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

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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.

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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

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The Flight into Egypt

Dear Readers,

Now that we have made it past the fervent focus that so many placed upon the winter solstice 2012, we have arrived in that most sobering of the astrological signs, Capricorn.  Time to pay the bills we racked up during the holidays, shed some pounds, get back to the work that piled up on our desks, or projects that got laid aside.  Putting away  lights and decorations, I got to review the pile of cards that came in this year.  I save Christmas cards.  I can’t help it.  Many of them are quite beautiful, and of course for someone who loves myths, legends and fairy tales, they are a trove of evocative images.  Anyway, as I went through my cards again, really having time at this point to look at them carefully, reading the messages and letters that accompanied them, I came across one that depicts the flight into Egypt, that part of the seasonal story that actually occurred after the Nativity scene breaks up following the visit of the three Magi.

The Flight into Egypt by Vittorio Carpaccio c.1515

The theme is only rarely depicted on greeting cards, so it stood out.  I couldn’t get it out of my mind, so I decided to explore it.  I am not about to wade into any arguments as to the historical veracity of this story.  There are those who have and will continue to argue it.  The one Gospel text that mentions it is the Book of Matthew in the New Testament.  And there is not much said about it except that because of King Herod’s order to kill all male infants in his kingdom, Joseph took Mary and the baby Jesus into Egypt to escape the massacre. After King Herod died, they went back home.  That’s it for Matthew’s text. So like much of ancient writings, it is a teaser and invites the imagination to come in and elaborate on the theme.

That imaginative embellishment went on for centuries, and many compelling works of art emerged out of it, taking their inspiration from various legends that arose to fill in the otherwise scanty narrative.  Artists extemporized at least until, at the Council of Trent in the 1500’s, church authorities forbade artists to use any sources but the Bible.  Whatever the additions and flourishes to the story have been, the paradigmatic theme is that of exile, and  currently we are living in a time that has been called the Age of Exiles.  The United States, Canada, the EU and many other smaller countries have become destinations for contemporary exiles.  However, the reality of the experience and thus the mytheme is a very old one indeed.

Being an exile is very different from being an immigrant. An immigrant is someone who makes a decision to leave his or her place of origin and the past behind with the purpose of  launching into a very different future in a different place.  The immigrant is inspired by hope for something better.  An exile has been compelled by marginalization, alienation, political persecution, war, despotic violence or natural calamity into leaving the familiar matrix of culture and language behind.  Despair, fear, loneliness and uncertainty mark the experience.  While both immigrants and exiles experience a longing for home and often idealize the past, for the exiles the unfulfilled yearning for home and for the past probably defines the salient emotion of their dislocated lives.

Syrian refugees Qassem and Aminaa with baby Mariam

So what, if anything, might the Flight into Egypt story have to say to us today regarding the exile’s experience?  Legendary details of the the journey are depicted in the artworks dedicated to this theme.  The Holy Family is seen passing through a sometimes desolate landscape where miracles occur.  A tree bows down to them to offer its fruit for their sustenance. A spring of water appears, gushing forth from tree roots to quench their thirst.  Robbers are turned away by the sight of the precious divine infant and his holy mother.  Herod’s soldiers are fooled by an ingenious peasant who hides the family within a field of rapidly and miraculously ripening grain. The problems of physical survival through the aid of miracles predominate in these tales.

Today, it is the hard work of the United Nations and the Red Cross or Red Crescent or other NGO’s that are trying to provide that sustenance and safety for the large number of refugees around the world.  Exiles, once their numbers grow, become labeled “refugees”. The miracle today, hard won, is that we have such institutions.

So the kernel of the story of the Flight into Egypt becomes apparent.  Individuals are forced by situations beyond their control to move into a place and a future that is not of their choosing. They experience fear for their continued existence, and are aided by surprising and unforeseen circumstances and people that seem to arise fortuitously. But why the particular legendary elements that accrue to this particular story of the Flight into Egypt?  What are their symbolic meanings and their mythic connections? (For the actual stories themselves go to:  www.art-threads.co.uk and click on link to Life of the Virgin and the Childhood of Jesus, then to Flight into Egypt, then the legends.)

One of those elements is the palm tree that surrenders its dates so gracefully. The palm tree, according to the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, is one of several trees that universally represent  “victory, ascension, regeneration and immortality”.  The date palm also figures in the myth of Inanna, the great goddess of ancient Sumer.  Later on she is known as Ishtar and would have been a familiar although alien deity in Jewish stories of the Babylonian exile.  Inanna’s beloved Dammuzi (Ishtar’s Tammuz), who so callously betrays her, is associated with the date palm. Inanna is one of the earliest deities on record to have descended to the underworld and returned.  So the palm tree bowing is not only giving a mythic fruit to the exiles, but acknowledging the heroic, divine nature of the child Jesus and his eventual victory over betrayal, sacrifice and death. So the beginning of the story prefigures the end. And an earlier myth prefigures a later one.

The Journey by Giotto

But there is another variation of the tale of a tree that recognizes the holy infant that says it was a “persidas” or a persea tree.  This is a tree with healing properties–its leaves, fruit and bark all have curative properties.  A reference to that tree would also have resonated for an early Egyptian Christian as significant. Many at that time would have known a very old story about the god Djehuti, or Thoth, who wrote the names of Pharoahs on the leaves of a cosmic persea tree so that they, the Pharoahs, would become immortal. Thus, the old myth acknowledges the newer and more transcendant version of itself.

Springs or wells of water, so important to wayfarers in any place, but especially in the desert, are components of many myths.  Most springs were sacred throughout the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern world two millenium ago and often had attendant spirits. But it is interesting to note that in the far north, in Norse mythology, this motif also appears. For there is a special, spring-fed pool at the base of the world tree Ygdrassil.  And the three norns live there, old ones who decide the fate of one and all.  Taking that imagery all the way back to Egypt, long ago there were also three goddesses at the birth of every Egyptian who determined the fate of that child. The spring that comes forth from the roots of the persea tree could have been seen as affirming the remarkable destiny of the child Jesus as written on the leaves of that tree.  It is a birth announcement by natural elements of the coming of a divine and immortal being.

At http://www.art-threads.co.uk is the following artwork of a fanciful well which according to apocryphal Pseudo-Matthew was conjured up by baby Jesus:

Painting by Altdorfer, The Miraculous Well

The theme of the hero or miraculous being in exile is not confined to the Flight into Egypt.  Hercules of Greek myth was an exile. In Hinduism there is the story of Rama exiled  And in the Mahabarata, the exile of the Pandava brothers is an essential part of the plot wherein they transform their identities. In Judaism there is the story of Moses. In Buddhism, Prince Siddartha leaves his life of privilege and wealth and exiles himself to a life in the forest as an ascetic, eventually becoming the Buddha.  These are but a few of the exiled heroes in world mythology and in history.  Mythologically speaking, it seems that a hero or leader must experience  distance and severance from the familiar, the traditional, the mundane in order to be able to garner some special powers or perspectives that can benefit his people or even all people everywhere.

The Flight into Egypt story echoes and reverses that most famous of exile stories, Exodus of the Old Testament of the Bible  Instead of fleeing out of Egypt, the Holy Family is fleeing into Egypt.  In the Coptic Christian stories of their journey throughout the land, there is a whole itinerary of their sojourn and many churches exist even today to mark places where they are said to have stayed.  Various stories tell of miracles that happened in each place where they stopped as they journeyed southward along the Nile Valley. And that motif echoes another very well-known myth of that time, the difficult wanderings of Isis as she seeks to recover the parts of her beloved and martyred husband Osiris.

Likewise, the story of the peasant diverting the attention of the malevolent forces of evil is a widespread motif.  It turns up in later centuries in the Germanic story of Walpurga who also escapes detection by soldiers when hidden amongst the stalks of grain that have suddenly ripened to protect her. To quote from http://www.art-threads.co.uk:   “This story does not appear in any of the apocryphal gospels and its origin is obscure, but it was popular with Flemish artists who included it as an additional landscape element.“

This Flemish painting incorporates the bowing tree, the miraculous well and the corn field in the middle distance. From Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Nor are stories of exile absent from myths of goddesses and heroines.  There is the aforementioned story of Isis, her arduous and sorrowful journey along the Nile and eventually triumphant restoration of Osiris, who lives just long enough to engender Horus. The son then grows up to defeat the wicked Set.  In Judaism there is the exile of Shekinah from Yaweh, or in its gnostic version, Sophia exiled from Heaven. And curiously the first wife of Adam, Lilith, is still out there  in a wasteland somewhere, suspected of being up to no good.  Mary Magdalene, according to a gypsy legend (now in popular revival–the Da Vinci Code), went into exile to southern France to escape the persecution unleashed upon the early Christians. Some say she took with her Jesus’s daughter, Sarah, but in other versions Sarah is a servant girl.

Mary Magdalene with others fleeing from Alexandria, Egypt to southern France.
The work is titled “Mary Magdalene Driven out of Palestine”. It’s at the Basilica of St. Maximine in Ste. Marie de la Mer, France

In Greek myth, the goddess Demeter wandered on earth, in self-imposed exile from Olympus, to mourn the abduction of her daughter Persephone.  That maiden goddess, also called Kore, was taken to the underworld by Hades, but she eventually returns to bring springtime back to the land.  Any number of fairy tale heroines are sent off by wicked stepmothers into dangerous places, but not only do they survive, they thrive, and their lives are changed for the better.  Beauty of “Beauty and the Beast” accepts living in exile with the Beast as a ransom for her father. She becomes the agent of transformation of the Beast into a handsome and kindly prince, and they live happily ever after.

Since we all live in an age where millions of people today have been displaced and dislocated by forces beyond their control, not by their own choice, besides considering some of the myths. legends, and stories about exile, I decided to read famous commentaries that center on this theme.  There is Plutarch’s essay “De Exilio”. He wrote it to a friend who had suffered political exile, a not infrequent occurence in ancient Rome.  To comfort and inspire his friend he writes quoting Socrates: “…the saying of Socrates is still better, that he was no Athenian or Greek, but a “Cosmian”…

‘Seest thou yon boundless aether overhead that holds the earth within its soft embrace?’

This is the boundary of our native land, and here no one is either exile or foreigner or alien; here are the same fire, water, and air; the same magistrates and procurators and chancellors — Sun, Moon, and Morning Star; the same laws for all, decreed by one commandment and one sovereignty, the summer solstice, the winter solstice, the equinox, the Pleiades, Arcturus, the seasons of sowing, the seasons of planting; here one king and ruler, “God, holding the beginning, middle, and end of the universe, proceeds directly, as is his nature, in his circuit; upon him follows Justice, who visits with punishment those that fall short of the divine law, the justice which all of us by nature observe toward all men as our fellow-citizens.”

That call to become a “Cosmian” certainly still resonates today as much or more than it did in the first Century A.D.  And it certainly invites the exile to develop a greater identity within a vision of his or her humanity located in nature, transcending local time and place.

Dante Aligheiri was also sent into exile by the city council of Florence when his political party was defeated.  He never returned to his beloved city, but wrote the Divine Comedy while living away. Of the sorrows of exile, he wrote in Paradiso, XVII (55-60):

… Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta	… You shall leave everything you love most:
più caramente; e questo è quello strale	this is the arrow that the bow of exile
che l’arco de lo essilio pria saetta.	shoots first. You are to know the bitter taste
Tu proverai sì come sa di sale	of others’ bread, how salty it is, and know
lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle	how hard a path it is for one who goes
lo scendere e ‘l salir per l’altrui scale …	ascending and descending others’ stairs …

Allegorical Portrait of Dante by Agnolo Bronzino c.1530

Much more recently, Edward Said, the famous scholar and writer who was a Palestinian exile himself,  wrote a well-known essay “Reflections on Exile”. It is worth reading, especially for his insights into the hyper-nationalism that today often characterizes the reaction of refugees to the loss of their homelands, which in turn has become a source of political turmoil and violence, which Said abhorred.  He muses upon the development of a special kind of perception that the experience of exile can foster and advises:

“Regard experiences as if they were about to disappear. what is it that anchors them in reality? What would you save of them? What would you give up? Only someone who has achieved independence and detachment, someone whose homeland is “sweet” but whose circumstances make it impossible to recapture that sweetness can answer these questions…”

And he goes on to say, “Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that–to borrow a phrase from music–is contrapuntal.”

He ends with, “Exile is life led outside habitual order. It is nomadic, decentered, contrapuntal; but no sooner does one get accustomed to it than its unsettling force erupts anew.”

Edward Said

Right now in movie theaters across the land there is a magnificent film that weaves mythical dimensions into a story of a young man exiled from his home and lost at sea, “The Story of Pi”.  Utter aloneness, the discovery of self within that solitude, the testing of resolve and courage, the reaching for the infinite Self are all  portrayed in Pi’s struggle to survive while sharing a lifeboat with a tiger.  His childhood home is faraway and long ago.  The sea is alien, strange, and by turns savage or mild, a desert or a bountiful source of sustenance.  Pi lives to tell his tale, or tales, and leaves one to choose which version is more life-sustaining–the mythical or the mundane. It is something for us moderns or post-moderns to consider carefully.

And so the Flight into Egypt seen on a Christmas card evokes many things–a familiar holiday with its comforting traditions on the one hand, juxtaposed to myths from other places, times and cultures. The common thread is that all have treated the theme of exile and triumph over its hardships. There are assurances of rebirth, of transformation and intimations of immortality.  The Flight into Egypt story led me on my own meandering way  to read writings of men, ancient and modern, who have had evocative and wise things to tell us about life.  Finally this  journey into Egypt led me to deeper understanding and appreciation of a contemporary film about a boy from India unwillingly making Columbus’s voyage in reverse.  A contrapuntal awareness indeed.

“Rest on the Flight into Egypt” by Luc-Olivier Merson

Best wishes to all for the New Year 2013,

Carol

P.S. While researching this blog post I came across the website of Colin Wright who has consciously embraced what he calls the exile lifestyle. You can find him at:   http://www.exilelifestyle.com.  His is a more cheerful example of what the word “exile” might mean. I would call him an expatriate adventurer in the tradition of Hemingway or other intellectuals who have exiled themselves to seek inspiration and knowledge in foreign climes. He gave a talk for TEDx that is at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6cAR2eQHUU

Sources:

For artwork and source texts don’t miss this one:  www.art-threads.co.uk   (you can source the original texts in translation from here)

http://www.bartleby.com/360/4/35.html   (for a 19th Century ballad about a curious legend that a gypsy read the cards for Jesus and Mary.)

A 19th Century rendering of a story found in Legends of the Madonna by Anna Jameson, London, 1864. Possibly based on a Tuscan ballad originally.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/15/16519776-we-escaped-death-syrian-refugees-struggle-with-cold-hunger-and-uncertainty?lite http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_exilio*.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri

Click to access Reflections-on-Exile.pdf

Books:

The Holy Family in Egypt by Otto Meinardus (a collection of Coptic Christian stories)

Myths of the Sacred Tree by Moyra Caldecott  (for information on the persea tree as well as others)

Penguin Dictionary of Symbols by Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, translated by John Buchanan-Brown

Mary Magdalene, Bride in Exile by Margaret Starbird

Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker

The Passion of Isis and Osiris, A Union of Two Souls by Jean Houston

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Mythical Urbanscapes

Last month, bringing along my dragonfly-adorned luggage, I had the good fortune to take a trip along the Danube River, a river as storied as the Nile, mother of the history of many peoples and many empires.  The area I covered on this journey once belonged to the territory of the Hapsburg Emperors, whose love of opulent buildings has left to posterity the pearls of a string of cities.  There was statuary everywhere, much of it dedicated to beings and themes from classical Greek or Roman mythology.  From Budapest to Vienna to Prague, the urbanscapes fairly bristled with gods and goddesses along with angels and demons, saints and sinners.  They looked upon the modern traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, from some very picturesque street corners, rooftops and building facades.

Strolling along one of the wide pedestrian-only avenues lined with both modern and 19^th Century baroque buildings in the heart of the Pest side of Budapest one comes upon a handsome statue of Hermes/Mercury himself looking down upon the people strolling by, as they are coming in and out of shops, no doubt approving of the commerce being conducted all around him.  Besides being the god of communication, the messenger god, he has endured the centuries as the patron of merchants (and also of thieves).

In another part of that graceful city, guarding the opera house, is a sphinx, that enigmatic creature that is half woman and half lion.  No doubt she is guarding the secrets of that creature who walks on four, then two, then three legs, whose stories are sung in soaring song within that elegant venue. (Look up the riddle of the sphinx.)

The New York Café, which is nothing like any café I have ever seen in New York, is brimming with fat cherubs skimming the ceilings. We call them “cupids”, even though there is, in myth, only one Cupid, son of Venus.  In fact these little fellows are seen often in both secular and sacred settings throughout the places I visited.  Full of good cheer and exuberant enjoyment, they flit through the architecture and artwork that is everywhere. As Paul Simon sang, “There are angels in the architecture…”

More mysteriously and a bit alarmingly, the lamps outside the café are held aloft by devilish figures.  Perhaps they are a warning to be circumspect in consumption of the gastronomic delights and addictive beverages served there.

In Vienna, the parade and display of mythical power and grace continues.  The chariot of a mighty war goddess, Minerva or Athena, bears down upon the one who dares look up to the roof of the Hofburg.

Not far away Jupiter and Juno, or Zeus and Hera, hold court, models for the Emperor and his Empress.

Venus/Aphrodite is busy banishing the turbulent god of the waters, Neptune/Poseidon, calming the oceans, no doubt to facilitate the shipping that underlies the prosperity of the realm.

Scenes from an exotic tale (Is it the Arabian Nights?) adorn the wall of a shop in vivid colors.

At the Belvedere Palace where one of the art museums is housed, one comes across Ops (source of the word “opulent”) or Abundancia (root of “abundance”) with a cornucopia that flows with flowers and fruit. She is accompanied by a cherubic child.

And around the corner, looking over the sweep of vast gardens, is another sphinx, this one winged.

In Prague, much of the iconography on public buildings has a more Christian or historical cast of characters, but the familiar and archetypal signs of the zodiac figure prominently on the famous astronomical clock in the central plaza of that gorgeous town.

Prague has so many unique and beautiful buildings with mythic and symbolic adornment that I could include many photos that I took.  I might have to write another blog about these.  But here is one that features a medieval figure on horseback.

Steeped in myth, history, legend and sacred imagery, Europe’s heartland seems both bound and liberated by the many stories and memories all those images evoke. In Prague there is a place where other, more contemporary, rougher and less defined images, which have their own personal mythology, are painted randomly and anonymously. They appear on a wall in the square where the Velvet Revolution began, where young people gathered and defiantly played music banned by the last empire.

“Imagine” that.

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Hummingbirds–Tiny but Mighty

“One Apache legend tells of Wind Dancer, a young deaf warrior who could sing bewitching, wordless songs that brought healing and good weather. He loved a young woman named Bright Rain. He died tragically and a bitter winter ensued, but it ended suddenly and mysteriously after Bright Rain began taking solitary walks. Wind Dancer had come back to her in the form of a hummingbird. He wore the same bright ceremonial costume he had worn as a man, and in fields of flowers, he would approach her and whisper his enchanting secrets in her ear. This brought her peace and joy.”—Pam L. Hendrickson (www.desertusa.com/mag00/jul/stories/hummer)

My garden has been especially full of hummingbirds this summer.  I see them every day, but one morning as I sat out there sipping my coffee and having toast, one of these tiny enchanters came to take a good look at me.  It hovered for a while at eye level taking in the sight of me.  I never thought it would be possible to look into the eyes of a hummingbird, but that is what happened.

Looking up photos of types of hummingbirds on the internet, I thought at first it must have been an Anna’s Hummingbird, but finally decided it was either an Allen’s Hummingbird or a Rufous Hummingbird, although my location away from the California coast would argue for the latter.  As it hovered holding itself in a cross position, it’s tail feathers spread out in a fan that was a rusty orange, black and white.  I don’t remember it having a bright gorget around its throat, so it must have been a female.(see http://ibc.lynxeds.com/species/allens-hummingbird-selasphorus-sasin for amazing videos of Allen’s Hummingbird)

As I browsed, I found out fascinating facts about this compelling little creature and its many sisters and brothers.  It’s fast-moving wings do not flap up and down, but move in a figure eight motion (a symbol of infinity).  It must eat every ten minutes or so to keep up its fantastically rapid metabolism, and it eats lots of flower nectar (the sweetness of life), but also small insects and spiders for protein (sweetness is not enough).  Of course in doing so it pollinates other flowers while keeping down pests that might harm the plants (demonstrating the interconnectedness and interaction that sustains the world).

Hummingbirds exist only in the Western Hemisphere–North, Central and South America.  Some migrate up to 2,000 miles.  Some do not migrate at all.  When not flying, their heart rate drops and their elimination slows dramatically.  They enter a torpor, a short-term hibernation.  Some that live high in the Andes have adapted to surviving very cold temperatures while in that state. (Thus shamans associated them with resurrection) They are the only bird that can fly backwards, up and down as well as forwards (poetically suggesting an ability to move between worlds and between past, present and future almost all at once).

In spite of their miniature size, they can be quite fierce in battling for territory and protecting their nests, although they never seem to hurt another bird.  Unequal size is no deterrent to an aggressive defense. They are known to go after hawks and other large birds, successfully driving them away (thus symbolizing courage in the face of great odds against success).

Such truly fascinating and colorful birds were bound to figure in myths and as totems of people native to the American continents and they do.  The oldest representation of a hummingbird must be the gigantic one rendered on the Nazca Plain of Peru. The Nazca Lines have been dated from 500 BCE to 500 CE.  The existence of that ancient geoglyph, along with many others, which can only be seen  from high above, is an enduring mystery. And in that mystery hummingbird occupies a place, larger than life, in literally mythic proportions.

A more recent example of  hummingbird mega-art appeared as a crop circle in 2009 in a field in Wiltshire County, England, an area famous for the many figures that have been drawn there.  These “circles” are not circles at all. They are elaborate patterns that depict symbolic, astronomical and mathematical images. Crop circles are largely unexplainable phenomena, created in a short time during the night and often without witnesses, though occasionally people have reported seeing bright lights moving swiftly around the field. UFO lore attributes them to aliens, but others scoff at the idea and insist they are man-made.  Whatever the source, they are remarkable for their size, their beauty and for their extensive references to esoteric symbols, hummingbird among them.

This appeared on July 2, below Milk Hill near Stanton, St. Bernard in Wiltshire County, England. It was unusual because it was drawn around a dew pond becoming the first-ever crop circle to incorporate a water element.

Native Americans from Alaska to the Andes have stories they attribute to this bird, sometimes seen as a warrior, sometimes as a piece of the rainbow detached and visiting the flowers in order to bring them color. In Brazil they are called “flower birds’ or “flower kissers”. People of the Amazonian rain forest believe the souls of the departed reside in hummingbirds. And in our U.S. Southwest– “In multiple First American stories, there is a strong correlation between hummingbird and the sun, rainbows and life-giving rain.” (http://wisdom-magazine.com/Article.aspx/567/)

Catching the feathered rainbow theme, Pablo Neruda, the famed Chilean poet, wrote  “Ode to the Hummingbird”.  Here’s an excerpt in translation:

From scarlet to powdered gold,
to blazing yellow,
to the rare
ashen emerald,
to the orange and black velvet
of your shimmering corselet,
out to the tip
that like
an amber thorn
begins you,
small, superlative being,
you are a miracle,
and you blaze

John James Audobon, famous 19^th century illustrator of birds, also saw the rainbow connection, calling hummingbirds “….glittering fragments of rainbows.”

As a totem this bit of bright color in flight inspires a variety of interpretations:

Leigh Egan at eHow.com says that the appearance of hummingbird “applies to your soul, past, resurrection and chakra energies”.  It communicates the joy of living and appreciation of the beauty and bounty of the natural world. Its ability to hover in place for many seconds (what I witnessed up close) speaks to the principles of independence and balance along with courage and strength.  As a messenger for healing, hummingbird reminds us to seek out flower essence remedies, aroma therapy and herbal medicine.  The bird’s small size combined with its high energy encourages us to take on seemingly big and difficult tasks with gusto and persistence. (www.eHow.com/facts_5772502_meaning-totem-hummingbird.html)

At another site, www.ewebtribe.com/StarSpiderDancing/clarity, Sun Bear gives us another version of the hummingbird as an animal ally or guide which carries the message “clarity”.  It represents “getting to the heart of a matter” because in reality this creature goes to the heart or center of a flower and quickly extracts the nectar from it.

Sun Bear goes on to add layers to the oracle by suggesting the plant rosemary as an aid to mental clarity and memory, the mineral mica to alleviate confusion and hesitation, the quality of translucence and clear as a color, the direction east and the season of spring.  I found it interesting the way this visionary created a synergy of symbolic and real elements, a multi-faceted metaphor.  And at the end of the piece the reader is encouraged to seek her/his own revelation through hummingbird. Live mythically!

http://www.desertmuseum.org

So what did my eye-to-eye encounter with hummingbird mean to me?  Certainly breath-taking beauty before me, a certain perfect stillness of moment and mind, a feeling that even as I was seeing, I was being seen, appreciation for the opportunity to have such a moment with so wonderous a being—all of that and more.

Suddenly my thought jumps to a memory of my now-deceased aunt, a very gentle soul, who painted lovely flowers on china. I have a small, decorative porcelain “book” on which she painted blue forget-me-nots. On the small open pages-the only pages, she painted in perfect lettering the words, “Expect a miracle.”

I think I will leave it at that.

In gratitude,

Carol

Some sources not heretofore mentioned:

“The Perfume Doctor” by  Libby Patterson found at http://aphrodisiacsfortheboudoir.blogspot.com/2011/08/lpo-anchor-point-parfumhummingbirds.html has the entire text of Neruda’s poem and another beautiful poem as well

for some far-out speculation regarding the hummingbird crop circle, the Nazca Lines hummingbird, and ancient Mayan lore regarding Dec. 22, 2012  go to   pigs-in-the-parlor.blogspot.com/2009/07/any-similarities.html

http://www.hummingbirdworld.com/h/totem.html

Photo of Naxca Plain Hummingbird by Yans Arthus-Bertrand from “Earth From Above”

And for gardening for hummingbirds in southern California go to  www.laspilitas.com  or check out  theodorepayne.org

And go to http://www.desertmuseum.org and look up “pollinators” for a status report on rufous hummingbirds–on the Audubon watch list for a species that may be in decline due to destruction of habitat, but not yet endangered.

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Welcome to the Mythic Living Blog!

Dear Readers,

The purpose of this blog is to connect you, the reader, to the present, living and dynamic properties of myths, legends and fairy tales.  Such stories are very old stories of gods and goddesses, or magical beings, who may or may not be helpful to humans, and who rather often behave in shocking and threatening ways. Myths also include stories of humans with superhuman strength, cleverness or good fortune who interact with otherworldly beings, protected by one or several of them, and disliked by others.  Today, these stories are not thought of as true in a factual way although at some time in history to some people they may have seemed so.  In our time to say casually that something is “just a myth” is to dismiss the matter as false.  Yet, whether believed as fact or dismissed as nonsense, myths persist.  They have carried on for millennia, appearing in art and arising in dreams, hanging out hidden in plain sight in the most ordinary of places, coffee shops and garden statuary, living rooms and libraries.  But what is most startling to realize is that they are lived out by us, sometimes with such resonance of detail from a person’s life to the myth, that one wonders—do we live the myths or are they, the myths, living us?  Joseph Campbell, the modern mythologist, said it well in The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

“The last incarnation of Oedipus, the continuing romance of Beauty
and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of Forty-second
Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the light to change.”

Myths, and their offspring—legends and fairy tales–serve at least four functions, according to Campbell:

• They reconcile events that are “local and historical”(here and now) with themes that are “transcendent and eternal” (timeless and permanent).
• They supply images that are signs and symbols for the relationship of the ordinary to the extraordinary, of the “local, historical” to “the transcendent realms and eternal forms”.
• They facilitate the collective necessity that seeks to shape and provide conciliation “between individuals and the requirements of their differing climates, geography, cultures and social groups. “
• Finally, myths foster the centering and unfolding of the individual in integrity with herself or himself in relationship to personal history, time and place, culture, the planet, the universe and ultimately to the greater Mystery, which is both beyond the individual and also part of her or him.

So, with that list of what myths can do, I will be using this blog to see through to the myths behind current events, explore the meanings and impacts of images and symbols that surround us, identify the conciliatory stories that can help us through the challenges of this time and place, and to touch on stories big enough to contain myriad individual stories, providing a bridge across from “me” to “us” and back again.

Hope you all enjoy and please feel free to contact me with requests, questions, and/or your own insights!

Sincerely,

Carol

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