RCG-I Seasonal Salon Spring Equinox 2008
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A Forgotten Animal Spirit Guide |
Rising Upby Max DashúSpring Equinox 2008: a leap year, a political year, a time of massive change. I’m sitting here under a blooming plum tree. The songbirds are back and trilling melodiously. The Persians had the right idea, to start their calendar from the Spring Equinox, with its fresh greening and fragrance and promise. All the clichés about spring are no less true for having been repeated a thousand times. That’s what tradition is: a constant repetition, in variation, by multiple voices over long time. Of course in our world, the government always has its hand in, interfering. I could do without the time switch mandated by daylight saving policy, that abrupt shift that scrambles the body’s sense of progressing days. Still, the spring forward to what feels like extra light is easier to deal with than the sudden turn to twilight by 5 pm in the fall. What a pleasure to sit outside in the mild air, especially after a winter spent cooped at my computer, organizing pixels into video and doing battle with software glitches. I’m finally getting outdoors, even if still confined to the urban realm. I walk the streets in search of sidewalk gardens, while longing for free land untrammeled by the man-made, the commercial and industrial. But the trees are in flower now, not just the dramatic plums and acacia, but also the pines and others whose blossoms are less noticeable. In Taoist philosophy, spring is the time when Chi rises, the upshooting of new growth. It’s the season of the liver, an expansive energy that spreads Chi throughout the body, as wind does in Nature. It has the nature of wind, while also being described as the element of wood, the color green or azure, and the sound of calling / shouting. It is also vision, imagination, the part of us that dreams. All of this is symbolized by the azure dragon of the East (whose counterpart is the white tiger of the West) [see Xi Wang Mu Seasonal Salon article, Fall 2006]. In its positive aspect, the liver generates kindness; anger and frustration in its negative. It rules the nerves and the tendons (where we store stress), and the eyes. If the flow of liver Chi is blocked, it can create heat, sick wind, and other disorders in the body. It’s important for wellbeing and health to find ways to release obstructed Chi and restore the flow. Movement, especially of the legs, is a really good way to open the energetic circulation. So is stretching, which acts on the tendons and joints. Chanting, sounding, and relaxing the breath also open the channels and harmonize the body. Rubbing the outer rims of the ears, the sides of the head, and the base of the skull help to remove stagnation in the liver meridian and its yang pair, the gall bladder. Because our livers work to remove poisons, spring is an excellent time for detoxification, especially by eating greens, sour foods, and bitters, and by abstaining from fats and refined foods. Another way to balance the wood element and soothe jangled nerves and stressed-out bodies is to walk in the forest or sit under a tree. Empty your mind of over-thinking, breathe in the fragrance, watch the subtle movements of the branches, listen, and become calm and clear. Allow your Chi to mingle with the tree’s Chi, and feel its essence breathing. To "enter the tree and become tree," as Life-Eve, the daughter of Sophia, is said to have done in the Gnostic text, Origin of the World. * The Chinese great goddess Xi Wang Mu is named Queen Mother of the West, a title that can also be translated as Western Grandmother. In the Chinese Concordance, West is linked to the Lungs, the element of Metal, and the Tiger. But several millennia ago, there was an Eastern Mother as well as a Western, as Shang dynasty oracle bone inscriptions show. Aspects of this pairing survived, and long afterward, Xi Wang Mu was often portrayed with the dragon of the East as well as the Tiger of the West. Classic Han dynasty depictions show her flanked by both these sacred beings, often while enthroned at the crest of the World Tree. This shamanic symbolism accords with more recent Taoist scriptural references to Xi Wang Mu as the protector of spiritual seekers, as a guardian spirit who initiates and reveals mysteries, and who sometimes bestows elixir or peaches of immortality. Shamans and spirits travel the worlds spanned by her great Tree. In a tomb tile with the dragon and tiger throne the goddess is accompanied by spirits, a dancing frog and the three-legged raven. A more recent woodcut still shows her, across all the centuries, with the teeth and tail of a tiger, and with the magical green birds who are often said to bring this goddess red fruits from the south.
Another Chinese goddess associated with dragon energies is the very ancient Nü Gua. In the words of the Huai Nan Zi: "... her brilliant glory sweetly suffuses the whole world. She rides in a thunder-carriage driving shaft-steeds of winged dragons and an outer pair of green hornless dragons. She bears the emblems of the Fortune of Life and Death."** Here Nü Gua ascends to the Ninth Heaven, seated in the "Visionary Chart," driving her magical steeds with reins of yellow cloud. Before her flies a white calf-dragon, and behind, a rushing snake. Nü Gua herself takes the form of a woman-serpent, like so many other goddesses around the world, from the Calinya Carib Amaná, who lives in the Pleiades, to the French faery goddess Mélusine or Babylonian Tiamat or Isis Bubastis in the Nile delta, or Ngalyod and other Australian goddesses. So the great Goddess of China is connected to dragon and tiger, to wood as well as metal. In Taoist mysticism, these elements are frequently paired, too, as Liver and Lungs, which have a complementary relationship, just as Heart and Kidneys, the correlates of south and north do. The body is seen as a microcosm of the greater cosmic reality. Alchemical texts frequently describe the Lung/Liver pair as signifying "sense and essence," and as interacting and exchanging with each other. The spring energy of Liver ascends, while the fall energy of Lungs descends. It’s the rising energy that I’m feeling now, and more than the regular seasonal upsurge. This is a mounting desire for freedom, an irresistible impulse to break the bonds of old pain, oppressive patterns. This rising is in the air, the youth are stirring, women are speaking up about the misogyny propagated by the media, which has been so obvious in recent months. People are fed up with the corruption and hidebound militarism crippling the economy and afflicting people in faraway places. We feel outrage at torture being pushed at the highest governmental levels. A recent presidential veto quelled a measure to stop it, with barely a peep from the TV screens. So we are the ones who need to raise our voices. To rise up... like the Gulabi Gang in India, the women in hot pink saris who go after batterers with lathis, giving them a taste of their own medicine. They confront corrupt officials in person and storm police stations that refuse to file charges in cases of caste injustice and march on households which abuse wives (and often kill them) in order to extort more dowry payments. The dynamic Sampat Devi, who was forced out of school to be married at the age of 9, founded and leads the group. She says, "We are not a gang in the usual sense of the term. We are a gang for justice." Where justice has been denied, they demand it, and they don’t take no for an answer.*** In the spirit of the rising energy of spring, and thanks to internet magic, I want to share one of the most moving living pagan survivals I have encountered. It’s one of many Slavic songs honoring Lada, the goddess of spring. Her invocations were chanted and danced over a wide swath of eastern Europe, crossing borders and even language families (the Balts know her too). This particular song, Ladarke, has a beautiful wild melody with a very ancient sound. It’s performed by a Croatian folk troupe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_SndCqax5Y One verse calls on the goddess "Dai nam selo, give us power/vitality." Do, Lada, dai nam selo: revitalize us, lift our spirits so we can rise.
* The context here is a woman transforming herself and removing herself from the reach of oppressive forces. The archons plotted to rape and "pollute" Eve, and to teach Adam that she came into being from his rib "so that the woman will serve and he will rule over her." But Life/Eve laughed at their scheming, darkened their eyes, and left her likeness beside Adam. "She entered the tree of knowledge, and remained there. She revealed to them that she had entered the tree and become tree." The archons ran away in fear, then defiled Eve's likeness. "And they were deceived, not knowing that they had defiled their own bodies." Later, the couple ate fruit, and the archons cursed them, the earth, and its fruit. Sophia became furious at this and cast down the archons from heaven. [See Arthur, Rose, The Wisdom Goddess: Motifs in Eight Nag Hammadi Documents, 1984, p 207; Young, Serinity, An Anthology of Sacred Texts by and about Women, p. 54.] This story is one of the feminist reinterpretations of Genesis by a pagan wing of Gnostics. ** Another goddess who drives a dragon chariot is Medea, and yes I do mean goddess. See the work of Miriam Robbins Dexter on the transformations of Medea in Greek literature, or even James Fraser who gives background on how the classic playwrights made a child-killer out of a goddess. *** For more on the Gulabi ("pink") Gang, see: |
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