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And now it is Christmas.
I’ve spiraled down the funnel bigtime.Now in free fall towards the New Year.
The creation of new time. A fresh start. A chance for redemption, or at least benign amnesia. But oh, the force that’s drawn me here. The holiday whirl brings manic joy to some, despair to others. Certainly it is stressful, as even a good experience may be, out of sheer emotional or physical force. The Holiday Season is like a great charge of energy that passes through our culture. We all vibrate to its pitch; whether we find it a pleasure or a pain is not wholly under our control, but recognizing the holiday as an entity, on its own terms, can help us to conduct its power with salutary, rather than deleterious result.
I’m just a little charred, this time around. I haven’t got done half of what I wanted, but I’ve tried to honor the Season in appropriate form.
But is the form appropriate? Let me try once more. I’ve mentioned the Cornucopia, how we are among its fruits. Fruits are to be consumed. If we note the depiction of the Cornucopia, it is shown as radially ribbed, somewhat suggestive of an intestine. Is this the nature of the Funnel, that we are passing through the digestive tract of an entity that supersedes the individual? Are we impelled by peristalsis of the Cosmic Gut? That’s not the metaphor you wanted? Not warm and fuzzy? Well, I have said that we must provide nourishment, as well as take it. At completion, a new cycle is begun. Appreciate your station; passing through many of these circuits, enjoying fruits, while you yourself are eaten by the World. Just so, the object of this celebration is remembered as an infant, and as a food.
Merry Christmas.
A little adumbration of a passing situation, by way of mission statement:
I saw the swollen Solstice Moon, riding wrack,shining bright as any moon I’ve ever seen.
But brighter? I don’t know.
I stood in a moonlit field last Summer, washed white as by some different sun.
I’ve watched Her from the rooftops of Manhattan, where the stars are just a rumor.
I’ve seen more moons than I can count.
We’re not as close as I would want.
If we still used the moon to find our way, you can be sure we’d gauge Her sheen by fine degrees, and know Her variance from day to day.
This is knowledge worth reclaiming, whatever its utility.
This is the knowledge I am seeking.
The late coincidence of solstice, full moon and perigee, against a background of questionable information, provides a good example of our dislocation from nature, as well as our desire for reconciliation. Although we seem to be working our way into an imaginary (or at least non-physical) space, we still inhabit bodies born of this material world, the world underlying all cultural achievement; an oft forgot foundation. Shamanism, the ur-religion of the earth, was our first technology for maintenancing and manipulating the connection between ourselves and our source. It was a practical, adaptive institution, which dealt in a sophisticated understanding of the natural world, as well as a multifaceted, though nominally “Primitive”, spiritual worldview.
The persistence of some kind of spiritual system throughout human history suggests to me necessity. The people who initiated human culture were working from necessity, to enhance survival; they wouldn’t have kept religion around if it didn’t fulfill some fundamental requirement of their existence. Do we exist in a different manner than they?
Which is not to say that they knew a truth that we don’t know today. I certainly don’t believe in magic; I only use it because it works. We require a working link between self and source, and even if we are confused about the nature of these terms, the link pertains, if only in a displaced form.
It follows from the shamanic example, that the close study of matter, and its trump card, life, will lead us into spiritual insight. This same principle was behind the hermetic mineral psychology of alchemy. That misunderstood philosophical nexus of the premodern western mind laid the foundations of modern science, even while it mined a timeless vein of mysticism. Also basic to the Primitive, or, let me say, the Traditional, worldview, is the sacred nature of Home; an insistence on the functional interconnectedness of the people and their land, replete with the understanding that the key to the deepest mysteries is always close at hand.
In this Tradition I initiate my Arboretum.
My practice has come to center upon Central Park, in the center of Manhattan. This is the place where, for many years, I have come to get my requisite dose of Nature, or at least the best hybrid form to be found in this relentlessly cultural city. I have made the Park my spiritual home page, and I’ve found that it rewards ever closer scrutiny by unfolding ever more engaging experiences in the real world, and ever deepening implications in the zone of intimation. What’s in development here is a prototype of the Spiritual Binocular. By focusing on the Park, by charting its seasons, its trees and blossoms, its birds and rocks and streams, by not merely identifying, but by knowing them (as I would I knew the Moon), I hope to share a glimpse of something more than these.
What I promise is that, for at least the next year, I will visit the Park as often as I can, with my eyes as wide as I know how to open them. I will see as much as I can see, and make report of what I find, and to the best of my abilities, try to divine such light as shines behind the fact of a tree.
I make no claim to any sort of expertise, but have been encouraged in this endeavor by good friends whose faith in me is sometimes greater than my own. With the kind assistance of the DMTree support crew, this Arboretum will be planted with images as well as words. If I tend it well, these will flower in every season. So may we all.