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.

Amaterasu

(Image : “Amaterasu”, soul card 145,  collage on cardboard, SG, 2010)

…Did you know that for the old Celts the Sun was a female symbol?

Oh how different everything would have been if the warm energy and the smile of the Goddess had not been banished to the night side of the Western psyche!

Amaterasu – omikami, ” the great august kami that shines in the heaven” –  is a sun goddess and one of the principal Shinto deities.

Anchoring the Light

(Image : Mandala 46, Anchoring the Light, SG, watercolours)

…Not much more we can do these days, but anchoring the Light as concretely as we possibly can.

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)

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.

Becoming a Legend…

 

Just so you see what I mean in my preceding post…The lady on the left is Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, both Miss Marple and Dame Margaret being legends, and dear models of mine as I go through my post-menopausal years.  The image on the right is me, recently, retouched with a heatmap design and nothing more, bwahahaha (so appropriate!)…Yes, well, I still have a long way to go to be like The Legends, but I´m getting there, day by day, …from the feet up!…

Yeah, I know, I look a lot tenser than Miss Marple, I look weird (even without the heatmap thingie), but that´s because I try to control the damn jawline! See what I mean ? I would prefer to let go, and am not able to, yet. Anyway, did Miss Marple worry about her looks, or didn´t she ? We´ll never know.

 ;-)

Elderwoman

(Image : Autoportrait surréaliste, art journal, SG, ’10)

“Happiness is not a destination. Happiness is a wonderful corollary of being on the right path.”

        The Blessed Anon (Anon-ymous).

…Can´t believe that ten years have passed since menopause! I´m perfectly OK, but oh Goddess have I changed! I´m no longer the Mom that I was, now I´m a friend of my daughters (a darn good one at that!); I´m no longer the “goddess of love” that I was (thank the Goddess too, that struggle is finally over, lol!) – but strangely enough, I feel closer to who I was before I became an adult. I feel much, much closer to the Inner Child, the luminous Mabon archetype. When I laugh, I don´t laugh prettily, and when I cry I cry for all human beings. The older I get, the more universal I become. I would define myself as “a grandmother for humanity” now. Watching “my baby” with all the awareness and love contained in my heart.

Ten years back, they (books, friends, etc) advised me : when Lady Menopause knocks at your door, either you are “clean” (OK with your past), or all the ghosts will come running back! All the unfinished business, all the negative energies, all the shit. Menopause is one grand opportunity to get clear before the Universe!…Yup, and that´s how it was. And I worked my way through it all, patiently, sometimes it was hard, sometimes it was funny, sometimes it was heartbreaking, and sometimes it was outrageous (like when I decided to get my first tattoo at 63, and the tattoo man couldn´t help smiling at my enthusiasm!). Looking back,  it was relatively easy, and not one “hot flashes” spell! I didn´t even go to see a doctor, (if you have any doubt about your health, don´t do that, I must have been crazy, lol). Not a one. Just some wild heart beating at times (the hormones, I suppose), in the beginning, and then some pain in my joints, some more wrinkles. My creative spirit soared! I immediately ”grokked” it that this was the central point in this menopause business : to allow the creative spirit to go from creating new life (or the opportunity of it, every month) to actually being this creative spirit all the time!

I never had any problem with my womanhood, so no negative ghosts reared their ugly head. It was just one long process of slow change until now, when I finally acknowledge that I have become what some feminists call “a crone”. I don´t really like this word, it makes me feel old, and I´m not ”old” (…that will be the next ten years? Hahaha). I prefer to say “wisewoman”, or “elderwoman”. I look at my daughters (27 and 31) and at my grandson (1), and I feel for them, – I´m finally out of a long archetypal tunnel, hooray, it is finally over, this constant battling with stereotypes! OK, I don´t like my “love handles” too much, but that´s because I have a “couch potato” vocation, my idea of “relax” being sitting with my feet up, a nice cup of coffee (a definite “no-no” for menopausal women, but who cares?), and maybe a chocolate bun.

My eyes are changing, it´s as if they were looking into the inner world most of the time…I care a lot less about what´s happening “outside” me (excepting Climate Change, and stuff of that nature), and I care a lot less about how I look to others. (I still put on my “war paint”, though, they say I have a “piercing look”, hahaha, and I enjoy enhancing that!…But just a dark line around my green eyes…mmm? No powder, no “foundation”, no perfume, commercially I would put beauty parlors out of business!)

I´m not reacting as fast to what is happening around me, I enjoy looking at the grass “growing by itself” a lot more, as I enjoy riding in the car instead of walking or running. There, I confessed. Oh and another confession, it hurts a bit when I see that my jawline is slacker in photographs from up close than before (though the said jaw itself is perfectly functional, lol), but then, hey! my model is Margaret Rutherford (Miss Marple) not Demi Moore, so I´ve still a long way to go…

Apart from these changes, I´m still the same zany person, and yes, outrageously young. In this case, young meaning vital, movable, moving, moved, in one word : dancing, see? Plus, I´m still practising beginner´s mind, except in those situations where a more mature outlook is needed,  and then oh Goddess can I be mature!…

So, my two cents of wisdom re/menopause to all of you lovely gals out there going through the Change : trust yourself, be true to yourself, and you´ll be just fine, even with hot flashes and aching joints (coffee is a no-no, remember that!), the last best part of your life is expecting you, no bullshit. I did it.