Fellowship of All Life

(Image : The Sanctuary, soul card, SG, 2005)

…Personally, I think that “Ecopsychology” is another name for Neo-Druidry. Some may not agree of course, and that is OK, they say that among 10 Druids there are 11 opinions! Lol.

In general and very roughly, there are four groups of so-called “Druids”, and I think that it is very useful to learn how to distinguish them, because they show vastly different ways of being in concrete reality, and also vastly different aims.

The Old Ones, of which practically nothing is known. They didn´t write down their teachings,have never built a temple in stone,  and have not left a mark in History, apart from some really faint traces that have been handed down the long corridors of Time. I list them because they are the genesis, the origin, true or false, of the other three groups.

The Romantic Ones, which are a re-creation of what a past century felt about the subject, a century in which there was no electricity, no highways, no Internet – and in which nothing was really verified. That´s where you can find the robed Druids and Druidesses who know all about casting spells and calling to the ancient gods, though they often dine at McDonald´s; those are the ones that are traipsing through the new forests, or even public parks sometimes since not so many forests are left, in flimsy fake-medieval robes, and trying very hard to look ancient, though most of them haven’t even got to the ripe age of 50. (No offense meant, it is just a passing remark, that happens to be true.)I think that these people are compensating the harsh reality of modern life, the very hardship of what our society has become, through happy dreams.

The Reconstructionists, who are very serious people who think that intuition is a valid way to perceive History, (particularly “His-Story”, lol), and are very precise about a lot of rather vague stuff,

And then there is a new group, which is still largely a sort of seed-group, which is pushing through the earth, straining towards the Sun, like a very modest plant still, – The Future Druids, the Gaian Druids, or Neo-Druids.

Our Druid Grove is part of this last group. We do believe in intuition, use it a lot, but do not think that it is really a valid way to “re-construct” the past, because such an enterprise as rebuilding an imagined past according to non-verified present beliefs distorts what is happening in the present, and sometimes even veils what should be happening if we are to correct past facts that have brought us to this collective disaster of a present, (yes, a long sentence, read it again, lol); we don´t need robes and wands and staves, but yes, we care about the Future of Earth, and in midst of this preoccupation for the becoming of the human species of which we are a part, absolutely, we understand that humanity needs a new Myth, for “without a Vision the people perish”, so, having gone through a real Druid training (OBOD), we might as well be called “Druids”, OK, Neo-Druids, if you will.

…This Vision that we have been so clearly a-creating in our far away valley these last few years, is that of a Humanity that would finally consciously acknowledge the simple fact that we human beings are Children of Planet Earth. Whatever our nations pretend to be, first and foremost we are Gaians, Earthlings. From all Internet users down to Eskimos and Bushmen.

(Sorry to draw such a scale, I actually do not mean to imply that people who are not Internet users are not human, lol.)

Yes, we envision a number of people starting to live the Gaian vision, very discreetly at first, inside themselves to begin with, people living with the clear knowledge that some things have to stop, like the desecration of the planet. I´m talking about people who would truly understand, because they have been coolly trained, that things cannot go on like they are, running around in stupid circles, that something must change, and that this “something” is the very structure of the patriarchal ego, which is an extremely limited historical view, even of physical reality: since man walked on the moon  (at the very least) and invented quantum physics,  we do have a pressing need to get out of the Freudian back alley:

Everything in our lives can be aligned to prosperity, agape *and abundance of intelligence, which is how Nature really works. There is no real necessity to botch human evolution.

We could, yes we could. We could do it, you know. Difficult ? Yes. Impossible ? No. Anyway, what with Climate Change and Peak Oil, we may be forced to change. Change into what, is now The Big Question.

If you find it difficult to accept the idea that our civilization is still barbaric, and that we DO have to evolve as a species, don´t change anything except this basic understanding, which you have to “grok” with your very bones : we are Earthlings, and we will have to deeply acknowledge this fact. Or we will disappear. Easy choice. And a long long process. Do we really have the time?

It all boils down to the fact that all of us are collectively responsible for the welfare of all of humanity, and of the entirety of the planet.

War is a boorish, unrefined, uncultivated, churlish way of facing collective problems. Warriorship as a patriotic demonstration can best be used on an entirely different  level : I mean, a mental way of tackling problems, of grappling with reality. I do think that we have enough enlightened brains on this planet to create an entirely new game.

As for us as a group, as a Project, as a Neo-Druid Grove, we have made that choice already. Actually, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, we are deep into the consequences of it. As a group we have touched the brass tacks of what it means. This sense of consciously  “being on the side of the woods” (as Tolkien says through Treebeard), is what makes us Neo-Druids. We may even, if the Myth becomes as necessary as bread, sew some nice white robes and dance through our very own woods. We may as well, since we so deeply feel part of the Great Fellowship of Life on this Earth.

In this deep sense, we have the Vision of a huge Rainbow of Consciousness/Energy spanning thousands of years, from the Old Ones right down to us, the Druids in jeans. A new Ark of the Covenant, if you will. Or a new lease on our renting this planet from our great-great-grandchildren.

…Rivendell lives! Long live Rivendell!

 ;-)

 PS.- Agape  : Christianity. Love as revealed in Jesus, seen as spiritual and selfless and a model for humanity.

1. Love that is spiritual, not sexual, in its nature.
2. Christianity. In the early Christian Church, the love feast accompanied by Eucharistic celebration.

In the New Testament, the fatherly love of God for humans and their reciprocal love for God. The term extends to the love of one’s fellow humans.

Animus work

(Image : The journal shown here is part of the work I did for my PS course, “Book of Merlin”, SG, 2005).

The Animus (the masculine part of women) is usually, and culturally, projected on men. We fall in love with the Aragorns of the world, we never stop to think that maybe this lovely ruggedy energy could actually be ours. Ever seen a hairy Arwen ? Lol. Such is our deep deep cultural conditioning.

But I discovered that lots of our courageous Prince Valiant energies could be ours, it´s a question of looking inside and being truthful with ourselves. In my PS work, way back then, I realized that I was sort of in awe with Strider (Aragorn)- (no, not the actor, Tolkien´s character), because these energies were mine. I didn´t want to be Arwen, I wanted to own my Strider energies, and what a wonderful addition to my life!… I also realized that a whole part of the events of my past life had incorporated these energies, oh yes, I certainly did some rather non-female things in my life!…

All of which, being my real life experience, had me thinking that maybe our culture has some rather shady agenda dividing people into male and female stereotypes. That´s what Jung (GrandPapa Carl Gustav) tried to say when he formulated that men have a female part of their psyche (the Anima), and women a masculine part (the Animus). Though…mmmm…Granddaddy being a staunch Swiss macho man (Goddess knows I´m familiar with those characters having had a very Swiss e-dew-kation!), he naturally thought that the Anima business was more “normal” than the other one!

Anyway, I did work with my Animus, and even gave him some really well-known faces at the time, Merlin for one, Gandalf, my inner Druid, (yeah, I know he´s a Mayar, not a Druid), Aragorn-Strider, and Elrond, the half-elven. (You must have guessed that I am a Lord of the Rings fan ?…).

It helped a lot to feel that these “masculine” energies were actually mine! So I stopped projecting them “outside”, and could finally let my men be the troubled, fragile, chinked beings that they really were…oh blessed relief for them…See my point?

This post goes with the preceding one about Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. The Sun was considered a female entity by the ancient Celts, as it still is in the German language : die Sonne, der Mond. When I speak about a shady agenda above, it is so, or why should solar qualities systematically be attributed to the masculine, and lunar ones to the female? Examining both, you get to understand the agenda, lol.

Note *** Just so you get this right : yeah, I am an Elf, and yeah, I am 3000 years old! (No, not Arwen.)

Hahaha

The Final Initiation

(Image : “Druid Review”, final exam, SG, 2009)

A year or so after receiving the lovely scroll that marks the end of my formal training as a Druid at OBOD (actually you may find out that it never ends!), the final Initiation.

…I was in the kitchen, talking with Mika and Adam (the other two parts of the Earth Sanctuary Project´s coregroup) over coffee one morning, about how hard it is sometimes to maintain this land, and how sometimes we would love to travel or go someplace different, smaller, easier, – and how we couldn´t ever go back to living in a town flat, when a sudden realisation hit my brain.

I, who thought I couldn´t ever live in a town again, had the sudden vision that all the trees of the world were now rooted in my heart, and the mountains, and the rocks, and the little river, and all the animals, deer, fox, squirrels and eagles, and that I could, without batting an eye, pack my suitcase and go…anywhere!

Tears just welled up in my eyes.

All the forests of the world are now rooted in my green heart.

I have become the Grove.

Silence of the Druids

(Image: The Sanctuary, 2010)

I´m ba-ack, it´s raining. *grin*

People sometimes ask me if we have written books, and what kind of didactic material we work with. Mmm…Good question. (…You mean apart from the OBOD Course? The OBOD Course is the didactic material we are working with, if somebody absolutely insists on the written word.)

Did the Druids of old send off a correspondence course around the planet by plane?

Of course not.

Ah, there is your answer. We teach by example, and our didactic material is that which people are. In other words, we may be of help to certain people who need to decipher their own Mystery, and thus we help them to look into the alive ”book” that each one of them is. See what I mean ? Difficult to express through words, lol.

As an example, one hour in the forest is a good teaching tool. Especially if you teach an urbanite who is enthusiastic about “Mother Nature”and wants “to get, you know, closer to Her, the Goddess”, and so insists on taking off her shoes to go into the the woods, which are 80 %…brambles! Hahaha

See what I mean by “alive didactic material” ? Believe me, you won´t do it twice!…

The Druids of old haven´t written books, didn´t leave manuscripts behind when they disappeared, didn´t build temples of stone (no, not even Stonehenge, which actually wasn´t built by “The Druids”, even if it has become a popular “Druid” icon!…). And they must have been silent, very silent. When you are in tune with the world, what is there to say?

And this is also how I teach, if I may say so myself. I just grin through the whole phase of approach, until the student learns his lessons the hard way.

I´m horrible, I know. But you can´t imagine how efficient, too!

Kew kew kew

(The Lady Dragon, chuckling)

Fierce Light

” Sparked by what Gandhi called “soul force” and Martin Luther King “love in action” Ripper spotlights remarkable individuals who are taking action from the heart. The film is the revelation of a new global “movement of movements” of positive, compassionate action. Fierce Light : When Spirit Meets Action illuminates what is possible when human beings are their absolute best …a human sunrise.”

Soul force : in sanscrit, satya graha.

Hooray, this project of ours is not a lone orphan in the human Universe! Watch this DVD, and you´ll get a unique insight about what we, the Earth Sanctuary, are all about! … Oh my goodness I should see the day when the words “Warriors of Shamballa” are pronounced in a mainstream DVD, a balm for sore eyes, and in the correct context at that!…

Fierce Light : When Spirit Meets Action, a film by Velcrow Ripper.

Going global

(Image : Children of Gaia, soul card, collage on paper, SG, 2005)

“Think globally, Act locally.”

New Age (so-called New Age) people sometimes, often, forget the second part. I have found that my real way of “going global” is to celebrate the land under my feet and around me. I don´t think of the Sanctuary as Catalan, though Catalans would most probably disagree, lol, and hit me over the head.

The land around me is part of Her, Gaia, the planet, our Home.

These are Gaian trees, I´m a planetary citizen, we are Humankind, Children of Gaia. It doesn´t look like it, but we are One Family. Oh how far away we are, as a species, from reality: we have to work from the ground up, not from the clouds down!…

We are, all of us, planetary citizens, – as long as we do not forget the real trees, the real land, this concrete Project lives in Spain, no doubt about it; though Catalans will scream bloody murder, it is so, even for them.

There´s a process, a whole personal development, a Path, pathworking, between “I´m Swiss” and “I´m a Gaian”, and let me tell you, it´s no easy Path, though we can board a plane to Bali any moment, even at low cost!…

What a stupid arrogant species we are when we are perverted by our collective past. The dark cloud from Iceland has downed thousands of flights,  and I don´t want to think about the volcano rageing beneath Yellowstone Park, which could erupt any time! Lordy, are we arrogant or what!

The more I hug my own trees, appreciating them more because I know the pain I had to go through to “liberate” them, the more ”planetary” I become. This is my planet, folks. Right here, in my garden.

Madame Mim and Native Americans

The little Mademoiselle on the left is me, aged three (I think), the photo in the middle is me, 60 years later, and the drawings (not mine!) are of Madame Mim, of Walt Disney fame.

Madame Mim is of course another funny archetype with which I have worked. She is the zany side of me, the “animated” Miss Marple in me. I love her dearly.

…The two comments on yesterday´s post don´t sound odd to me : I have a very keen inner relationship with the cosmos of Native Americans. Being such a nut about Ecopsychology (= the relationship of Humankind with Nature), I have this same…errr…sort of disinterested (questing ?) look on the Crazy White Man (the photographer)? Lol.The “heatmap” tech thingie and the colours no doubt emphasize the perception, but the energy is there, that´s true. It´s the Warrior of Shamballa in me that comes to the foreground through the “heatmap” thing. And yes, it´s the very same picture! (See how you can play?)

I am working in a journal with the original picture, in all sorts of nutty ways. What looks Native American can also look very ladylike with another option of the same programme. I´m working with all options, including an Andy Warhol-like pop painting type of collage.

Psychosynthesis calls these aspects of oneself “subpersonalities”, or “subs” (lol). All of us have lots of facets, and PS gives us the tools to make a true Mandala out of all of them, so that we can see that they are all fragments of the same Self, each semi-detached piece being a path in itself towards “center”. Some of these fragments are quite independent from the central ego-structure (what we generally call “me”), for example the Shadow realm on one “side” or on one hand, and then the spiritual side of our basic nature on the other.Very often these two aspects are not contained within the ego structure, and are “projected” onto other people. PS is the Path to reclaim all these projected aspects of ourselves (of our selves) and bring them into harmony, “owning” them, maybe for the first time in our life.

I think that PS, or any Path that practices “soul retrieval”, is especially good for ladies of “our age” (mmm…) because in a way our lives are behind us, we have already made our choices, and lived through the consequences, for good or for bad. At least that was my experience when I worked for my PS diploma with Will Parfitt (you´ll find a link on the side).

So yes, thank you, Susannah and Jill, I really appreciated the sharing of your perception.

Hecate, and all that jazz!

(Image : Autoportrait surréaliste, SG  April 2010)

…Have started a new Art Journal to explore the tricky passage that I am going through as a woman, I´m definitely a crone now, but you see, I don´t really feel like one.I wonder how many women feel the same way ? I don´t have a clue of how I´m supposed to feel, though I know that I am supposed to feel something, some things, and I dont – repeat: don´t –  agree with those things one bit! And I see the desperate efforts of some other women to cling to the last remnants of their youth, like clinging to worthless rags… I swore to myself that I would not be like them!…

I don´t feel “my age”, I don´t really look “my age”, I´m the same “me” as before, and yet there are subtle changes that I do acknowledge. I cannot run as fast, I have wrinkles, sometimes my teeth are hurting (lol), and I´m certainly not as slim as I once was (never been “slim, so what?)

Actually, I feel strong, ready for battle, full of creative juices- and quite determined to help the next generation as the brand-new challenges of climate change and the need for deep change arise in their young lives. I´m a weathered veteran really. Veteran, as in skilled,steady, adept, expert, versed and practical. (Courtesy of Dictionary, com, lol). 

And that, my friends, is one hell of an advantage, for me and for them.

PS.- The Spanish say “Don´t you have a grand´mother?” when someone throws compliments at themselves (which is a grandmotherly task, as we all know).

 Well, no. I don´t have a grandmother anymore. I am my own grand-mother (on my passport only).

Transition Mode at the Sanctuary

(Image : Biosphere 2030, MDG, 2009)

…Do you know about peak oil ? No? Well, you had better Google Wikipedia for it, otherwise  it could be a rude awakening if you don´t!…

Do you know about the Transition Movement ? No? Same thing. (Have a look at Wikipedia, there are lots of Spanish websites, too).

We know about all that jazz, have been into it for a good number of years now, and are slowly changing the basic gears of our community to “go into transition” (=post peak-oil mode). Yes, we have been recycling for quite some time , but hey! it could become worse, and it´s later than we think.

The Sanctuary is quite litterally carbon-neutral  (two cars and one van for 100 acres of woodland), which means that our trees give us more breathing space than what we waste with the cars. This last week we made the experiment of consciously writing down all the plastic stuff that comes out after shopping in a supermarket, and I mean all, well, my dears, just becoming totally conscious about this (and actually writing down every bit of plastic that we throw away, then thinking about alternatives), we have been able to spare 80 % of plastic trash in one week!

In the same way, we have been able to save 70% of supermarket shopping. We do not buy new furniture (what´s wrong about good second-hand?), are not travelling on planes, and haven´t had a real “holiday” for years. Why go to the Bahamas, or to the Seychelles, when we can have a “holy day” every single day just by going down to the vegetable garden ? (We bought this property as a group, as an investment for a sustainable future, and have gone through a long and sometimes painful process to really make this project a healthy alternative.)

OK, and we are now into Trash Art, recycling stuff into Artwork (like paper beads to make curtains made out of old magazines), baking our own bread (very symbolic), and planting our own vegetables. And we are planning to buy a good wood stove, as soon as possible.

We have wood in abundance for the fireplace, and lots of water (our own, fortunately).

All symbolic gestures and not much more than that, I know – but at least we are concretely and above all psychologically ”processing” the hard truths of our times!…

I would encourage you to start doing the same. Who knows? We might yet survive…(Not funny, I know).

PS.- Plus, we do have the methodology of the Psychology of Change, elaborated over two decades of group processing too (see Pages right-hand corner up the post), so at long last, we might even come in handy, seeing the sorry circumstances… If we want to survive the long night, lol, we will have to learn how to live together, after all.

Two must-see DVDs (At Amazon, no problem):

- The Age of Stupid, Why Didn´t we save ourselves when we had the chance, “Think  “An Inconvenient Truth” but with a personality” (lol),

and…

- A Crude Awakening, The Oil Crash, Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, “We´re running out…and we don´t have a plan”.(Gulp.)

Both are eye-openers!…(Gulp again.)

Have fun, if you can.

The Trees Are Not Looking At You!

(Image : The Book of Vivian and the Book of Merlin, OBOD, Druid Grade, SG 2008)

…How ever many projections you send out, seeing fairies and gnomes everywhere, elementals and whatnot, dryads and stuff, one thing is as sure as death (pun intended), and it is that when you are out there in the woods, the trees are not looking at you!

That is what is so wonderful about nature. Nature doesn´t  judge, doesn´t plan, doesn´t really care about the human species, only if we get to be much of a nuisance (the case now!), in which case we will probably be swept from the planetary map at some time in the future, along with  dinosaurs and the dodo! One day, there will be nobody to even notice the beauty (that is our task, ours, the human pest, lol). Indifferent to all our great schemings, Nature will go on and rebuild itself.

When you are seated at the foot of a tree, don´t ever think that the tree is looking at you. That is what is so restful about it all. No camera, no sly evaluation. Just a great peace, and a vibration that comes and goes and breathes from your relaxed heart.