not native fruit

solitude, monasticism and artemis

“Opposing the solitary austerity of Artemis to the joyous union inspired by Aphrodite must not let us forget the benefits of solitude, the significance, for the contemporary personality, of Artemesian chastity. 

“Since, from the beginnings of Christianity, most examples of the solitary meditative life have been offered by monasticism, it is relevant to establish the bond, at once historic and mythic, between the cult of Artemis and the solitary life as lived by the religious orders of Christendom, in order to discover the positive elements of both Christian and Artemesian seclusion.

“However, we must distinguish the chastity of the monk or hermit from that of the secular priest, for they did not have the same meaning, nor the same effect.  We have spoken sufficiently of the misogyny of the Fathers of the Church, who, while appropriating to their own advantage the power of domination over others (particularly over women), refused to grant the least power to the feminine sex.  The chastity of such men, who were men of power rather than of spirit, often and unfortunately implied disdain or dislike of women.  When chastity is defined more by negation – rejection of the other sex – then by a positive choice of a way of life, its experience is corrupted.  Anxiety towards the opposite sex and a solitary life are two realitites which should not be confounded.” (pp. 132 -133)

“The first communities of monks or solitaries, as marginalizing the dominant values of their society, had other things to do than found a family.  Their refusal of relationship with the opposite sex was perhaps above all a refusal to identify with the paterfamilias and the conqueror mentality associated with virility.  For the nuns, chastity might have been a way to escape the biological destiny of maternity and a way to live in a female hierarchy of power.  In fact, certain monks gave the impression of venerating nature and the feminine principle but also of identifying with the style of life proper to women: they wore robes, tilled the soil, and refused to fight wars.  (The first Christian monks, retired into the desert or into a monastery, were often Roman soldiers who refused military service.) (133)

“The chastity of the first Christian monks thus resembles the castration of the priests of Artemis, who emasculated themselves voluntarily to enter the service of the virgin Goddess, approaching her through mimesis.  Contrary to this, the priests of the ecclesiastical orders identify with a hierarchy of power that is strictly male and that clearly seeks to keep the priest from feminine contagion.  The pyramidical organization of ecclesiastical power resembles that of an army, whereas the rules and values adopted by the religious orders – such as the Franciscans, the Benedictines, or the Cistercians – are much more similar to the cult of Artemis and of nature than to the rest of the Church.  The equilibrium of manual labor, contemplation, and intellectual work, their cult of nature, and the importance accorded solitude and silence – all these aimed to develop contemplatives and not soldiers of Christ.” 

These passages are quoted from "Pagan Meditations, The Worlds of Aphrodite, Hestia, Artemis" by Ginette Paris, published by Spring Publication.

I just happened to open to this by chance, and everywhere I look in this book I want to copy out passages! (The ancient scribe-woman lives!)  This particular section helps me to make sense of how, when I was self-identified as Christian, I did not feel 'sympatico' with much that was happening around me in the 'church,' but rather felt drawn to the monastic tradition, to contemplative practices, and I idealized 'the hermit living in the woods.'  (I've pretty much transfered all of this whole to Hinduism where it also fits in rather well, especially with my Guiding Light, Amma, whose personal spiritual practice took place basically on the beach.)  I was also able to see how the Andalusian culture of contemplation, enshrined in the 'alcove,' the meditation garden, etcetera, was adopted into European Christian culture in the late medieval period and how that influenced the Catholicism I grew up with, but this puts a whole new slant on things. 

For me, Ginette Paris' words evoke a startling realization, a whole new way of seeing something previously very familiar, or so I thought.

ruined by jung

I'm participating in two novel-writing groups.  They are very different and balance each other quite well.  I have learned a lot through this process, and one of the main things I've learned is that thinking 'The Manticore' is one of the best books in print ruins me as a successful modern writer.  I say this at least partially tongue-in-cheek.  Seriously, folks, I did read a lot Jungian authors in my thirties, meaning books by Jungian therapists about their theories and discoveries and case studies.  Robertson Davies' book is simply a fictionalized version of those.  And I do sometimes wonder if I'm ruined as a novelist because of it.

sacred secret

The above is a sampling of the secret script in which I wrote pages and pages to myself as a child. 

I like what Carl Jung writes about his own childhood experience in which he made a tiny man, a painted sacred stone and  small scrolls of paper "written during school hours in a secret language of my own invention," placed them all in a ceremonial container and hid them among the rafters of the attic in his house.  He later wrote of it in his autobiography, "Dreams, Memories, Reflections":

"This possession of a secret had a very powerful formative influence on my character; I consider it the essential factor of my boyhood.  The little wooden figure with the stone was a first attempt, still unconscious and childish, to give shape to the secret.  I was always absorbed by it and had the feeling I ought to fathom it; and yet I did not know what it was I was trying to express.  I always hoped I might be able to find something - perhaps in nature - that would give me the clue and show me where or what the secret was.  I was constantly on the lookout for something mysterious.  Consciously, I was religious in the Christian sense, though always with the reservation: 'But it is not so certain as all that!' or, 'What about that thing in the ground?' [from an earlier dream-vision of a chthonic phallus'] And when religious teachings were pumped into me and I was told, 'This is beautiful and this is good,' I would think to myself: 'Yes, but there is something else, something very secret that people don't know about.'  " (p.22)

reading on faith and reason

I'm reading Sam Harris' "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason."  So far, I haven't come across anything I didn't already know, but that's because I've been over this territory quite a bit myself.  I'm not an atheist, as he apparently claims to be, but I'm not a subscriber to any particular religion anymore either.  I've worked my way through a couple of 'em, based largely on reason and study but also on 'getting real' about my own experience.

I had help.  Francis Baur, the late Franciscan friar who taught theology's basics to all incoming students, insisted on applying historical critical method and any evidential sources from the sciences to the subject of our interest, namely, God, the Bible, church tradition and Jesus, not necessarily in that order.  This was done to off-set the natural religious bias against science that is very common in religious literature and communities, and which is seen perhaps most clearly and publically today in the debate between creationists and evolutionists. 

As soon as we got in the classroom, he demonstrated right away just how much faith we all place in science, in everything from driving our cars and flying in airplanes, to seeking modern medical care, enjoying media technology, and believing in the solar system.  Some of the priestly hopefuls quickly transferred to other schools.  My theory is that somehow their sense of identity and well-being was tied up in ignoring this split within themselves,  and identifying their 'beliefs' one-sidedly with the religious pole of their thinking.  Harris writes eloquently on the wedding of ignorance and knowledge in religious moderates.  I think Francis Baur would agree, because he was tough, he had 'tough-love' for christianty. For myself, I evolved an understanding of the bible as a combination of mythology and legend.  I love both of these, so I'm okay with that.  In my view, myth and legend are primarily telling us something spiritual about ourselves, and their historic interest is secondary to that.   

I've also been reading Edward F. Edinger's 'The Psyche in Antiquity' in two parts.  The first part deals with the greek philosophers as our 'cultural ancestors', and gets into each one's most representative concepts as parts of our earliest mapping of consciousness in the West.  His writing is terse and to the point, illuminating, and altogether quite wonderful. The fact that he can deal with all this material in two exceedingly slim volumes astonishes me. The second volume deals with 'Gnosticism and Early Christianity.' 

Anyway, reading Edinger and Harris in tandem have supported a train of my own thought that's been developing over the last year or so, about the importance of having some kind of 'measure' to apply to one's religious beliefs, ideas, principles, etc, that arises outside the religious dogma itself.  In the case of Christianity and the West, that would be Reason, which we acquired thanks to our late medieval rediscovery of the Greek philosophers. And the fact that Greek thinking is embedded in the New Testament, thanks to the letters of Paul.

Here are the relevant passages from Edinger that enlighten for me the origins of Christianity and the role of Greek philosophy in it right from the start:

saint francis esoterica

In honor of the feastday of st. francis of assisi which is coming up on october 4th, i've finally gotten around to posting 'Nature Symbols - Wisdom and Healing: the Grieving Process and the Four Elements," which I wrote for my master's degree in theology back in 1985. It can be found under 'Rare Cultivars' in my side-bar. 

I balked at calling my own writing 'rare,' but on the other hand, no one else, or few others, will have written a long essay that gets into St. Francis of Assisi, Carl Jung, Simone Weil,  the old metaphysical system of the Four Elements, catholic theology on such topics as the divine feminine, nature, evil,  co-creativity, wholeness versus perfection, and all the other random notions that were floating around in my being at the time.  If I were to re-write this today, I would have even more literature to bring to the topic.  Anyway, I can't think of any other companion word for 'cultivars' other than 'rare,' and I want to stay with my fruity metaphor.  So, 'rare cultivars' it is.  I hope to publish some of my other past work here soon.

freya in film/teatro del mundo

recently i've watched two danish films, 'old men in new cars' and 'smilla's sense of snow' (read the book too), and i noticed that in both of these films there is a heroine who is indestructible.  In the case of 'old men in new cars' her indestructibility is farcical, but smilla's is no less unbelievable.  as you know, i'm looking for talismans of danish culture in order to better understand my own roots.  i would never have noticed this danish penchant for indestructible females if i hadn't watched these two films in close proximity.  it leads me to believe that the goddess 'freya' may be living yet in the danish psyche.  not only are these females indestructible but they are motivated by compassion.  smilla subjects herself to all sorts of harm in order to unmask the wrongful death of a child, and Mille's huge capacity for love (romantic love) 'saves' a psychotic woman-killer from himself.  (Similarities in their names, too: Mille and Smilla).  In recent reading on Denmark, I noticed that their government's first woman representative was in 1947 - pretty good!

last night we watched 'the five people you meet in heaven.'  very sentimental, a hallmark presentation, but we enjoyed the basic premise, and i really liked the 'ruby pier' carnival-like setting.  well, i remember piers like that from when i was a child and we went to the seashore, especially Atlantic City.  when i was a teenager i worked at a local theater, and one of our specialties was 'Alice in Wonderland.'  There were all sorts of fantastic costumes and characters - the white rabbit, the red queen, the hookah-smoking caterpillar, etc. -  and looking back on it from here, i often think what a great introduction to life it was: the many characters (several played by the same actor perhaps), the shifting scenes, the various dramas and comedies, the imagination of it all.  it put things in perspective and showed me what we're all about.  as they said in 'five people,' 'all the stories are one story.'