Miracles Of Bach

I first listened to Bach's partita number 2 for solo violin about 35 years ago. I never heard it played like this, however.

Around the year 1720, God spoke to Johann Sebastian Bach, and out came the partitas. 277 years later, the God did the same again, with Hilary Hahn, and out came her playing of the music. That's how it seems to me, at least.

Visitors to Pale Green Vortex will know that the word 'God' is used carefully and sparingly around here. It is a word that comes fraught with difficulty, prejudice, and misunderstanding. When it does get used hereabouts, in a positive sense at least, it does so more as a manifestation of myth and archetype, of a mystical realm, maybe, outside any literalism or dogmatism. It is Source, the root of manifestation. Its use may or may not have much to do with the way it is commonly perceived within the mainstream monotheistic religions.

Yet God is the word most appropriate for what can manifest through this piece of music in the hands of the right violinist. Bach's composition is a miracle. and, to compound the miracle, it is played by Hilary Hahn, at the age of seventeen or eighteen. Did she know what she was doing? For what she was acting as divinely-inspired vessel?

"On a visceral level, it pierces my soul": thus goes one comment on YouTube. It is a clumsy mish-mash of ideas and images; nevertheless, it approximates to my own experience of listening to Hilary Hahn playing the Bach partitas. This music is typically stark, skeleton-like, even, in keeping with Bach's composing it for one Prince Leopold, who was a no-frills Lutheran. Hilary Hahn, however, imbues it with warmth, clothes it in flesh, a wonder which goes to enhance, rather than detract from, its spiritual power. This is a miracle which, I provocatively suggest, only a woman could achieve.

So we have the superficial, the herd, the thoughtless and soul-deprived, following the trends heedlessly; those who fail to give birth to hope, as related in my previous blog piece. And we have Hilary Hahn playing Bach. Far, it seems, one from the other.

At all times, maybe, this has been the pattern. A sea of floundering beings; and, scattered amongst them, individual sparks of real inspiration, of divinity. Flashes of grace, of wonder, of connection with Source; of devotion to the Good, the True, the Beautiful. At times these rare beings can manifest more-or-less publically; at other times they need to lay low, their deeper realities lived in secret, for fear of ridicule, persecution, torture, or worse. Or they may take on a disguise, living esoterically under cover of the exoteric. Whichever, my heart goes out to the beings who embody something of the divine spirit, the world soul, the daimon, the God, the goddesses and gods. I give mighty thanks.

Find Hilary Hahn playing Bach Partita no 2 on, surprise, surprise:  www.youtube.com


    

Five Hours in Barcelona

Part One

I recently had cause to visit the Mediterranean island of Ibiza for several days. The place seems to be a curious mixture of ancient history and mythology, the jet-set life, quiet beaches and tranquil forests, and party-party-party.

I wasn't there primarily for any of these, though, but to attend a wedding. Getting to Ibiza from the Highlands of Scotland is just a little more involved than two-hours on the Ryanair or EasyJet express that's the way from London. No, it's three hours by rail or road to Edinburgh, hotel overnight, before flights the following morning, change Madrid (way out) or Barcelona (return trip).

It was a four-hour stopover in Madrid, five in Barcelona; I can report that the airport in Barcelona is infinitely more pleasant for such a wait than is that of its central Spanish counterpart. Both provided ample opportunity for looking around, checking out what's going down, etc. Personal sensitivity dial adjusted accordingly, so as to prevent total exhaustion by the experience.

Airport waiting areas have little to commend them. They are, however, a great place to watch people, along with various aspects to those people's life. One glaring and discomforting observation was the complete disconnect between propaganda (what we are told life is) and reality (what people actually do). On the one hand, dire warnings about human-induced global warming continue to flood out of high-level summit meetings of extremely important people. Simultaneously, more and more of the affluent sections of western populations (I include here folk from India, China, and the rest, whose lifestyle and aspirations have been effectively westernised) gad around the planet like it's just a millpond. Folk use air travel the way that I use the local bus. The number of people who travel halfway round the world simply to do business at a meeting in Dubai or Singapore has skyrocketed over the past thirty years; I know quite a few people who conduct their life in this manner personally, a situation that would have been impossible until recently. Officially, this is all frazzling us to cinders, but nobody says a peep.

So, at the airport we can observe the total disconnect. I also observed something else, which for me was all the more wondrous. Everyone - or nearly everyone - is absorbed in their machines. Nobody stops, ponders, breathes in the life around them, absorbs in mystical quietude the deeper layers to what is going on. No. It's fast, sometimes frantic, head-down, and relentless. Info, info, info, the main medium for consumption. Substantial communication between individuals is out, soon to be rendered emotionally impossible. Facebook, What's App, Instagram, Twitter, whatever else people use these days. Selfies, photos of Fred at the pub, more photos of Millie the poodle, info about what Shirley had for lunch, what she's watching on tele, how long it took to get home from work. Selfies, more selfies, smile please. This would appear to be the substance of people's lives, the end product of this magnificent culture of ours.

In amongst this endless procession of modern life, its relentless march, the masses of people signed up to it without even realising they've taken out the subscription, something unexpected happened. I gave up hope. I finally gave up all hope for the mass of humanity. Or, rather, any vestiges of hope that I had been clinging onto finally drained away. I was a million miles from Neil Kramer and his optimism about the effects of growing consciousness among more people, and the great things about to happen. No. There really was no hope.

It's not that people are horrible. I am sure that many of those I witnessed at Barcelona airport are friendly, sympathetic, quite caring and warm. Interesting to speak to: more than me, no doubt. There was no sense of antipathy on my part. No. It was simply a question of people's ignorance, of wanton thoughtlessness, of signing up to a programme without realising, a programme that leads to greater superficiality, stupidity. A programme devised to contain, to keep the individual as a sub-individual, in a tiny crappy box within an enormous and magnificent universe. A programme that only leads further and ever further from deeper realities, from soul, from god. Absorption in the trivialities of daily life on Facebook takes us far from god, that is the inescapable essence of the matter. It leads far from the direct personal experience of awe in the presence of the sacred, the divine, call it what you will. It cannot be properly excused.....

Funnily enough, rather than experience panic, existential angst, or personal trauma, after the 'moment of no hope', I felt a sense of relief and relaxation come over me. Whether or not I personally felt hope would make not one iota of difference to the fates of the millions of people out there anyway. Life would unfold as appropriate whatever my feelings about it all. Further, I felt that, were everything to go up in flames, or whatever medium the angry gods might prefer, it wouldn't constitute such a disaster after all. For sure, I'd rather us all stick around and try to make a decent fist of things. But, in the cool clear light of day, the absence of people who have strayed so far from the path of divinity, who have betrayed, or at the least ignored or forgotten, the needs of their soul, would hardly count as tragic. The grand experiment wasn't turning out too well, so starting again from the beginning might not be such a terrible idea after all. And while that may sound harsh, it seems to come accompanied by the ring of truth.

What is hope anyway? Maybe it warrants a little monograph, under the umbrella of the Star card in the Tarot. It seems to be a particular response to our ability to envisage the future, in this case in a better form than is the present. As a survival mechanism, helping people to get out of bed in the morning, it serves a purpose. But beyond that? It could quite possibly be put into that bag of unnecessary attitudes and feelings to be thrown out in an act of psychic uncluttering. Whether or not I personally feel 'hope' probably makes little difference to what I do or don't do during the day. If something turns up that I sense requires me to jump up and down, to generally create a stink, I shall still do so.

Part Two

A recurrent theme on Pale Green Vortex has been the toxic nature of 'news'; at least 'news' as presented in the mainstream media, and indeed in good parts of the independent and alternative versions as well. It deceives, telling the unwary what to think and, as significantly, what is important in the first place.

I personally observe a conscious distance from these sources of falseness and negative programming. I will typically check one or two mainstream outlets daily, taking roughly three minutes of my time (I mean this literally). That is plenty to get a good idea of what topics are being pushed today; and, on the rare occasion when there is something to be followed up, I shall proceed to do so. The independent media I check less frequently, but will invariably spend a little longer perusing.

This strategy has enabled me to develop a far more objective view of what is going on. It's the same with many things: full immersion makes a wider perspective difficult, if not impossible (hence the need for couples to seek outside help with their relationship problems, even if they are both qualified therapists). As with the epiphany in Barcelona, I find an enormous disconnect to be in place. Check out the headlines. Daily, there are stories given great prominence on the themes of racism, sexism, gender inequalities and injustices, discrimination against transgender folk, people being nasty against people with black skins or of Muslim faith. You get the picture. These, we are being told, are the issues, the important stories, the 'news' for today.

This is the biggest bullshit you will encounter in your life. For the vast majority of folk, these are 'issues' which effect them not one bit ever, or only on a superficial level. For most people, this is not 'news' at all. Yet every day it is forced down the throats of the unwary, as being the big problem of the day. It is this incredible disconnect that leads to the inevitable conclusion that 'news' is not news at all. It is an agenda in operation, a programming, to beat down people's resistance, until they finally submit to a set of values, a way of thinking, which someone somewhere has deemed is what is good. In truth, like Facebook, it leads far from our authenticity, far from the divine. If 'evil' exists, it is this: whatever leads us far away from our sacredness. And race, sex, and gender issues as presented in the mainstream media do so because they seek to eliminate our sense of distinctness, of being a unique and different being.

On a metaphysical level, the recognition and valuing of distinctions, as in the union of opposites, appears to be an essential prerequisite to 'wholeness', entering into the divine, call it what you will. So by attempting to remove our sense of sex ie the masculine and feminine within life, this agenda is in effect setting out to bar our personal contact with the sacred. 'God becomes self aware through the experience of opposites.' So, if evil exists, then this is it - in my book, at least.

Part Three

All of which brings us neatly to 'The Secret Covenant of the Illuminati'. This is a text that turned up in relatively recent times; it sounds super scary, nefariously nasty. The one thing that's sure about the Secret Covenant of the Illuminati is that it isn't written by a member of the Illuminati. It is far more likely the creation of some bloke waiting for the delayed late night train to Bolton. Nevertheless, the document is a brilliant expression of what might be said by an Illuminatus, or chief archon, or whoever or whatever may be lurking in the shadows, should they wish to make their actions and motives known. The Secret Covenant points up succinctly many of the inconsistencies and incongruities surrounding events, ideas, 'news', all of which lead one inevitably to smelling a very stinky rat somewhere. It is a decent checklist of the horrors, incongruities, and vicious weirdness, that may lead any reasonably intelligent person to conclude that all is not as it is claimed to be.

The biggest giveaway, or deception if you prefer, is the point where the Illuminati claim that they are enlightened (that is, after all, the meaning of their name: illumination). Whatever they may be, the Illuminati ain't enlightened. The term 'enlightenment' is generally taken as referring to a state of non-duality, the implications of which include a certain connectedness and fellow-feeling for the rest of life. The mentality that spawns illuminati-hood, on the other hand, is sharply and exaggeratedly polarised - as starkly dual as you can get. It feeds on the lust for, and sadistic enjoyment of, domination and control over other beings. If you sense your one-ness, for want of a better term, with others and the rest of the world, that thirst for control just won't exist. It cannot do so. If they are anything, the Illuminati are likely to be sad, tormented beings who have access to other dimensional worlds in extremely darkly polarised form.

Should you wish to check out the secrets of the Illuminati's covenant - and it is worth five minutes of ones life to do so - they are not so secret after all. In fact, they can be easily found on YouTube.

Tarot and the Martin Luther Factor

The most popular Tarot deck by far, and the one which many people will associate exclusively with the word 'Tarot', is that variously known as the Rider-Waite or Waite-Smith deck. It is not, however, a Tarot that I much resonate with personally or feel the wish to use.

There are two main 'difficulties' which present themselves with the Waite-Smith. First up is the undoubted Christian influence on some of the imagery, and hence on the nuances of meaning associated with the cards. This influence is overt in some of the images: Judgement, for instance. The issue first came to light for me with regard to the Hierophant card (see my post 'Hierophantic Revisitings' dated 24/06/2016), but as time has passed I have come to see that Christian touch as all-pervasive. It acts like a wash over everything.

The second element -related to the Christianism - is the aesthetic. Some people seem to like them, but I find the figures stiff, lifeless and lacking in joy, cartoon-like (nothing wrong with cartoon, but quite bad cartoon at that). Little of the magnificence of archetypal manifestation jumps out at me from these cards.

The creator-in-chief of this deck was Arthur Waite, a Christian mystic with his roots in the Catholic tradition. The artist, Pamela Colman Smith, converted to Catholicism shortly after completing the Tarot deck. Yet, despite the Catholic leanings of its creators, the Waite-Smith Tarot oozes a Protestant aesthetic and Protestant ethic as I experience it. The figures are in the main gaunt, dour, static, weighed down with the seriousness of something or another. Delight in the sensuous aspect of life is notable through its absence. The figures are manifestations, if you like, of Logos; Eros, meanwhile, has gone missing.

It's a thing about Protestantism in general, its puritan strains in particular: its unease with, fear of, even, the image, the human form. It's an old story, harking back to the days of the Reformation and the destruction of images in churches. Plain, simple, austere, and with a total absence of sensuous response: these are the hallmarks of worship in such places, reflecting a flight from the flesh, from the body; from the Word made flesh, from the sacred expressed through the beauty of human form, through the realm of the senses. For all its faults, the Catholic side of Christianism has at least held onto this element, the sacred image.

These characteristics are amply reflected in the history of  the visual arts. On the whole, the Protestant countries have given us landscape art. Landscapes and still life - pots of flowers and dead lobsters in bowls. Think 'British art' and you think Constable, Turner: cornfields, haywains, sunrises and sunsets. The human form is painted by Gainsborough, but it is stiff, formal, as far from the sacred image as possible. And in more modern times there is Francis Bacon, testament to the inability to rise up in joy at the sight of archetypal beauty. More comfortable and at home with the ugly than with the beautiful. Contrast this with what's come from the Catholic-based nations, especially those south of the Alps: Titian, Veronese, Michelangelo, Caravaggio (OK, a dodgy character....). The gods speak through the splendour of lovingly-created human forms, the splendour of silks and satins, the radiance of youthful flesh - and sometimes the flesh of the ancient and decrepit.

Actually, I sometimes land too much at the feet of Christianism. It's a trend that started way before Jesus Christ turned up on the scene, and in which Christianity is merely one player. An essay by D.H.Lawrence, called 'Puritanism and the Arts', much of which I find to be excellent, covers some aspects of this theme. He writes of the growth of the 'spiritual-mental' consciousness at the expense of the instinctive-intuitive consciousness, a process which Lawrence articulates both clearly and with passion. It's worth quoting a little from this essay of his. "The dread of the instincts included the dread of intuitional awareness. 'Beauty is a snare' - 'Beauty is but skin-deep' - 'Handsome is as handsome does' - 'Looks don't count' - 'Don't judge by appearances' - if we only realised it, there are thousands of these vile proverbs which have been dinned into us for over two hundred years. They are all of them false." And "This is the real pivot of bourgeois consciousness in all countries: fear and hate of the instinctive, intuitional procreative body in man or woman. But of course this fear and hate had to take on a righteous appearance, so it became moral, said that the instincts, intuitions ..... were evil, and promised a reward for their suppression....." Lawrence doesn't say so, but maybe we're back with Luther: suppress, have faith, and your reward shall be in heaven.

What is true for visual art in general applies to Tarot in particular: Tarot is, put one way, an attempt to communicate the workings of consciousness and the universe through the medium of image. Dark, mysterious, lunar, sensuous, embodied, feminine: these are a few of the adjectives which come to mind if I consider what appeals to, and therefore works for, me in the realm of Tarot today. It is no accident that most of the Tarot decks which speak to me are creations of artists from non-Protestant cultures. Some of the 'dark' and 'gothic' decks I have discovered have a particular resonance. OK, they might be a bit obsessed with bats, dragons, and fairy-like half-human female creatures with long fingernails and streaks of blood across their forehead; I can live with that.

Best of all, in my view, are the Tarots by Luis Royo, in particular his 'Dark Tarot'. Read about this deck and words like 'primal', 'empowering', 'confronting', and 'darkly beautiful' turn up.

Royo hails from Spain, and his art work literally could not be created by anybody from north of the Alps (and Pyrenees). If Titian were alive today, he would paint like Royo, I imagine. He is a true artist, with a remarkable grasp of how to communicate through the medium of the human body, especially the female form. If you are averse to depictions of scantily-clad warrior nymphs who sometimes fail to tick any politically-correct boxes, stay away from the art and Tarot of Luis Royo. But while a few of his paintings and drawings come close to being mere pin-ups, many capture real mythical and archetypal themes. They are meditations on the relationship of basic dualities: sun and moon, beauty and ugliness, sweetness and terror, dark and light, feminine and masculine, beauty and beast. Royo is an alchemist for our age.

Some of Royo's cards are also, by the way, achingly beautiful, such as the magnificent 'Judgement' card accompanying this post. And, interestingly (to me), the Royo Dark Tarot seems to have more female than male enthusiasts, despite some of its images, which the tedious and deluded Protestant mindset will undoubtedly condemn as 'sexist'. Maybe some males are intimidated, I don't know.

That's it for now. There may be more on the dark tarots in future. Or maybe not. I'm not sure where I'm going at the moment, with this blog or anything else.... if anywhere at all. New voices wanting to be heard, but how......?

Images: The Judgement card.        Top: Waite-Smith Tarot
                                                    Centre: Gothic Tarot
                                                    Bottom: Royo Dark Tarot

Who was Shenrab Miwoche Really?

You may not have come across Shenrab Miwoche. Outside a smallish circle of cognescenti, he is little-known. Take it from me, though, he is an extremely interesting character. You see, Shenrab Miwoche lived a long long time ago......

Shenrab Miwoche is the enlightened, realised, founding figure of the Bon-Po tradition. The Bons were the pre-Buddhist - we might say indigenous - peoples of Tibet, with their own spiritual/shamanic beliefs and practices, until the Buddhists came along and took over. It is worth remembering that, though less vicious than its Christian and Muslim counterparts, as a mainstream exoteric system, Buddhism too has its imperial, conquistador-type aspect.

The thing is that, according to many of the Bon sources, Shenrab Miwoche lived 18000 years ago. "Ha! Ha!" I can hear the scholars and academics scoff. "That's stupid. In fact, that's ridiculous." True - we have no 'hard facts', no 'hard data', the gold of our modern culture, on Shenrab. But is there anything so special about that? Take Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha of our times. How many sources will tell you that he was born in 563 BCE, and died 80 years later, in 483 BCE? But different traditions have varying - some wildly so - dates for the life of the Buddha. It is a classic case of 'truth', generally recognised 'truth', being a fabrication for the purpose of convenience. We don't really know. It just makes for a neater story.

The same goes for our local buddie, Jesus Christ. His 'story' is well-established, but from what I have gleaned, there is precious little 'hard data' on his life - or indeed whether such a character really roamed the face of this Earth at all.

We know very little about the literal Shenrab Miwoche. But how much do we know about most of what is so easily accepted as 'truth' anyway? Take Syria. Everyone knows about Syria, it seems. Everybody has an opinion, has a view. But how much do you know about Syria really? 'Personal expertise' is a fiction nowadays based upon dodgy youtube videos, facebook posts, 'analysis' by armchair specialists, and that's that. Do you really know anything much about Assad? Does he really like killing and maiming his own kind with chemical weapons, knowingly incurring the wrath of the rest of the world? Most of us know as much about Syria as we do about Shenrab Miwoche. Too many of us still go along with the bad guys (Syria and Russia) against the good guys (USA, NATO, Syrian rebels) fantasy, which is fuelled by the mass of people who have been too lazy spiritually to (in Jungian terminology) integrate their own shadow side, thus leaving it hanging to dry in the outside world, where it is easy meat for the latest story in town. A story which is fed to us through organs of propaganda of whatever political leaning: the BBC, the Telegraph, the Guardian, whatever.

Paradoxically, the modern spurning of myth and of mythological truth in favour of 'hard facts and statistics', the prima materia of our age, renders people especially vulnerable to deception and manipulation. Give them a few 'facts' and they will believe anything that the propaganda machine wants them to.

Where our credulity with Shenrab Miwoche is really stretched to the limit is when we take a look at the details of his life. His story is known mainly through termas, 'hidden treasures' discovered and taken out by accomplished spiritual practitioners called tertons. According to the story related through the termas, his life journey is almost identical with that of the well-known Buddha from 2500 years ago. He was born into a royal family, lived an early life of luxury in a palace, before leaving behind family and friends at the age of 31 in order to live as a renunciate. He died at the age of 82.

Down even to the details of age, this is practically a carbon copy of what you'll find in most 'life stories of the Buddha'. There may be a few hard-headed literalists who will insist that this is the pattern by which all Buddhas live, but that, frankly, is ridiculous. I have little doubt that the original 'life of Shenrab Miwoche' was very different. What we are presented with is a re-invention by Buddhists over the earlier story. It is an early example of what is currently known as 'fake news'.

While there might have been some kind of dancing girls to provide entertainment, there's no way that folk lived in palaces 18000 years ago. Whatever evidence we have suggests that the notion of a renunciate's life is also a far more recent happening. The tale of Shenrab Miwoche has been re-cast in the light of the later arrival of solar cultures and their attendant mythologies: 'Buddha as sun god'. The predominant guise of our current Buddha is as transcendental sun god (see the much-missed Acharya S. for more on this). He appears at a time when solar mentality was taking over as the defining paradigm across the cultures of Asia, Europe, and North Africa, and this shift is transposed onto poor old Shenrab. Our great Bon-po hero issues from a period far before all that, when for sure lunar mythology was more prominent; speculatively, a greater harmony between sun and moon then held firm.

The story also tells us that Shenrab Miwoche led most of his life in what is now the region of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and northern Afghanistan, once upon a time a marvellously fascinating area of our magnificent planet. It was not, however, an ordinary geographical location which tourists can visit, but a hidden location (i.e. existing in another dimension). He visited Tibet only once, but that was enough. A pivotal moment.

There was a time when I considered the study of history as among the more noble pursuits. It was the discovery of truth, and through seeing where we have come from maybe shedding a little light upon who we are today. No longer. Aside from its study by a handful of researchers of high integrity, largely found outside of formal academic institutions, history is among the shadiest and most shifty of subjects. When we are presented with 'historical facts', they have normally passed through a process of filtering, suppression, and often plain destruction of knowledge. 'Reality' as provided by mainstream history is highly selective and selected; its main function is all too often that of tribal propaganda, rather than open education.

It is ironic that, at a time when the amount of information and data on offer is unprecedented, and when the majority of people take this as their baseline for what is real, we actually know so little. I recently met a somewhat troubled somebody who told me straight that he no longer knows what or who to believe. This is by and large the reality today. We need to learn to discern (one of Neil Kramer's favourite words), and to discern fiercely. At the same time, there is a challenge in facing up to the situation, and learning to live in and with this state of unknowing. What is dished up as news, history, reality, truth, is just another case like the story of Shenrab Miwoche.      

Images: Top: Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche
             Bottom: Ancestor, the Wildwood Tarot. Maybe this is closer to the real Miwoche...

Fairy Tales, Myths, and the Rest.....

It has been evident for some time to me that myth, fairy story, Jung and archetypal psychology, and aspects to shamanic practice, are all treading similar ground. Any regular reader of Pale Green Vortex will find it evident that I find it evident....

So here's a friendly and heartening site with a fascinating set of articles. Easy to read, and covering important stuff. Check out especially the section on 'folkloricforays':

www.carolynemerick.com

Sol y Luna

Part One

It's a long-delayed, much-needed (by me, anyhow, probably by nobody else on the planet....) domestic project. The little-used, little-in-size (what's with all the hyphenated adjectives today?) room upstairs at the front of the house is being painstakingly transformed. I'm not much good at this kind of thing: it all takes ages, step by little step. But the room is in process of snailpace conversion into......what?..... an alchemist's cave? Not really: caves don't normally locate themselves on the first floor, overlooking trees and hills beyond. Alchemist's den? The leonine quality isn't really me. Magician's workshop? Escape? Retreat? It's all beginning to sound a bit pretentious anyway. It will be a place to do Tarot, a bit of writing, and a bit of meditation stuff.

Consolidating, organising, processing are just three of the alchemical moves that have come into operation over recent weeks. One such has involved collecting together the various writing projects that I have done since, well, when I was twenty years old. Some of this stuff is fascinating, almost like newly-discovered treasure; some is being retained for historical purposes only; a few scraps of songs and poems are heading for the recycling ......

Alongside the items with which I am fully familiar are substantial pieces of writing that I had forgotten about. 'Personal identification' with some of it is pretty tenuous: the being who came up with some of that material seems related to the one on Pale Green Vortex today only in a most vague and wispy way. At the same time, revisiting my life-work of writing endeavours throws into full relief the patterns which have gone to make up a life.

I was particularly shocked - that's the best word for it - by a large A4 exercise book dating back to 1983, I would guess. It contains some writing that I did while on a rather long solitary retreat in the south of Spain. Page upon page upon page about Italian Renaissance art. In-depth studies of paintings, themes, the change from Byzantine to Renaissance styles, serious stuff. All sitting alongside analysis of the transformations in perception psychologically and spiritually which apparently accompanied these changes.

I struggle to recognise the guy who wrote all these weighty pieces; the analysis is far from how I see life nowadays. I am shocked by the facility with which 'I' write about God, the Son of God, the Virgin Mary in these paintings without cringeing or apologising. I suppose that I was seeing beyond the literalistic meanings given to these figures by exoteric Christianity to their more symbolic, archetypal aspects and universal qualities. I am also shocked by some of the themes which emerge in these essays. The outer garments are different, but the questions are in essence the same as some which continue to litter the posts on Pale Green Vortex over thirty years on.

Take these quotes from a dense and lengthy piece entitled 'The Annunciation'. "The angel is a messenger....... an intermediary between two worlds...... between man and god, between man and the divine....... The angel appears, and he announces....." Then, as if that's not enough, we've got Mary: "Like the angel, Mary is also, in her way, an intermediary......... intermediary between humanity and the son of god." Art, too, served this function, according to the author of these pieces; "True art...... like an angel, serves as a mediator between the human and the absolute."

There is pretty much zero personal resonance with this stuff today, maybe reflecting the reality that 'I' am better imagined as a flow, a stream, rather than as a being with any fixed attributes. Nevertheless, there is continuity between angels and the Virgin Mary on the one hand, and those fascinations which continue to the day, with Soul and with Anima. It is the same theme, attempting to work itself out in various ways.

The other thread running between the 'then' and the 'now' involves differences, dualities, pairs which are conceived as opposites. In the mid-1980s 'I' was preoccupied with the 'classical' (Apollonian) and 'romantic' (Dionysian) spirits. The former, according to my essays, emphasised clarity, order, rising above the unruly passions. The latter embraced the energy of passion, divine chaos and unpredictability. The aim was to bring about a certain synthesis, a fusion in which something greater than the parts was created. This endeavour 'I' saw as epitomised in the life and work of Michelangelo. And today, this stuff continues to find voice in alchemy (not that I have gone into alchemy in great depth), in my 'inner work' on light and dark, masculine and feminine, the basic polarities.

It is as if, when we turn up on this planet, the gods give us a task, or number of tasks, that will form the basis for our 'inner work' this time round. "Here you go, buddie. Soul, anima, the keeper of the keys: you need to really check that out. Duality - it's basic. See what you can do. Good luck, and see you next time round." Thus they spoke, giving out the koans for this lifetime, as this particular stream of consciousness hurtled through the bardo en route to incarnation in Buckinghamshire in the springtime of 1953.

Part Two

There are recurrent themes which go to make up my 'life work', it seems. At the same time, there is a certain type of progression - not so much as a tedious straight line, aiming arrowlike towards its predetermined destination, but more as a ziggly zaggly path, running hither and thither, passing through brambles, thickets, on the edge of precipitous slopes, but heading vaguely in a certain direction. Or maybe it's not a line at all: more of a curve, a parabola, possibly ending up as a circle; I don't really know.

It is as if my life has taken on different shades, different hues, as the years have passed. The rainbow of colours expresses in different proportions with time.

The hues of life unmistakeably changed after my midlife, after my descent into darkness in New Zealand. There is a good quote from Jung (which I can't locate!), about how, the moment our life reaches its zenith, its midday, its texture begins to change with the long, slow descent towards midnight. "The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it" - Jung again. This is not an accurate description of my life's unique shape, but there is a degree of resonance all the same. The sun begins to set, and the moon comes up.

I shall speak of solar and lunar rather than masculine and feminine. Masculine and feminine are vague, indistinct, impossible-to-define and pin-down kind of words. Nevertheless, many people have strong and fixed views of their meanings, all too often accompanied by a jolly good dose of politically correct brain dross. Solar and lunar are similarly vague, indistinct, impossible to define. However, they are words which come out of the mythical realm, and people are sufficiently uncomfortable with them to jump to fixed definitions and tedious ideological standpoints.

Moon was never absent; yet the early decades of life were lived under the relentless influence of the sun. Vision, ideals, glory, heroism all loom large in my Renaissance writings of the 1980s. My ordained Buddhist name bespeaks heroes and sparkling jewels; the Bodhisattva visualisation that was conferred at my ordination and from which I benefitted greatly for many years, was of a solar figure. "Buddhism is a religion of sky gods,"(and I think we're talking of sun gods here) a colleague declared in a public talk; I wrote it down approvingly.

Now Sister Moon demands her say. Among her many entrances, she announced her presence early on through migraine. "The Gods appear in our diseases" opined Jung; and thus it was most literally in the case of my regular and increasingly severe head-and-intestine torture sessions of a few years back. The only correlation I could find for the occurrence of migraine was with the phases of the moon; full moon especially, but also new moon, dark moon. It was at this moment that I realised it was time to say goodbye to the G.P. on the subject.

"I am here. I am in your life. Do not ignore me. Do not forget. You do so at your peril" Thus seemed the moon to be speaking. Sometimes I remembered, sometimes I forgot - and 'ouch'. I still sometimes forget, though Tarot helps to keep me in touch.

Lunar is cyclical. Women have their periods, I had my migraines. And, interestingly, the migraines only appeared in my life in the phase following my year in New Zealand. You begin to see how I try to apply the Sherlock Holmes method in life. Sometimes it's wide of the mark, I'm sure, but at other times it seems spot on.

In the 1980s it was angels who announced the arrival of the unknown: bright, golden, glorious. Or Mary, the sweet virginal lady of chaste respectability. By the time we ushered in the new millenium it was feminine (oops, used the word) flowing, increasingly sensuous princesses during shamanic journeys, plus the occasional feisty lady warrior. And now is the time for the entrance of the  Moon Goddesses, no less. The Dark Moon Goddess, even, and her priestesses, who come down from their hilltop fastnesses in depth of night. I follow the moon in her different phases, her comings-and-goings. Watchful, expectant, with a touch of fear.

Another angle (this is the lunar way: looking from many different perspectives, circling, rather than a mad rush to find 'the one and only truth'). In my life, 'Sun' is a given. Male, pretty clear and confident about gender identity and sexual orientation (my 'conscious attitude'). As years pass and experience increases, focus necessarily passes to the opposite, the other. The Great Work of alchemy, the conjunction of opposites. This is my life. And in the sacred bridal chamber, both Sun and Moon demand their complete satisfaction.

Images:

                Hermes Trismegistus with Sun and Moon
                Full Moon on Water - Victoria Laloe



          

Jung's Red Book

Part One

I write about Jung and things Jungian for a reason. It is not out of theoretical enquiry, or because of philosophical preferences or ideological bias. It is not because of 'ideas' about life. It is because Jung and things Jungian have spoken to me about my actual experience when pretty much everything else has failed to do so. In particular, in times of crisis, of real personal need, Jung-type stuff has come to the rescue.

Way back in February 2013, I wrote a piece called 'How Lou Reed Saved My Life'. About how, when on the far side of the planet (for me), in New Zealand, I fell into a deep dark hole. Light became dark, up became down: you get the picture. The only voice which spoke to me, echoing the host of newfound feelings and perspectives which overwhelmed me (murderous, suicidal, utter hopelessness, and a bucketload of similar delights) was that of Lou Reed. Some time later I came across Jung: his 'nekyia', the night-sea journey. Here, at last, was another human being who had been there,
investigated it thoroughly, and lived to tell the tale. What's more he managed to place the ordeal within a broader context of, in his terminology, unfolding individuation. It was a necessary step in my own adventure of life. 'Confrontation with the Shadow' is the neat package in which it is often presented today; or demythologised into 'mid-life crisis'.

A decade on, and I entered my period of intense shamanic journeying. I was once more unwittingly propelled into Jungian territory. All kind of persons, animals, mythical beings turned up uninvited during these 'visits to the lowerworld'. What's more, these characters seemed intent on communicating with me, and took up temporary residence in the hitherto-unknown bits of my mind catalysed by this particular technique. Jung's work on archetypes was the thing which best seemed to acknowledge, address, and attempt to elucidate what I had been experiencing. Along with some of his slightly maverick successors in 'archetypal psychology', notably James Hillman and a few others such as Mary Watkins and her excellent book 'Invisible Guests', Jung proved a kindred spirit in this weird and wonderful world that I had dropped into. These inspirational champions of the imaginal gave shape to what was going on, providing context, if not a map (which would be a bit too neat and tidy for the project).

I have written about, and pointed out ad nauseam, the female figures that would turn up on the shamanic journeys, and with whom, following an exchange of greetings, I would take off, along with my 'power animal', on adventures into unknown, magical worlds. And how, following research by a co-journeying friend of mine, I began to see some of these female persons as what Jung referred to as 'anima figures'. Figures that mediate between our normal conscious lives and what Jung calls the unconscious, especially the collective unconscious. Which is precisely the function that the figures in my journeys seemed to be undertaking.

So, to repeat, really. I have embraced some, at least, of Jung and his successors in archetypal psychology, not out of idea or theory. It is as the consequence of direct and personal experience, and wishing to find resonating spirits who might bring shape and illumination to my own experience - which is all that I have to go on......

Part Two              

I recently purchased a copy of a remarkable book. It had better be remarkable: I coughed up over £20 for the privilege (the full illustrated edition is £195. Dream on.....). Remarkable it indeed is. 'The Red Book' by Carl Jung is his kind-of diary of his visionary experiences around 100 years ago, when he decided to undertake the 'experiment' of deliberately descending, into what he terms the unconscious, to find out what lurked there. 'The Red Book' finally became available for the general public to read in 2009.

Jung is recorded as saying in 'Memories, Dreams, and Reflections': "The years when I was pursuing my inner images were the most important in my life - in them everything essential was decided....... It was the prima materia for a lifetime's work." It was easy to take this statement a bit figuratively, or with a pinch of salt. Until 'The Red Book' was published, that is. Jung hadn't wanted the book to come into the public arena until after his death, if at all, and a read of some of its pages demonstrates why. It is over 500 pages-full of his visions and experiences as he regularly sat of an evening in his study, imagined himself digging a deep hole, entering, and going down. The parallels with shamanic journeying as practised by myself along with friends and acquaintances are unavoidable and many. Different 'philosophical' framework, same manner of exploration, same kind of result.

I am only halfway through the book; it may well take a time. But it is remarkable for a number of reasons. I would venture that, without acquaintance with 'The Red Book', a person only knows certain sides to the multifaceted Jung. Day after day he goes down that hole, meets all kind of characters (many of whom he has an uneasy relationship with), and proceeds to engage them in lengthy conversation about religion, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy.

Amongst all this, the experiential, visionary basis of much of Jung's later writing becomes clear. In his first descents, he encounters three main characters: his 'Soul', 'the Spirit of the Times' and 'the Spirit of the Depths'. In a vicious nutshell, 'the Spirit of the Depths' informs Jung that all his professional ambition and striving to date has been a waste of time, and tells him to stop thinking - he thinks about things too much. In these encounters is found the germ of Jung's notion of 'the Shadow'. Additionally, his being thirty-eightish when he undertook these adventures leads to the observation that his 'night-sea journey', nowadays trivialised into 'mid-life crisis', when the second half of life takes on a radically different trajectory to the first, also originates in these journeys, where his values are turned well-and-truly upside down.

In the next series of meetings, the increasingly stupified Jung encounters Elijah, the prophet from the Old Testament, along with Salome, famous for having John the Baptist's head on a plate. A serpent also turns up in these adventures. Here are the seeds of Wise Old Man and Anima as focal archetypal characters in the evolving mythology of Jung.

I don't find 'The Red Book' particularly easy reading. Jung sometimes writes in prophetic style, and, despite the 'Spirit of the Depths' exhortation to stop thinking, spends a lot of time turgidly discussing and debating the meaning of the meetings and conversations. This stands in contrast to the treatment meted out in my own shamanic journeying diary, It is a notebook full of weird happenings. Some have been seriously absorbed by me, but much has had a "cor blimey, there's a load of archetypal stuff there, and I've got no idea what it's about" treatment from me, and little more.

Another element making for less-than-easy reading for me is the pervasive smell of  Christianism. While my own shamanic journeys were populated by wizards, witches, princesses, and other characters mainly from fairy stories and myths, Jung sees an Old Testament prophet and a naughty girl from the New Testament. Later on he engages in extended conversation with an anchorite who comes in distinctly Christian garb. Jung is frequently moved to torment and anguish in his archetypal conversations, recalling those tortured saints out in the desert or stuck in their damp little study. Once more in solar Christian fashion, he reserves his greatest suspicion and incredulity for the main female of the piece, Salome. She turns up blind, and tells Jung that she loves him. He is not well pleased with this revelation. In fact, he is completely confused and horrified. "Leave me be, I dread you, you beast" are Jung's first words at Salome's profession of love for him.

There is something amusing, not to say life-affirming, about the way that an edifice such as modern Jungian psychology has been in good part built upon such non-rational and visionary foundations. It is not so different to the way that a person might spend years trying to work out and live out their psychedelic visions: "What did that all mean? How can I live my life in accordance?" Or the two-a-penny non-dualists who have an experience of oneness while shopping for aubergines in the supermarket, and before you know it are teaching their own exclusive method for liberation from separate selfhood on the internet.

Jung's descents took place for a couple of years before ceasing to be productive. This is in accord with my own experiences, along with those of a few other people I know. It is as if the message is 'This is the map; these are the stories; this is the work to do. Now get on with it.' It seems that the voyages provide the raw material for the remainder of ones life. You can't spend all your time down a hole, or in the lowerworld of shamanism, after all. You need to collect the jewels, the prima materia if you will, come back to the surface and, without every forgetting, get on with everyday living.    

Images: Lou Reed 1972
              Naughty Salome (Caravaggio)
              Elijah (18th century Russia)