Gaia—From Myth to Hypothesis

        

The earth as seen from Apollo 17

Homeric Hymn to Gaia

To Gaia, mother of all, shall I sing:

The oldest one, firm foundation of all the world.

All things that move over the face of the earth,

All things that move through the sea, and all that fly:

All these are fed and nourished from your store;

From you all children and all good harvests come forth,

O blessed one, our mother earth.

O blessed one, mother of all mankind,

The giver of life and the taker of life away,

For mortal men, happy are those you honor:

Your fertile earth yields up riches to satisfy all their needs;

Their cities and their homes are filled with all good things;

Well-ordered lives of men and women you bless:

Good fortune is theirs.

Their children sing for joy and delight,

Exulting in their youth, they dance through the flowers;

And over the grass they dance for joy.

It is you who bless, it is you who nourish,

Sacred spirit, mother earth.

Be well, be well, mother earth,

Lovely bride of starry heaven,

And for my song grant me life both full and long…

“The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.”     ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis)

Dear Reader,

Back in the 1960’s, James Lovelock first came up with the Gaia hypothesis, which has gone through quite a lot of debate and experimentation since then. It has been criticized, clarified, diversified, adopted, adapted and modified. And it has caught the imagination and interest of many people, scientists and non-scientists alike. One line of criticism has been that it is too “metaphorical” and thus not “scientific”. It is a strange comment when one considers the abundance of metaphor in the nomenclature of all branches of science. Science requires metaphorical language precisely because it is describing and explaining what has not been described heretofore.

James Lovelock with a godddess in a garden

So what is the nature of this metaphor? Who was Gaia before she became a theory?

Gaia, Ge or Gaea are all ways of spelling the name of a Great Goddess who, according to Hesiod’s Theogony, was born from Chaos, a generative void. She is Earth to us, our planet, our world. Like a blue-green marble, she shines, floating in the blackness of outer space. She is the vehicle upon which we live, as we are carried along, circling the sun. She is alive with species of animals and plants. Her “bones” are composed of minerals and metals. Oceans cover most of Her surface, and an atmosphere wraps Her in a beautiful, gauzy shawl. Magnetic and gravitational fields emanate from Her. She is grand and vast relative to any of us humans, ultimately wild and terribly powerful. While She is indifferent to our suffering (much of which is self-inflicted), She is also generous in Her prolific, multi-varied bounty.

Susan Seddon-Boulet’s depiction of Gaia

For the Greeks of classical antiquity, She was already old, primordial–mother of the Titans, grandmother of the Olympian gods. Homer called Her “the oldest of all”.

She was immutable and a priori. All oaths were sworn by Her name. She was the first to be invoked in any prayer. Oracles came from Her through the medium of dreams or out of trances. Every cave or cleft in the land were entrances to her inner realms. Her body held the bodies of the dead. She gave birth to Chronos, Time Itself, and saved him from being swallowed by Ouranos, The Heavens. While her grandchildren, the Olympians, developed anthropomorphized shapes in the human imagination, she could never be constrained to such a small form. She was trans-human—before us and beyond us and certainly was not like a human mother at all. Even though She was invoked as “mother”, that was a hopeful effort to appease her more dangerous aspects and call forth Her gentle nurturing.

The Goddess’ Gentle Side

From Her Greek name comes the name of the science dedicated to studying the rocky, metallic surfaces and depths—geology. A geologist can tell us facts about the age of Gaia, the eras of Her planetary development as measured in the millions and millions of years. These spans of time mostly do not include a human presence; and many animal and plant species have arisen, have thrived for immensely long periods and then gone extinct, sometimes relatively quickly, as scientists tell us.

Gaia’s children, the Titans, still live, of course. Now we call them volcanoes or earthquakes, storms, tsunamis, hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, wildfires. They are also the forces that we detect as magnetism and gravity and electricity, or nuclear energy. These are Her powers that both terrify and inspire us—the forces we seek to expropriate for our own uses (just as Zeus captured Her thunderbolts to use as His weapons).

And like the heroes of so many mythologies, once we acquire even a small bit of one of Her powers, we go too far and turn it against Her and thus, against ourselves– polluting air, water and soil; slaughtering animals to the point of extinction; decimating ecosystems; clearing forests, and even destroying mountains. According to myth, the hero, Hercules, had to learn to stop his heroics, had to learn by becoming a cross-dressing servant to Queen Omphale and eventually had to be initiated into the Underworld mysteries of Eleusis to be healed because, in his zeal, he had become mad and dangerous. (As Tina Turner sang, “We don’t need another hero….”, or just maybe we need a new kind of hero.)

In mythology, Gaia is Origin and Destination. Throughout geological time, many beautiful animals, ferocious and gentle, big and small, have come and gone, as have many pantheons of gods and goddesses conjured by human imagination. Civilizations have risen and fallen by the dozens if not by the hundreds in mere thousands of years—a blip on Gaia’s timeline. Womb to tomb, birth to death and back again through the cycles of time, the natural world emerges from Her and disappears into Her.

Gaia’s indifference to suffering is alluded to in the myth of Persephone or Kore. It is Gaia who colludes with Zeus and Hades in the abduction of that maiden goddess. First Gaia produces the narcissus of a thousand petals that attracts Persephone. When she wanders away from her companions to pluck the flower, the Earth opens up so that Hades, god of the underworld can carry Persephone off to his dark realm. Her terrified cries are to no avail. Kore’s naïveté (i.e. Her lack of awareness of death) is destined to change into a more profound wisdom despite her distress. Thus begins one of the most powerful of Greek myths, which was the foundation of a religious movement that lasted well over a thousand years and which spread throughout the Mediterranean world. One could say that at that point, human awareness comes to terms with the overwhelming nature of Gaia, but also a promise intuited from nature’s cycles of return.

                                                                                          Mandala of Earth

Ultimately then, humans are the ones who may develop a particular kind of consciousness of and for Gaia; we are the ones who can not only hear and see, but understand; and we can have a conscience if we will. We are the ones who choose kindness or cruelty, prosperity or ruin, survival or extinction. Our planet will not dictate what choices we make. But it will adjust itself and follow its own ways of maintaining interconnected systems whether or not current life forms, including humans, adapt. Our survival and quality of life through that adjustment is open to question and dependent on how much communal wisdom we can develop and how quickly, according to scientists.

As Gaia theory has it, living organisms interact with each other and with the inorganic elements to create the conditions for life that we experience. From other perspectives, mythological, poetical and metaphorical, the ancient Greeks understood that we tread always and everywhere on Gaia’s Sacred Ground, and from Her all our blessings come. If modern humans decide to, we could restore that sense of the holiness of our Earth and perhaps then begin to exercise more prudent judgment in how to manage our relationships to our planet and to all living beings. This is where myth and science, prose and poetry, fact and metaphor might come together.

 

So, dear readers, this to me means that our choices matter. And Gaia will respond to our choices, however one wishes to envision the process, through a scientific lens or through a poetic one or through both.

Musing mythologically,

Carol

Drought in Myth and in Fact

When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.
–  Benjamin Franklin

Drought is not a happy topic, but it is a theme that figures in myths around the world. No surprise there. So there are plenty of divine figures, gods and goddesses and demons, as well as animals that in various times and different places have been made to carry the blame for drying up the essential element of water.

In California, now in its fourth year of a drought, the Pomo Indians had a complicated tale of how Coyote initiated a drought of no small proportions.

According to one legend, Coyote tricked Wood Duck Woman into having sex with him. Children were born from that coupling and this caused much displeasure among Wood Duck Woman’s female relatives and friends. There is more than one version of what happened next, but in one of them two children (associated with the sun and the moon), although grudgingly raised by the tribe, were mistreated.

A Pomo Maiden
photo by Edward S. Curtis

Coyote was angered by the abuse of his children when he learned of it, so he set a fire in revenge. It came from the east and burned up almost everything and everyone in its path, drying up lakes, streams and creeks, leaving no water for people or other animals to drink. Coyote himself had to leave this world and was lifted up to the sky on a rope spun by Spider until he reached the fourth world, where his children were. Once there, Madumba, his older brother and the chief deity of the Pomo, reprimanded him for his excessively destructive behavior. A healer deity, Kuksu, was called in to cure Coyote of his sickness.

Before leaving the earth realm, because of great thirst, Coyote had drunk salt water from the sea, so Kuksu, the healer, jumped on his belly causing him to expel the water, but also all kinds of aquatic life–turtles and water birds–came tumbling out. Furthermore, the water from Coyote’s belly had turned fresh and refilled the lakes, streams and creeks of the land. (Specifically, Clear Lake, today part of Blue Lakes Recreation Area in California, was held to be the product of this remarkable recovery.)

Clear Lake, California (in better times)

Coyote, who had had a hand in inventing people in the first place, then set about to re-create them from bird feathers and to assign each his or her own bird characteristics. For example, a human created from feathers of a red-headed woodpecker would be a “slow man” who would be able to see a great distance.

So that is how one group of California’s First People explained or illustrated for themselves how wildfires, drought and renewal of life after disaster would occur. And for good measure there is a caution against seducing women by trickery and a lesson about the unintended consequences of revenge. Cruelty towards children is also shown to be a factor leading to natural catastrophe. The tale is multi-faceted.

Across the world, in ancient Egypt, no less a deity than Tefnut, one of the eight primordial forces, was responsible for bringing or withholding rain.

Tefnut

In one story, she and her father, Ra (the sun), had an argument. (Fathers of teen-age daughters will relate.) She stormed off (pun intended) to Nubia where she transformed herself into a man-eating lioness. Ra, concerned by her rampages, sent two messengers to her. Both her husband Shu (The air or atmosphere) and Thoth, (the great Ibis-headed inventor of writing and advanced communication) were sent to cajole her into coming home. She was duly persuaded and did return, trailed by a great procession of musicians, dancers, baboons and, happily, rain.

In one version of a Chinese myth, droughts were the work of Nuba, a goddess daughter of the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi. Wielding power to cause the rains to cease, she came down from the celestial realm to help her father in a battle against gods of rain and wind. Once those enemies were vanquished, however, she did not return to the heavens, but began to wander the earth, bringing drought along with her wherever she traveled. Ceremonies were practiced into the mid-twentieth century to encourage her to move on from any region plagued by drought.

In ancient Greece, Amymone, one of the fifty daughters (Danaides) of King Danaus, was said to have aided her father’s subjects and her own large family to survive a time of drought.

Poseidon and Amymone

She and her sisters were sent out all over the countryside to look for water. When she reached Lerna, the maiden was set upon by satyrs, but the god of the sea, Poseidon, came to her rescue. In her relief and gratitude, she granted Poseidon her love. The god then proffered a gentlemanly gesture by striking the earth with his trident, causing a gushing spring to appear. That spring became the water source that quenched the thirst of the Argive people and their animals.

In Hindu mythology, an arch-demon named Vritra, depicted as a serpent or dragon, was responsible for a terrible drought. He stole all the water there was and locked it up in a high mountain cave. Indra, the protector of the people and the god of rain sought out the demon and battled to victory over it. Wounded and defeated, the dragon released all of the water he had been hoarding. So the streams flowed, the rivers filled, the rains fell and the land and the people were saved.

Indra battles Vritra

German, from eastern Serbia and northern Bulgaria, was said to bring rain, but could also cause the rains to cease or produce hailstorms that damaged crops. Because German was so changeable, customary rituals were performed that were intended to mitigate his undesirable moods. In times of drought, a doll representing German was made by village girls who would enact a “funeral” for him, burying him on a riverbank or consigning him to a floating casket placed in the stream. Apparently, this was meant to encourage German to start the rains up again.

Much of the western United States today is drier than it has been in a very long time, and there is no relief in sight. (Ironically, as I write this, rain has begun falling, tapping on my roof, a rare and very welcome sound!). Total rainfall during this rainy season has been insufficient to get the state through the coming dry months. The snowpack in the high Sierras is a mere sliver of its normal level, and the aquifer that provides the groundwater for irrigation in the vast Central Valley is now so reduced that a NASA scientist recently announced that California could run out of water in just one year. (The governor was a bit more optimistic saying it may be “a couple of years” before that happens.) Water conservation is already being practiced and showing some effectiveness, but must give way to strict rationing at some point.

Update, April 9, 2015:  Just two days after I wrote the above, Governor Jerry Brown announced upcoming mandatory 25% reductions in municipal and residential water usage for California.  Water use of agribusinesses was not mentioned, nor was usage required in fracking operations. However, the Governor was clear in his condemnation of water wasted on private and public lawns, grassy cemeteries and golf courses.

Shrinking California Reservoir

There are many layers to this crisis in California. Agriculture uses by far the largest portion of available water, 80%. Pumping of the aquifer that underlies the Central Valley has been going on since the 1920’s to provide crop irrigation. That pumping has increased dramatically as water intensive crops such as rice and almonds have been introduced. The drought has speeded up the process as farmers dig more and deeper wells in order to continue irrigating. California growers and politicians would do well to heed this Native American saying:

“The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.” *

California Red-Legged Frog (population in decline)

Snowfall in the Sierra Nevada has been an important source for the rivers and streams of the northern half of the state. Now that those snows have failed to arrive for several years, reservoirs are at an alarmingly low level. Warm rains that fell this past winter were of no help in the long run because too much of that water simply ran off to the ocean. Some scientists predict a 20 to 50 year time of drought for this area of the world. Others claim that the state is on its way to permanent desertification. Obviously, humans are going to have to take steps to mitigate the drying out of this important agricultural region or face some dire outcomes. 

“In the Western United States, water flows uphill to money.”
–  Glen Sanders

The politics of water, always contentious, have escalated with predictable results. Big money wins, smaller operators lose. Common sense and long-term planning are debated, not implemented. Farmers have gone out of business. Almond orchards have been bulldozed. Giant agribusinesses have managed to get more water for themselves, leaving smaller growers to bankruptcy. The upshot is that water usage remains at unsustainable levels.

“We have been quick to assume rights to use water but slow to
recognize obligations to preserve and protect it…  In short, we
need a water ethic–a guide to right conduct in the face of
complex decisions about natural systems we do not
and cannot fully understand.”
–   Sandra Postel, Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity

California’s drought is fact, not myth, but it affects the imagination as well as the vegetation. On the personal level, here in the city, it is painful to watch big, beautiful trees shrivel and turn brown, to see green lawns replaced with gravel, to watch even drought-tolerant camellias wither and die. Water bills soar although residents water less and less. Those little oases, the small personal gardens that people tend so carefully and at such personal expense, disappear little by little. The transition to dry landscaping has ever so slowly begun for those who can manage or afford it.

Yet with all that voluntary conservation effort, the effect on total water usage is minimal so far because the fact is that residential usage of water in the state amounts to 4% of the total! The following quote expresses the angst and the sadness of the average gardener for whom water in the midst of drought is becoming an unaffordable luxury:

 “Day after day we looked for rain, and day after day we saw nothing but the sun.  Lavender that we had planted in the spring died.  The patch of grass in front of the house abandoned its ambitions to become a lawn and turned into the dirty yellow of poor straw.  The earth shrank, revealing its knuckles and bones, rocks and roots that had been invisible before.”   -Peter Mayle

One function of myths used to be to explain the natural phenomena around us. Today we distinguish, as we should, between myth and science. But it is ironic to say the least that even as science explains to us what is happening to our climate and why, we seem collectively as helpless to mitigate the outcomes as were those who assumed a demonic dragon was hoarding the water, or that a trickster Coyote had misbehaved and brought on dysfunction and disaster. So mythically speaking, Nuba roams the land unchecked. We are waiting for Kuksu to jump on Coyote’s belly and cure him and the land. Tefnut remains alienated, and German is not propitiated.

Yet, scientifically speaking, we do not employ enough science-based methods to conserve and manage what water we do have because of a lack of political will abetted by some measure of willful ignorance. The frog may not drink up the pond in which it lives, but apparently humans do.

Finally, there is this humbling thought:

Man – despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication,
and his many accomplishments – owes his existence to
a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.
–   Author Unknown

Further information:

A book about drought myths:  Drought and the Human Story:  Braving the Bull of Heaven by R.L. Heathcote, Ashgate Publishing,LTD.

For effects on some businesses:  http://fortune.com/2015/04/09/6-industries-hurt-the-most-by-the-california-drought/

All of the quotes in this blog come from   http://www.gardendigest.com/water.htm

* Sadly, amphibian populations worldwide are in a dramatic decline and California’s frogs are no exception. David Wake, a UC Berkeley biologist, wrote, “Amphibians have been around for about 250 million years. They made it through when the dinosaurs didn’t. The fact that they’re cutting out now should be a lesson for us.” You can read his article “Dying Frogs Sign of a Biodiversity Crisis” at  http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/08/12_extinction.shtml

On the Bunny Trail . . .

 

Spring has arrived in most parts of the United States although there are still reports of snow and hail moving in bands of storms across the upper Midwest. Winter has been extremely reluctant to leave those regions. But the cherry trees are blooming in Washington, D.C. while the azaleas and tulips have already faded in California gardens giving way to early jacaranda blossoms and roses.

Along with spring comes the season-marking holiday of Easter with its glorious celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and its ironically pagan name (in English). “Easter” is cognate with “Ostara”, the name of a Teutonic goddess of the dawn and related to Old Norse “austr” meaning “east”. Scholars trace the root of the word back to the Sanskrit “usra” meaning “dawn”.

 

 

The word “Easter” is probably even further back in time related to the name of Ishtar, the Babylonian great goddess whose mythology also emphasizes a journey to the underworld and a return to life. Ishtar was associated with a celebration in which red eggs played a significant part, as they do today in Eastern Orthodox Christian Easter feasts.

Red eggs for Easter

 

The theme of death and resurrection did not begin in world mythology with Jesus’ moving and magnificent story. In fact, even the rabbit, so fondly depicted nowadays as the Easter Bunny, has its own long history of association with the rising up of the sun at dawn and other themes that belong particularly to this season. For starters, in ancient Egypt, the hare deity is connected with concepts of “opening” and “arising” and was represented as a goddess,Wenet or god, Unnut.

Hare Glyph from Egypt

From http://mirrorofisis.freeyellow.com/id599.html there is more information about the hare in ancient Egypt:

“References to the hare are plentiful in ancient Egyptian mythology and literature.  The god Osiris, husband of Isis, was sometimes called Un-nefer, and portrayed with the head of a hare.  As Un-nefer, Osiris was sacrificed to the Nile each year to facilitate the annual flooding which brought renewal of the land and crops. Un-nefer has been translated variously as “The Good Being” or “The One Who Brings Good into Being” or “Beautiful Renewal.”  Wenet’s male counterpart, Wenenu (or Unnu), was sometimes identified as a form of Osiris or Re.  The hare also appears as a standard hieroglyphic phonetic sign.  This hieroglyph which is called “Wn” symbolized the very essence of life itself, and depicts a hare over a single ripple of water, the very substance from which life first appeared out of the primordial waters of Nun in ancient Egyptian creation myths.”    

Then there is the matter of the lunar aspect of Easter, which is calendared on the Sunday after the first full moon that follows the spring equinox. Throughout much of the world for millennia, it is a rabbit that moon-gazers see when they look up at the full moon.

Moon Rabbit

 

In Chinese mythology this moon rabbit is the companion of Chang-O, the moon goddess who left the Earth in order to take the elixir of immortality to the moon to keep it out of the hands of her cruel and despotic husband. (There are other versions in which she was merely curious as to what her husband was hiding from her and took the potion that then caused her to rise up to the moon.) Her rabbit, known as the Jade Rabbit, who lives with her on the moon, is in charge of mixing the elixir of immortality.

 

 

Trickster rabbits abound in world folklore and are found in Africa and North American Native tales, but also in the fables of Aesop from ancient Greece and Rome. Think of Brer Rabbit, a trickster figure of African folkloric origin, and how he gained his release by loudly protesting that he must not be thrown in the briar patch—a perfect example of how to use reverse psychology to escape from a threatening situation. Then there is the hare in Aesop’s fable of the Tortoise and the Hare. In that story the hare tricks himself out of winning the race by arrogantly assuming his superiority over the slow, but steady tortoise. In that case, contrary to common sense, speed does not win the race.

Brer Rabbit from London Charivari, 1892

 

In the United States in modern times, the theme of the rascally rabbit continued right into popular cartoons in the figure of Bugs Bunny. From Britain we have the literary invention of that famous White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. The White Rabbit lures Alice into the otherworld dream state for a very significant time in which she learns that her sense-perceptions can be quite perplexing and unreliable. And the March Hare is another confusing fellow in that tale. Rabbit’s message as trickster seems to tell us to be careful because appearances can be deceptive.

 

Alice, Grown Big, Watching the White Rabbit Disappear

But the hare is not limited to being a trickster only. The Dine Hareskins revere the spirit of the hare as a force that influences hunting, abundance and death. One of their stories tells how a hunter trapped in the underworld was able to escape by throwing the head of a white hare into a fire, which immediately brought on the sunrise. (Moon giving way to the sun at dawn?) The Algonquins had stories about the Great Hare they call Manibozho or Michabo who had many aspects, including that of being the inventor of picture writing, i.e. symbolic thought.

 

 

The theme of self-sacrifice is part of the lore of the hare in Asia. The following comes from the Jataka Tales. Hare is one of four enlightened animals, Boddhisattvas, in the story. Sakra, Lord of Devas, disguises himself as wandering Brahman in the forest and pretends he is in need of food in order to test the holiness of these four animals. Three of the animals have food they have caught to share with him:

“Then the Brahman went to the hare and asked for food, but the hare had no food but the lush grass growing in the forest. So the Bodhisattva [the hare] told the Brahman to build a fire, and when the fire was burning, he said, I have nothing to give you to eat but myself! Then, the hare threw himself into the fire.

 Sakra, still disguised as a Brahman, was astonished and deeply moved. He caused the fire to be cold, so the hare was not burned, and then revealed his true form to the selfless little hare. Dear hare, he said, your virtue will be remembered through the ages. And then Sakra painted the wise hare’s likeness on the pale face of the Moon, for all to see.

Sakra returned to his home on Mount Meru, and the four friends lived long and happily in their beautiful forest. And to this day, those who look up at the Moon can see the image of the selfless hare.”

Another depiction of the hare motif is seen across the world in the rotational image, a triskele of Three Hares, dating 600 A.D. in China right up to the present day in Europe and Britain. This image occurs in Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish and Christian contexts, yet its meaning is quite mysterious. Does it refer to the three phases of the lunar cycle-dark moon, full moon and crescent? Or is it a puzzle that tricks the eye, reminding us that what we perceive varies with how we perceive? Its interpretation changes from one setting to another, but its popularity seems to be based on the hare as a meme. At any rate, there are handsome art exemplars of the Three Hares from many times and places across Asia and Europe. A Google search of images for Three Hares is worth a few minutes of your time. There is also a “Three Hares Project” site that has some good photos.

Three Hares motif from a synagogue in Gwozdziec, Poland

 

On an engraving of the  Three Hares motif in 1576 this message was written in both Dutch and French:

“The secret is not great when one knows it.

But it is something to one who does it.

Turn and turn again and we will also turn,

So that we give pleasure to each of you.

And when we have turned, count our ears,

It is there, without any disguise, you will find a marvel.”

 

John Layard, a Jungian analyst, wrote a book about the cure he was able to accomplish with a patient who kept dreaming of a white hare. By using dream therapy, the theme of the white rabbit was followed dream after dream. It eventually evolved into a dream in which the rabbit became food. After that dream the patient began to get better and so did her troubled child! The account is an astonishing one and is chronicled in a fascinating little book titled The Lady of the Hare. So impressed was Layard with this cure that he went on to research the primordial meaning of the rabbit as an archetypal figure. If you want a good understanding of this motif, Layard’s book is fascinating and a good source for worldwide myths and stories about the Hare.

 

So our Easter Bunny, contrary to the misinformed statements of some who object to its pagan roots, is connected in time-honored and universal ways with themes of sunrise, lunar cycles, resurrection, immortality and self-sacrifice, all concepts associated with our current celebration of Easter. Furthermore, in Christianity the Three Hares symbol has long been thought of as representation of the Trinity and also the Virgin Mary. Even the partaking of the host of the sacrificed one, ritualized in the rite of communion, is echoed in the archetypal lore of rabbits and hares. Here is a print of the Holy Family with three rabbits:

Albrecht Duerer-La sainte famille aux lièvres (There are 3 rabbits at the feet of the Virgin)

How fitting it is that the Easter Bunny brings us the cosmic eggs in a basket (see my blog about the egg) to share with one and all. These eggs must be of course hidden so that the seeker is obliged to hunt for them. If we are up to it, the symbolic trickster rabbit may challenge us to understand just how we ensnare ourselves into some very narrow-minded and prickly points of view when we fail to think mythologically, or when we confuse metaphorical meaning with verifiable facts.

Easter Bunnies bringing eggs, Victorian post card

 

So enjoy your baskets from Ostara and her companion bunny rabbit while you celebrate joyfully the Christian story that chronicles the resurrection of Jesus witnessed by Mary Magdalene in a garden at dawn. While we are told that this miraculous thing happened long, long ago and far away, more importantly it also happens here, now and everywhere in the kairos, in mythological time.

The Resurrection painted by Fra Angelico

 

Happy Easter to everyone!

 

Carol

 

Sources:

Fascinating discussion of rabbit as hieroglyph of verb “to be” is at:

http://www.szasz.com/hare.pdf

On Three Hares motif from Wikipedia entry:  Jurgis Baltrusaitis‘s (1955) Le Moyen-Âge fantastique. Antiquités et exotismes dans l’art gothique includes a 1576 Dutch engraving with the puzzle given in Dutch and French around the image as cited above

Wikipedia and Google search, especially for images were of great help in putting this blog together.

About.com/Buddhism led me to Jataka Tales.

“The voice of the turtledove…”

Doves and Pear Blossoms after the Rain by Qian Xuan, 13th Century

“The voice of the turtle dove…”

New Year’s Day 2014 started out quietly. The night before had ended early for me because I had not been feeling well.  However, I got up just after 8:00 the next morning, the first of January, in order to watch the famed Rose Parade on television.  A bit morose because the year seemed to be starting out with a whimper not a bang, I trundled my aching body to the kitchen and pulled up the shade to look out on the garden in the morning light of another year.

Just above and to my left, sitting placidly preening on the corner of the front porch roof was a blue-gray mourning dove. It was just feet away from me on the other side of the kitchen window.  “Okay,” I thought, “that ‘s rare. “  I have seen and heard a pair of doves that sits upon the crossbar of the telephone pole that stands at the corner of my property, but had never had one come so close to the house. Generally, they would sit there aloft, sometimes cooing, and then fly off high into the large oak tree adjacent, or they would take off into the sky.

Since the unusual appearance of animal, insect or bird always compels me to contemplate its meaning, I knew that I must take this visitation as a sign to conduct some research on this particular bird. After all, it had taken up such a close perch and come so near to my gaze early on that significant day of the year.  Having thought that in that moment, and seeing more of its fellow doves throughout the month in various places, it still has taken me weeks to come around to write about it.  A dove is such a well-known creature in the symbolism and lore of so many cultures that it would seem there is not much to add to the sum of all the commentaries.  Yet the creature had shown itself to me at the very first part of the very first day of the year.  I could not just ignore its epiphany so plainly displayed.

Now that we are closer to Valentine’s Day than to New Year’s Day, it seems most fitting to finally publish something about my New Year’s Day visitor since its most famous association—that of true romantic love—ties it in popular imagination to this particular holiday on February 14.  Doves mate for life and thus have long been metaphors for the human aspiration for lasting romance. They were a commonly featured image on the elaborate Valentine cards of the 19^th Century, but their connection to love, romantic and erotic, goes back thousands of years.

As far back as ancient times in the Middle East, doves accompanied goddesses Astarte, Inanna, Semiramis and Ishtar.  That association with feminine divinity, sexuality, fertility and maternity continued for many centuries, becoming part of the symbolism of the Greek goddess Aphrodite and her later Roman counterpart, Venus. Doves were sacrificed to both by humans eager to gain an advantage in their amorous pursuits. Thankfully, we have  left those practices behind and now mostly confine ourselves to using prayers and candles when imploring divine favor in matters of “amor”.

In Judaism, the dove is most famous first of all in the story of Noah and his ark.  It was the dove with the olive branch in its beak that returned to Noah to show him that the great flood was actually receding and that dry land with trees still existed somewhere.  Yahweh’s wrath towards humanity was spent and peace between man and his god was at hand.  Today that symbol remains as the sign of peace among men, a state of existence that seems as elusive for humanity to manifest as is the attainment of everlasting romantic love.

Noah releasing the dove

Not surprisingly, it is the latter theme which is also evoked in the Old Testament of the Bible, in the Song of Solomon. In a well-known lyrical passage, the turtledove’s tender cry is the voice that announces the arrival of the season of love and the awakening of the heart.

But dove lore has also long connected the bird to prophecy.  There is the Biblical figure of Jonah, the prophet, whose very name means “dove”, who was sent as Yahweh’s messenger to Ninevah.  Interestingly, doves were also associated with prophecy in ancient Greek traditions at the site of Dodona.  It was said that a “dove” (probably a priestess of a goddess) had founded the tradition in that place. Alexander the Great stopped there to consult the oracle before launching out on his campaign of conquest of the then-known world.

In Christianity, the dove is known for the role it played in the baptism of Jesus.  The descent of the dove above Jesus’ head as he emerged from the water was taken as a sign of God’s favor, a sign that this man was the hoped-for Messiah.  From that story is derived the ubiquitous use throughout many centuries in Christian art of the dove surrounded by golden light as the symbol of the Holy Spirit come to earth.

In North American Native American lore, the mourning dove is a rain dove, and it is a totem that for the Pueblo people of the southwest U.S. could lead them to water sources.  The cooing of the doves at twilight drew people to the springs and pools where the birds would come to drink. So in a ritual sense the feathers of the rain dove were attached to prayer sticks, and the doves gentle song was thought to be an invocation to water itself.

Rain Dove by a Pool

The mourning dove of North America is, as its name suggests, sometimes connected to the notion of the soul’s passing from this life to the next.  Thus, the appearance of the bird has been associated with visitation from the “other side”.  This is not a new metaphor, nor is it only North American. It is usually understood to be a reassuring representation that life goes on, albeit separated from the still-living. It is perhaps why the most popular depictions of angels often show those heavenly emissaries with wings like those of a dove. This concept emerges, beautifully expressed, in a line from Charles Wright’s poem,  “Appalachian Book of the Dead”:  “…Doves settle, surreptitious angels, on tree limb and box branch… “  And it is visible in the grave marker below from Athens, Greece around 350 B.C.

Fragment of a Grave Relief showing mourning dove in the right corner and angel above, circa 350 B.C.. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland

And a few lines from a longer poem, ”Linnaeus in Lapland”, by Lorine Niedecker evokes the haunted feeling , the longing for love lost, that the mourning dove’s simple song may evoke: 

Hear

where her snow-grave is

the You

            ah you

of mourning doves

With all these rich and far-reaching symbolic qualities, doves of all kinds have been employed by poets to carry meanings that words can only suggest.  In the following poem, Robert Bly contrasts the return of the dove to Noah’s ark, so often depicted and heralded, to that of a crow that actually came back with mud on his feet showing that floodwaters were receding.  Somehow over the ages, the lovely dove seems to have stolen the crow’s thunder, so to speak, and the poet wants to give the dark bird its due:

Where We Must Look for Help

The dove returns; it found no resting place;
It was in flight all night above the shaken seas.
Beneath Ark eaves
The dove shall magnify the tiger’s bed;
Give the dove peace.
The split-tail swallows leave the sill at dawn;
At dusk blue swallows shall return.
On the third day the crow shall fly;
The crow, the crow, the spider-colored crow,
The crow shall find new mud to walk upon.

Another poet, Jared Carter, combines themes of love and loss, death and dream evoked by hearing the mourning doves call in the early morning:

Mourning Doves

 

That all my life I have listened to the calls

of mourning doves, have heard them hidden far back

under the eaves, or perched among sycamore branches—

their five still notes sometimes lost in the wind—

and not known how to answer: this I confess,

lying here now, on a summer morning, in a dark room

no less lit by the sound of their soft calling

 

than by your breathing.  And though you might dream

that I lie stretched beside you, I am alone again,

and a child, hearing these same dim voices drifting

high outside my window, explaining to myself how

these are the cries of the newly dead, in the dawn light,

rising toward heaven.  Only that, and a child’s need

to make up stories on falling asleep, or waking.

 

And though you might speak, out of that dream, or form

some forbidden word on your lips, my response

would be no more than the music two of them can make—

matching their notes in time, setting up harmonies

that are clear, and pure, and accidental even

to their own reckoning, since all of their singing

is circular, and comes back to the same stillness.

 

It is back to that place they are calling us now,

and it is out of not knowing that I brush away

strands of hair from your face, and begin to kiss

your eyes, your lips—that I might take sleep

from your mouth into mine, that we might dream invention,

and you hear my confession, and I your answering,

like a song traded back and forth in the morning light.

Two Turtle Doves

 

Well, I would say that Carter’s poem is a tribute to love, whether current or past, remembered or dreamt of,  fitting for a truly romantic Valentine, so I will leave it right here, having come thus far up time’s river 2014 from January 1 to this point in time, “on the wings of a dove”.

Thinking mythologically,

Carol

Sources:

Wikipedia entry for “mourning dove”

Charles Wright’s poem is at:   http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177976

Jared Carter’s poem was found at:  http://jaredcarter.com/poems/6/

You can link to Robert Bly’s poem at: http://www.wisdomportal.com/RobertBly/Bly-Anthology.html

Lorine Niedecker’s  quoted poem can be accessed at:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182882

Book source:

Animal Speak by Ted Andrews. Llewellyn Publications, Woodbury, Minnesota, 2005.

“I see the Moon…”

Moonrise
by Bela Ivanyi-Grunwald

I see the moon. The moon sees me.

Over the mountain, over the sea.

Shine on me moon;  shine down on me,

And shine on the ones I love.

So goes the lullaby my grandmother used to sing to me when I was little.  Perhaps for this reason, I pay attention to the moon.  Or perhaps it is because when I was very young, we lived in a rural area, and the moon commands the night sky so much more obviously where there are no city lights to distract attention.  And in farming communities like the one we lived in, almanacs keep track of the moon’s phases to indicate when it is best to sow and to reap.

After we moved to the suburbs of a city, as I grew, I didn’t pay much mind anymore to the moon.  Years passed, but eventually I found myself living in a canyon where the hills blocked out the city lights beyond and where there were no street lights. The moon once again became a featured part of my awareness.  We lived on a dirt road that circled a hill, and on nights of the full moon I took walks with my children in the brightness of its light.  My youngest learned to call back to the owl that sat on the top of the telephone pole as we circumambulated the road in a light that turned the landscape luminous . There were times when moonlight would come through the bedroom window so strongly that I would be startled awake to see the moon setting large on the western horizon. At those times I remembered the words of the song, “…the moon sees me.”  It was easy to imagine that it was indeed looking in at me as I slept, just the way my grandma had sung about.

Myths about the moon are so numerous and so ancient worldwide that to write about them would easily fill a large volume.  There are both goddesses and gods of the moon, long lists of them.  Although in the Western countries, the moon is most often associated with  a feminine divinity, it has also been anthropomorphized  as masculine just as often in other places and other times.

In Greek myth, the moon was the goddess Selene (Roman Luna). The Hymn to Selene  by Homer describes her thusly:

“The air, unlit before, glows with the light of her golden crown, and her rays beam clear, whensoever bright Selene having bathed her lovely body in the waters of Ocean, and donned her far-gleaming raiment, and yoked her strong-necked, shining team, drives on her long-maned horses at full speed, at eventime in the mid-month: then her great orbit is full and then her beams shine brightest as she increases. So she is a sure token and a sign to mortal men.”    

The most famous Greek myth about Selene is that she fell in love with a handsome shepherd named Endymion.  This shepherd lived not in Greece, but in Asia Minor. He had asked Zeus for the boon of immortality, and had been granted that although only as an eternal and ageless state of sleep.  As he slumbered in that deathless sleep in a cave on Mt. Karas,  Selene looked in on him and fell in love with his beautiful, peaceful visage. His dreams must have been very sweet indeed for the myth tells us they had fifty children!  These fifty “children” became the months of the Olympiad cycle.

Selene and Endymion
by Ubaldo Gandolfi, 1770

The waxing crescent belonged to Artemis (Roman Diana), the Huntress, representing her bow while the waning and dark moon belonged to old Hecate, a pre-Olympian figure, who was a presence at triple crossroads and who was a guide for spirits of the departed. The following poem catches Hecate’s eerie essence and her connection to the ancestors:

“Moon Gathering”  by Eleanor Wilner

And they will gather by the well,

its dark water a mirror to catch whatever

stars slide by in the slow precession of

the skies, the tilting dome of time,

over all, a light mist like a scrim,

and here and there some clouds

that will open at the last and let

the moon shine through; it will be

at the wheel’s turning, when

three zeros stand like paw-prints

in the snow; it will be a crescent

moon, and it will shine up from

the dark water like a silver hook

without a fish–until, as we lean closer,

swimming up from the well, something

dark but glowing, animate, like live coals–

it is our own eyes staring up at us,

as the moon sets its hook;

and they, whose dim shapes are no more

than what we will become, take up

their long-handled dippers

of brass, and one by one, they catch

the moon in the cup-shaped bowls,

and they raise its floating light

to their lips, and with it, they drink back

our eyes, burning with desire to see

into the gullet of night: each one

dips and drinks, and dips, and drinks,

until there is only dark water,

until there is only the dark.

Hecate

Before time was measured in terms of the sun cycle, the moon was humanity’s timekeeper.  We still call the measurement of one-twelfth of a sun cycle a “month”, from the same root as “moon”, despite the discrepancy in the respective number of days between solar and lunar “months”. The second day of every week is named for the moon, “Monday” in English, “lunes” in Spanish, “lundi” in French.  And  of course lunar calendars still exist in Asia, and they still mark the important festivals and religious events in many cultures.

One of the oldest lunar festivals on earth is the Chinese moon festival that commemorates the story of the lovely Chang O (or Heng E).  There are variations on her tale, but she ended up living on the moon because, either out of  mere curiosity or out of a desire to protect humans from her cruel, despotic spouse, she had taken the elixir of immortality that her husband had procured from the Great Goddess of the Western Mountains. Upon drinking the potion, she became lighter than air and simply floated away to the moon.  She took her pet rabbit with her, and that is why it is said that you can see until today the shape of a rabbit in the full moon.  Sometimes it is also told that the rabbit is the one who continues to mix the elixir of immortality there.  If you can get to the moon, you might partake of it.

Tang Dynasty bronze mirror with moon goddess and rabbit

After five thousand years plus, the Chinese still commemorate this myth at the first full moon around the autumn equinox.  Mooncakes made of bean curd are prepared for the special feast.  Children are told the story of Chang-O and her rabbit, along with the story of her husband the Great Archer. The figure of the lovely, graceful moon goddess floating through the clouds to the moon is a favorite motif in Chinese paintings and statuettes. Some claim that they see the palace in the moon that her estranged husband built there for her after he got over his anger at her departure. That is where they enjoy a brief reunion on the night of the full moon each month.

In our Western cultures, the moon has stood symbolically for everything from romantic love to frightening, sinister influences.  It may evoke either sublime beauty or terrifying nightmare.  It is the inevitable backdrop for the ghost story at Halloween as much as it gently lights the garden where lovers meet in summer. In his vast novel, Ulysses, James Joyce had this to say about the many facets of lunar symbolism:

“Her antiquity in preceding and surviving succeeding tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.” 

 

The lovely harvest moon that appears so large and orange, yellow or red in the fall of the year has been a favorite motif for painters, songwriters, and storytellers.  But the light of this autumnal moon was necessary to farmers who depended on it to be able to work by night as well as by day to bring the crops in before inclement weather would ruin them.

The Harvest Moon
by Samuel Palmer

Farmers and gardeners may still consult almanacs that list the lunar cycles so that they know when it is the time of the new moon, the time it is best to plant. And many think that it is also the best time of month to start any new enterprise.  The Greek goddess Artemis, in her aspect of midwife, brought together the concepts of new moon and birth of living beings. Not only did she attend the birth of her own brother, Apollo, and human babies as well, she was the protector of all young things both human and animal.

The force that moves the tides affects all living things, including people.  Crime waxes and wanes to some extent with the moon.  Whether this is just the affect of having more or less light to move about in at night, or whether the inner tides of the human being are drawn to and fro by the moon’s gravity is, as far as I know, an unproven theory.  Still ghost stories and murder mysteries make much of the moon’s absence or presence.

Moon Clouds

“We love the night and its quiet; and there is no night that we love so well as that on which the moon is coffined in clouds.” 
― Fitz-James O’Brien, Classic Ghost Stories by Wilkie Collins, M.R. James, Charles Dickens and Others

Eclipses of the sun were and are still impressive events for people to marvel at and contemplate.  The moon’s passage across the face of our bright, life-giving star struck fear in people throughout the world in past times.  Of course it was not understood that it was the intervention of the moon that caused this. Thus, such events were attributed to mythic creatures swallowing and then disgorging the sun. Now that we know that it is the moon we are seeing crossing the sun’s path, it is no longer something to strike fear in our hearts, but it may still evoke wonder and awe. Eclipse-chasers will travel long distances to experience the full event.

Eclipse
Photo by Wing-Chi Poon

Whether it is the man-in-the-moon, the rabbit-in-the-moon, a god or goddess, or whether it is a rocky, arid, landscape that your imagination may assign to Earth’s satellite; whether it is the memory of some romantic evening or fearful, shadowy night, the moon affects us, troubles us, inspires us. With reassuring regularity, it reminds us of the greater vastness of the cosmos, the mysteries of all the immensely long enduring cycles of its appearance and disappearance in Earth’s sky. Just as the oceans are swayed by the tides, the moods of the human heart may be expressed through the varying qualities of moonlight.  In contemplating the moon, we come to know ourselves better. And that journey within is just as important as any literal voyage to the material moon:

“The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Everyday it’s a different version itself.  Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

Moon-gazing, I used to think about what the moon would see and imagine if in fact it had eyes that could look out at the rising and setting earth. Now that we have photos of the moon’s perspective, now that human eyes have actually looked out from the moon to the earth, the words of my grandmother’s lullaby have gained new meaning.  For indeed, in some real sense, the moon has finally, through human eyes, seen us. As Joseph Campbell once remarked, that fact changes everything.

Earth from the Moon

And that image of our planet, hanging poised between sun and moon in the inky blackness of space may yet bring us all to a new level of conscious gratitude for the absolute miracle of our very existence and the responsibility we have to that reality.  The astronaut, Edgar Mitchell, put his experience of personally witnessing this sight in vehement terms:

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”
― Edgar D. Mitchell

So, dear readers, enjoy your moonlit nights, but know that as never before, we not only see the moon, but from its surface some of us have actually seen the planet we inhabit. Millions upon millions more of us have seen the photographs they took. And what is it that the moon at last sees? It is that great goddess of Greek mythology,  a living, breathing entity, GAIA, our precious mother and home.

Carol

Sources:

www.theoi.com

http://www.goodreads.com

www.poets.org

www.commons.wikimedia.org

www.brainyquote.com

http://www.Wikipedia.org

Mythic Fountains

“Don’t say, don’t say there is no water. That fountain is there among its scalloped green and gray stones, it is still there and always there.…” – Denise Levertov

Dear Readers,

I flipped on the radio the other morning and heard the voice of Orson Welles.  No, I had not been transported back through the decades.  It was an archival recording, and he was talking about the lure of the Fountain of Youth.  At that moment, I knew what my next blog had to be about—the lore and poetry of fountains.

The Fountain of Youth is probably the most ubiquitous and best-recognized story about a magical fountain.  Most school children in the U.S. learn, inaccurately as it happens, that the Spanish explorer, Ponce de Leon, was looking for that very thing when he landed in what is now Florida and supposedly thought he had located it there. That was the imagined history of his discovery as erroneously passed along by supposed historians writing not long after his death.  The explorer himself never made any mention of such a motivation or such a find.

The Fountain of Youth
by Lucas Cranach, 16th Century

However, there is a landmark park in St. Augustine, Florida  that promulgates the myth that the much-sought-after fountain was located there.  But that claim seems to have been the invented by a lady entrepreneur nicknamed “Diamond Lil” who opened the park as a tourist attraction at the turn of the 20^th Century, almost four hundred years after Ponce de Leon’s storied, but unsubstantiated find.

The Fountain of Youth myth is certainly a venerable one with many offshoots. The written references to it go back more than 2,000 years.  Herodutus wrote about a legend that Alexander the Great, after conquering much of the known world of his time, was interested in finding a river with magical waters that could reverse the aging process. Alas for Alexander, he died of a fever at a very young age, never having found that river, nor ever having had the opportunity of experiencing old age.

Apparently the tale of such a miraculous fountain persisted because much later on, in the 12^th Century in Europe, there were popular romances telling tales of a king named “Prester John” , who reportedly ruled over a kingdom wherein there was a river of gold and a Fountain of Youth.  There still exist some art objects from the medieval period that display the theme, indicating that it continued to spark the imagination of artists and artesans for several hundred years more.

French Mirror Cover, 13th Century, depicting the Fountain of Youth

While the pursuit of unending youthfulness is still of primary interest for humans, most of us look to cosmetic surgery, exercise and diet these days.  Still, the occasional trip to a spa, complete with a bath in a spring-fed pool, is  a temporarily rejuvenating experience.

The words “fountain” and “spring “ have been nearly synonymous for a long, long time.  It is only more recently that “fountain” seems reserved for a man-made artifice. The construction of what we would today call a “fountain” started out as the building of artificial structures directly over natural springs to provide pools or even ornate housing to contain the healing, soothing waters, which were perceived as being the province of a mythical being, usually a beautiful nymph, a muse or a goddess.  The miracles of modern plumbing and electrical pumps allow for fountains to be located wherever one chooses, outdoors or in, and fountains now come in all sizes.  Even desktop models are available. Whether a divine being resides within such artifices is a question I will leave up to you to decide.

Three Graces arising from a fountain, Las Vegas, Nevada

Some springs or fountains that were meccas for health seekers in ancient times are just as attractive to modern day tourists. Some still evoke the mythological as well as the historical past. Most springs in ancient times were thought to be the dwelling places of an attendant nymph or even goddess. One of the most famous and enduring of these is at Bath in England, at the spring and pools of a goddess or goddesses, Sulis Minerva.

This spring was known for its curative powers even in the remote past when the spring welled up in a muddy, marshy area.  The tradition of the original inhabitants of the area had it that a king’s son, stricken by leprosy, and reduced to the status of swineherd, noticed that when the pigs bathed in the mud, they were cured of ailments.  He took the plunge himself and was also cured! The local sun goddess Sulis was credited for the healing properties of the waters. When the Romans arrived, they built an impressive Roman bath there, along with a temple dedicated to their goddess Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom.

Today this is a world heritage site where one can see the excavations of the Roman baths towered over by  the Gothic cathedral built centuries later at that spot. Christians, no less than pagans, were attracted to the restorative waters of that place that their ancestors had found so significant, so the sense of a Divine presence is still honored there.

Cathedral and Roman Ruins
over the spring-fed pool of Sulis Minerva, Bath, England

In the 18^th Century, Bath became a fashionable retreat for the English upper crust and much of the graceful Georgian architecture built then still exists.  In the Pump Room, described in the writings of Jane Austen, built above the ruins of the old Roman baths, there is a fountain from which one can drink a cup of the health-giving water, followed by a charming English high tea in that elegant high-ceiling ball room.  And of course one can still swim in the mythic waters of the pools in the modern-day spa just a few blocks away.

Drinking fountain, Pump Room, Bath, England

One of the world’s most magnificent and mythologically decorated fountains is the Fountain of Trevi in Rome, adorned with many god and goddess figures.  There is Oceanus in the middle, father of rivers, and to one side is a figure of  the goddess Abundancia and on the other side is Salubria.  So Abundance and Health are blessing the waters flowing there.  In addition, there are horses called hippocamps, representing the ocean surf, one wild and one calm.  Triton, son of Neptune, blows a trumpet.  All this resides resplendent above a fountain that is fed by waters that were first brought to Rome in 19 B.C.E.

Legend tells us that a young woman guided the engineers to the water source some miles outside the town’s limits.  From that source they built the Virgin Aqueduct  that ended at the site of the fountain where three streets met.  Such a spot would have been considered sacred to a very ancient goddess, Trivia (translated “three streets or roads”), who was originally the Greek goddess Hecate, goddess of triple crossroads. Thus arose the custom of tossing three coins in the fountain to ensure one’s return to Rome, or for luck, or for love.

Trevi Fountain, Rome, Italy
photo by Markus Mark

Fountains , while they may be filled with health-enhancing mineral water, very good, pure drinking water or just ordinary tap water can also be works of art that inspire artists of all kinds. They are places for relaxation and contemplation, inviting to the casual and superficial glance of a passer-by, but also serving as sources for deeper meditation and inspiration.  They adorn parks and plazas, patios and palaces the world over, spaces both grand and humble, public and private, and they may be ornate or very simple. Painters have painted them, and writers of both prose and poetry have extolled their qualities.

Company at the Fountain
by Bela Ivanyi-Grunwald

In searching for myths, stories or poems about fountains, I came across some essays written by students for a class project in which they were designng a fountain for their college campus.  Here are some quotes from three of those papers:

From “Liquid Paths”, an essay by Sarah Allen

“There is something incredibly relaxing about the rhythmic yet not – rhythmic sound that falling water beats out in its chaos-driven path, falling down dips into itself, rolling and breaking over itself, swirling and spiraling with itself.  In smaller, calmer trickles, the sounds are light and musical, reminiscent of flutes and small bells, or even of birdsong – high-pitched and twittering, wavering as the flow’s path.”

From: “The Inward Music”, an essay by Bryan Shepardson

 “The nature of water in motion is musical.  What ties the lowliest brook and the Fountains at Bellagio together are the rhythms, the tempos, the melodies and the harmonies that an observer senses. . .“

From: “Subtle Fountains”, an essay by Anna Sharpsten

 “Subtle beauty is the key . . . That is my favorite type of beauty, something that has depth, but doesn’t baffle someone who can’t, or won’t, look beyond the surface.”

Poets have waxed eloquent about fountains.  A search on poemhunter.com, key word “fountains” is very rewarding.  Here are a few selections:

From Amy Lowell’s second collection, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) come these lines about a fountain.

In a Garden

Gushing from the mouths of stone men
To spread at ease under the sky
In granite-lipped basins,
Where iris dabble their feet
And rustle to a passing wind,

The water fills the garden with its rushing,
In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns.

Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone,
Where trickle and plash the fountains,
Marble fountains, yellowed with much water.

Splashing down moss-tarnished steps
It falls, the water;
And the air is throbbing with it.
With its gurgling and running.
With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur…

Ir seems that the presence of a fountain, whether man-made or burbling spring, may lure us into a moment of attentive relaxation, allowing the imagination to spill over into conscious awareness, inviting the muses to murmur in our ears their sweet notes.

Portrait of Mademoiselle
by Aman Jean

Then a special opportunity arises, as James Russell Lowell wrote in his poem entitled “The Fountain of Youth”.  For we might, in a moment of grace,  find in those waters that part of ourselves that is in fact always young and always innocent. Here is Verse VII of that lyrical poem:

‘Tis a woodland enchanted!

If you ask me, “Where is it?”

I can but make answer,

”Tis past my disclosing;’

Not to choice is it granted

By sure paths to visit

The still pool enclosing

Its blithe little dancer;

But in some day, the rarest

Of many Septembers,

When the pulses of air rest,

And all things lie dreaming

In drowsy haze steaming

From the wood’s glowing embers,

Then, sometimes, unheeding,

And asking not whither,

By a sweet inward leading

My feet are drawn thither,

And, looking with awe in the magical mirror,

I see through my tears,

Half doubtful of seeing,

The face unperverted,

The warm golden being

Of a child of five years;

And spite of the mists and the error.

And the days overcast,

Can feel that I walk undeserted,

But forever attended

By the glad heavens that bended

O’er the innocent past;

Toward fancy or truth

Doth the sweet vision win me?

Dare I think that I cast

In the fountain of youth

The fleeting reflection

Of some bygone perfection

That still lingers in me? 

Little Girl Fountain, Elizabethan Gardens, North Carolina

So as the  days of late summer bring the heat and the haze, here’s hoping you will find some lovely fountain to inspire your soul and renew your spirit.

Carol

Sources:

http://www.mythforum.com/threads/mythical-fountains.1038/

http://people.clarkson.edu/~dvalenti/public/water.htm

http://poemhunter.com/poem/the-fountain-of-youth-5/

guardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/jul/29/poem-of-the-week-amy-lowell

Photos are either my own or from WikiMediaCommons

Mythologically “Stoned”

Dear Readers,

For weeks I have been ruminating on this topic of stones and their place in mythological space.  Where to start?  Rocks have such a slow, long arc of life within the human imagination that they seem too majestic in their antiquity for such an ephemeral person as myself, hardly a blip in the spectrum of geological time, a human being, to even address. There are stone monuments, cairns, stone circles still standing mute and impressive from out of our prehistoric past.

Trethevy Quoit in Cornwall,
England

Then there are carved stones, sacred stones, gemstones, oracular stones, garden stones, building stones, decorative stones, painted stones and pet rocks, to name just a few of the many ways we humans interact with the mineral kingdom. But finally, I just decided to begin where I began with my own relationship to this vast realm of rocks.

I have always been a “rock hound”, someone who picks up stones wherever she goes.  I used to be quite dedicated to the practice, filling my pockets with souvenir pebbles from all travel destinations.  But over the years the impracticality of that won out over my fascination and attraction to inchoate minerals of all sorts.  The last trip I took, I brought home only one small rock.

At one time, when I was much younger, I refined my love of rocks by studying a bit of gemology while working in a jewelry store.  Gems are the aristocracy of the mineral kingdom, but studying them and selling them to willing customers did not dampen my enthusiasm for collecting their random rougher cousins that appear so prolifically beneath one’s feet everywhere and all the time.

I told myself that this habit of picking up rocks was simply a poor person’s way of bringing home souvenirs from travel destinations, and that is what many of my piles of rocks did mean to me—memories of beaches or camping places, mountain streams, hiking trails, colorful red rock canyons. Just looking at them could take me back to a summer day watching my children splash about in swimming hole along a stream, or to a sunset walk along a wild rocky beach, watching the beating surf as the sun spilled orange streaks on the sea.

Big Sur Creek, California

I have bought guidebooks to help me identify these “treasures”, but I can’t say that I have ever developed a really keen knowledge of their diverse names or their geological origins.  I confess that stones are more important to me because of their colors, shapes and textures than for their scientific descriptions.  I pick up the ones that I like to hold, to turn over in my hand, or because I want to admire their randomly beautiful markings or hues. It’s an intuitive thing.

Being an aficionado of myths and legends, it is only natural that I should also be curious about the place of minerals in the collective imagination.  Rocks, like all natural elements, have extensive and extremely ancient roles to play in myths worldwide.  Their place in imagination is primal.

Mythologically speaking, a stone, according to its type, could be the source material for human beings, may confer authority to a ruler, might represent the ultimate philosophical attainment, facilitate oracular pronouncements, repel demons (or in modern lingo, “absorb negative energy”), may attract a lover, can heal ailments or attune one’s “vibration” to “cosmic energies” or it may, in the minds of believers, embody the divine energy of a god or goddess.  In other words, stones have inspired human imaginations, creativity, and sense of the sacred since…well, seemingly forever.

As the “materia prima” for the current world population, rocks figure importantly in the Greek myth of Pyrrha and Deucalion.  This married couple survived the world flood that ended the Bronze Age because they had been forewarned by Prometheus, father of Deucalion, and so had built a boat or raft ahead of time. When the flood subsided, they knew they had to repopulate the world, a big job!  They consulted an oracle of the goddess Themis, who told them to cast the “bones of their mother” behind them in order to create the new humans.  Deucalion understood the rocks which lay about to be the “bones” of Mother Earth, Gaia.  They did as the goddess told them to do, and (supposedly) here we are, descendants all of those same rocks! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrha)

Pyrrha and Deucalion tossing rocks behind them to repopulate the world                                                                 (after consulting Themis in the background)

In our time, the stone that is probably best known for conferring the right of rule to a monarch would have to be the Stone of Scone.  Famously this stone was fabled in Irish legend to be the coronation stone for the kings of Tara, sons of the Tuatha de Danann. Also known as the Stone of Destiny, one part of it is a standing stone on the top of the hill of Tara in County Meath, Ireland. There it is said the stone was once an oracle.  If a true king put his foot on it, the stone would loudly exclaim his right to rule and grant him good health and long life at the same time. (I am reminded of the Arthurian legend of the Sword in the Stone, but that is another story.)

But the Stone of Scone has many other legends attached to it.  Another myth of its origin makes it the pillow of Jacob, the Hebrew patriarch, who dreamed, while sleeping with his head on it, a vision of a ladder to Heaven where angels descended and ascended.  The day after his dream, he consecrated this pillow stone at that place, which he called “Bethel”, variously translated as the “Gate of Heaven” or “God’s House”.  Centuries later on, popular story has it that the stone was transported to Ireland either by migrating Hebrews or magically by another dream, but this time one dreamed by the Irish Christian Saint Columba.

Detail of “Jacob’s Dream” by Jose de Ribera

Taking it off that Biblical track, there is also a legend that a daughter of a Pharoah of Egypt brought the Stone of Scone with her to the Celtic lands, that it came via a sojourn in Spain.  That is interesting because in Egyptian mythology, the goddess Isis was designated as the Throne.  Every Pharoah sat on Her lap.  It was She who gave him the right of rulership. Some say that Egyptian throne was made of or decorated with lapis lazuli, a deep blue-colored stone, which was also associated with Isis. Certainly the reddish sandstone Stone of Scone on view at Edinburgh Castle is not made of lapis lazuli.  But its tradition as a sacred stone that confers sovereign powers may have some distant link to this ancient Egyptian mythical motif.

Isis with the Lapis Lazuli Throne as Her Headdress

The Stone of Destiny was also, in yet another legend, to have been split in half by the Celtic Irish hero Cuchulainn when it failed to acknowledge as a true king the hero’s chosen candidate for that position. After the Dalraida Gaels moved north and west into Scotland a portion of the stone was sent to Scone (pronounced Scoon) to a king MacFergus for his coronation in 538 A.D.  That established the tradition that from then on it would be the coronation seat for all future kings of Scotland.

Stone of Destiny, Tara Hill, Ireland

Its authenticity as a rock upon which one could found a kingdom became so thoroughly established that in 1296, Edward I of England, after defeating the Scots, made sure to capture it, taking it to Westminster Abbey in London and fitting it into his own coronation chair, thus establishing England’s rule over Scotland. Since then English monarchs have been crowned upon the Stone of Scone for many centuries, including the current Queen Elizabeth II.

King Edward I’s Coronation Chair with the Stone of Scone

There is much more to the story of the Stone of Scone, which is now back in Scotland at Edinburgh Castle (or is it?), but I encourage you to look up all the details of this controversial stone at the following sites:

http://www.visitscotland.com/about/arts-culture/uniquely-scottish/stone-destiny

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/where-does-the-real-stone-of-scone-lie-1105165.html

Perhaps one of the most famous of stones is not a stone at all. As an alchemical symbol the Philosophers’  Stone represented the ultimate goal of the process of alchemy, which very confusingly, is veiled in mystery.  Does this stone represent the transformative element in the process of turning lead into gold, or is all that merely a symbolic cover for spiritual practices which bring the crude humanity of the practitioner into a highly elevated psychological and spiritual state?

“Alchemist Discovering Phosphorus” by Joseph Wright

In a time when the Catholic Church rigidly dictated the allowable parameters for both the practice of science, in this case metallurgy and chemistry, and also for the attainment of spiritual enlightenment, the highly symbolized and mythologized texts of the alchemists protected forbidden knowledge.  So we cannot know exactly what was meant by this ultimate “lapis”, but many authors certainly can and do speculate on that subject. The true nature of the Philosophers’ Stone seems to be a matter of personal intellectual and spiritual quest.

What is interesting to me is that the chosen symbol for this life-long project of perfecting matter and/or oneself is a stone.  To me that suggests the very essence of things, the enduring truths that, ultimately, surpass the time-limited, culturally-defined interpretations of spirituality; the core realizations that are always available to the truth-seeker and mystic however they are dressed in the symbols, stories and language of a particular time and place. The lore of Alchemy is mythology consciously crafted.

As for the healing properties of stones, there are books and more books about this lore. For ancient people stones worn as amulets, or ingested in powdered form, or placed on painful places had great powers.  Red gemstones such as rubies and garnets were particularly associated with healing blood diseases.  Blue sapphires or green malachite stones were thought to be good for healing eye problems. Yellow gems such as topaz were used to cure urinary tract disorders.  Black stones typically were and still are said to “absorb negative energy”.  One can see the sympathetic magic of color being used in such practices.  Like heals like.

New Age practitioners of gemstone healing have revived much of this ancient way of interacting with precious stones in highly imaginative ways.  While there may be no scientific basis for these methods, and they should not be substituted for better evidence-based practices of medicine, there are always those elements of faith and belief that affect outcomes.  If it makes a person feel better to wear a particular gemstone, or to have a gemstone healing session while pursuing all avenues of medicine—seeing an M.D., following a good diet, using herbal medicine when applicable, acupuncture, chiropractic, Reiki—I say, “ Whatever works, do it! “

The Woman’s Dictionary, Symbols and Sacred Objects by Barbara G. Walker includes an interesting section on “Minerals, Stones and Shells”. Among the many tidbits of mythological elements associated with this kingdom, she tells us that in one Greek myth, amber was “formed by the tears of sun nymphs called Heliads when they wept for the downfall of their brother Phaeton.” In Norse myth amber beads were said to be the tears of the goddess Freya and also a cure, or at least a palliative, for arthritis. Of course, properly speaking, amber is not a stone at all; it is petrified tree resin.  Still it holds its own with the semi-precious gems, and I personally love it.

Also, according to Walker, black stones had a prominent place in ancient goddess mythology.  A famous black stone in antiquity was one associated with Cybele, brought to Rome from Asia Minor, engraved with that goddess’ laws and enshrined in the Roman Forum.  Before Rome’s glory, there had been a black stone kept in the Parthenon in Athens.  And a black stone was also revered in pre-Islamic Mecca in a shrine dedicated to “The Old Woman”.  (Of course that last stone is still revered today, but dedicated to a different name for the Divine One.)

Generally, these black stones so sacred to worshippers then and now are thought to be meteorites, so that they are, literally, star stones from heaven, having fallen from the sky.

White stones were used by ancient Romans to commemorate happy events. Because of that usage white stones came to be associated generally with good memories.  Thus, it became customary to mark the graves of beloved family members with white stone markers, white marble being the most beautiful and prized.  In addition, one phase of the Great Work of the alchemists of the Middle Ages involves the use of the “white stone”, whatever that might be.  And in Revelations a white stone is mentioned as “the glory of Heaven.”

In some Buddhist belief systems, the soul after death is weighed by using black stones for bad deeds and white stones for good deeds, so relatives place white stones on graves to help their deceased relative tip those judgment scales in favor of their good deeds.

Speaking of Buddhists, perhaps the most refined and pleasing of stone symbolism has been perfected in the practice of creating Zen stone gardens.  While there is color symbolism involved, shapes are also strictly symbolic and so is placement. Stones are laid out to represent certain aspects of the Creation.

Rock Garden at the Temple of Kyoto

There are five kinds of stones that can be used, each representing a different element:

kikayu, earth stones, which are reclining stones

shigyo, branching stones that represent fire

shintai, horizontal and flat, representing water

taido, which symbolize wood, being tall and vertical like trees

reisho, vertical but low to the ground, representing metal

These are placed according to certain rules of esthetics on a base of sand. One rule is to place the rocks on a medial axis with the mid-point being between any two rocks or a grouping.  This is perceived by “the invisible eye” and produces a sense of tranquility.  In other words, we would say that things are placed off-center, thus the center is empty of form.  For more detail, I recommend you visit:

www.ehow.com/info_8306300_zen_stones.html

Lastly, when considering stones for their inspirational aspects, there is a psychologically evocative process that involves hunting for “picture rocks”, that is, stones that have markings that suggest images to you.

It is akin to looking for shapes in clouds, such as elephants, dragons, angels, dolphins.  I found a “picture rock” beachcombing by a cove at Point Lobos State Reserve, along California’s famed Big Sur coast, one day a couple of years ago.

Point Lobos State Reserve, South Shore Trail, California, Photo by Eugene Zelenko

The rock I found seems clearly to me to carry an image of a line of hills over which a full moon is rising, surrounded by clouds that are about to cross over it.  I love looking at it because it at once reminds me of the beautiful clear water of that cove, the rocky beach and the salty smell of kelp, while at the same time it evokes a more remote memory of watching just such a moon rising above hills near the sea, in a place far away from city lights so that the illumination that the moon spread over the landscape was brightly magical.  I can even remember the cool night breeze from the ocean and the shiver it gave me.  A rock like that is more precious than a jewel, or so it seems to me.

Such are the gifts a seemingly ordinary stone can bring to you, if you just look at it with your imagination, that is with an eye to myth.

So rock on, my friends, rock on,

Carol

Sources other than those listed above:

WikiMediaCommons for images of all pictures except Trethevy Quoit, a photo I took myself,

and http://www.turbophoto.com for the photo of Big Sur Creek

The Green Man-Here We Go a’Maying

“God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying,’Ah!’ ”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 – Joseph Campbell

                                                                                                                                                                                          

Dear Readers,

Recently I attended a milestone-decade birthday party for the author of the Voyager Tarot, teacher and motivational speaker, James Wanless.  Along with a good friend of his, whose alter-ego’s name is “Wowza”, the guests were treated to an improvised skit wherein “Wowza”, playing the part of Gaia (Mother Earth) inducted James into his Green Man self.

The assembled were treated to a light-hearted theatrical that also included a useful demonstration of how to promote continuing vitality of body, mind and spirit. The unscripted tale involved first moving in a dancing, free-flowing way, then breathing deeply and with great gusto, feeling the fire of spirit by uttering exclamations, and finally coming down to earth by making deep, low growls while  feet were firmly planted wide apart, arms swinging low.

It was altogether  a much more interesting and laughter-inducing exercise routine than those usually encountered in gyms full of grim-faced, mostly already thin people, hard at work staying fit. And it certainly brought out the sense of rejuvenation that the Green Man represents in the springtime of the year. (To find out more about James Wanless, go to http://www.voyagertarot.com ).

Tree by St Keyne’s Well, Cornwall

The Green Man is an ancient mythic motif with many roots and offshoots.  His images, with leafy hair and beard, are embedded in architecture and art throughout the world.  He has morphed over the ages into many forms of human imagination, slipping easily from nature spirit into a Lord of the Forest and even into the guise of a saint.

Green Man in Trafalgar Square, London

While always a part of each seasonal shift, he is particularly prominent  in the spring.  As a vegetation god, his leafing-out phase is joyful, filled with the exuberance of youth and vitality. At this time of the year he becomes the partner of the Queen of the May. The customary May Day dances recognized their union in the age-old rite, the twining of the ribbons about the May Pole, much as ivy winds around the trunk of a tree–feminine and masculine polarities entwined–to encourage the fertility of the land and the people.

19th Century, Russian May Day Celebration

Naturally, Green Man’s visage evokes the woods and wild places of the earth, and so he has become a quintessential symbol of our emerging eco-awareness. We now know, at least most of us do, that we must make better efforts to save our environment and ourselves from our own thoughtless, destructive ways. Wherever folks are striving to clean up, protect and preserve air, water and soil quality from pollution, the Green Man is at work.  When people plant urban gardens, start eating locally grown organic produce, plant trees, and generally cut back on wasting precious natural resources, they are enacting Green Man, or Green Woman. When we pursue sustainable energy development, the Green Man is with us.

In short, this concept, energy, deity, presence, mytheme–call it what you will–is inspirational for us today, as we try to figure out how to behave in ways more compatible with the Earth, with each other, and with the myriad other creatures around us. Terri Windling writes in Tales of the Mythic Forest:

“Our remote ancestors said to their Mother Earth, ‘We are yours.’ Modern humanity has said to Nature, ‘You are mine.’  The Green Man has returned to the living face of the whole earth so that through his mouth we may say to the Universe, ‘We are one.'”

Tree Person, Elizabethan Gardens, 2007. Photo by Anne White.

Where does Green Man come from?  Some, including Terri Windling, link him to the Greek god of wine and ecstasy, Dionysus, whose wild revels have been feared by and frowned upon by the pillars of society, both in ancient times and now.  But Dionysus is a god of the cultivated and fermented grape, and really not a denizen of the wilderness per se.  His habitat is more likely to be a local tavern, than a green glen.  However, the leaves and grapes that adorn his hair do evoke some of the same imagery as that of the Green Man. And the fondness of his errant followers for celebrations in the woodlands may have some remote connection to the god of the forest, some cellular memory of more ancient feasts. Still, I am not convinced that the Green Man is merely a remnant of Dionysian rites.

Dionysus, Biltmore Estates Gardens, North Carolina

Other classical references to gods and trees include the oak grove at Dodona where the goddess Dione, the first wife of Zeus, held sway.  Dione pre-dates Zeus’ other wife, Hera, mythologically speaking, and probably hearkens to a pre-Olympian past.  But by the classical era that sacred precinct and its oracle were dedicated solely to Zeus, who whispered his messages in the rustling of the oak leaves. Another god, the young lover of Aphrodite, Adonis, who died and returned with the cycling seasons, a god of vegetation, was born from the trunk of a myrrh tree.

Goddesses and trees also have a long association. The nymph Daphne escaped being ravished by Apollo by turning into a laurel tree.  And thereafter, wreaths made of  laurel leaves became symbols of victory in all contests of skill and strength. The laurel tree was said to give inspiration to poets. Artemis, or Roman Diana, was a goddess of the forest and of the hunt. Her worship was associated with sacred groves. So there are many indications that the ancient Greeks respected the inherent mystery  and primeval power of trees.

Oak Grove in California

For centuries that followed, during Roman times and into the ages after the decline of the Roman Empire, various deities were worshipped in oak groves throughout Europe and Britain. The Druids certainly maintained a close spiritual alliance with trees.  They developed a tree alphabet, the ogham, and although they did not write their texts, they could use actual leaves of trees or symbols for them to spell out messages.  Thus, we still call pages of books “leaves” and refer to a “leaf” of paper.  The Celts had their nine sacred trees, each one elucidating a certain type of character while designating a time of the year as well as a letter of the alphabet.

Although the Green Man is generally conceded to be a pre-Christian sort, a part of the pagan, shamanic past,  his likeness has been carved into many a church pew or cathedral eaves throughout Europe.  He is no stranger to decorations above doors and windows in all manner of buildings built from the Middle Ages up to more recent times.  And the vaulted ceilings of great cathedrals, where his visage may be seen looking down from on high,  have been described as forests of stone, replacing the sacred groves that the early Christians in Europe eagerly cut down.  Moyra Caldecott, in her wonderful book Myths of the Sacred Trees, has this to say:

“Even the Christians who cut down the sacred groves must have felt the loss, because they built their cathedrals with soaring columns like the trunks of trees and with vaulted ceilings ribbed and fanned like the canopy of a forest, and every where, in unexpected places, they carved the head of the Green Man–spirit of nature–peering out of his leafy dell, beautiful and challenging.”

The Green Man at Sutton Benger Church

In folklore, the Green Man is associated with Robin Goodfellow, Jack-o’-the-Green, or Hod (an animistic woodland sprite).  That famous friend of the poor, Robin Hood, with his band of forest-dwelling followers, is surely related.  Merlin, in his hermitage in the forest, gives us another version. Merlin’s tutelage of King Arthur suggests that to govern well, a great leader must first understand and be close to the earth.  How much better would governments be if those we elected were held to that standard? And wouldn’t it be nice if advisors today were as wise as Merlin?

Interestingly, bridging the pagan-to-Christian gap, Gary Varner in his book, St.George: Christian Dragon Slayer or Green Man, notes that “St. George has also been called Green George–the spirit of spring” throughout Europe and Britain, and that “St. George’s Day…has figured prominently in the various rituals of spring.”  He mentions a Russian proverb, “George will bring spring”.  He also cites the custom in Anjou, France wherein “statues of St. George were carried through the cherry orchards to ensure a good crop.”   He explains that the Greek name “Georgius” originally meant “ploughman, a cultivator of the land”, thus implying a very ancient link to customs marking the springtime revival of nature, the season of planting seeds. In that case, the “dragon” the saint is depicted slaying may represent the winter darkness and cold.

St. George slaying a dragon, woodcarving over side door of cathedral in Prague. Notice the oak foliage in the corners.

In the modern fantasy literature of J.R.R. Tolkien, in The Two Towers, the character “Treebeard”  is described in a way that is suggestive of the Green Man’s arboreal personage:

“I don’t know but it felt as if something that grew in the ground–asleep, you might say, or just feeling itself as something between root-tip and leaf-tip, between deep earth and sky, had suddenly waked up and was considering you with the same slow care that it had given to its own inside affairs for endless years.”

Whitefield Green Man, Photo by Paul Sivell

And I really like the following poem by Lauren Raine, titled “The Green Man”:

Remember me, try to remember,

I am the laughing man with eyes like leaves.

When you think that winter will never end,

I will come.

You will feel my breath,

a vine caressing your foot.

I am the blue eye of the crocus,

opening in the snow,

a trickle of water, a calling bird,

a shaft of light among the trees.

You will hear me singing

among the green groves of memory,

and the shining leaves of tomorrow.

I’ll come with daisies in my hands –

We’ll dance among the sycamores once more.

My favorite little green boy, my grand-nephew, in photo taken by his grandmother.

Have a very merry month of May.  You will probably encounter the Green Man.  He is out an about growing the foliage on plants and trees, accompanied by Chloris, also known as Flora, Goddess of Flowers. He is even living in that potted plant you may need to water.

Carol

P.S.  Anne White, who took the photos of the Tree Persons you see in this blog, wrote the following to me:

The Tree Person creation was done by two very creative adult people – Carol Buzilow and Celeste Wood – who volunteered to set up for a family concert on the lawn.  The event was Flute Frenzy which featured a youth flute choir from Williamsburg.  We invited families to picnic on the lawn, then enjoy the concert.  During picnic time we adorned the children with flower or laurel head wreaths or paper Robin Hood hats or fairy wings at craft tables where they helped make their costumes.  They also made magic wands. 

Book Sources:

Myths of the Sacred Trees by Moyra Caldecott

Green Man: The Archetype of Our Oneness with the Earth by William Anderson

Images:

Along with lots of information on trees the first photo at the beginning of the blog can be found at:   http://www.wunderground.com/blog/gardencoach/show.html

WikiMedia Commons is the source for images of the Whitefield Green Man, the Green Man of Sutton Benger Church, The colorful print of a Russian 19th Century May Day, and the Green Man of Trafalgar Square.

The tree people photos and “Dill or Fennel and Child” were taken by Anne White.

The light through the trees photo inserted in the poem was taken by my friend Yuliya, at Descanso Gardens, California.

The other photos were taken by yours truly.

Iris–Lady of the Rainbow

With the arrival of spring and its attendant weather foibles and whims, rainbows have been on my mind.  Most immediately, leprechauns attending their pots of gold at the end of the rainbow arrived in March. They have come posing as decorative items or on greeting cards to remind us of the Celtic heritage that has so influenced the cultures wherever the children of Danu have made their homes.

My youngest daughter and I once saw the gleaming gold at the end of the rainbow.  True story.  We were driving uphill along the freeway towards the mountains that form the backdrop of the valley where we live. A dramatic scene of dark clouds dropping rain along the ridges was suddenly pierced by sunlight.  An intensely bright rainbow appeared, and seemingly ended on the highway ahead of us. At that moment, there was a burst of golden light off of the wet pavement ahead of us that caused both of us to exclaim out loud in surprise and wonder.  We both immediately thought of the “pot of gold” and decided to believe that we had been witness to its actuality. Of course, as is the nature of this sort of ephemera, it was gone in a flash.

Quite a few years later, when my daughter got her first driving permit, we took to the open highway on a road trip to give her a chance to practice driving.  We saw a rainbow the very first night out about sunset, at Kingman, Arizona, blazing across a blue-black bank of clouds. We continued to see them all through our journey to the Grand Canyon and Sedona.  For some reason rainbows in the desert are more sharply vivid than those in more humid climes. The rain, such as it is, hangs like veil wafting on some high-blown breeze, the drops of water not even reaching the ground.  Then the rainbow leaps into sight, often accompanied by a second arc, the mirror reflection of the original.  We still refer to that vacation as “the rainbow trip”, a young and happy time for mother and a daughter in transition, taking that early step towards adulthood. Rainbows in mythology are a worldwide leit motif, and like most mythological elements, they are viewed with joy in some cultures, but with dread in others. In looking over the rather vast amount of material that is out there on the internet about the mythology of rainbows, I was drawn to the mythological figure of Iris, the ancient Greek goddess of the rainbow. Perhaps it was because the purple iris are coming up in my garden now, or maybe it was because this goddess has remained throughout the ages as recognizably herself.  After the decline of the ancient Greek civilization, she continued to be known as “Iris” during the successive centuries of the Roman Empire’s rule. Unlike other Greek gods and goddesses, she did not suffer any name change.

With the restoration of classical learning during the Renaissance, she reappeared in literature and art still called by that name, “Iris”. In modern Spanish the rainbow is still called arco iris, “Iris’ bow”. And in English, the word “iris” was given to the flower that thrusts its proud spear-shaped leaves and richly-hued blooms up from the earth in spring. Her name  is also memorialized as the colored part of an eye. So one could say that the rainbow is both the band of colors we sometimes see after a rain and also a part of what we see it with.

What is left of Iris’ mythology is fragmentary and incomplete.  But there are intriguing bits that can send the mind into a reverie.  This golden-winged goddess, according to Hesiod, is daughter of the sea god Thaumas and his wife Elektra (the goddess, not the queen).  Her father’s name has given rise to the word “thaumaturgy”, meaning “miracle-working”. The Roman poet,Virgil, sometimes called this goddess “Thaumantias”. That designation continued to be used in some medieval literature. Her mother’s name, “Elektra”, translated “bright one”, denotes the sparkle which is so necessary for the rainbow to manifest. After all,  it is the sudden beaming of sunshine through raindrops that creates the prism of colors that tint Iris’ robes.

Iris announced herself to mariners after squalls passed and must have been a welcome sight to them. No doubt many an ancient mariner felt his life had been miraculously spared after the storm had abated. Lord Byron wrote on just such a theme in Don Juan, Canto II.

“Now a rainbow, bursting through

The scattering clouds, shone, spanning the dark sea…

The airy child of vapour and the sun,

Brought forth in purple, cradled in vermilion, 

Baptized in molten gold and swathed in dun…

Our shipwrecked seamen thought it a good omen;

It is as well to think so now and then.

“Twas an old custom of the Greek and Roman,

…and so this rainbow looked like hope,

Quite a celestial kaleidoscope.”

However, like many families, Iris has its more difficult members. Her sisters are the Harpies, those entities that bedevil and even drive insane those who offend the gods. (A reminder that the dark is closely related to the light.)  The Harpies beset the wrong-doer with endless tormenting thoughts arising from a guilty conscience.

In the earliest writings in which Iris is mentioned, she acts as messenger of the gods.  She is either the personification of the rainbow itself, or the rainbow is the bridge which she traverses from heaven to earth, or from heaven to under the sea and back again. She carries out this duty for centuries before Hermes (Roman Mercury) ever comes on the scene.

In the Iliad of Homer she is busy carrying messages back and forth to both the Achaen Greeks as well as to the Trojans because the gods and goddesses took sides in that epic conflict. However, in the Odyssey it is Hermes alone who traverses heaven to earth with divine instructions for mortals.  By the time the Roman poets add their mythical musings to tales of gods and goddesses, Iris has become the exclusive messenger of Juno, while Mercury carries Jupiter’s (Jove’s) words from on high.

Juno and Iris by Antonio Palomino

One of the mentions that Homer made of Iris depicted her in the role she plays in saving the goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite. Aphrodite’s own mortal son, Aeneas, had been wounded on the battlefield of Troy, so the goddess sped to his side to save his life.  But in so doing, she herself was wounded in the hand.  Zeus, seeing this, dispatched Iris to bring the lovely Aphrodite back to Olympus to the seat of Ares, where she could recover.  Once she did so, she borrowed the war god’s chariot, and with Iris at the reins, she traveled to Hera, to seek revenge.

Venus, supported by Iris, complaining to Mars, 1820

Perhaps today, for those of us who view the ancient stories as maps to the human psyche, this imagery of Iris rescuing Aphrodite seems to offer the possibility that after some terrible wounding, an appreciation of beauty and the ability to love again can be restored. On the other hand, Aphrodite seeks revenge, so the tale goes.  And who doesn’t know this side of the goddess, when she becomes Nemesis?  Thus, the story, while hopeful, is also cautionary. Notice that either choice is aided by Iris. It would seem that it’s up to us to choose, but to choose carefully. One shouldn’t forget the proximity of the Harpies.

Although the Trojans, whom Aphrodite favored, lost the war, Aeneas was one of the survivors who escaped, along with a number of Trojan women. In the Aeneid, Virgil, the Roman poet, tells the tale of how Aeneas made his way wandering across the Mediterranean to arrive eventually at the Tiber River, thus becoming a founder of Rome.

And of course, Aphrodite, his mother, became revered as Venus to the Romans, remaining to this day the holder of her archetypal throne.  Iris’ key role then, seems to have been to save and serve the Great Goddess by restoring her to her divine place on Olympus where she remained, even as civilizations rose and fell.

Venus holding an infant, probably Aeneas

Iris also plays a role in the Aeneid.  By the time Virgil wrote his epic poem, Iris had become the exclusive messenger of Juno, queen of the Roman pantheon.  In one episode, a storm drives the Trojan ships to shore in Sicily.  The tomb of his father, Anchises, was located there. According to custom, Aeneas was obliged to give offerings in memory of his father.  Having made those offerings, a large and unusual serpent, multi-colored as the rainbow, emerges to receive them. Virgil describes the coloring of the friendly reptile:

“More various colors thro’ his body run,

Than Iris when her bow imbibes the sun.”

This imposing creature probably should have been understood as a representative of the great mother goddess, who for millennia had been thought of as the source of life, death and rebirth.  But Aeneas, after being shown this boon, dedicated the prescribed funeral games to Jove (Jupiter) rather than to Juno, as he should have. Juno, incensed at this slight to her august dignity, sends Iris, disguised as an old woman, to the Trojan women.  Her message is that they should burn Aeneas’ ships and travel no further.

Iris with torches to burn Aeneas’ fleet
by John Flaxman, 1795
Source: Antiquariat Dr. Haack Leipzig
Licensed by Creative Commons

Since the women were very weary of wandering, they were willing to consider this option.  When the old woman’s subversive activities were found out, she rose into the air as her true self, a brilliant, glowing rainbow.  The Trojan women then decided that they must do as Juno had instructed. They managed to set fire to four ships of the fleet before Juno’s plan was thwarted by Jupiter, who sent rain to put out the fires.

This story fascinated me for a couple of reasons.  One is the mention of the rainbow-colored serpent.  We know that up until today in Australian aboriginal lore, the rainbow serpent is the primal creatress deity. Of course, Virgil would not have known that mythology, but the same motif was widespread among African peoples. This serpent in the Aeneid then must be a link to one of the oldest of rainbow myths, wherein the rainbow goddess/serpent is the source of all creation. Was it simply intuited by Virgil, or had he heard such folklore from Africans living in Rome?

Australian aboriginal rock painting of the rainbow serpent

It brings up a seminal debate. Do myths, which show so many similar patterns across the world, proceed from a single original group of humans who lived at an unfathomably distant past time, or do such universal images and themes exist somehow hardwired into human imagination, forming the basis of a collective unconscious? Carl Jung believed the latter theory to be true and developed his psychology of the archetypes based upon it.

Then there is the fact that Aeneas purposefully changed the tradition of dedicating the funeral games to the mother/queen goddess, choosing instead to offer them in honor of the father/king god. This reference seems to underpin a theory that the cycle of stories regarding the Trojan war were a chronicle of the time in prehistory when humans’ concept of the ruling divinity shifted from a feminine image to a masculine one–from Mother God to Father God. Iris’ role as the old wise woman seems to hint at an older order of service to the Great Goddess that was antagonistic to what was then a coming “new world order”.

In our time of paradigm shifts, such hints about this change that occurred at the dawn of history stir the imagination. We are invited to more deeply understand the duality at play within our own psyches–a synergy of opposites which is also writ large in the history of humanity. From D.H.Lawrence’s The Rainbow (1915) comes the following passage. The heroine has a vision of a new world when she sees a rainbow above a gloomy “dun atmosphere over the blackened hills”, a landscape made ugly by human industry:

…She saw in the rainbow the earth’s new architecture, the old brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven.”

The Rainbow by Robert Delaunay, 1913

Returning to stories from antiquity, Ovid recounted one in which Iris carried a message from Juno, Roman queen of the Gods, to Morpheus, god of sleep. (When a double rainbow appeared, the second, darker or paler one, the mirror image of Iris, was associated with Morpheus.) Ovid told of her visit to the realm of the unconscious, dreaming mind in his Metamorphoses. “So Iris, in her thousand-colored mantle, a rainbow through the sky, sought out the palace under the cloud, the royal home of Sleep…”

Morpheus and Iris
by Pierre Guerin

The poet goes on to describe how she made her way to where Morpheus dwelt: “The maiden goddess entered, using her hands to part the dreams, to clear her way, and the shining of her garments brightened the holy home, and the god saw her… And, her instruction given, Iris left him…and she soared upward along the rainbow arch she had descended.”

In this way Ovid pictures mythically how it is that we sometimes receive messages that come from the depths of the unconscious.  Iris with her full spectrum of differentiated light may enter even into the house of Sleep. Thus, we can understand Iris as the bringer of dreams of portent, especially those dream images that sometimes arise in brilliant technicolor, the ones that linger and cause us to ponder their meaning.

Although Ovid calls Iris a “maiden goddess”, in other stories she was married to Zephyros, the gentle breeze, and their child was Eros himself, or perhaps one aspect of him, “Pothos”, meaning “desire”.  This story earned Iris the title of “mother of love”. But that is surely a conflation of the messenger with the source of the message, Aphrodite, who is more often depicted as the mother of Eros (Cupid to the Romans).  And then we must also consider Hesiod, writing much earlier, who imagined Eros springing from Chaos, thus beginning the mutual attraction of one thing to another so that perceived reality could come into form. So while some poets have given Iris this title, it is a contested one. Eros is not easily confined to a single mythic geneology.

So what are we to make of Iris today with our modern, scientifically-informed views?  We know that the rainbow results from the refraction of sunlight through water drops.  We know that the colors we perceive are the differentiation of the light spectrum in the range visible to the human eye.  The poet Keats took exception to the scientific view being the exclusive way of seeing this natural phenomenon. He complained that Newton had “destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism“.  He wrote the following lines:

“Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings,

Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, 

Empty into the haunted air, and gnomed mine–

Unweave a rainbow.”

Light passing through a prism.
Refraction varies by frequency.

But Emily Dickinson seemed less worried that science could ever explain the inspirational message that a rainbow can still carry:

“We shall find the cube of the rainbow, 

Of that there is no doubt;

But the arc of a lover’s conjecture

Eludes the finding out.“

And Percy Bysshe Shelley proclaimed the enduring power of Iris as muse to a writer in the following lines:

“The triumphal arch through which I march,

With hurricane, fire, and snow, 

When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, 

Is the million-colored bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.“

Italian Landscape with Viaduct and Rainbow
by Karoly Marko, 1838

In addition, Lucy Larcom in 1824 in her work Three Old Saws suggested that we ourselves have some role to play in carrying along Iris’ message.  She wrote:

“If the world’s a vale of tears,

Smile till rainbows span it!“

So as I write this, on this day and night of the vernal equinox, 2013, Iris is ’round about.  She is making an appearance right now as the flower named in her honor, growing in spring gardens.

She is coloring our eyes while suggesting that we pay attention to the many-nuanced perceptions that her waves of light can bring to us. The full spectrum of awareness is her gift.  And she is hiding behind dark clouds, ready to jump forward waving the banner of peace between heaven and earth as soon as a storm passes. She is undimmed and un-discouraged by all the strife here below–quite undeterred by resolute claims that she is merely a wholly explainable trick of the light as it passes through water drops. William Wordsworth spoke for Iris’ enduring enchantment when he wrote:

“My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So it was when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old.

Or let me die!”

Hopefully, we will all remain as excited about rainbows as Wordsworth was.  Happy Spring!

Carol

Sources:

The Book of Rainbows, Art, Literature, Science, & Mythology, Richard Whelan, O.G. Publishing, 1997

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/18/chasing-rainbows-why-myths-matter

http://www.native-languages.org/legends-rainbow.htm

http://www.farmersalmanac.com/weather/2012/04/30/weather-ology-bridge-to-the-heavens/

http://paganpages.org/content/tag/rainbow/

Pictures from WikiCommons.  The iris flower photos are my own.

Iris growing around the
kahuna statue in my garden.

A Rose is…

From The Symbolic Rose by Barbara Seward on page 91, she quotes William Butler Yeats, a passage from “Essays”:

“It is only by ancient symbols, by symbols that have numberless meanings besides the one or two the writer lays an emphasis upon, or the half-score he knows of, that any highly subjective art can escape from the barrenness and shallowness of too conscious arrangement, into the abundance and depth of nature.”

A Rose in the garden
at Wells Cathedral, England

Gertrude Stein came up with the metaphor of metaphors, “A rose is a rose is a rose.”  The rose seems to have primordial sway as a symbol for the ages. Its history throughout centuries of art and literature has made it representative of so many disparate emotions that by now it has become an inexhaustible metaphor of even itself.

In Greek mythology, the explanation for the origin of the rose has two variations.  In one, the Goddess of Flowers comes across a dead nymph, and wanting to immortalize her, decides to turn her into a flower.  She beseeches Aphrodite to grant beauty to the nymph’s immortal form.  Aphrodite’s attendant Graces bestow delight, radiance and joy as attributes. Dionysus contributes nectar and fragrance. Apollo kisses her with sunlight as Zephyr, the wind, parts the clouds.  The Gods are enchanted by their own creation and call her “rose”, dedicating the flower as the Queen of the Heavens.

Rose at the Elizabethan Gardens, Roanoke Island,North Carolina

The other story of the rose’s first appearance involves Rodanthe, a devotee of Artemis, who beset by unruly suitors, flees to a temple of the chaste goddess.  The suitors imprudently pursue her into the compound.  Violating Artemis’s precinct was never a good idea.  The goddess instantly changed the lovely Rodanthe into a rose flower and the foolish men into thorns.  They were thus charged with protecting the sanctity of the rose from thereon.  So even now, whoever plucks the flower must suffer from the thorns.

Roses with thorns, Descanso Gardens
California

Thus, the themes for the rose’s many literary roles are set.  In the one, earthly beauty, while subject to death, achieves the status of an emblem of heavenly queen.  In the other, the punishment for the desires of the flesh are jealously imposed by a goddess who demands chastity and an exalted respect.

The other day I was in my garden alongside my eldest daughter pruning the rose bushes.  Nothing seems more stark than rose bushes trimmed down to their basics.  It is a midwinter necessity  if there are to be abundant and healthy blooms later in the spring and early summer.  It sobers the mind to do such pruning, to cut away even the few last shrunken flowers that have insisted on seeking the chilly winter sunlight.   But even that cutting away is not enough.  I continued down to the bare branches, trying to leave them a shape from which the new growth can emerge.

Not long after this pruning time, Valentine’s Day comes along with its plethora of florists’ ads for roses, roses, and more roses.  In all their hues, they appear in advertisements reminding lovers and husbands that the day is near for which this flower seems to have been cultivated–a day still overseen by Aphrodite though she hides modestly behind a saint.

The rose can say it all.  If it is white, a pure and spiritual devotion is implied, if red, passion, and the acceptance of the suffering that it brings, speaks from out the mute petals.  The yellow rose brings either memories of love past, or it can be a pledge of friendship.  The pink one is sweetly young, full of innocent admiration. The lavender rose, so strange a color, means enchantment is underway, love-at -first-sight, infatuation.  Orange expresses exuberant excitement. (http://www.proflowers.com/guide/rose-colors-and-meanings)

Lavender Rose, Buchart Gardens, British Columbia

The rose’s long history as image, symbol, metaphor or simile in poetry and story has given it enough time to have become a representative of the ultimate object of desire or despair. It has expressed human feelings in as many ways as there are ways for the human heart to experience longing and joy, or disillusionment and grief.  Poets have charged the rose with becoming the repository of our hopes for salvation and immortality as much as they have chosen its image to contain our sense of loss of childhood, of innocence, of social harmony, of God.

Robert Burns lustily, earnestly and happily sings:

“My love is like a red, red rose that’s newly sprung in June..”

Rose at Buchart Gardens, Vancouver Island, British Columbia

While in “Little Gidding”,  T.S. Eliot laments after the London blitz:

“Ash on an old man’s sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.”

T.S. Eliot also creates a rose garden that evokes memory of  lived experiences, but also, most poignantly, those moments only imagined, never lived. “From Burnt Norton”:

What might have been and what has been

Point toward one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. My words echo

Thus in your mind.

                                 But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

I do not know.

Roses in my garden
in spring

 

Dante’s vision of Paradise is the place where there is the mystic, white and radiant rose at whose center sits enthroned the Virgin Mary.

“That sacred army, that Christ espoused with his blood, displayed itself in the form of a white rose, but the Angel other, that sees and sings the glory, of him who inspires it with love, as it flies, and sings the excellence that has made it as it is, descended continually into the great flower, lovely with so many petals, and climbed again to where its love lives ever, like a swarm of bees, that now plunges into the flowers, and now returns, to where their labour is turned to sweetness…so was She, that flame of peace, quickened in the centre, tempering the blaze on all sides.”

Gustave Dore’s illustration of Dante’s Rose, The Divine Comedy, Paradiso

Many centuries later William Butler Yeats fuses Dionysian images of  wine and roses with mystic vision in his rose poems.  In “The Blessed” there is holiness paired with irrational earthly passion and drunkeness:

‘O blessedness comes in the night and the day
And whither the wise heart knows;
And one has seen in the redness of wine
The Incorruptible Rose,
‘That drowsily drops faint leaves on him
And the sweetness of desire,
While time and the world are ebbing away
In twilights of dew and of fire.

In another one of his many rosy poems Yeats evokes the feeling of a young man in love with the beauty of his beloved, a contemplation that can re-make the ugliness of the mundane.  From “The Rose in the Deeps of his Heart”:

“All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.”

And so Gertrude Stein’s “a rose is a rose is a rose” is perhaps the truest of all the thousands of things ever written about  this flower. It’s image, being the truest of true symbols, can reconcile the irreconcilable, unite what seems separated, encompass the whole of human experience. It can pair love with joy, or love with pain. It can reflect the attainment of spiritual harmony, the sunny brightness of friendship, the enchanted moment of love-at-first-sight, the heat of erotic desire, or the very personal despair of unrequited love. It can imply the Divine within Nature and Nature within the Divine.  It may be a rose of memory of the real or the imagined. It can represent life, death and immortality.  And for those less eloquent than poets, it has served for centuries as both message and messenger.

For the Friend

Happy Valentine’s Day!

From Carol

Sources:

The Symbolism of the Rose by Barbara Seward, Spring Publications, Inc., Dallas, Texas, 1989

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Italian/DantPar29to33.htm#_Toc64100040

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/winter/w3206/edit/tseliotlittlegidding.html

http://www.csun.edu/~hceng029/yeats/collectedpoems.html

http://www.csun.edu/~hceng029/yeats/yeatspoems/rose.html

And do not miss this one.  It is lovely.    http://www.squidoo.com/all-about-roses