With the Hierophant (originally known as the Pope), we move for the first time into the human world. The previous four archetypes encountered by the Fool on its journey were isolated forces set off from human affairs. But with the Hierophant, there are two other figures pictured on the card.
In the Rider-Waite version of the card depicted above, the Hierophant is much younger than the traditional Pope image. The youthfulness allows an androgyny that betrays the card's role as a further amplification of the masculine Logos of the Emperor. Still, the original role of the Pope was as mother and father within the Church, so the image is not far from the intent of the older images.
But at this stage, the Fool is only beginning to develop an ego structure, so there is not nearly enough interiority to accomodate such a powerful archetype. All of the cards to this point have also been projections of the Fool's own inner world, but this is the first time that there is an ego to kneel before the Hierophant and ask for blessings.
Finally, I want to touch on the Osho Zen variation of this card. In this deck the card is called No-Thingness, referencing the Buddhist concept of shunyata.All you can do now is to relax into this no-thingness...fall into this silence between the words...watch this gap between the outgoing and incoming breath. And treasure each empty moment of the experience. Something sacred is about to be born.And, indeed, with the next card, The Lovers, something will be born: the unification of the conscious and unconscious. Again, the Fool will need to learn the art of surrender, so practicing No-Thingness is a valuable piece of the work.
Bear Creek was very low after the dry winter we had. I expected more water, but was grateful for the little that there was. Plant life around the trickle that made it as far as the entrance to valley was lush, and the birds were enjoying the gnats floating in small bunches above the water.
So this morning I was up at my usual early hour and on the trail. I took my camera with me so that I could get some pictures to use on my blog, and just to get some practice with using it. I find that photography gets me out of my head, as well. And when I am alone, I have a tendency to keep going further and further from the trail in search of the perfect shot.
And there is a definite sense of fragility out here, although I really don't dwell on it much. I tend to violate most of the basic rules of hiking, such as letting someone know where I am, taking a cell phone, leaving a projected itinerary in my car or at the trail head. Anything can happen out here. Mountain lions roam these valleys, some bobcats, coyotes, and maybe a few Mexican grey wolves. But there are also rattlesnakes. That's the one thing that can scare me a bit.
The farther in I get, the more amazing the cliffs become. The rock is jagged in places, and much of the cliff face is banded in various colors of sediment.
The best part, though, is that there is no one around. The only sound is the water and the birds. Even in my native Southern Oregon Cascades and Siskiyous, there is seldom complete silence. I was often disturbed by the sounds of jets flying over. But there is nothing here but the water and the natural sounds of the canyon.
gone. As I breathe out the stress, I feel my body relax, my shoulders loosen, my brain stop working so hard. I relax my vision and stare into the movement of the water in front of me. Reflected colors from the rocks above swirl and mix in a way that totally undoes my orientation.I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,~ From "Song of Myself," Section 52
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
___
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
What happens when you choose to live at the level of Spirit, in a state of gratitude from morning to night? In his new book "Inspiration," best-selling author and spiritual teacher Dr. Wayne Dyer explains that when you're living in Spirit, your "vibrational energy is more attuned to that of the creative energy of the Universe." Strange, even miraculous things can happen at this level of energy.
[Buy the book]
where's the moon?
as the temple bell is --
sunk in the sea
along this road
going with no one
autumn evening
on this mountain
tell me of its sorrows
wild-yam digger
So why has the left become so attached to scientism? The left emerged as part of the broad movement against the feudal order, which taught that God had appointed people to their place in the hierarchical economic and political order for the good of the greater whole. Our current economic system, capitalism, was created by challenging the church's role in organizing social life, and empirical observation and rational thought became the battering ram the merchant class used to weaken the church's authority. Many of Marx's followers thought they were merely drawing out the full implications of their new worldview when they adopted a scientistic approach that not only dismissed God and spirit as being without empirical foundation but also reduced all ethical and aesthetic judgments to little more than reflections of class
interests.
The idea that people are only motivated by material self-interest became the basis for a significant part of what we now call the political left, or labor movement, and the Democratic Party ("It's the economy, stupid"). But in the research I did with thousands of middle-income working-class people, I found that there was a pervasive desire for meaning and a purpose-driven life, and for recognition by others in a nonutilitarian way, and that the absence of this kind of recognition and deprivation of meaning caused a huge amount of suffering and could best be described as a deep spiritual hunger that had little to do with how much money people were making. Granted, most people on the left would probably agree, in the abstract, that money can't buy love (or meaning). But when it comes down to the choices they make in trying to formulate goals for a union or a political party or a social change organization, they often revert to their deeply internalized materialistic assumptions, which leads them to deny the potential efficacy of addressing the "meaning" needs.
The truth is that most people on the left already have a set of moral principles that guide their lives and have led them to be Democrats or Greens or social change activists. But their scientistic worldview makes them feel slightly embarrassed to acknowledge and articulate those values. And the intense skepticism about religion and spirituality on the left makes them reluctant to talk in a language that could be seen as inherently religious or spiritual. In this, they are reflecting a long history of indoctrination into the scientistic assumptions of the dominant secular society, assumptions that have shaped our educational system, permeated our economic marketplace and been internalized as "sophisticated thinking" by the self-appointed (and capital-sustained) arbitrators of culture.
I've used the word "spiritual" as a label to identify a meaning-oriented approach to politics. Its focus is on the yearning of human beings for a world of love and caring, for genuine connection and mutual recognition, for kindness and generosity, for connection to the common good, to the sacred and to a transcendent purpose for our lives. Understand human history and contemporary society and individual psychology from the standpoint of these needs and the ways they have been frustrated, and then develop a strategy that addresses those needs, and we will be able to build a movement and a political party that will be in a position to bring about all the good things liberals and progressives have fought for with such limited success over the past 100 years.
[More than 100,000 people marched in Phoenix, AZ]Nearly 15,000 students and at least 500 classroom teachers were absent Monday, leaving some local schools with less than half their normal attendance and one school missing its entire faculty.
But officials stressed that to the best of their ability, the school day went on as normal.
The largest impact from the immigration protests was on Tucson High Magnet School, 400 N. Second Ave. There, 1,500 of the school's 2,600 students were absent, with 200 more walking out Monday morning. Forty-six teachers were absent.
At Davis Bilingual Magnet School, 500 W. St. Mary's Road, the entire staff of 19 teachers took off and substitutes were brought in to cover their classes."I think it's a well-educated staff," Davis Principal Christopher Loya said about the faculty absences. "These are people who know the issues, and they are also activists. All teachers are activists."
For the most part, students opted to just skip school rather than walk out as they had in student walkouts in late March. Part of the reason was the different nature of Monday's protest, where many students joined their families to march.
against the gently flowing spring morning
the arrogant rattle of a passing coach
peach blossoms beckon from the distant village
willow branches caress the shoulder of my pond
as bream and carp flash their golden scales
and mated ducks link embroidered wings
the poet stares about: this way, then that –
caught in a web beyond all speaking
“A classic procedure in Buddhism for cultivating compassion is to develop a way of viewing others as if each sentient being is your own mother. To verify by means of cogent reasoning that every sentient being has, in fact, actually been your mother in some life in the infinite past is a difficult task. But that's not the primary reason for viewing all sentient beings as your mother. Why do it? Because viewing an individual as your mother brings forth a sense of fondness, cherishing, gentleness, affection, and gratitude. When you recognize why you should do it, then even if you're not absolutely sure that every single sentient being has actually been your mother, seeing the purpose and anticipating the benefit, you can make the attempt.”~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Blizzard
Snow falls:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down --
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes --
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there --
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.
William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, in 1883. He began writing poetry while a student at Horace Mann High School, at which time he made the decision to become both a writer and a doctor. He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended Ezra Pound. Pound became a great influence in Williams' writing, and in 1913 arranged for the London publication of Williams's second collection, The Tempers. Returning to Rutherford, where he sustained his medical practice throughout his life, Williams began publishing in small magazines and embarked on a prolific career as a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. Following Pound, he was one of the principal poets of the
Imagist movement, though as time went on, he began to increasingly disagree with the values put forth in the work of Pound and especially Eliot, who he felt were too attached to European culture and traditions. Continuing to experiment with new techniques of meter and lineation, Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh—and singularly American—poetic, whose subject matter was centered on the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. His influence as a poet spread slowly during the twenties and thirties, overshadowed, he felt, by the immense popularity of Eliot's "The Waste Land"; however, his work received increasing attention in the 1950s and 1960s as younger poets, including Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, were impressed by the accessibility of his language and his openness as a mentor. His major works include Kora in Hell (1920), Spring and All (1923), Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962), the five-volume epic Paterson (1963, 1992), and Imaginations (1970). Williams's health began to decline after a heart attack in 1948 and a series of strokes, but he continued writing up until his death in New Jersey in 1963.
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Spring and All
By the road to the
contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from
the northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken
Pastoral
The little sparrows
hop ingenuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest them.
But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.
Meanwhile,
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
and his tread
is more majestic than
that of the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.
These things
astonish me beyond words.
