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A week ago I had a bad fall from my new bike. Riding happily down a leafy country lane quite fast, I didn’t see the drift of loose sand and gravel across it until too late; I crashed from a great height, like Humpty Dumpty and my right leg is still developing the story in fantastic technicolour! When I got home, I applied arnica, St Johns Wort oil for haemorrhoids (? which I don’t have, thanks God), and ice to the enormous bump and grazes, with good effect. I cannot resist quoting from this consoling email which arrived soon after, from Uncle Apothecary’s Garden across the pond:
“Ahhh The drama of life!! Poor new bike!! Haha. Yes. Poor you of course!! I am happy your body wasn’t too badly banged up, and so glad I could help it heal in some way!! Ouch! Maybe it should be called something instead of hemorrhoid oil? Humpty Dumpty oil? Puts things back the way they were. Reversing oil? That St. John’s Wort oil is something isn’t it? PutitbackthewayitwasOil? Even without my help, it seems to make all sorts of repairs on its own.
“A three wheeler for you ? … Maybe life just thought you needed to get up close and personal with Nature? Too much putting up of feet in a retired person kind of way. No retirement for us, Jane. D.”
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I was terrified lest my beloved Bike was irreparably damaged by my misadventure … But it suffered little more than a scratch – basically – and thanks to the marvellous Oil of Life, we are riding around again, just as before.
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What is the provide-ence? Why indeed is Humpty Dumpty egg-0 shaped? And what did I actually bump into?
I haven’t room here to describe the carnival of rugged rocks, revelations, pesterings and personalities that rose and fell during the week; but I did wonder what underlying current of ‘the teaching‘ I might retrieve. And each morning I studied, and wrote my diary:
15 June – ON SOUND AND COLOUR
Paul Foster Case writes: “Blue-violet, A-natural, is the tone-frequency of Saturn: the power in us which puts on the brakes. Sacral plexus, base of the spine. Excretion of waste: transmission of life/regeneration. Skin, knees, ankles, kidneys, lumbar spine, vasomotor system (blood?), bones. Kundalini is the storage-battery. It is charged with the residual energy left over from the various body functions.”
This is rather a wonderful thing to reflect on! Having a tough time with the material world, and discussing with my Aries friend how the lungs work (he like most of us, didn’t know they are like seaweed floating up and down in water, the alveoli, the delicate little expanding sacs inviting air, many of which feel crushed by the pain of his cracked rib, and recovery is delayed by smoking. So now he goes SWIMMING.)
Right now, I sense the miracle of this residual energy from the body functions. What keeps the body functioning is cosmic; the physical body in balance is cosmic; the Kundalini when available, is awesome and eternal.
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Serpent of Light – and Ibis – detail from Hermes Trismegistos 2003
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In my inner eye, I catch sight – as if through a door – of the living, wonderful Snake of Light; the extraordinary manifestation of what we actually are … and the living mass of trillions of individual cells like stars in water. In outer space you might travel at 10,000 miles an hour, yet feel you are standing still, because there is no air to resist you. In the interior body-cosmos, we are 80% water, and this, as made of atoms, is 99% empty space. Everything I am, flows seamlessly through itself.
And simultaneously I have hard heads, bodies, legs, and a complex of interior organs; and I bump, and I have a great fall, and I get embarrassed, and I have one brittle worry after another to believe fervently in; and I try to cope with life! What is Real? What of all those tossed up egg-shells?
In a dome the size of St Peter’s in Rome, if a nucleus were a single grain of salt, the positions of electrons would be a few specks of dust – they whirl through the great chamber of space. They are not objects but waves enwrapping the salt grain. Salt crystallizes to the cube, the basic structure of all matter. The cube’s six points when circumscribed reveal the Seal of Solomon or sphere. The lines extended from the equilateral tetrahedrons form the web of our world. Upon this subatomic lattice the electronic paths come into being.
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Portrait of Annika with lion: Tarot Key 8 – soul Strength
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And now I have the Snake of Light. The Stellar power manifests through my body’s organs, and if they are all using it and working well enough, what is left over is the Serpent. It bursts the box. The Serpent spoke to Eve, and she told Adam and said, Taste the fruit!
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Imagination beholds the Serpent, as alive as in all the revelations of Alchemy and Yoga. It is fiery, with gleams of gold and red, and permeated with white light; and it is a loopy dragon. It brings no rush to my system, but to see it is peacefully liberating … the deep inner chamber, the realisation that I am the stars. The realisation itself coils and is the DNA. The mercury mind abandons any attempt to spell the countless codes. None of that is necessary when I see Great Hermes in principle. I see him now as in my painting. Calm and still, and just perceived; but luminous. Clarity of thought.
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Hermes Trismegistos of Alexandria, with Staff of Life and Serpent of Light
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Last week was “one bloody thing after another” as Mr Gurdjieff used to say. Dealing with non-deliveries and bureacratic fluff, was particularly frustrating. While battered from crashing my bike – the invisible wall of life – I did a post on Aurobindo’s Savitri, and in the other blog, I did two on Master R. Light relief !
At the same time, a local “harassment” issue arose, in which I took an interest: and a neighbour’s abuse of strong painkillers. I feel I am shown, not to deny any situation or challenge, but to learn to remain detached enough during it, to receive the bigger picture. It’s not easy. Keep practicing!
When I started to write about the Serpent of Light this morning, I remembered the addicted neighbour, and realised our human plight in its extremity: the abysmal ignorance about our bodies. Unconsciously, we regard them as punch-bags of perished putty – thus the cosmetic advertising. Do I really live in my body? mostly I daydream along, somewhere outside it. Unconsciously the body is an enemy, ready to spring cancer and limitation into the movie-go-round. The neighbour … she is wasted. She says “I want a high.”
In Kabbalah, Malkuth of the Tree is the Kingdom, the field, the root of Kether: the embodied Conscious will. We have the free will simply to remember this, whenever we can: remember the conscious breath. In my view, the free will accepts and flows with the Will which is cosmic: the river in every organ. When I am awake, my body is the earth … Gaia.
Some souls – like the neighbour – have so deeply self-harmed that they live beyond repair. Whatever her GP gives her, she abuses and uses up. Couldn’t he prescribe her an antidote? But nothing stops the self destruction of the living dead, until they turn and begin to climb out of the pit. Whatever an outsider may do for the sufferer, is turned to abuse. It is like a quicksand.
That soul takes responsibility, to become human, to become embodied; to respect life. Everything we are is a condensation of what we chose upstream in this or other lifetimes : and the faculty to make a small but fundamental choice of direction, is an individual one. It is also in human nature to “hit rock” first.
And I dreamed someone allowed himself to drown without regret in the leaden-grey sea: was this my Shadow? Or an opting out – a runaway, a suicide? The same Life remains, wherever it is left … the same problem to deal with.
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Virgo Malkuth garden and forest, with the Moon in Capricorn – from a tree of life painting for Christopher Stavri
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Paul Foster Case writes: “The right direction and sublimation of the coiled up serpent power, is the major operation of the work of Yoga. Its sublimation is the Great Work of western Alchemy.”
I saw, as I began to write of Saturn and the Serpent of Light – the excretion and the transmission of life – the balance and clarity of function and of thought: the mercury through the body – the Sun-cube through the veins and arteries. It is called the path of Administration.
PFC writes, “the mental effects of this blue-violet vibration are poise, deliberation and concentration.”
This is the discriminating blade of Saturn in the ZAIN path of the Lovers: Saturn on the Tree is Binah: and the path of Binah – Tifareth is the parting and the placing together of things without mixing them wrongly, or blurring them.
Tarot Arcanum 22 – The World (Yesod Malkuth path – Moon/Earth: the root)
Tarot Arcanum 6 – the Lovers (Binah Tifareth path – Saturn/Sun
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“An over-active Saturn – the violet-indigo vibration – results in fear and in retaining waste, which poisons the body.” Tension hardens the sphincters by torsion. “Deficiency of Saturn weakens the bony structure and leads to dreaming without doing, and to eccentricity and rashness.”
If we are destined for a path of Knowledge or genuine Kabbalah, its opening stages can be violently painful, physically or emotionally. The awakening – coming to grips with the Light – is like Jacob wrestling the Angel. We cannot yet see what it is, but we are magnetically wedded to it all over. The Presence in the long years before it begins to dawn and take shape, is a fearsome commodity in relationships, work or whatever is given to tackle. When I was a baby, I woke crying from the recurrent nightmare of a high, sharp mountain range which screamed. That Himalayan range, as I grew up into it, became the ancient Self.
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Now, some poetry:
I see in my past, a preparation of the Great Work in “the Rain Check Dream” in the Watershed. It was like a cauldron in the cellar of the seas, and is accurately described. I have quoted it in an earlier post, but here it is again:
“There was a feeling, in these sequences of dreams, of the light of the Sun’s fire. It grows in a cauldron whose substance I cannot quite see. Time entered and gave it meaning. Time with it brought feelings and images of something male, unknown and triumphing, a power or vividness which I recognized, something outside or new to myself, something I welcomed. The cockbird crowed. I touched with it, stone in a secret place. A mosaic of window panes fell away, and I lived now in light between the fragments of an archipelago which danced upon the sea. Upon the crests of the waves came wild plumed horses to meet me, blow upon my making. Yet, too acute an occult concentration may mask fear and emotional poverty.
“I put it down, I left it, went to have lunch.
“The thing in my absence maintained its steerage, and when I returned to the cellar of the seas, I purchased with it my vision. From the dawn a tribe of sea-lions drew chariots of fire and the sun waxed until it filled the whole sky. I welcomed. And still it was held, this unknown thing, this flame, in the quiet equilibrium of hands. Upon the potters wheel rises slow my city of Gathertegen, for my children to generate; the wrong rotation, the wrong touch, vanity, it crumbles.
“Again and again, between sheets white as snow whose melt is the ocean, the seed was taken, and it grew. “Let God guide you.” It widens and is shaped with hands, it is something fiery which glows.”
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I suffer it before I become it easily. This is clear. When the human organism is transitioning from the racial form into the ageless form, it crosses a Quantum field – an electron leaping to a higher orbital frequency.
From “I Dreamed on Good Friday Morning”
“To clamber through to the other side was now deliberate ;
to dream an unreal fairground scene of desolation –
phantasm of effort: for may we not connect, at any time
with or without the surface body?
My inertia could not turn.
I could not walk, but on the cakewalk I
let my awareness open, soften, surrender the vibration itself;
and into a neural chaos drowned,
seeking comfort, smudging circuitry.
For a few seconds only, the cooperation eased;
then wave clusters dense, collided, cancelled, jammed to a screech
braining damage
metallic resonance of Light on high,
a black hole curved to singularity, destruct survive –
cried out. Woke.”
Poems of Eclipse, 1999
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And this poem which is called “The Beginning of Seeking.” Ramesh Balsekar spoke of the beginning of seeking, as a dark night of the soul when the ego realises – “Who is this I, i am so concerned about?” – and there is nothing that can be done. For me the beginning of seeking was in the Karmic minefield of a relationship:
“I call our story “beginning of seeking”
but actually it was the end
when I ambushed you with attitudes
and so called success
of culture and conditioning –
and your Tales from No-mans-land began.
I saw my hands and arms, unstoppably
sew for you unsuitable shirts
of their own accord.
From vulnerable no mans land
sprang a battlefield, twist of swords
helpless to prevent
as a silver birch’s stem to order the leaves that branch –
or forest to restrain the deer.
I saw mercenaries, armed to the teeth
lay siege to a house within the storm
which stays untouched ;
which does not break,
but into which all broke, each plate
and cup of repaired fragility.
The beginning of seeking happens when
an open house is closed,
and swords lay siege
to a grey and starving maiden
locked inside.
From Poems of Eclipse, 8 June 1999
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16 June 2013
In John Coyote’s poetry, I found these three wonderful lines.
“You rested your body against me.
We were lovers once.
Friendship took us to the next level.”
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Secret Dakini Oracle spread, 15 June 2013
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Spirituality is the way things work in life. Last week came a gleam of light – the Serpent of Light in the archway of the inner life: Hermes. The other day, I cast the dakini oracle. The horses look at one another across it, and the Serpent rises through Mula, the dark Goddess, the root chakra or muladhara. The first card, “Earth Bound” at the top, is actually Tarot Key 21, The World. The one in the middle, apex of the pyramid, is the Karmic living goddess: a higher insight level. The oracle reflects what I was thinking about. Give it time.
Aries and I went for a walk and discussed why life is so unbelievably hard and painful for some people – the knocks, the battering … the spiritual path.
It is the way the Light looks and feels, when we are still in training, and bumping into it.
Even a bike crashes on the road to Damascus!
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A painting of Binah – In the Beginning – Genesis. The E or Aleph of “Elohim” is at the centre point, inside the letter Beit like a little spark. God breathes on the waters, and Creation returns through the cosmic night, to source. At the time this was painted, Uranus, Saturn and Venus were conjunct.
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.
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All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/
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