What follows is a gathering of impressions come up from the old green mounds of Somerset and Devon between the full moon of Easter, and this recent full moon of May, after just having moved into a new home at the base of an ancient hill.
A stunning collection. I was led through a watery dream, deep and half remembered in the waking light, but left with salient messages and vibrant imagery. And then up a gleaming green and fog-veiled hillock, sacred and older than human memory. Stirring desire and grief, and the overwhelming fears of the immensity of the ancient past and of unknown future movements. I want to keep re-reading your story-song of Rhiannon, it’s hauntingly beautiful and many layered: “She was full grown and womanly and hungry. The milk of the world was in her, and the songs of birth and magic.” Your writings and dreamings of this place pull at the threads that call me back to my paternal ancestral lands. While also feeding the hungry spirit in me during the time that I’m not able to be there in physical form. Oh and that Robert Bly Poem 😭. Thank you
Ah, I'm so glad to hear this Sophia. Rhiannon has more to say I think, I feel a big door has opened with her. I'm glad these words feed that hunger, I understood it myself too, I think I write them as bread and milk for me own self, even though I'm here. Funny how that can be; the longing for home no matter where we are, whether on motherline land for me longing for flesh and blood home (California), or vice versa... xx
During those years we stroked the hair of the old, brought in
roots, painted prayers, slept, laid hair
on fire, took lives.....
And one day my faithfulness was born...
Just so! My own one sleeps off the last bit of something hunting the stag of us as I read your fine collage here. I think alot about the antlered in the dark between the trees here and about seasons and the change o tilt to a world. Lions they say, one day will lay with lambs. Moriarty wonders what sort of Lion that would still be but I wonder back about from the Ari a story about the shattering of vessels, tikkun olam and those sparks. Do you think there could be a time when men who do read the backs of salmon as their sacred book might refuse the hunt, root and branch. Something old and ochred in the blood laughs at my Yid but I dream of soft eyes and mercy and garden.
Thank you very much Andrew-- and yes those lines of Robert Bly's poem are just stunning to me too. Hope all in your family recover quickly from sickness! That is an interesting question about men refusing the hunt, and not one I can really answer of course, but I do believe in the hunt as a sacred and holy undertaking from the very beginnings of our story as a species, when approached as a love song and a great grief at once, and part of the whole round of things. I'm put in mind of Paul Shepard, a favorite of mine, and his book The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game. And then there's that Gary Snyder poem, Song of the Taste, that's also coming to my mind now--
Eating the living germs of grasses
Eating the ova of large birds
the fleshy sweetness packed
around the sperm of swaying trees
The muscles of the flanks and thighs of
soft-voiced cows
the bounce in the lamb’s leap
the swish in the ox’s tail
Eating roots grown swoll
inside the soil
Drawing on life of living
clustered points of light spun
out of space
hidden in the grape.
Eating each other’s seed
eating
ah, each other.
Kissing the lover in the mouth of bread:
lip to lip.
We are all eating and being eaten, so I don't think it's a matter of no hunting, but a matter of a return to the original story of the hunt, which I believe is what that dream figure was trying to remind me. In waking life I don't disagree with him, but in the dream I wasn't so sure! Maybe that's the ambivalence of being a modern human being, and the distance that is created between us and the reality of stag as both god and food. I'm also thinking of the story of St. Hubert who saw a white stag in the forest with a cross of light between his antlers, and stayed his bow, realizing who it was he was seeing. He became a patron saint of hunters, but that didn't mean he stopped hunting; instead he returned mercy to the hunt—only take down the old, at the back of the herd, and never ever mothers— and therefore ecological balance, things that indigenous tribes across the world know instinctively, but perhaps were lost as concepts by early medieval Germans?
Thanks for this response, Sylvia. No argument here with the old ways. Immersed in participation, all that makes sense. Still, I think whatever comes after our abandonment of the individuation may be birth something new in the synthesis Barfield calls the Final Participation. I am sure I don't know what a coming into a sacred custodial way of being might look like between the Human and the Ungulates. I too think about Hubert and Acteon as well in this day dreaming. There is some sense of a sobriety being a honorable season after the centruries of excess. Not in a dream of prohibition or a story for all the human peoples, maybe just certain lean for the hip-torn fools at the wheel of the carnage. I am sure its just that Lions and Lambs image in the Yid of me, or some residual fist shake at the death/suffering bend that can seem like an intrusion of some kind under the stars of certain nights. Or maybe I am just in love with the Antlered people in some still childish way that will not keep as the truths of Winter come on. Regardless of my silly trip, thanks for your generous and thoughtful response. Peace,
I'm with you in that beautiful question/ vision Andrew-- I like how you put it, a season of sobriety "after centuries of excess." That's a very moving thought. Thank you for sharing it here, like a prayerful seed planted x
As ever, your words are so poignant, nourishing, and beautiful, spanning wide as heron wings. Your dream stood out to me - I am a great lover of dreams. There is a golden stag who watches over a friend of mine. He has come to her in dreams, both as a child and as an adult. He comes to me also, in meditations, when my friend needs help. He is her stag, but he lets me ride on the back of his powerful body to hasten my arrival at the place where her body holds her spirit. I say this because your white stag reminds me of this guardian spirit I have been honored to meet. What a blessing to have a guardian stag! The ancient man of the hunt: what if he understands the value of a life given better than we do today, we who eat three or more meals a day, who do not have to ask the Earth for our food? A hunt is not necessarily a sport, even today. A hunt can be a humbling, a dropping to the knees in the sight of a life passing, a whisper of thanks that should be a song sang loud and clear to fill a cloud-walled cathedral. The ancient hunt invited the stag to live on in human bodies, to blend hooves with fingers and toes to dance the edges of forest and clearing. Perhaps the stag, living in the very cells of humans, kept wildness alive in their bodies. In contrast, what does the eating of so much domesticated food - plant and animal - impart into our cells today? Not that we should eat deer into extinction, mindlessly consuming the wild, trying to outrun the domestication we have trapped ourselves in, but rather, I, too, wonder what the man in your dream would have said about the sacred hunt? What can he teach you from his ancient perspective? I have been able to meditate back into a dream I left incomplete, unsatisfactory, so I imagine that you can as well. Thank you for sharing your gift with words!
A stunning collection. I was led through a watery dream, deep and half remembered in the waking light, but left with salient messages and vibrant imagery. And then up a gleaming green and fog-veiled hillock, sacred and older than human memory. Stirring desire and grief, and the overwhelming fears of the immensity of the ancient past and of unknown future movements. I want to keep re-reading your story-song of Rhiannon, it’s hauntingly beautiful and many layered: “She was full grown and womanly and hungry. The milk of the world was in her, and the songs of birth and magic.” Your writings and dreamings of this place pull at the threads that call me back to my paternal ancestral lands. While also feeding the hungry spirit in me during the time that I’m not able to be there in physical form. Oh and that Robert Bly Poem 😭. Thank you
Ah, I'm so glad to hear this Sophia. Rhiannon has more to say I think, I feel a big door has opened with her. I'm glad these words feed that hunger, I understood it myself too, I think I write them as bread and milk for me own self, even though I'm here. Funny how that can be; the longing for home no matter where we are, whether on motherline land for me longing for flesh and blood home (California), or vice versa... xx
Beautifully said! I too felt the weaving depths of Sylvia's poetic expression. Potent and intriguing, touching many layers within my own being.
Thank you Rhiannon! Magic to see your name pop up here :) x
During those years we stroked the hair of the old, brought in
roots, painted prayers, slept, laid hair
on fire, took lives.....
And one day my faithfulness was born...
Just so! My own one sleeps off the last bit of something hunting the stag of us as I read your fine collage here. I think alot about the antlered in the dark between the trees here and about seasons and the change o tilt to a world. Lions they say, one day will lay with lambs. Moriarty wonders what sort of Lion that would still be but I wonder back about from the Ari a story about the shattering of vessels, tikkun olam and those sparks. Do you think there could be a time when men who do read the backs of salmon as their sacred book might refuse the hunt, root and branch. Something old and ochred in the blood laughs at my Yid but I dream of soft eyes and mercy and garden.
Lovely offering. Good thoughts.
Thank you very much Andrew-- and yes those lines of Robert Bly's poem are just stunning to me too. Hope all in your family recover quickly from sickness! That is an interesting question about men refusing the hunt, and not one I can really answer of course, but I do believe in the hunt as a sacred and holy undertaking from the very beginnings of our story as a species, when approached as a love song and a great grief at once, and part of the whole round of things. I'm put in mind of Paul Shepard, a favorite of mine, and his book The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game. And then there's that Gary Snyder poem, Song of the Taste, that's also coming to my mind now--
Eating the living germs of grasses
Eating the ova of large birds
the fleshy sweetness packed
around the sperm of swaying trees
The muscles of the flanks and thighs of
soft-voiced cows
the bounce in the lamb’s leap
the swish in the ox’s tail
Eating roots grown swoll
inside the soil
Drawing on life of living
clustered points of light spun
out of space
hidden in the grape.
Eating each other’s seed
eating
ah, each other.
Kissing the lover in the mouth of bread:
lip to lip.
We are all eating and being eaten, so I don't think it's a matter of no hunting, but a matter of a return to the original story of the hunt, which I believe is what that dream figure was trying to remind me. In waking life I don't disagree with him, but in the dream I wasn't so sure! Maybe that's the ambivalence of being a modern human being, and the distance that is created between us and the reality of stag as both god and food. I'm also thinking of the story of St. Hubert who saw a white stag in the forest with a cross of light between his antlers, and stayed his bow, realizing who it was he was seeing. He became a patron saint of hunters, but that didn't mean he stopped hunting; instead he returned mercy to the hunt—only take down the old, at the back of the herd, and never ever mothers— and therefore ecological balance, things that indigenous tribes across the world know instinctively, but perhaps were lost as concepts by early medieval Germans?
Thanks for this response, Sylvia. No argument here with the old ways. Immersed in participation, all that makes sense. Still, I think whatever comes after our abandonment of the individuation may be birth something new in the synthesis Barfield calls the Final Participation. I am sure I don't know what a coming into a sacred custodial way of being might look like between the Human and the Ungulates. I too think about Hubert and Acteon as well in this day dreaming. There is some sense of a sobriety being a honorable season after the centruries of excess. Not in a dream of prohibition or a story for all the human peoples, maybe just certain lean for the hip-torn fools at the wheel of the carnage. I am sure its just that Lions and Lambs image in the Yid of me, or some residual fist shake at the death/suffering bend that can seem like an intrusion of some kind under the stars of certain nights. Or maybe I am just in love with the Antlered people in some still childish way that will not keep as the truths of Winter come on. Regardless of my silly trip, thanks for your generous and thoughtful response. Peace,
I'm with you in that beautiful question/ vision Andrew-- I like how you put it, a season of sobriety "after centuries of excess." That's a very moving thought. Thank you for sharing it here, like a prayerful seed planted x
Oh how I loved all this, your writing is such a balm from all the hyper-rationalism of our society.
Thank you Mirabella, I'm glad these words provided respite... I'm with you in the exhaustion there, and write to balm my own mind and spirit too x
Spellbinding. Portent. Thank you.
Potent (it autocorrected to portent) but perhaps it is that too
Thank you Stasha, potent and portent together are quite the pair! :) x
As ever, your words are so poignant, nourishing, and beautiful, spanning wide as heron wings. Your dream stood out to me - I am a great lover of dreams. There is a golden stag who watches over a friend of mine. He has come to her in dreams, both as a child and as an adult. He comes to me also, in meditations, when my friend needs help. He is her stag, but he lets me ride on the back of his powerful body to hasten my arrival at the place where her body holds her spirit. I say this because your white stag reminds me of this guardian spirit I have been honored to meet. What a blessing to have a guardian stag! The ancient man of the hunt: what if he understands the value of a life given better than we do today, we who eat three or more meals a day, who do not have to ask the Earth for our food? A hunt is not necessarily a sport, even today. A hunt can be a humbling, a dropping to the knees in the sight of a life passing, a whisper of thanks that should be a song sang loud and clear to fill a cloud-walled cathedral. The ancient hunt invited the stag to live on in human bodies, to blend hooves with fingers and toes to dance the edges of forest and clearing. Perhaps the stag, living in the very cells of humans, kept wildness alive in their bodies. In contrast, what does the eating of so much domesticated food - plant and animal - impart into our cells today? Not that we should eat deer into extinction, mindlessly consuming the wild, trying to outrun the domestication we have trapped ourselves in, but rather, I, too, wonder what the man in your dream would have said about the sacred hunt? What can he teach you from his ancient perspective? I have been able to meditate back into a dream I left incomplete, unsatisfactory, so I imagine that you can as well. Thank you for sharing your gift with words!