually leave their bodies to journey with their spirit helpers to the land of the dead where they can find answers to important questions that only the dead can answer.

Apparently in order to get to this point a shaman has to undergo some fairly extreme procedures.  Among the Buryat people of Siberia the future shaman must die and have his flesh scraped from his bones and his organs removed and then be reconstructed and reanimated by the spirit forces in order to gain the power to make his passage to the numinous and ineffable land of the dead.

I’m just not sure, as much as I’d like to see what the numinous and ineffable looks like, that I’m prepared to accept such a sacrifice even though my bodily transformation would probably have more to do with melted plastic than bone scraping.

I guess, for me, the numinous and ineffable will have to remain numinous and ineffable.

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Beyond the Grave

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I see by the calendar Dia de Muertos, the Day of the Dead, is approaching.  Death isn’t something dolls, particularly plastic ones, think about very much but at this time of the year, with nature racing toward dormancy, the topic tends to come to mind.

In medieval times death was on everyone’s mind daily.  The Black Plague invited Death to be a regular visitor if not a live-in house guest.  She became so well-known she starred in a regularly performed play called the Danse Macabre.  In the play the Black Angel would appear and along with her spirit helpers the psychopomps  invite victims to accompany them beyond the grave; the beyond being, I guess, a promised land of paradise.

Throughout history (and even earlier than that I bet) people have sensed an existence beyond the grave:  The ancient Egyptians conceived of a Ka or immaterial double that would live on after the demise of the physical body so the deceased would be able to keep doing the same fun things they had always done when alive.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was inclined to believe that, upon death, an individual’s will or essence of being would be reunited with it’s Cosmic origins: a sort of collective world soul (Plato called it the anima mundi) from which all life originates and subsequently returns; it’s a pretty cool idea of togetherness even though one wouldn’t really be aware of it because one’s memory and ego would cease to exist.

The Hindu people understand the universe to be eternal and that rebirth will continue to happen until enlightenment of the soul propels a leap into the infinite, which, I guess must be a bit like Arthur’s cosmic origins only they call it the Atman.

Contemporary Trans-humanists anticipate a situation in which one’s brain activity is downloaded to a computer and since the brain is where one’s being resides one can expect to live on forever provided someone is around to keep the batteries charged.

I’m sure I’m like everyone else in hoping the Black Angel stays away for a while but when it does come time for me to leave the realm of the physical, wherever  I end up, I hope I will have left behind a reasonably positive image for my friends to remember me by.

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Life Stories

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Friends and I were sitting around the other day chatting over afternoon tea. Sister Chloe got into talking about the providential nature of her life: How God had seen fit to bless her with strong, supportive parents who had taught her right from wrong, follow the Golden Rule, do no harm and help others when possible and to follow the path that God had laid out for her.  She acknowledged God’s ways were sometimes mysterious and were not always easy to understand, like when her brother was left on the driveway behind the family car and subsequently ended up looking like Flat Stanley.  She questioned how God could let that happen but said she believes he must have had his reasons as he does for everything.

Well, Lala then proceeded to offer that she saw her life in quite different terms.  Fortune, she said, had been kind to her.  Following a particularly potent incantation her father had won the favors of a Toys-R-Us manager and ended up being featured in a toy exhibit which enabled him to secure a fine home for the family.  Even though the family had had their share of bad occurrences, mother having been purchased by a quite rowdy child and very likely ended up moldering in a damp basement her stuffing infested with centipedes and spiders,  cosmic justice had, for the most part, shined upon her and she hoped the stars would continue to do so.  She showed us an amulet she was wearing that came from her ancient ancestors.  She felt sure this would continue to protect her through the travails of life.

Then it was my turn.  I told them that my father was fond of telling us when difficulties arose that there was no reason to fear unpleasantness or worry about things because what would be would be and we had the freedom to make choices in our lives that would lead us, in all probability, provided they were wise choices, to a content and happy life.  I told them this advice had worked out pretty well, that I’ve always done well in school, able to overlook the prejudices of my human classmates and even the potentially devastating event of my aunt being lost in a family move (I think the dog carried her off and buried her somewhere) was met by us all with stoic acceptance.  I said that I was content in my ability to choose and felt comfortable letting each day unfold as it will.

Sister Chloe asked me how I can go about without faith in the existence of a benevolent overseer.  Lala asked Chloe how she could possibly believe her ‘Superman in the sky’ could care about the events in her life.  I asked how either of them could attribute future occurrences to the Supernatural.

As I poured our second cup of tea we all agreed it was time to change the subject.  We decided to talk about the weather.

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Karma

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Hindu believers see existence as never ending; people are born into being, live their lives and die only to be reborn, hopefully into a better situation than they left.  Although, if they aren’t lucky or haven’t accumulated enough good karma they might end up as a lesser animal or even inanimate like a rock (or a doll).

The skeptic in me thinks they might very well have gotten this idea by watching plant and animal life cycle through the seasons year after year but who am I to question an age-old belief embraced by so many people.

So, when I look at some of the Hindu gods I have to wonder what kind of karma they accrued in their previous lives.  Take Ganesha: human body, elephant head and lots of arms.  The story goes he was born of Shiva and Parvati both of whom had lots of arms so that attribute may have been hereditary, but it certainly doesn’t explain the elephant head.

If we assume Ganesha accumulated, in previous lives, sufficient good karma to become a god then maybe an elephant head is superior to a human head; maybe Ganesha is further along the karmic path than anyone else.

I’m not sure how to think about my own karmic destiny.  Considering the present quality of my construction my previous life must not have been all that wonderful.  Maybe if I’m exceptional this life I’ll come back as …………….a Barbie?

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Fishers of Men

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I’ve been wondering lately about what happened to the indigenous tribal groups that used to be so prevalent in the desert southwest.  Apparently, in the 16th century Spanish explorers along with Christian missionaries sailed westward to claim lands in the new world.  When they came across native populations the missionaries immediately set about trying to convert them believing they had the true path to salvation even though the indigenous people didn’t particularly feel the need to be saved since their own religions , which they had been practicing for thousands of years, worked pretty well.

There was one tribal group in northern Mexico, the Tarahumara people, who listened to the missionaries’ stories, then thought about it and changed things around so that God was married to the Virgin Mary and the Devil was God’s brother.

Well, I guess this didn’t sit too well with the missionaries because then they told the Tarahamara’s that if they didn’t believe in the true God and help build a mission they would surely go to Hell.  So the people went along and built a chapel so the missionaries could hold religious events but they still secretly consulted the local Shaman when they had serious questions to put before the ancestral spirits.

The missionaries, however, were unrelenting.  Before long they had the people working 9 to 5 in the mission gardens and were re-educating the children in the mission schools.

As sad as this story is I guess there is a bright side.  The gaming industry has been a God send for many native peoples.  I suppose you could call it Montezuma’s revenge.

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