Mythological Meanderings

The Quest of Sir Valentine: The Real Origin of Valentine’s Day

2009-02-14T07:10:00.001-08:00

The Quest of Sir Valentine: The Real Origin of Valentine’s Day

Many times come and many go, but, the time that presents as very now seems the only one to matter then. So it was for Sir Valentine as he wandered the countryside, actually, scoured would be more apt. You see, Sir Valentine was seeking that one lady whose love he was sure motivated him to wake each day, caused him to be that annoying do-gooder neighbor and stranger that so many detested, made him think of strange thoughts to those around him about the fabrication of the world, about why trees talked and no one seemed to listen, about why the animals were constantly whispering in voices others seemed not to hear, but most importantly, about her, who as far as anyone could see did not exist at all! Mostly, others thought him odd, strange, weird, “funny,” or even schizophrenic, and so eventually, Sir Valentine became isolated and reclusive in order to avoid the hot flames of disapproval worn so openly on their judgmental sleeves.

But, this did not depress him, for the extra time allowed him to concentrate on his future Lady Valentine allthemore. And, so he did, as you could imagine, being mostly alone and left to his own thoughts and imagination. As Sir Valentine thought, imagined, and conjured her forth from the mist of his own very active imagination, she gradually took form, like clouds becoming a goddess of pure beauty, which clouds, it turns out would follow him from time to time, especially when he was with her in poignantly palpable imaginings and fantasies. Finally, he could see the beginnings of a form of the great Lady Valentine, this after writing love poetry for decades about her and never seeing her, only moved forward in his love of her that he knew existed somehow.

Future poets and artists would see in Sir Valentine a religious faith in his unknown Lady Valentine. Future psychoanalysts would say, knowingly, at this very point of the story that he was delusional, succumbing to his fantasies turning into phantasies, and that he was facing a serious psychological fracture in falling in love with his own anima. What all these future folks mentioned and unmentioned failed to realize was that their thoughts passed directly into Sir Valentine’s head as he thought and imagined each day, mostly about Lady Valentine. The negative thoughts Sir Valentine discarded as that part of him that was unwilling to move forward, just as his wise father had taught him. The positive thoughts Sir Valentine accepted as encouragement to continue and fed off them like horses eating hallelujah hay.

It was while eating some of his miraculous manna one day, that Sir Valentine actually had a vision that informed him of what to do, as it pertains to Lady Valentine and finding her. He had been riding the countryside, well, again, scouring it, like a brillo champion, when he decided to rest underneath his favorite mammoth old tree. His father had taken him out as a youth and advised him to find a tree that spoke to him, and in ways that he felt deeply. They rode and walked for miles and miles, miles and miles, until finally a very large, nay gigantic, tree spoke so clearly and loudly to him that he nearly fell off his horse.

It was to this very same tree that he rode quite often, to sit underneath her, on her roots, to listen to her stories, and sometimes she to listen to his, and to cry his woes as she listened soothingly; this very same tree he rode to that fateful day. No one can say if it was the tree that revealed the vision of her heavenly heart, or whether it was the clouds above that parted and sunrays entered through the top of his head, and frankly, not many cared then, but, somehow, after decades of wandering, Sir Valentine finally knew what she looked like, what she felt like, and that he would be with her. After profusely thanking the tree, the clouds, the sky, and everything that might have contributed to this momentous gift, he leapt upon his horse and galloped off toward home to prepare. He was so excited and thrilled that he nearly washed the dust off his horse’s back as he rode about the hillsides and under the canopy of the trees and sky, in what appeared to be a meandering and routeless route, but which picturesque path returned him home in high spirits.

Whereupon, he began planting the rose bushes of rainbow colors all across that gorgeous landscape he knew and loved like the wrinkles in his skin. Despite the fact that the vision mentioned roses, with Sir Valentine’s very active imagination, he just knew that Lady Valentine would appreciate more than the fantastic fragrance of roses, for their thorns can make quite the impasse, and thus he planted a variety of flowers, trees, flowering bushes, and even ferns so that she would feel this place to be as magical as he had always known it to be, and also then find her way attracted to it long enough to stay so that he might find her one day. So, he planted and planted, and then one day while the local people, as well as people from far away, had heard of this noble gent’s earnest efforts to create a paradise for his Lady Valentine to enjoy a blooming flower every day of the year, the people gradually began to visit her sanctuary. When visiting, many were struck by the reverence of the place, feeling as if somehow the place itself were imbued with energy, but nothing negative or deserving of a hanging, stoning, drowning, or burning, rather, something to be emulated. Perhaps it was during these visits that many people began to open their eyes, and gaze upon their surroundings with heightened awareness and to see that even their places had some of this energy. Whatever the case, future philosophers were sure that this was the decisive moment in history that the notion of land and landscapes having soul was born.

Nonetheless and allthemore, one thing was certain, the people were changing, and in numerous ways. You see, love was actually blooming, her fragrance was filling the neighborhoods as more and more people planted roses and all manner of beautiful flowers, bushes and trees, and, as they did so, they became more connected to the very undersurface of what they often trampled upon with unknowing and uncaring feet; they became more interrelated with each other; they became more interconnected with the entirety. As love bloomed further, and as Sir Valentine’s gardens grew in scope and majesty, the people themselves began to believe that they had seen the Lady Valentine, or that surely she would come tomorrow, and eventually, many of them knew she would come on this particular day.

Thus, the people came out in droves on that day, cutting flowers on the way, holding hands here, arms around each other there, and kissing everywhere: the very nature of love seemed destined to stay. Sir Valentine had also known she would come that day, and so he washed himself thoroughly, anointing himself with myrrh, cedar, and juniper berry oils. What he did not know would surely make him leap for joy. As he neared the gardens, riding carefully through swaths of pilgrims, first one handed him a gorgeous bouquet of rare flowers not even found in his gardens, then another handed him a parchment extolling her charms, and when another handed Sir Valentine some homemade chocolates, he knew what a perfect meeting this would be.

The appointed time came, for even the hour was foretold, and thousands of people had gathered around that very same ancient tree Sir Valentine had so often received comfort from, cried under, and under which he imagined the Lady Valentine arriving, and the people parted as only a wave does when special divining poles are used, to allow Sir Valentine to reach the open circle underneath the tree. Of course the tree had a name, it had revealed this to Sir Valentine before he was a Sir, advising him to only tell others when the time was right. And so, he had long held this secret, wondering if ever such a time would come. He knew in an instant, that that time was now. He also knew it was time to address the people gathered round, to thank them for not trampling the gardens underfoot, to thank them for sharing his belief that she would come today, and for all of the many gifts they had given to she and him, so that their day might be wonderful. So he did. Upon finishing his discourse, after which people applauded and cheered, some snapping their fingers in approval, others gently tapping the backs of their hands, and some whistling loudly, all the sudden, in an instant, the tree seemed to vanish.

Perhaps not vanish, as much as part, for thereupon from out of the trunk of Valentius stepped the most radiant and glowing lady anyone could ever recall seeing or hearing of. In fact, most of the people thought her a goddess and as if another wave parted, they bowed in waves that rippled across the gardens. Only Sir Valentine was left standing, in front of the shimmering and lustrous Lady Valentine. Then, what happened next none can agree upon, not even those people in the crowd that day, for all saw it differently. Some saw the Lady bow to the Sir, while others saw the Sir bow to the Lady, and others saw him fumble to give her the gifts he was carrying behind his back, whereas others saw them embrace with such passion and love as to kindle the fires of the core and birth a volcano. Many other versions surfaced and continue to surface, as Sirs and Ladys celebrate their love throughout the millennia. The best thing that happened that day, which most people who did stay there concur, was the way in which the Lady and the Sir Valentine celebrated their love openly and warmly shared it with others. The gifts they were given in honor of this momentous occasion were returned in full by the love they shared with all.

Many times continue to come and many to go, as they ever will, like the rhythms of the beach that match the marching of the mountains and the loping of the forests, but, the time that presents as very now will always seem the only one to matter then. So it was for Sir Valentine and Lady Valentine as they wandered the gardens together in bliss and happiness. You see, though some called him foolish, Sir Valentine never deterred from seeking that one lady whose love he was sure woke him each day, had him doing good, and thinking oddly about the world, about talking trees, about whispering animals, and most importantly, about her, who would one day exist indeed!

May you find that love, rekindle the one you found, and ever remember Sir and Lady Valentine and Valentius the magnificent Tree of Love!

Unconscious Love

2008-04-23T08:58:00.001-07:00

I glimpse you peripherally and I yearn to hold you, to crush you nearer.
I espy you across the courtyard, amidst the falling leaves;
resplendently dressed in their last hurrah—your beauty outshines them.
I see you in the vanity mirror, but as I turn, your image flutters and fades;
slithering through my perception to the next past or future, never dallying in the present.
I'm taken aback as your face speaks to me
from the rippling surface of nearest neighbor's man-made pond,
prophesying events yet to come; my mind spins and you stay still, calming me.
I sense your presence as you tenderly brush my hair,
softly caressing nape of neck, shoulders, small of back.

My eyes roam carefully over your scantily clad body as we dive into the river;
foreseeing foretold events—experiencing our unions, separations, and communions simultaneously, arriving at a tumultuous explosion.
Fusing ourselves and our souls, melting into that cesspool of minds…
Losing ourselves, our souls, finding, loving, knowingly we choose to complete the cycle again;
to find each other once more as: man, woman, cat, bird, or fish—
realizing the bond.

I see your soul in adored flowers.
I hear your voice in racing breezes through laurel.
I smell your sweet scent in burning incense.
I feel your hot breath upon my neck as I walk in the sand.
I understand that which you have prophesied.
I love you in your absence.
I possess you in the mirrors in my closet, upon my walls.
I hold you close as storms crash onward.
I pull you tighter when it seems I've lost my nerve.

You are that which has no name.
You've been termed love by some—yet I see no semblance in you.
You demand my attention lovingly nonetheless and I succumb,
for this bliss can't be measured against mere wisdom.

Feel me surrender as you envelop me further; ohhh more,
if only we could...

What

2008-04-23T08:57:00.001-07:00

What is not how or why or when or even where
What finds itself distinctly separate
from the above more temporalities and moralities,
as attempting to define some element
of truth in beingness in quality
in order to describe
the is-ness
of this particular
thing

Weaving Becomingness

2008-04-23T08:56:00.002-07:00

Clotho once wove a weave so fine,
so exquisite,
its rainbowed hues left none
witnessing it without tears.

The fabric entwined
that thus clothed
the heroes who donned it
throughout the eons,
protected them from harm
and allowed them access
to the most private of seclusions,
the most secreted mazes,
the deepest cavernistic halls,
the highest mountainous peaks;
on the bottomest of ocean floors
they ambled slowly;
on the thinnest of clouds
they tread with surety.

Do you wear the rainbow robe
that makes of nine heads
a simple stoney sculpture?

Do you wield the power
interlinked with donning such responsibility?

Wearing and wielding such power
wends its way beyond
one’s blood fueling movement
and into innovative inaugurations:
life becomes
and constantly becomingness
generates,
rather than is
or simply being…

Watery Creature

2008-04-23T08:56:00.001-07:00

Changing skin for clothes
and rending teeth for toothy smiles
a wedding soon ensues to treasure.
Skin secreted in hidden chest awhiles
where hearts beat much less
but whose pounding for fear of founding
leave detectable scents nonetheless
eventually find their winding way bestows
a replacing of haranguing clothes.
Children? Home? Husband? Culture?
All is shed for free watery pleasure…

Sown Words Drown Swords

2008-04-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

Moving through reeds on the edges of each cool pool
what was carrion has risen anew with mewl
The leaved poetry on trees viewed as a macule
speaks passion only sweetly wafting past the fool
who instead of hearing all sees but majuscule

Brief Exegesis
The above word play is not addressed to anyone in particular, but to those who cannot hear the plain poetry of nature plied on the leaves of the trees, for all they can see instead are the $, which in this case represent the majuscule, and therefore everything else is blurry text (macule, as in mackle, not the macula lutea). So, despite the fact that they may have experienced a near-death potential life-changing event (at the will of Artemis in the cool pool, or Pan among the reeds that are Syrinx), and as walking carrion arisen they make weak whimpers (mewl), they yet remain fools when they cannot or refuse to listen to nature.

Soul Companion Whole Reunion

2008-04-23T08:51:00.001-07:00

In the finding of the souls
A mixture of love and remembrance overwhelms

It is the strangeness of being one
Before one knows the other
Before one sees the other
But as one has been with the other

It is a reunion

Give me that new love
Beyond the old paradigms
The old ghosts of today through the past
Wherein people get lost
In the way it should be and not feeling what is….

This is not as we are….

Whirlwind of embraces
Sounds traverse woods of lost loves
Leaves speaking languages hidden
In caves of learning
In wombs of memories
Crafting what we shared and know
What felt itself before we lived again
In the midst of echoing traces

We elevate over instances
What once grasped and held
Holding us without warmth
We gave into all…transforming energies

They flowed through warming us
They became us
And in that instant we saw self, I, me, we and ourselves as one….

This new mythology arises into a semblance
Of revelation not borne of redemption
Or any other archaic notion

Where doth the information come from
Doth it channel forth from voids in Chaos
Doth it channel forth from unspaces in Gaia
Doth it channel forth from unlight in darkness
Doth it channel forth from undark in lightness
Wherefrom matters little as whatwith and wherewithal matter

Smatterings of this and thou resonate
Into summer reverie of dismemberment
It is the knowledge of the integration of death
And of life that enters psyche and soul
Herein is import for reform

Riding mutual energies into oblivion
We scream streaming sweet release

For we know the known and the unknown
We’ve known what we thought and what we unthought

Where did the losses go?
Where did the chances go?

If we find nothing other than us
We have found the changes that make a world!

Seeking Fresh Searching True

2008-04-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

Seeking, ever seeking, who is this searcher I sometimes call me?
Is this searcher more aptly called myself?
Or perhaps the searcher would prefer self?
What if the searcher should see its way to Self?
Other times, this searcher definitely seems like I;
And, still, at moments most quiet, the searcher is all of the above at once
And, none of the above,
But, rather, much like the seeker, ever seeker,
Whose goal is not rest,
Whose goal is no goal,
Yet, whose aims continually move further inward
Further outward to interiority and exteriority
Of unknowabilities and unthinkabilities…
Thus, the searcher and the seeker wed
Realize there is no ultimate finding of any of the faces above,
Only momentary moments of recognition,
Of which each moment thereafter proves unrecognizable
The face that once presented.
And what of perennial questions of suppositions of oppositions?
What of any of these polar pairings do we attribute to whatever of our faces—
Ourselves thus appearing momentarily to be begrudgingly labeled such—
In whicheven moments, we make of ourselves as completely taken over by it,
Should we allow such to occur we are possessed,
And in the possession of archetypal forces and energies
We are no longer just that face that presented, we are myriads of faces
To be better represented as ourselves as a rainbow of faces in one
Ever shifting, ever moving, ever giving landscapes beauteous colors
Landscapes of humanity and of places, and so on…
What then of these pairings comprises or nourishes our roots—
We now being akin to kin of world trees, to brethren and sastren strong
Trees standing tall and wide with deep and long roots—
Is what we perceive, is what we rememory, is what we think,
Is what we act, is what we see, is what we speak, is what we hear, is what we feel,
Is what we imagine, is what we fantasize, is what we intuit, is what we create,
So that what we do makes of us what we are…
Questioning what forms our roots nourishes and strengthens our trees,
But obsessing on one or another, especially the inherently toxic samples,
And wondering if these be within the fibrousness of the roots
Requires energy from the tree be redirected in order to heal the psychic wounds
Such wondering entails: to stem the sap from oozing outward into the ground.
Rarely does anything or anyone truly trick all of us
Except for if we dive into faith without its just due
So, let us look deeply, feel fully, sense surely, and intuit openly
And in so doing worry not over trickery, masks, guile-filled breezes and false windows…
Thereby, we can instead see over that hill and into that vale
The sunsets and sunrises, the forests slowly marching
The mountains breathing and growing to slowly sink again
The very land exhaling and inhaling to meet and depart is not heresy

Soothsaying Necromancer

2008-04-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

Seeing shades of death wash over, all around are touched by its dank feathers
Rancid, the smell of rotting death, swooners'd sooner fair better than be necromancer;
Yet none there is who has escaped this fiend called death whom some refer to as friend.
Bitterer the war that hope loses glimmer, graces chase the strayed shimmer,
Seeking always to keeping that radiance nearer, not even creaking, to allow the steeping gradient
To wear dictator's clothes, or those of emperor, for though hope hastens close,
Never does death run scared from, leaving some intended freed forever.

Aye that I were the necromancer, the living, walking necromancer, the walker and talker
Among the dead, but also communing with the living: if I were the necromancer
Those who've passed and those to pass and those passing would all find a bridge;
One worth crossing over, under or above, spanning both sky and earth,
And connecting heaven and hell for all to be as it is meant to be,
Connected and interconnected, not disconnected.

Could it be that the shades of death were every rainbow ever colored,
Every cloud ever floated, every rain ever rained, every sunray ever shined;
Could it be that all those colors, shapes, sensations and lights would uncover
Realities of life, answers about life or reasons for life, a proverbial gold-filled pot,
Pandora's miseries rebuked to let the jar-stifled hope out in bright sunspots;
Then it'd be we'd all rejoice, as ailments and suffering vanished.

Aye, here in this light, in this midnight irradiance, in this luminescence,
Moon drenching the subterraneanic nightscape—
Here is a space akin to that peace place,
That place of calm where love infuses,
Where the light is the love and the love is all of life—
There, beneath a golden, hovering, harvest moon,
Shall the transformation unveil another prophet hero
Aspiring not for platitudes, meek and full of gratitude
For station and chance, predicting futures only the dead know.

Excerpted from I'M DEAD—Osiris

2008-04-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

The cadaver horizon is a mountainscape
that spreads from my eyebrows across the world
spanning outward evermore,
for death is everpresent within everpresent life,
and so it is not purely chaotic
to see in my death the death of all
and within that all
a nothingness some would call a void,
but which upon closer inspection reveals but another me dreaming it,
the dream and me…
life within the cadaver is the promise blossom
awaiting blown seedlings to scuttle across the desert
of a once rain forest
under the glacial ice’s memory of millennia,
is a world tree,
a stately scented sycamore…
If plants waited to expand because another glacier were coming,
then all would be desert or ice.
Nonetheless, we are all a carnival dressed for funerals
and upon our pyres we dance
the macabre cadaver dance
regardless of peregrination
chosen as a soul before entrance to the dance,
despite our willingness to unwillingness
to comprehend the choices now,
we yet journey.
Dying each day,
stinking and rotting,
and living each day,
fragrantly renewing,
leaving stenches intermixed with aromas of beauteous sorts.
No poem is a poem as self identified,
or self unidentified,
for in its own recognition or dismissal
does it fail as such or its antithesis.
So, call this nothing, but read it deeply…
And, what of a life pretending to be dead then?
Does death pretend and feign so readily life?
Is a wound but death making light of life?
Wounds heal and reopen,
countless times in a moment,
scarring providing us skin
and tissue
memories to jolt physicality back into psychology,
as if we need to recall and cannot without their assistance.
A wound in unthought fields of chaos reels
over black flowers
dotting ever-steeper valleys and ever-lower hills,
bleeding black flowers with heady stenchy odors
wafting warily nearer and further
from until surrounding all Osiris
emerges
reborn from Isis’ chaotic womb…
the glacier but a memory
of her moonlight fading
in the unconsciousness
of Osiris’ dead memories.
The memory returns,
now a rememory:
Osiris is the sycamore,
is the plants reborn out of a desert or tundrascape,
is the sun born from the moon each day,
is the cadaver horizon,
is the life carnival,
is all of life and death
one arising out of the other…

Fanciful Imaginings…

2008-04-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

In the beginning of light within the dark and dryness in the moisture,
Four cougars craved solace and while crouching on lily pads
They suddenly were transformed into lotuses,
Which many deities and their devotees noticed.

Millennia later, they found themselves reified in cults as a posture,
Which spread over tropical zones and became fads
They realized then that they were the only ones
Who knew what lotuses really were…

And, accordingly, they sent a message to some
And me who seemed to not hear
And continued instead to reify lotuses,
Until one day a radiant lotus dared speech practice…

I heard a soliloquy seductively whispered from a Goddess.
She was not a cougar, and so I wondered…
A roar sounded primordial colors into existence
And the space that wound in that place fondled
A creature into a plant again and I witnessed happenstance.

‘Tree, come to me,’ She whispers…
Whoever heard absurder a perjure of sanity?
In the shadows, I observe, goosebumps and chills—the profanity!
Wheneven shelters wrestle and perspire…

Wait. A Shadow stretches to reach my heart.
And a heartbeat pumps of energy brainwaves impart.
How shadow reaches thought reveals to inspire
The telling of “whenever stories” of diverse characters,
Even trees’ slow Sahara sojourn provides witness!

No more do cougars and lotuses challenge
What once proved as truth for me for truth has no bearing
For in its telling doth truth become else
And when a goddess fills one spilling outward into all
What is shadow is light and all paradox seeming real…

Disassembled Beingness

2008-04-23T08:37:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time there were three no we’ll make it four, little bits of time running a race that actually paralleled that of an anaconda digesting its large prey; a grizzly hibernating on a bighorn; a swan singing in sunlit daisies in white-butterfly-intermittent-clouds, and-quite-unpredictable, despite observing hours to days to weeks, which stretches forth wings of glory to rejoicingly introduce the prophetess from the west with no agenda or attachment to ideals: Isis!
What happens when three billion are expendable?
One sneezes…
It is that easy, as has been proven over millennia…
What happens when no amounts of billions will perpetuate anything?
Shivas eat everything and no rumbling sounds so deep…
What happens when a forest of ancients is timber?
In a week…
It is a rumbling deeper and more ancient than Changing Woman as she has been known in the present day.
Changing Woman of many moons ago found no solace in fields wider than two peaks could comfort.
Changing Woman saw continents, islands, galaxies, universes, and found the worthy ones here called alcreatamythos….
They seek whatever realms of revisioning have not yet seen the shapes of four such riveting minds.
Bowing dew splatters in diamondlike chatter
Crackling birch flirting with a pit
Crab apple blooms internal / external
It is…
Give me now this life I soon see no more…
Reassemble me, oh, Isis…
I, your husband who was tricked by horrid sibling rivalry, implore thee…
And, if you ask But, what is the fourth?, then you have not seen or read closely enough and so you must return and revisit the words, one by one, until you have been through the four again, and for some again and again….

From the Mouths of Babes

2008-04-23T08:33:00.000-07:00

Infants speaking in ancient tongues heft the weft
Left bereft on the loom of arcane weavers
Leavers of the clothing of original ones
Wondrous fabrics of rainbowed hues
Humors would not allow done garments instants

From Within the Without of Yggdrasil the World Tree

2008-04-23T08:32:00.002-07:00

Fondly hang thee witless nine nights
wee the dawn tickles the upmost boughs;
hang thee well and upside down;
see thee into inevitable breakdown;
see thee into the eye that e’er floats below;
read the meaded messages even though they flow;
read the runes as one does ingredients in low light;
as above ravens, eagles, and hawks aflight;
and below otters, coyotes, and monkeys excite;
see into, between and beyond;
myth is but what we find most fond,
but how we forge our strongest bonds.

Eating My Tail

2008-04-23T08:32:00.001-07:00

Herein is the uroboric return
Move downward spiral within
Grooves etched echo the downturn
Begin improving after the tailspin

Horus Forgave Prometheus

2008-04-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

Driving into an area where the sun drapes darkened benches when the moon’s lost its light to campfires when I learn-see again…
Underneath the sheen of the milky way herein fairies roam and dwell; for, they seek something similar strange…

Aged carvings tell pillared stories:
A birded flight of winged Isis
Mounts a spectre named phallus
Removed from Osiris whose twelve pieces reassembled
Nearly whole on cold unforgiving stoney slab
He somehow begets a sun
Rising on the horizon is Horus

I AM Horus!, says he.
A hore of us is part of us
and we move on into the we of us
Here we reside for most of the time between
But, she runs beyond the stars
On a sunlit wave step that I could not reach
not on the sunnestmost beach…

In disobeyance, I dream
Not out of will or a need to try
Rather out of the coursing energy surrounding
I see myself a thousand pieces strewn about
Every one of them tells a lie about the whole
My Promethean slumber sees on the mountaintop I’m dismembered
Though in nightly dreams I’m rightly remembered
Gusts blow beyond fire as images stir and twist
Ashes transform from the former alive.

Invigorating fire—I hear a sound past the inane
In the midst of what was once sparking fire
A lady’s cry answered by bufoonic antics
Related to putting out a fire—
What I see here is plentiful loving fire
Regardless the winds that treacherously overtake
Fire, rather that one could warm themselves over

And we build our fire with the logs that remain
Reveling in the warmth and light that is reborn
Out of Prometheus’ flesh and suffering
For us…

Breathing in and Breathing out Mythology

2008-04-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

If ever you should by chance encounter some snakes copulating
lest like Tiresias androgyny you start advocating
seek not the counsel of even the wisest of deities
and instead breathing deeply into shallow vales
where rattles give their place seek the council of whales

When vision Hypnos visits—
whose thoughts implore us
a journey take in underconscious—
with amazing alacrity:
who sees with any clarity?

Speeding slowly past the holy gates
of Erebos what souls shine
that are solely stolen from the Fates
from the horrible knowledge that glances
like the burning sun, seek not chances

Leftovers from the fevered feast
blithering butts of swift-swine
prickled wrath of the Erynies:
suckling sows gift no kindness
itching sight into blindness

The herds of Hermes once pilfered from Apollo
are not always the most fortuitous guests
as razing fields and stampeding wolves suggests
though many forget and their elixir swallow,
habitually harried, haoma follows

A chariot rides a bit too close:
Phoebus flicking his wrist,
misses the red-burnt chorus
chanting as one: He sees us; He sees us!
as horses’ foam sprays and coats

Experience the heat of amour
without the distinct pleasure
feverous sweating amidst
Aphrodite’s displeasure
the choir is wondering What for?

Once, after smelling sweetest-Daphne-Artemis—
her fragrance wafting through branches assaults rank hounds—
I knew too late not to breathe deeply her essence
and though fortunately I knew not staghood
what wisdom stuffed me fully then words were not found!

Metamorphosing into a tree:
wondered I if the leaves would
wind their way into the wood,
therein transposing the once could be
from breathless flight to rememory…

Hearing not the admonishment of Hebe,
concerning more than fun, play and infancy
embarking on surrealist wax-filled fantasies
of fanciful flights following the free bee
sound diminishes now awfully slowly

Who it might be that astutely connects
astral feathery flight through the ionosphere
with this piercing dizzy knows the disconnects
when liquefying wax Icarus won’t fear
and neglecting father’s calls, falls, a killdeer

Naked vision of Poseidon’s fury—
seething foaming, salty spring deemed unworthy
after losing to Athena’s olive tree—
pronely shivering on a wave-crashed blustery
lonely island in the cursed cold wintry sea

When the fetus Athena grows
gestating pains of kicking slows
not, so soothing Zeus’ aches shows
naught but ignorance in shadows flees
disillusionment the captive pleas

Then, the instant the infant Athena’s born
the aches like bursting open turn to pains
of splitting apart and breaking asunder
as grey matter a’splatter from skull is torn
and anesthesia becomes empty thunder

But, let us not be timid in the telling
lest embodying Prometheus’ horrors
lungs in chest reeling, doubled up in his terrors
of unrelenting pinioning fast chains
and jagged beak tears we forget the swelling

Finding myself stuck in a pale loop
of repeated ritualistic romps with Ah-Shoo!-Hades
I now tire of the gray wracking group
for who desires to be smothered
or who spattered, grisly covered?

Instead of seeing formless shaded reflections
of myself in every shielded mirror
it is the mug of Medusa in my visions
whose turning visage feeds every terror
‘til seeing sees nothing but hallucinations

At darkest hours when Hephaestos works
and then on his anvil he pounds
oh, the panoply of quirks and jerks
as lumbering becomes wishes for reclining
and slumbering alters wishes from confining

Everyone enjoys festive feasting
until afterwards when they feel the effects
of Dionysus running his course of visiting
whereupon the notion of overindulging
loses its attraction owing to the bulging

Finally said, there once was a troupe
who never left the billowy tent
Bacchae one and all willowy rent
and though springing were the desire,
and back more, still danced they higher!

The FourFold of Poetics

2008-01-14T17:55:00.000-08:00

I

I stood on top Everest and painted heaven amongst
not past, not beyond, and not within
the clouds, for I knew not many could find my heaven
since the tendency is to seek literal
to cultivate esoteric and ineffable
to convert others in hearing our tongues
it seemed wisest to place heaven therein

Who wants unknown others or worse yet known and detested others luxuriating in their personal heaven?

Next, I climbed deeper than Voronya Cave
into the earth’s womb
and fetally dreamt hell into the very molten core
where it would constantly stream and course
and thus in its fiery tomb
would entry to others’ pantheon stave

Would you want to find some uninvited devil or satan or underworld deity presiding over your hell?

After reconsidering my heaven and hell
I thought it best to also construct a place between
One which hanging upside down on windy trees
will not force me to any personages tell
One that some would consider pristine
and others ready themselves for expected fees

Would you believe me if I told you that when opening my eyes next did I continue to see exactly where I was before this construction?

From this place soar I unto others:
paradises and infernos alike
and wild places unlabeled and untrammeled
where forged hammers of crippled divine blacksmiths
furrow not the rocky veins of the conceiver’s
and civilized places that beelike
buzz in bustling hives of dissembled
whose awareness of wherein their own myths
they languor and live is annulled
by pursuits and action, insidiously boxlike
and wondrous places with warm mothers
whose arms spread wide, inviting and branchlike
whose unseen eyes open wide and seeing, bejeweled
whose wombs sing songs that vibrate megaliths
whose supple breasts all in need have suckled
whose trunk and jutting branches and roots husbandlike
drip honeyed ambrosia to the world’s aquifers

Who would want is admonished, herein such places shall know something only if in contemplative humility they seek, yet would you not?

Words, the soul emitters and transceivers;
images, the soul transducers and conceivers;
music, the soul transfusers and transformers;
movement, the soul freers and conductors;
evermore intermixing and interrelating
souls expressions perpetually sensating
intellecting, cultivating, fostering and creating:
our perceptions challenging and forming what is
inducing deep draughts of soulful wells to fizz

We who would then find our souls not only forming and reforming, but also creating and recreating, in a constancy that belies notions of static and solid stances and instead resembles the movements within the metaphors of the world tree…

II

Here is now alive and thriving, moving dance to bleed out pores
My soul sweats into the cool air and swims in hosts of raindrops
to pierce the veil that others label lifeless ground and therein to course
in Lethe’s swift currents that eventually feed the springs of bluebonnets
and there, under the cool shade of a bent tree, you drink deeply
of my soul, and your drinking is at once my drinking
for under another summitful tree I too drink of your soul
and in our mutual drinking do we know friendship
do we breathe and move friendship
do we write and craft friendship
into all spaces between, out, in

Who would advantages seek ought look elsewhere
for now have the absent gates been built and shut
the gates that bar entry to those unworthy
And who am I or anyone to label another
to cast judgment upon one deemed so?
We are the ones who have cared for the downtrodden
only to be trodden upon by them as the door slammed behind
their quick escape from responsibilities in the house of friendship
We are the ones whose seeking for deeper and increasing meaning
meets with those whose careless parlays and occasional forays
are dropped as soon as vehicles for acquisition of desired things
approach and make themselves known
We are the Artists whose lives demand scrutiny and reflection
and whose tormentation none others grasp
and whose thoughts fly unfettered in the interiority of imagination
in a feelingness of thinking and being that calls forth creation.

Who then would join us often does so for brief moments that soon pale
for encounters long talked about, laughed about later even
for the ununderstanding, for the inability to penetrate the veil
smothering their vision, which often only portrays allusion

And I am to stand here convicted by the masses
swallowing their ingratitude, bad will and ugly perceptions
so that what is considered law or societal constructions
becomes only a seething gaggle of vipers in tall grasses
to my memories whose fleetingness resembles passages
rapidly taken by the vapidly mistaken albatrosses!

Still, from within the deepest realms of my being surges waves
of harmonious melodies that form beautiful memories, scripts and representations
and despite the stunned incidences, these incredible waves
wash me clean from within, without and withal so that presentations
leave nothing other than a smile that is my being
in radiance and creativity abounding
the self that is of many parts is continually actualizing

III

Tomorrow miracles fly freely from my suitcase called skin;
they find flight from formless feelingsthoughts moving in my marrow,
where wings grow in emulation of fairies and angels dreamt;
they soar celestially, swimmingly submerge, pantomime pewter precipitation
and breathe crystals constructing water, snow, sunflower and mountain;
whereafter their creating inspires surreptitious songs sublimated
and then let loose upon strings, valves and chords,
to scrape bottom dwellers from their murky laments
and scooping them thusly to scatter them not on scraggy
spots, or scramble their psyches, but, rather to perch
them wherever they’d be most free and happy

How old is this process of miracles emanating from bones?

To answer is to know one’s morrow….

The prophetess chews some laurel and utters:
It is the oldest phenomenon known on earth,
miracles within the bones, and only outdated by miracles
within the bark, which is only outdated by miracles
within barnacles, and this, is only outdated by miracles
within basalt crust, and so forth…

Ah, you contradict yourself! trumpets the realist missing more than criticism yields…

Whose worn mantle warm composes us?

Everywhere come the metaphors:
step into the deep wild woods and stop,
still, very motionless, until you listen and stagger;
stags, deer, elk, or moose, their antlers make the dagger
which will when seen in its bareness be the stabber
deep into the heart of inside for the changeling
to be born from the stiffness of the taut muscle
whose stoppage, an aching dazed cramp, chagrining
dances a catharsis into a crazed comforting carousel;
dive endlessly into wordless emissions of soulful memoirs,
ply vicariously their meanings unto a cloudy blue morning dewdrop

When will nothingness become somethingness so that everythingness makes sense?

Cut short the unthought unthoughts so that they can more rapidly through sleeping’s gates enter into eventual thought thoughts.

IV

At times, especially during dream-filled sleep or daydream occupied stupors,
what is fleeting metamorphoses into what is granite, what is pumice,
the hardened production out of the volcano flows of rivers of primal fears.

To see the granite or pumice dagger knifing through the stifled air
of interminable vacuousness,
slicing through eyelashes like a Campbellian chunky lid,
increases not acuity of vision,
clarity of perception,
nor intensity of prophecy.

Instead, this movement, cyclically eternal,
illumines rivalry as nonexistent shadows
in the fleetingness of the interiority of volcanic ash,
making of ingenuous interpretations of projections
an ashened cloud riding the wings of dragons
on high as large as one wills
that could threaten an entire universe with choking pompousness.

No shaman can rescue such a soul from its own induced mortal dangers,
lest said soul find its way out of the ashy cumulus
via streaking down the fiery bolt that strikes the axial mountaintop:
that is riding in the saddle of the rainbowed phoenix
flashing its fiery wings to deposit this once forlorn soul
unto the edge of the spring-fed pool in the virgin forest.

Here, from whatever angle, this round pool is the same,
as a visible Arthurian feast of plenty appears,
and confers upon one wisdoms one will soak in,
if one will.

Gazing lustily upon the nakedness of Nature in manifest form,
culling from her her bounty as if it were only resources,
without proper deference,
yields the toothy rending the hunted stag meets
at the behest of the hunters’ hounds.

To be thus strewn,
one’s psychic skin shredded to reveal the inside,
the interiority wends its way along the rivers of blood
seeping into the pool to descend unto the murky-clear depths
from where the unsullied newly reformed
might arise freshly washed clean of the ash deposits
that surely penetrated under the skin.

How is it to experience this?
What some would mistakenly label as bliss,
those of us panting-still
emptied-shrinking-inside-outside-swelling-filled
know an experience of Nature as Artemis
seen and reacted to until
death of self does indeed part
speak not lightly of being washed clean by that heart.

This Artemis parallels the action of the Uroboros,
the original dragon,
the keeper and bider of all time and history,
the eater of all mythology and culture,
the progenitor of all thoughts and feelings:
rebirth and eternal return is the fate of the Artist!

why authentic revisioning?

2007-04-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

Authentic Revisioning represents a new attempt, some may deem foolhardy, at writing in snippets to try to achieve a jigsaw puzzle result that conveys more meaning than ordinary essays and essay writing are able to accomplish due to the numerous connecting words and explaining required. It is not a type of approach this writer has come across previously, and represents only the first such attempt. It has also been submitted as an example of the thesis/dissertation writing process, for consideration of inclusion in a book on that topic through the Imaginal Institute.

My thinking is that perhaps as a first attempt it will not truly get across enough as a puzzle, and may need more polishing in order to do so, movement of stanzas, reordering of pages, etc., which means that if it is accepted it will be a pleasant surprise. However, regardless of status, this attempt will see further ones that will be forthcoming and posted as they are completed. I hope at some point to release a book of such “essays,” which are not journaling, or freewriting, as much as they are intense thinking on particular topics that are interrelated and ongoing in my life.

Life’s Force,
Scott Michael

Authentic Revisioning

2007-04-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

…if we even state that there is such a thing as the collective unconscious, or desire to discuss the dream world, then to say that any way is more or less authentic than another is simply ludicrous. It is the intention of each individual breathing in their actions that defines whether or not that action is ‘authentic’ or not. Authentic to whom?

Journeying on the journey, seeking nothing other than what appears, yet seeing within the appearances all that resonates, one need no goal but intention, no meaning but what is therein. A journey, however, understates the gravity of the situation at hand, for, now this journey undergone, paints and jousts a Dantesque meaning and process.
For truly whether we realize it or not, myth effects us daily, it inhabits us. And as such, an unwillingness to delve deeper and discover the mystery that throbs within the myths, uncovering the meaning behind the sacrality, comprehending the sacred and seeing it reflected in their own self, echoes Oedipus’ inability to see the message in his personal myth as he lived it.
The dissertation direction appeared to me in visionary form, after speaking with a professor about the importance of trees, while playing a soul song on the piano.
Myths, as living stories, free us from our surround while fastening us to it. Myths depend partially upon the environment and interpretation or translation; usually center on deities or spirits; are responsible for creation or the creation of mystery, tensions and change in our world, including natural and so-called unnatural phenomenon, and, as such, wield a sacred influence, an element of mystery and some ineffable power to inform our actions. Myths share similar building blocks, incorporating archetypes; all of which affects our psyche, touching the unreachable and untouchable part of us—the entire Self—that compels us to react emotionally, spiritually and intellectually.
yes, well learning how to write expertly is something I need to do…
First came poetry, from the well of poesis, and then came philosophy as the Narcissus of poetic language. Poetry, emanating from the interiority of nature as it reflects the interiority of the soul in accord with its reflection, allows the unfoldment of the wings of philosophy to take flight.
…beware of thinking myth is only one thing, as black and white. Myth to the eastern culture is different than myth to the western culture as a generalization to the extreme. One does not paint myth white or black or any other color. Myth paints itself; our opinions color our statements but not myth itself. Myths afford more to those who read or live the myths than to those who have myths translated for them.
For, without defining nearly every word we use, how can another know what we say? They may think they know, but we know from experience, that what others think they know we said is not always what we meant to say or said at all at times.
Poetry breathes an alchemicality. Ever it is: creative imagery creating creative thoughts….
I feel like I am beginning to see more in the metaphor of mythology, versus of the metaphor in mythology, than ever before and it is amazing… Myth derives some power from its mystery and more from its commune with the psyche and soul of all in contact with it. What tools, besides our conscious thinking mind should we utilize in discovering the meaning of myth?
When metaphor is borne from the same place of no-thingness that all creativity ultimately emanates from, then how is it not innocent? To call metaphor guilty, malicious, tainted, or worldly, simply because it implies things and points to the ineffableness that it emanates from does not mean that it can dictate process to outcomes. Whenever metaphor emanates from the no-thingness that is the creative and unknowable space of poesis, then it is innocent and incorruptible until it is co-opted by others for their personal devices.
Best of writing and may Ecanus, Ambriel, Akriel and Samandiriel be with you as you write…
I have had writing difficulties as a result of my dad’s passing combined with the seemingly ever-present problem of running out of steam at the end of a degree. This happened with each of the other degrees earned and I need to push through it. I too have entered the underworld, whose heaving underbelly was unbearable grief, and I too have a love that brings me up from such depths of sorrow as never experienced, and asks of me to climb even higher than the heights of keenest sight.
The journey also indicates an understanding of an alchemical transformation, which requires first the descent, then the search, movement, symbolical representation of the process in imagery, and reflection and self-examination in order to transform while the image changes.
Once something is viewed, or experienced in any sense, it is not only deposited in the mind (or consciousness), but also in the body and the unconscious. Too many systems dealing with the therapy of the senses neglect the body, conscious or unconscious, and thus end up not measuring up to the psychic needs of humans.
Mythography does not destroy myth, it opens it up…
The heart attack I experienced in 2004, or was it early 2005, anyways, and the ensuing recovery, was aided by science in the form of chelation treatments, which my father took after his first heart attack and prolonged his life for at least seven years during which time we got to know one another and became friends…science then, minimally, works personally to collectively mythically.
Through art, myth, poetry, psychology, and prose we remember how our bodies, souls, and the earth are intimately connected…
Naming and seeing are, as you know, the first steps in integration, but in my opinion require further work to become foundational in a life. That is the sort of intention I speak of when I mention conscious intention, it arises out of an integration of something that becomes foundational—not that foundational stuff cannot change or remains constant thereafter.
Of course, we all process and write differently, yet, an excellent editor remains invaluable!
My thesis, Part I, compared ideas of Campbell and Jung on Mythology via Alchemy, Mercurius and the Uroboros; Part II was titled Deforesting Tree & Soul.
All energies are in interrelationship, this means that whether one starts with a negative or a positive, one will always be able to find the other at some point: it requires looking and being open, and depending on whether or not one prefers the negative to the positive, the starting point is determined. Of course, there is also the neutral, which seems to be excluded in most related discussions, and it too is part of that interrelationship, which means that one could also find the neutrality of opposing ideas: if one is open to seeing other alternatives.
I choose metaphor over literal, or should I say it chooses me…
I do not see a production dissertation as a reverting phenomenon, but as a liberating one. My initial thoughts were to create a production dissertation with as much theoretical writing as a regular dissertation, only pack it with images. Then, I was told that was too ambitious, and to trim it…
Pinning oneself down is the way to open oneself up to the helixical fractality of the innerness-inwardness-interiority of a particular part of the self, aspect, field or notion. I think it is the most critical step in the dissertation process to do so.
Incredible progress occurred in the form of a breakthrough after being stalled completely due to the over-enormity of scale that I had originally intended to pursue—many lives’ work contained therein—now I have focused in on the notion of Daphne and Apollo in interrelationship, the aesthesis, poesis, consciousness and unconsciousness, the mythical alchemical depth psychological content, the Arbor philosophicum embodied in a moon goddess turned nymph turned moon goddess. Seeing Daphne: A Tree Transforms.
So, I decided to spend the next eight months reading as much as I can lay my hands on about Daphne, including taking a trip to Portugal and then the Madeira Islands to commune with some laurel forests, draw, photograph, paint and write. This will form one of the pillars of my dissertation, I am sure, and so I am excited about the prospect. My intention in this research area is to become the foremost expert, globally, on Daphne, so that the conferral of a Ph.D. means more than I paid for it in sacrifices monetarily and personally.
The trip was, nonetheless, not as profitable as I had imagined, for the laurel trees grew on the edges of steep mountainsides and did not offer much room for examination, exploration or communion, lest I fall to my death. Nonetheless, the power of revisiting a myth while underneath the associated tree proved instrumental. And, I did read a lot about Daphne and Apollo…
I think the ultimate reality is that always and evermore does humanity respond and react more powerfully to images, text, and, music in combination, and, even more so to the actuality of an experience of these within the forest, desert, or in Nature. Visuals and field trips would enhance all dissertations.
As an artist myself, I will attempt to weave image and word throughout the dissertation exhibition, for I think both equally important. I see in aesthesis contaminated by poesis, a way to open people up into worlds never considered on such deep levels, and a way to reach more accord through seeing differences and similarities.
My dissertation will also cover color, but, it is in relation to a developing theory of color affectation upon the viewer/participant. In arranging color patterns in stages throughout the exhibition, my intent is to enable those willing to undergo a transformative experience.
I agree with the importance of writing and focusing on it, and its reinscribing process…but, would see it in combination with the importance of thinking, theorizing, dreaming and imagining about myth (and in my particular case and others as well, creating artwork based on it too), while revisioning it. The very process of revisioning needs closer examination, and how one goes about doing so concerning myths proves even more significant. Revisioning philosophy gives certain tremors, as does psychology, but, when one attempts to revision myth, one enters into a new fray, and chances meeting new judges that do not preside over other fields as often.
Dionysus desires the dynamic processes of life, not resolution, and in this way parallels closely the individuation process, which is an ongoing and lifelong growth. Ensouling relationship and wildness within the civilized, in culture, recall Dionysus, yet they also correspond to the psychic process of realizing the Self. Memory works in re-membering the shadow or Dionysus, moving beyond fear and the extraordinary into the realization of cosmic consciousness—Gaia and humanity beating with one heart.
The Cosmic Tree, Axial Tree, World Tree, Life Tree, etc., each within its system, provide insights of profundity, yet, these all pale as imaginative and later intellectual, intuitional, religious and theological pursuits, when compared and contrasted to the affects one feels when engaging in the same intensity underneath a great old tree specimen/entity. I have been saying this all along and will continue to do so: to remove oneself from Nature and the lessons Nature has for us, each individually and singularly, is to block off a section of our human selves that is integrally connected and interconnected with the Universe. The idea of physical versus symbolic trees is necessary and critical to revisit as long as people still see the tree as merely decoration, symbol, metaphor, home furnishing, paper or shelter.
The negative search is one of interiority, and is no search at all, one that begins with an inner look—not a search for meaning, but, rather an exploration that provides the sense of beingness which for any who have found it removes any thought, need or wish for “meaning”—and fully understands in its explorative nature that nothing that arises is wrong or right, and furthermore that all notions of Truth and Beingness herein reside without reservations or challenges because of the amenability to change.
The re-inscribing myth, deconstructing myth, and reconstructing myth processes all can (but do not necessarily have to) lead one to the process that naturally follows them: revisioning myth. AND, I would say that in order to truly revision myth, one must do so not only in writing, but also in pictorial form, via imagery, as well as through sounds (instrumentalizations and/or vocalizations). To simply (as if writing a revised myth well is simple) revision a myth in writing, in words, regardless of how profound and perfect, is to miss the potential to reach a much wider audience, which holds true for imagery or sounds only, or any of them alone; whereas, in combination they form a revisioning of a most powerful sort!
Myths, in addition to the Donigeristic telescopic, visionistic, and microscopic views, also correspondingly develop as deep and far a molecular structure or cosmic feel as each individual imaginer brings to the observance-encounter; myths are as fractal as life.
Yet, it seems always something remains hidden : there is the element of hiddenness that speaks to more than simply the author and their wherewithfromalloutin…
The book is what hides its face, not the author of the book… And, the reader does not control the hiding, the book hides its face from the reader who is unworthy because they only think, they only research, they only approach the book from a philosophical standpoint, they do not see it alchemically, esoterically (and it is that too, but not alone), imagistically, mythologically, musically, psychologically, naturistically, actively, as well as philosophically and logically.
And, one would be right to point out that the voice is as the voice has been and will be, especially in dialogue with another, although it seems that those dialoguing also ought to give the voice the room to manifest as it will, and so at one point it is this voice and at another that voice, consistent in its constantly changingness.
The numinous encounter makes experiencing life a very lived and transformational life. What is key here is what is key in life itself (all of the cosmos), that is: the presence of change is what makes life continue. To inform what informs the changes in our lives is how we humans shape our lives and destinies.
The study of myth does not destroy myth—it is those who study myth who destroy myth either for themselves or others, who then destroy myth, and only those people who do so… mythology is of the ineffable, the numinous, the sacred, and that can never be realized in language… Is comprehension simple or complex?
After my father died in April, I was not too sure about being ready to write or not, but it seems to have returned, the writing inspiration…
As I have undergone the process of taking back my thinking from my own religious consciousness, I noticed that in some situations, nearly every moment is colored by this lens, and that as one becomes more conscious of this “brainwashing,” that one can will oneself to think differently. A religious consciousness also works its way into one’s thinking on deeper levels, such as psychologically, or philosophically. A deeper meaning, reason, truth, cause, etc., it is all but a drive toward reconciliation with what haunts the innerness of much of humanity.
A religious consciousness is something I am trying to escape; I do not seek to replace God or a God-image with myself or my inner Self or some other passion or intense thought, only to remove myself from its tyrannical clutches. Only then can we say something of originality and intensely human that is not an emanation of historical attachments to God, but rather, a respectful emanation of human beingness.
Nature, on all levels, nurtures and nourishes the human soul, spirit, mind and body, as it also performs similar functions for animals and plants. The kingdoms are not removed and isolated one from the other, instead they are vitally interconnected on levels far more basic than what some may consider—at the molecular and sub-atomic level.
Revisiting anyone we have exposure to, especially the ones that resonate most with or most against our views at the time, will inform us about ourselves and allow us to move beyond current stances into something new. What truly illuminates our views and shapes them are our exposures to thought and our discovery and exploration of what has been inputted, and that which is dreamt.
There is a text, a sub-text, an over-text and a beyond-text that operates at all times.
Concentrated dissertation writing (75-pages minimum theoretical application) and creating of artwork (an exhibition centered on global tree mythologies) for two years, which involves much whittling down, reorganizing, rewriting and editing processes, begins soon.
The soul is both a beingness and a becomingness, a tangible thing in itself and a metaphorical transcendence that can only be formed in its “higher” aspects, and “caught sight of” through the most stringent of practices, regardless of targeted desire of the soul’s many aspects.
Interpretation, our hermeneutical heritage, always risks loss of meaning, and one can never return to the original context or cultural manifestations of the original metaphors and symbols, until time machines become reality. Therefore, such studies as those of the entire field of mythologies and religions of the past rely heavily on interpretation and we cannot escape our own interpretational frameworks ever: hermeneutics is…
Mythological discourse ought to be exploring edges, as in Dr. Casey’s edges…
It is through the archetypal energy of poesis intertwined with the energy of aesthesis (combined in a helixical fractal synthesis), that we tap into passion. It is with passion that we learn—truly learn—more than simple facts, but, also are able to tap into the numinous, which is itself a similar synthesis of completely rational and irrational thoughts, feelings, sounds and images mirroring one another in interrelationship.
I took a LOA for a year, to decide on the dissertation topic, and then withdrew because I felt it was way too personal and not universal enough to warrant a Ph.D.
I have decided to resubmit a revised and new concept paper that re-immerses me in more of the global transformative tree process than what only Daphne would allow. Thankfully, I will be able to use some or much of the research conducted on Daphne as well in the Greek/Roman chapter…. This is most likely what has been brewing all along, but, I needed to let go, and completely, to see the trees within the forest and the forests within the leaves on those trees, in order to be ready to begin fresh and anew…
Thus, the new concept paper returns to the first idea, covering a number of world trees from different cultures, according to scholarship, and in revisioning them, while in a self-induced trance state through being an open conduit to poesis for the artwork for the production arises the potential transformative power, including chapter-ending poems for each. This dissertation seeks to effectuate transformational processes in human consciousness through words, music and imagery in concert.
Transformative as applied, deals with the notion that an interrelationship develops between the creator of artwork, who taps into poesis, the archetypal energy of creating, and the viewer of said artwork, who taps into aesthesis, the archetypal energy of hermeneutical appreciation. This interrelationship puts the viewer partially in the same field of creating energy that the creator tapped into in order to create initially. Any time a viewer taps into the energy of aesthesis, which I see as a conduit for poesis, and vice versa, then they experience a potentially transformative moment. The transformation centers on their consciousness changing, and cannot be consciously prevented through intentional willing, unless one has a highly developed will that can discern between the many types of energies present in any given situation and moment. Such a transformation occurs for the creator as well, but for many artists it occurs unconsciously each time they create because they have not tapped into the energy of poesis consciously; an unconscious transformation occurs for viewer too.
Art is not dead and neither is mythology, nor symbol. They have hidden their faces from most, in shame, for the advantages taken and the lack of appreciation that prevails.
Yes, I have waded through over 18 books now for dissertation purposes, reading completely Writing and Difference. The research has restarted with a vengeance…
If we do not engage in our own personal revisioning of loaded words, then we continue to bask in the previous usages of those words and our exposures to them inform our understandings of them. We each need to reexamine our own personal definitions of all loaded words that trigger strong reactions from us.
To be in the presence of Being and Nothing, and to be aware that one is there, is to tremor and to feel as if one is not part of the reality that others partake in and is to be an outsider while at once being an insider to a degree that traders would envy…
To the level one intends or wills it, rituals and ceremonies connect one with the soul.
Sometimes I think of things and then images come to me, and sometimes images come unbidden and then I think about them.
There is one level at which I think color does not remain a phenomenon of light, and that is at the level of the creative imagination or dreaming—where one could say that color lives instead of depending upon sunlight or artificial light to manifest.
If we delve deeply enough into the interiority of metaphor, into the interiority of what some might term Isis-consciousness or moon-consciousness, then it is that the normal way of perceiving sloughs off, for, I would argue, one finds the way into the interiority of metaphor blocked when one tries to use intellect to penetrate that veil. Metaphor originates from within the same place that poesis does, and this is an unconsciousness as consciousness, or a complete turning on ends of consciousness so that one relies on one’s unconsciousness to guide and direct one, not on the consciousness normally attempting to direct. Thus it is that one can say they are directed, and at the same time could also paradoxically be willing from within the directionless direction.
The ego does not vanish when one enters this form of unconsciousness as consciousness, rather, it is sort-of subordinated to the Self. It operates after the Self has its say, and only then can the ego act. Even still, in this state of interiority, perception kicks in when the ego acts, if not shortly before it thinks of acting. That is to say that whenever the ego is involved, perception too enters, but, is not to say that the Self is devoid of perception. For, the Self also perceives, but, from a place of interiority, not from a place of exteriority (as in most cases the ego does operate from exteriority). So that when on a “drum walk” exercise, blindfolded and with eyes closed, and made to be directionless as seated one meditates, while heading to the sound of the drum (thereby once the drum beats begin one relocates their direction in relation to the drum, which in this scenario the drum beat would be the ego and the relation to it the Self and ego in concert), one can actually “see” trees in proximity.
This Experience of seeing the present but unseeable (due to blindfold and closing of eyes) represents the interiority of Isis-consciousness as best I can manufacture. Such “seeing” proves impossible for most for they have not tapped into that aspect of Self and awareness, and, I would argue more applicably, consciousness. It is this type of consciousness that allows one to enter into the interiority of poesis, as close as one can get to it, and to approximate the process of creating. It is a humbling Experience.
I try to write as directed, not as I wish…
All of life is not text or writing or even words. There are those sides of life that are purely images, purely beingness (without images or words), and/or purely music (no words, images or even beingness seem to factor in here), wherein no words do exist that we only try to word into an experience others will understand later. Certainly, myth is created and destroyed, but does it not seem that even the old myths recycle? Perhaps, only mythologies die to those who see them as dead, or those who would see them dead…
Where is the original position, the ensuing identification of the unity of old ideas and the differences of them and then the unity of these two in the new original position?
Do we all only think in collective ways and not share with others our private understandings of words and ideas?
The revised Concept Paper will feature the scholarly coverage of and revisioning of five Mythological World Trees, as well as the art exhibition/production of them.
Each forest is countless manuscripts of poetry, each leaf a poem or phrase, a stanza or book, depending…which is why I have stated that deforestation is desoulation, for it is a removal of the potential of the exact correct energy needed in poetry to soothe the psyche: soul, spirit, heart, body, consciousness and unconsciousness, of humanity.
The creator, the artist, creates an image, song, writing, or movement and that act of creating is a manifestation of the archetypal energy: poesis.
I am only beginning to write about what color does to the psyche… It factors into my dissertation exhibition as well as in the theoretical dissertation thesis that articulates the necessity of art in transformation—which brings color via the chakra system into play because I intend to provide an opportunity for transformation with the exhibition itself and its arrangement as far as colors go.
It seems to me that Europeans have strangled the myth out of mythology in favor of the logos due to their strangling of the earth, in a parallel or perhaps more appropriately a tangential move to that of the movement of some of Islam, much of Christianity, and some of Buddhism, which have strangled the myth out of mythology due to oppressive doctrines that strangle the heart.
Quotes in the spirit of furthering thought are wonderful, but to use them as a basis to suggest that one’s own thinking is therefore valid, without adequately exploring one’s thought does not work.
The attempt to revision each of the world trees as an integral chapter-ending exercise in seeing into and out of the specific imagery and symbols, while meditating upon them and being meditated upon by them, has reinvigorated me to resubmit and has shown me the way into the material that offers globally-heightened awareness to any who would receive the messages therein.
That is what great art does to us, it evolves into its own interrelationship with our souls and spirits so that the image and our interrelationship continually change and whither and grow, and that is what I would have these trees give to those who attend the exhibition or read the publication.
We are still in the throes of this shift, as human consciousness has not evolved past the notion of ‘natural resources,’ and, since humanity cannot ever return to the notion of trees as deities or progenitors of humankind, we must move into newer territory that is being hinted at by environmentalists, environmentalism and ecologists, accompanied by their shadow of violence.
A minute alone in the forest is worth more than months of scholarly study to the Self and Ego!
Revisioning of myths has been like the tides, for all myths, despite attempts to squelch heroic changes. Once static, myth becomes stagnant, for myth naturally ebbs and flows and seeks not the proverbial djed pillar of clarity. The stagnation clears as mythic flotsam returning to tides revisioned.
However, I would also add, that like Romare (in Spring) hints at by speaking of symbols, and I would flaunt, art and myth are integrally interrelated. At any one point, to truly separate them becomes impossible, because art becomes in its origination and function, a psychomythological manifestation of humanity. Thus, the historical construct of both art and myth begin to join—recall Jung writing about how ‘man’ cannot be divorced from history…
One of the concepts I am working more fully currently involves living sculptures that provide nourishment for the eyes and the body by incorporating fruits and herbs in the designs. A tree factors as the central grounding element, and earth, wood and stones (hopefully from location) become the sculptural attestation to aesthesis and poesis.
When in the studio, or when creating outdoors, in the forests, on the beaches, or on mountains, there is a sense of using both the heart and the mind that never leaves me, even when in the throes of losing three days to sculpting and/or painting. I equate creating with poesis, poesis being the primordial-archetypal energy of creating that once was called inspiration of the Muses or Apollo, the actions/words of Ptah, declarations of God, etc. To construct metaphors or to grasp them requires an activity of interrelationship and intercommunication between heart and mind, for one needs to marshal more than thought, more than feeling, more than emotion, more than intuition, more than action, more than imagination: not one, but all of them in concert provide humanity with the capability to grasp metaphor and/or soul.
Sometimes poesis appears and then disappears, with no aesthesis appearing to occupy that same place or space, and sometimes, aesthesis immediately appears after poesis. Neither is dependent upon the other for an appearance. Instead, the Helixical Fractality of Life envisions these archetypes or energies as being in interrelationship with one another. Aesthesis or other archetypal energies may be the necessary cause for one to tap into poesis, however, poesis does not simply flow in the unconscious of humans awaiting the awareness that one is creating.
Art is a necessary and critical function of mythology and mythological studies, as it is also in religion—icons attest to the central role art has played throughout the millennia. This posits a not-well-developed notion, that of the artist as catalyst to the evolution of mythologies themselves. Art has been long known and recognized as the first source of conveying mythologies, including through oral storytelling, and one could argue either as the first event convincingly. This places both art and word in a similar place of significance in the very studies of mythology and religion, and, yet, who spends time researching these most valuable areas?
Hermeneutics, to my mind, involves two main archetypal energies: aesthesis and poesis. So that to understand the archetypal energy of the numinous requires firstly an experience or encounter with it, even if only a written account of someone else’s experience, which is reflected upon using the tools of interpretation or the energy of aesthesis, and in which process one taps into the energy of poesis to create or language that event. Is not art but perception to the viewer?
To attempt to be a conduit, to be a voicepiece for the unconscious, so that whatever needs to come through can and will, is not an easy task.
When you know something from experiential reality, you speak with authority; it is really that simple, and for some, that authority is seen as dogmatic since it is ‘foreign’ to them. Whatever psychological term one wishes to label such experiences with the numinous as being, is, in the end, reflective of one’s exposure to such terms. Labeling an experience cannot equate to that experience, and so, calling the mystical experience a psychopathic state of inflation is to identify with and align oneself with that terminology, to the detriment of the mystic. I find such terminology as ‘psychopathic inflation’ to be ridiculous…
The transformation of human consciousness is not like a diluvial flooding; it requires varying processes of transformation that seem to act like a tide that moves first this way then that, like the ocean, which has countless chaotic waves, but also contains main currents such as the gulf stream that follow predictable and patterning routes, or the winds like the Santa Anna wind. Perhaps we can attribute no specific thinking to this transformation, but rather, ought to see it as a confluence of any number of varying currents that are then forming one larger current that may then continue to deteriorate into others.
How many of the current currents flowing contain myth and how many contain no myth? Is it rather more to the point that even the ideas that claim to be mythless yet seek mythic status? I think that myths work in the currents of human transformation, and if for now, the notion of an absence of myth needs to flow as a current, from within itself will arise the mythicness. Perhaps we ought to try to stir the mythic from within the current of mythiclessness. Perhaps there is no myth within the mythiclessness.
Although I see and can agree with the notion that while we think, we are (according to Derrida and perhaps Giegerich following him), that we exist while thinking, and that thinking can measure up to our existence at a given moment, there still nags the idea that so too while imagining, dreaming, acting, performing, reacting and perceiving, we also are and that these too can measure up to our collective to individual existences at a given moment. There are times and moments when one receives inspiration that has no thought or thinking attached to it at its conference.
In this way, language appears to be a big game, or battle to the death: chess for chess players who know not the number of levels of the board, nor the pieces present or passive, or any moves prior to them, but whom only know what move they make at that instant and perhaps nothing further. The words we choose to use matter very much; the words we as humans use define us to some extent, and speak to our very natures.
All this defending against attacks sounds like so much insecurity to me disguised in the rhetoric of academic rigors, another chess match with no endgame.
Understandings are; misunderstandings are not possible when you really think about it.
But, the label you choose, and the one I choose do not determine where we go, for that route has been traveled many times over before us. The labeling is not the important aspect of our journey, it is where we go with what we have learned and how we can find a suitable syzygy-coniunctio-marriage for all of this jargon within the confines of art and mythology that truly matters and will either move the field of study further or not. A glimpse of the infinite is possible from whatever angle one glances, if one’s vision is open enough. By vision, I mean to say one’s third eye, one’s supraconsciousness, one’s soul fully opened and receptive…not sight alone, so that through whatever senses one employs, one can tap into this type of vision of unendingness.
Life never stops becoming and being, even in its most generative and degenerative states, the energy persists. Artwork never stops becoming, nor is it the object itself that is the source of the art, rather it is the creation, the very act of creating the work that is akin to the alchemical process of becoming psychologically, and as the artist creates, the artist becomes more psychologically, especially when intent and will are engaged. So true, is it for the appreciator of the artwork, and the artwork in interrelationship with its appreciators, both continue becoming and their becomingness is affected by one another. The conjunction of art-participant and art-work defines the interrelationship of the will and intent of both the appreciator and the creator at that particular moment. The creator imbues their artwork with an element of soul to the degree that they create with intent and will, and the participant engages with that energy-trace through their intent and will when appreciating it. This interrelationship can lead to increased or diminished energy attached to the art-work.
If, in each epoch, there is not an indication or sign of that epoch as clearly represented by the anxiety of language transforming universal thought (according to Derrida) then what does the transformation of universal thought rely upon?
Writing challenges one to see alternatives in everything thought and worded.
How is one to successfully extricate words from a text, from the poet’s experiences and life, and arrive at a meaningfully accurate hermeneutics concerning them?
Poetry, it may be argued, has less diverse recognizable movements than other fine art categories such as drawing, painting, sculpture, and music; yet these reflective constellations (isms) within cultures and the world over in many instances surely made their mark on poetry as well. Mostly the reason for such minimal recognition of poetry by the masses relates directly to the uncomfortability of ‘serious’ poetry, all of which aims in some manner to work the inner workings of the psyche—the process of individuation or the moving in a complex—out onto paper.
When an image materializes in my dreams, there is no penetrating that blind origin, no way to reunite myself or anyone’s self with it’s origin. That type of origin, wherefrom unconsciousness emanates dreams and visions, is ultimately unknowable, and certainly its access not precisely the same from person to person, and perhaps even its makeup entirely varies as well, which would account for the multitudinous forms and ways of presenting creative visions in artwork.
If one has no ideas then one has nothing to write. Ideas flow naturally out of reading another’s words, at least for me, and so I think it is true of all writers.
There is no returning to an original position of a word unless its exact lineage and etymology can be ascertained, and although this can certainly be done for many psychological terms and some philosophical terms, it remains untrue for a majority of the terms in use today. Etymologists disagree on the derivation of the word tree for instance…
Ah, how heavy human hubris weighs the other...so that no feather is light enough to see its soul outweighed! We perpetually kill the liver in every Prometheus chained to rocky dogmatism by turning hubris on its head and damning humanity for damning nature. All of our nature we acquire from Nature, for where else does it come but from within and not from without Nature? The soul more closely parallels wild Nature than it does anything manicured, manufactured or synthetic, yet, even these are but secondary or more exponentially than that, forms or manifestations of Nature itself from within itself, albeit extricated and sterilized in many cases.
But, poetry and the act of poesis is open to everyone, so that anyone could create good art, but, since not many are open to discovering what medium really calls them, and only some find it by accident immediately, and even fewer are drawn to their medium fairly young, the ability to create good art escapes most. Yet, the potential still exists for them, and is there if they but were to explore and discover that aspect within that most closely parallels a divine inspired state when it is exercised.
Poesis emanates from a place of no-thingness, from which no one artist can say they know it intimately, for it is unknowable. The inspiration to create can be said to come from or to well from that same place of no-thingness, and the utter paradox of poesis and creativity, including imagination and thought, is that it also comes from a place of every-thingness. Thus, where poesis and intellect come from is, to me, the same exact place of no-thingness and every-thingness in unified symbiosis. Intellect and creativity can both be practiced, and one can draw from past Experiences as one continues doing either activity, but, where the ability to differ, to do one’s own creative thinking and creating comes from is unknowable. It is this unknowableness that dominates humanity into arriving at divinity as an answer to reason for existence, for how else does it make sense that such abilities as to creatively think and to create could be existent in humanity if not conferred from some-where and some-thing?
Learning is traveling…
The adventurous vision must needs include the ability to travel each time artwork encounters one in whatever setting, once the opportunity presents itself. In the act of traveling while viewing artwork, viewer joins artist in their artistscape, even only momentarily before or after deviating from that particular ‘scape for another more personal one. The artistscape for each piece of artwork, I would argue further, shares some universal themes with all other artwork and artistscapes, the utmost of which is poesis, the power and act of creativity/creation itself, but which list may be quite endless depending on the sensitivity of the viewer and the provocation of the particular artwork itself (for whatever reasons that vary temporarily even for the same individual).
Through creativity, we artists, and all of humanity, have the potential to transcend the mundane, the ordinary, and to enter into the realm of the trance, of the vision, of the sacred as Eliade puts it, and in so doing, to enter into the place of myth, to climb and/or hang on the World Tree that breathes and grows myth, to feel the breezes of future myths ruffling our hair, to see the letters of future myths dancing on the boughs, to feel the rumbles of future myths resonating through the Tree, and to experience all of this in regards former and present myths as well...
Without language, of some sort, there is no communication, and without communication there is no human history, and certainly there is no literary document to discuss.

Poetry on Writing

2007-04-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

Writing for the Haul

All this writing is nonsense…
Just a fishing
Hoping to snag
The biggest catch
Or the smallest
One that’ll make profundity
Useless
That’ll set new records
For inanity
That’ll perch upon a wall
Eyeing us all
That’ll mark time
An annoyance
All this writing is nonsense…

Writing on the Walls

Connections rushing everywhere…
Whereupon time crushes connections
We soothsayers smooth not sooth
Soothsaying soothes no truth we
Desire not to hear, despite the message
Messengers relate what fear we desire
Lost to remain, whatever the cost
Accosting aside, Remaining lost
Wherever these then reside - connections -
Connecting whatever, however, wherever,
Our keep as keepers of sooth
Soothsaid enough shall keep our
Truths written, as in stone
Stonehenge gives starlit truths

I'm in Charge Here, so Allow me to give it to Myself Please?

Well, I thought, pleasantly, I'm in charge here…
I used to be so proud of how in charge of things
I actually was, that I'd charge admission
Just so's others wouldn’t fall into remission
Through missing my emissions…

See, I was so in charge, I thought nothing'd interfere,
Certainly no one'd dare try to take charge of things,
Not while I ruled the roost,
Not from me in my spruced
Up outfits - was I juiced!

It wasn't much longer, after another loud dress fear,
'Fore the gentlemen over there, took charge of things.
And had audacity to charge me admission
Just so's I couldn't leave and go in remission
From missing their emissions…

Now I don't mind much, having to adhere…
And pride rattles a cranium corner with things,
That seem like cocks at roost,
Amid rooms all down spruced,
I want me to be juiced!

[first stanza of] Greyhound and New York Grass
Oh, but Walt, you wrote – oh how you wrote,
When you wrote, writing where you wrote,
You wrote of Grass, of states, and of love you wrote,
Leaving some questioning why you wrote what you wrote
And then how to write like you wrote.
[excerpt from stanza seven]
Thither words turn sour, sourness stamps tongue,
Twisting lemony citrus squirts of other words,
Yet not uttered, the wordy future soured expositions lay resting,
For the moment silent, not born of saliva surrounding tongues,
Yet unborn from the spittle longing to launch them,

Cave-Painting with the Shaman Einstein

2005-11-17T18:32:00.000-08:00

Bison staring into history’s gaping maw
Spear belt hitching posterior haunch
Lo, what legs are these spindly and human
That you tread the rocky ground upon?
Could it be that the gory bloody head—
bespeckled in grey matter discussed instead
by Einstein, which he says equals metallurgy chemically squared—
squarely resting on newer shoulders, severed,
at the point of breathing stopping and spirit spared,
through complete recognition of beingness weathered,
only represents qualities of animalia relating to loyalty,
steadfastness, stamina, prowess and largess of herders and grazers
whose story is that of migratory?
Could it be that this recognition
represents furthermore a precognition—
of civilizations looming around histories’ corners
whereby cereals and serials get confused by mourners
of the olden ways—beating drums and stirring fires
charring paints, rubbing pigments with horse’s wires
flying through time into extensions of now,
into preclusions of pasts, and altered futures;
so that what was calm becomes a stormy cow
mourning the death of her beloved bull
feeling her heart beating still and full
as the calf comes to comfort her with a nipple withdrawal?
Here, the meat nurtures;
there, the milk nurtures;
and, life continues, strands of DNA from these shaman
and their families entering into the everyday human
carrying with them the bygone rituals and ceremonies
that may one day save humanity from its focus on monies,
that one day caused grief in someone as intelligent
as Einstein: for his atomic contribution he felt negligent…

Seeing Treeing Osiris

2005-08-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

by Scott Michael Potter

While Egyptian mythology is complex in its original vignette form, and offers no clear story lines to follow, many of the deities receive enough mention on tombs, in pyramids, inside coffins and sarcophagi that an understanding of what their main attributes and characteristics are can be sketched. That the succeeding procession of main gods and goddesses each came to take on much of the attributes of the preceding ones is obvious. What these myths or mythemes more appropriately, actually mean or impart is not so clear. [EndNote 1] This paper follows a more esoteric than exoteric leaning, and in specific, seeks to understand esoteric meanings of Osiris contained within a tree, as a tree, a tree-deity or tree-spirit. The focus centers on the symbolism of the tree in the Osiris-Isis myth: firstly, the significance of both coffin and tree enveloping the dormant god (who in some versions is thrown into the water in the coffin without being killed first); and secondly, that the tree later grows to mammoth proportions. [EndNote 2] Throughout the following considerations, the notion of the Cosmic Tree, Axial Tree, World Tree, Life Tree, or Central Pillar thrive in the background, as they do in the myth itself. Thus, the mythological import of such symbology shall be briefly explored at the outset. The significance of Horus and the coniunctios between Osiris and Isis and Nephthys, albeit important, can be found in the Appendix. [EndNote 3] Nor will the plethora of other tree referents in Egyptian mythemes, which suggests a deeper connection to trees than previously assumed, be visited in the body of the paper. [EndNote 4] Finally, the idea of the image: tree, itself, must be looked at initially, in order to determine from what idea of that image the paper’s ideas flow.
EndNote 1 Please see Appendix for a quick look at functions and science embedded in Egyptian myth.
EndNote 2 The implementation as a (Djed) pillar is contained in the Appendix.
EndNote 3 See Footnote 3 in the Appendix for some thoughts concerning these from a psychological perspective.
EndNote 4 Please see Appendix for a brief exploration of some of these other tree-deities.

A tree, as image, idea and symbol, means as many things as most other rich archetypal symbols do. Mircea Eliade, in Images and Symbols: […], writes: “[…] Images by their very structure are multivalent” (15). Trees compose horizontally to vertically, and as such are apt representations of the human psyche. A symbolized image therefore contains even more meaning than the image initially did, normally gaining in esoteric import, increasing as it becomes mythologized. Trees have represented the idea of a World Axis, Cosmic, World or Axial Tree; but before they came to represent such mythological implications as the center-point upon which the universe revolved, navel of the earth or the pillar that interconnects the various realms of our world—heaven, earth and underworld—surely they meant nurturer, nourisher, protector, shelterer and fueler. These earlier functions that trees were seen to represent then, must have been reposited in the collective unconscious or the collective psyche, which informed the manner in which trees were imaged later. The gender of mythological trees being mainly feminine makes more sense when one recalls that trees initially represented more motherly qualities. In Myths of the Sacred Tree, Moyra Caldecott recognizes the continuous nature of tree symbology; “The diversity of our use of the tree as meaningful metaphor and symbol knows no end” (18).

This symbolism varies from the tree as benefactor of procreation, enlightenment, transformation, divination, wisdom, knowledge, good, evil, and redemption—these boons come to specific mythic characters at the cost of some sacrifice, and who are often identified with the trees themselves—to the tree as originator of the cosmos, the world, or humanity, or into which humanity or divinity transforms (Potter 1).

These universal trees came to offer a means to reach above, below and out. Such a center is represented by both tree and mountain most commonly. Eliade writes: “The soul of the deceased ascends the pathways up a mountain, or climbs a tree or a creeper, right up into the heavens” (Images and Symbols 49). I think that Egyptian myths, the myth of Osiris in particular, remember the prior images of trees, even those before the image became symbolized, and as such embody many of the attributes seen within universal trees. [EndNote 5] Joseph Henderson, in Man and His Symbols, writes: “We know from many examples that an ancient tree or plant represents symbolically the growth and development of psychic life (as distinct from instinctual life, commonly symbolized by animals)” (152). The psychology inherent in trees as symbols and that of the psychology of trees themselves also prove rich topics that need further exploration. After shortly scanning the image of the tree and its symbolic and metaphorical aspects, it proves beneficial to relate the myth of Osiris that will form the basis for a majority of comments and insights, followed by some synopsis of Osiris as a deity and in his tree characteristics.
EndNote 5 Thus, the feeding and watering aspects of Tefnut or Nut and Hathor as sycamore goddesses in the underworld and the protecting aspects of Isis in the Osiris myth take on more import.

Plutarch provided the first comprehensive story of Osiris and he used current stories and customs about Osiris common during the first century CE to build his version of the Osiris-Isis myth as related in his Concerning Isis and Osiris. In Egyptian Mythology: […], Geraldine Pinch writes: “His stated purpose in writing the book was to seek the universal truths that he believed to lie behind the myths and beliefs of all cultures” (41). The myth goes as follows:

Osiris is tricked into trying out a sarcophagus, which once inside, he is then sealed and dumped into the Nile by Set and his followers. In Egyptian Myths, George Hart writes: “[Isis] pursued the chest to Byblos in the Lebanon where it had been enveloped in a magnificent heath-tree which the king had cut down to form a pillar in his palace” (41). She becomes nursemaid for the Queen’s son and in the midst of attempting to confer immortality to the child, the mother sees him burning and screams, thus interrupting the process. He continues: “Isis then demanded the pillar and cut out the chest, donating the outer wood, which was coated with fragrant unguent and wrapped in linen, to her temple at Byblos” (41). Isis returned the chest to Egypt and left it unguarded one night when Set was hunting; He discovered the chest and cut Osiris into fourteen pieces to be scattered around Egypt. When Isis found out about the disaster, she collected all the parts of Osiris except his phallus that some fish had eaten. Osiris and Isis still manage to couple, sometimes with a wooden phallus and othertimes with none, thereby producing their son, hawk-headed Horus. Eventually, Osiris is ruler of the underworld and Horus of the earth, while Set helps Osiris vanquish the serpent Apophis during the nocturnal journey through Nut, as Osiris unifies with Ra.

Osiris, as has been intimated, meant numerous things, especially since he absorbed attributes of so many of his deity-predecessors (mainly those of Atum, Ptah and Ra). According to Anthony Mercantante, in Who’s Who in Egyptian Mythology, Osiris has been combined with Aah to demonstrate his crescent or full moon qualities; Geb in relation to the cosmic egg and earth qualities; Horus in combination to represent the rising son; Neb-Heu, as the Benu-bird headed mummy representation of the Lord of Eternity (everlastingness); Neper for the grain attributes; Orion or Sah to complement Isis-Sept or -Sothis; Ra in the form of night and day suns; and, Tua as the begetter and god of the dead (115-16). Erich Neumann, in The Origins and History of Consciousness, writes: “Worshipped as vegetation, grain, and in Byblos, as the tree, [Osiris] is a god of fertility, earth, and nature, thus combining in himself the characteristics of all the divine sons of the Great Mother [Attis, Adonis and Tammuz according to N.]; but he is also water, sap, the Nile—in other words, he is the animating principal of vegetation” (225). In Valley of the Kings, John Romer thinks that, historically, Egyptians represented Osiris as a mummified figure sometimes with grain sprouting out of it, the Djed pillar, a khepri, khepera, or scarab beetle, or a vase with head (214); whereas Donald Mackenzie, in Egyptian Myth and Legend, sees Osiris as a tree, the Apis bull, the boar, the goose, and the Oxyrhynchus fish (2), and as “an ancient king of Egypt who taught the Egyptians how to rear crops and cultivate fruit trees. He was regarded as a human incarnation of the moon spirit” (8). Pinch writes: “Both Ra and Osiris could be identified with the benu bird, an expression of the ‘secret knowledge’ that these two gods were one” (117). She continues: “His [Osiris’s] soul could be shown as a bird perching in a tree or grove growing from the [Primeval] Mound” (181). Marie-Louise von Franz, in On Dreams & Death: […], adds: “Osiris is also called ‘the Lord of Decay’ and ‘the Lord of the Abundant Green’” (12-13); in addition, she describes a protection charm for Osiris in which he is named the “Large Green Ocean” (85). In Resurrecting Osiris: […], Muata Abhaya Ashby comments that Osiris was the first-born god on the ‘Epagomenae,’ the extra five days brought into existence by Djehuti/Thoth in his form of manager and sustainer of creation (53-54). Finally, and not exhaustively, Romer writes: “The King is identified as the God of the dead, Osiris, the son of the sky and the earth” (64). Clearly, the abovementioned show a tree connection. Osiris, as son of sky and earth and god of the underworld, and then as the tree, contains the notion of the Cosmic Tree in its celestial world, underworld and earthly connections: he is a bridge or conduit to each of the realms as humanity has seen them, just as the Cosmic Tree has been.

Historically, it is helpful to situate Osiris in the period in which he was worshipped, according to archeological records. [EndNote 6] Pinch writes: “The cult of Osiris is hardly known before the Fifth Dynasty, but he gradually became the most important funerary god” (11). She continues: “By the time of the Coffin Texts [Middle Kingdom], all the elite dead could be identified with Osiris, the god who died and rose again” (16). Thus, Osiris, as was the Egyptian custom, absorbed much of the qualities and attributes of the main gods preceding him. [EndNote 7]
EndNote 6 The Appendix contains some thoughts and quotes about historical notions.
EndNote 7 Hart names Memphis as the birthplace of Osiris and mentions his connection to Abydos as an epithet, ‘Khentamentiu:’ ‘Foremost of the Westerners,’ which he thinks links Osiris to the underworld and spirits hoping to gain access to it (30).

Trees find several conversations with Osiris beneficial. Set, his brother, sequesters Osiris within a wooden coffin, made of a tree, which then comes to rest at the base of a tree that subsequently performs miraculous growth feats only to become a pillar in a palace. The coffin has been identified as being a wooden one that is sealed with lead; an alchemical referent is this sealing with lead, and in alchemical explorations lead is seen as the base metal that is worked and transformed into gold. Osiris equivocates with the process of individuation when seen in an alchemical fashion, going from the leaden death to a rebirth as a sun god who rules the underworld. Osiris conquers death with the help of his anima-ted transcendent bird-feminine soul, Isis, and goes on to lord over it, to even wield creative control over it. In his dead form he is lead, and as he transforms through the birthing of a son, despite being without his generative member, and dismemberment and rememberment, Osiris as ruler of the underworld, a sun god, transforms into precious and alchemical gold. Osiris metamorphosizes into the philosopher’s stone, which has been called the Arbor philosophicum, yet another tree. This action could be said to be founded upon Osiris’s death and containment within the coffin.

Once the coffin rested upon the shore at Byblos, a tree grew around it. That tree recalls the much earlier “tree of life.” Osiris as tree or affiliated with trees occurs frequently. [EndNote 8] He has been identified as or affiliated with, variously, the Djed, sycamore, erica, persea or tamarisk. Ashby identifies the tree that enclosed Sar/Osiris’ sarcophagus as being a tamarisk (61). [EndNote 9] Osiris is not only the tree of life as represented by the sycamore tree, but also contained within the tree, he is the water that sustains that tree. In Figure 10, of On Dreams and Death: […], von Franz discusses an image that shows a box that could be construed as a coffin, with a tree growing out of it that emanates an arm holding a pitcher of water pouring into a dead person’s drinking bowl. The fecundity of the image lends itself to multivalent interpretations, including the significance of the tree bringing or being the water or life waters for the dead. This water is the prima materia. As, in Alchemy: […], von Franz writes: “It is the divine water which is naturally not H2O, but is actually a symbol for the most basic matter of the world, the prima materia” (66). One could say that the coffin, tree and water all represent Osiris in this image. That the tree grows an arm that holds a pitcher harkens back to images of Hathor, Nut and Tefnut trees providing water and food for the souls in the afterworld. Pinch writes: “The body of Osiris could also be shown regenerating inside a tree” (179). What a wonderful observation, and one with special significance as the planet is being deforested so rapidly. Both deities and bodies, spirit and matter, are regenerated by the insides of trees, not cut down trees, but growing trees. Osiris dies into a sycamore tree, his coffin surrounded by the great tree, and the notion of life and death being conferred by or through the agency of trees is thereby implied to admitted. [EndNote 10] The strata of memories of trees as the creators of humanity continue to encourage the implementation of such pole erections as the Djed pillar. [EndNote 11]
EndNote 8 The Appendix contains some tree-related information gleaned from images in the Temple Denderah.
EndNote 9 That the king was amazed at the extraordinary size and fragrance of the tree makes more sense once one knows a bit more about the tamarisk; please see Appendix for more information regarding this adaptable tree.
EndNote 10 Mackenzie writes: “Like Thoth, Osiris was identified with the tree spirit. His dead body was enclosed in a tree which grew round the coffin, and Isis voyaged alone over the sea to recover it. […] The myth, as will be seen, is reminiscent of archaic tree and well worship, which survives at Heliopolis, where the sacred well and tree are still venerated in association with the Christian legend” (8). Osiris not only dies into the tree, he also is purportedly buried underneath one. Hart states that the island of Biga, at the Abaton, allegedly holds the burial place of Osiris, underneath the “Naret-tree” (32).
EndNote 11 The tree, whether in pillar or pole form, acts as the supporter of the souls of the dead, as Anup the psychopomp-jackal does. Please see Appendix for further exploration of the Djed pillar.

In exploring the tree-imagery surrounding Osiris in Egyptian myth, that Osiris continually finds comparisons to trees of differing types speaks to the underlying Cosmic Tree that rarely is identified as being one specific variety of tree (Yggdrasil is, however, an ash). It also speaks to the notion of a psychological connection to trees that predates historical records. von Franz writes: “The tree is the unconscious life which renews itself and continues to exist eternally, after human consciousness has ceased to exist” (On Dreams and Death: […] 25). As previously seen, Osiris embodies many things, especially due to the Egyptian custom of absorbing much of the prior deity’s attributes into the newer and more favorable current deity. Egyptians and those commenting on the myths of Osiris, knew Osiris as knowledge, enlightenment, giver of laws, arts, grain, cultivation, irrigation, agriculture and corn, mining and working of metals, mythology-religion and the sciences. He was seen as the light, sun, moon, male, female, ox, bull, god of the underworld, a world-traveler, the Persea tree and blossom, sycamore and other trees, and a palace pillar. He was thought of as active or passive, an inventor of civilization, provider of fertility and fecundity overcoming castration, a husband, father, and the source of the great inundation of the Nile. He suffered a humiliating death, grew a tree to mammoth proportions whence inside a sarcophagus from within the tree and he therefore was seen as having generative as well as regenerative powers. He later was conflated and confused by numerous cultures and scholars with Adonis, Apis, Attis, Bacchus, [EndNote 12] Bata, Dionysus, Orpheus and Serapis. The vegetative connection to sowing and reaping of agriculture, especially regarding the inundation and recession of the Nile, or the astronomical alignment, only begin the exploration of the myth of Osiris; a deeper focus grows with his continual and persistent connection to trees. It is through Osiris and his connections to the Cosmic Tree, from Osiris as tree god, and his aspects as tree-fallen, to those of tree-in-dweller and tree-resurrected, that the consciousness of humanity manifests mythologically in the Egyptian Osiris Myth. The shift into centroversion, from an arguably older, nature-based consciousness, as evidenced by the Osiris myth and pointed out by Neumann, and thus removing itself further from its interconnectedness with nature, manifests in the treatment of trees mythologically. Transformation of cultural norms, such as the treatment of trees, reflects an overview that suggests that all peoples within an era do not feel or think similarly; therefore, there is room for the possibility of tree-worship and tree-reverence in the entirety of human development. Such persistence of tree-reverence demonstrates that humanity can continue to connect with the spirits of trees, if so open. It is precisely Osiris as the sycamore tree, representing psychic transformation and renewal with the Cosmic Tree myth running in the background, that lends the esoteric power to his myth.
EndNote 12 In Osiris: […], Cooke states that both Plutarch and Herodotus (as well as all Egyptians according to Herodotus) held “that Osiris and Bacchus were one” (29).

Appendix

EndNote 1—Functions and Science in Egyptian myth
The main arguments offered by scholars concerning Egyptian myth resemble those functions that myths serve as identified by Joseph Campbell in The Hero’s Journey and Thou Art That. He saw four main universal functions for myths: mystical, cosmological, sociological and pedagogical. On a cosmological-sociological bent, I think that the Egyptian mythemes contain embedded scientific revelations, as offered by Paul Laviolette’s subquantum kinetics exploratory commentary in Beyond the Big Bang. He writes: “It is also possible, however, to interpret it [the story of Osiris] as portraying subsequent matter creation taking place on an ongoing basis, for the ancient metaphysics teaches that ether has continued to spawn matter since the time of this first primordial event” (110). [EndNote 13] And, as offered by Gerald Massey in an astronomical focus in Ancient Egypt - The Light Of The World: […], whereby he compares the constellations and various planetary alignments to the movement in the myth itself. Many others have opined on the science embedded in Egyptian myth. Massey also writes of the sociological function of Egyptian myth and the fundamental observational origin of those myths. Yet, the more esoteric meaning (read mystical) of the myths can be lost to such scientific, functional and origin (Was Egypt the “mother culture” or, as many suspect, was not Egypt one of the dispersionist cultures that was given much of their science and myth from another culture? Evidence from the earliest tombs shows a full writing system and a mythology intact, which means that this culture had to originate from somewhere. However, how deep do archeologists have to dig, and how many planets and star systems do astronauts and sci-fi writers have to visit in order to satisfy those seeking an origin?) explorations, and by esoteric I mean to imply the transcendent meanings centering around metaphor common to myth as Campbell has asserted.
EndNote 13 For more thoughts on Laviolette’s book, see the posting online: http://mythologicalmeanderings.blogspot.com/2005/01/reaction-to-paul-laviolettes-beyond.html.

EndNote 2—Osiris and his Djed
The Djed pillar finds it similars elsewhere. Eliade writes: “In Vedic India, the sacrificial stake (yupa) is made of a tree which is similar to the Universal Tree. […] From the wood of this tree the sacrificial stake is fashioned, and this becomes a sort of cosmic pillar […]” (44-45). Somehow, the yupa sounds familiar and similar to the Djed pillar, whose construction and ritual surrounding its erection generally form little of the focus of authors read, but whose composition and transformation from a simple pillar into a more figural representation is depicted psychologically by Erich Neumann in some detail in The Great Mother […]. Could it be that the original tree-felling for the construction of the Djed pillar resembles more closely that of the ritual around the tree-felling for the yupa? The erection of the Djed pillar has also been covered in some detail by Neumann, and its significance as the centroversion or everlastingness of Osiris (and therefore the pharaoh), but, what remains missing in his erudite psychological commentary is the material and mythological significance of the tree-felling, tree-dwelling and tree-raising of Osiris.

Michael Conforti in Field, Form, and Fate: […], writes: “The attracting quality of the archetype pulls for commonality of experience and a universally recognizable expression of form” (27). If one accepts Conforti’s notion of an archetypal influence on the commonality of tree worship globally, an idea Jung also asserts and names independent invention, placing its appearance on the shoulders of the collective unconscious, then that the yupa sounds similar to the djed is really only due to an archetypal field imposing its energy in differing areas particular to each locale. Conforti continues: “Patterns are the imprints of the archetype, and perhaps even imprints of the divine, whose recognition and assimilation is transformative” (47). In stating that the patterns left by the influence of archetypes transform through recognition and assimilation of them, he psychologically combines the previously polar opposites of independent invention and dispersion. This move resonates with Jung’s earlier move of stating that whether myths generated out of either method truly was unimportant: their affects upon the human psyche were the real reason to study them, not which culture could claim first rights to a particular myth.

Amentet is identified by Ashby as the union between Amun/Amen and Asar/Osiris because “tet refers to the Djed Pillar of Asar[/Osiris]. […] The Djed symbolizes the awakened human soul which is well ‘established’ in the knowledge of the Self.” Ashby states that this special realm is not only the abode of Asar/Osiris but is also “the ultimate destination of those who become enlightened” (147). Ashby then quotes Chapter 125: 1-17 from The Egyptian Book of Coming Forth By Day, in which an initiate identified as Asar/Osiris negates all growing things in a brief list, including the cedar tree, acacia tree and grass and herbs. In a realm that is signified by the union of Amun/Amen and the tet or Djed pillar form of Asar/Osiris it would seem antithetical to negate trees, yet, in doing so, the reference to growing things is made, nonetheless, and specifically to trees. I think this mentioning of trees in the negative sense speaks to something deeper than simply saying this is the land of non-growing things, especially if one considers that the realm is named partially after the Djed pillar form of Asar/Osiris. As Wolfgang Giegerich following Hegel and others has made clear, the negation of the original position brings its deeper essence into awareness. Ashby later identifies Amentet as being “Transcendental-beyond all planes” and as being located within Duat, while Tet “symbolizes the awakening human soul who is well ‘established’ in the knowledge of the Self” (253). Thus, it appears that the notion of negating the original leads to the realization of the transcendental or the mythical metaphor that each of these trees represents. Unfortunately, with the proliferation of varying interpretations of what trees mean what and are identified with which deity in Egyptian mythology, what the actual metaphorical meaning of these trees are becomes veiled and later transparent to those whose attitudes and cultural milieu do not revere trees, such as in Plutarch’s age and on.

Djed tree or pillar: its raising and accompanying ceremony represented the resurrection of Osiris and the sycamore tree of the myth (Hooke 70). Neumann states: “In the symbolic equations of a Feminine that nourishes, generates, and transforms, tree, djed pillar, tree of heaven, and cosmic tree belong together” (The Great Mother 243). He continues: “The principal symbol of Osiris is the ‘djed pillar,’ a tree fetish, itself sufficiently remarkable in treeless Egypt; and in Byblos, too, a tree, wrapped in linen and anointed, was worshipped as the ‘wood of Isis’” (The Origins and History of Consciousness 70); and states further: “[…] the erection of the djed pillar in the coronation ceremonies at the Sed festival, symbolizes the renewal of Pharaoh’s strength” (ibid 70). Neumann comments that the Djed pillar is the oldest representation of Osiris (ibid 229). He goes on to mention the obvious significance of the wooden sarcophagus, also hewn from trees (ibid 230); and then agrees with Budge’s interpretation of the djed forming from combining Osiris’s sacrum with the older tree-trunk of Busiris. In his discussion, Neumann repeatedly draws attention to the idea of the importance of erection, calling the sacrum the “higher’ phallus,” which eventually gets replaced by Osiris’s head (ibid 231). The djed symbol may originally have been seen as a pillar made of reeds or sheaves of corn and alternatively as separating sky and earth, but, it eventually (by the New Kingdom) came to be associated most closely with Osiris (Pinch 127-28). The significance of the Djed pillar being raised thus associates more with Osiris being revived (sitting up again), or symbolically, the Cosmic Tree returning the conduits of the afterworld to the Egyptians.

Ashby states: “The Djed column is symbolic of the upper energy centers (chakras) that relate to the levels of consciousness of the spirit within an individual human being” (34). He continues: “Djeddu refers to the abode of Asar[/Osiris]” (147). Without knowing the etymological roots of the Djed in the Djed pillar versus the djed in the djeddu that is Asar/Osiris’ abode, nor what adding an additional du to its end, drawing deeper connections between them engages in conjecture and imagination, yet, one could say without too much controversy that to call Asar/Osiris’s abode the djeddu, is to name his abode after the Djed pillar that represented him in festivals and in worship. The significance I would like to call attention to then is in the fact that a place one dwells in, albeit a deity, is named after a stylized tree representation of oneself. Naming a home or abode after oneself as a tree is to name the place itself oneself. Doing so in this connection then places particular attention on the divine nature of not only the place but also the stylized tree and the tree itself by extension. Laviolette writes: “The hieroglyphic meaning of these symbols is normally given as ‘prosperity’ (uas), ‘life’ (ankh), and ‘stability’ or ‘durability’ (djed). Schwaller de Lubicz, however, identifies them respectively with spirit, soul, and body” (118). Massey states: “The Tat, a pillar or tree-trunk, was an emblem of stability and type of the god Ptah as the fourfold support of the universe” (116). Laviolette describes how the djed not only represents physicality, but also sustains it in the ongoing process of life regeneration. He writes: “Finally, the djed pillar may be interpreted as a symbol of the physical form, or ‘body,’ produced by this spirit-animated ‘soul,’ thus denoting the explicit order that incarnates from the underlying implicit order” (118); and: “The djed was understood to symbolize the cosmic pillar that supports the vault of the sky and thereby maintains physical form in existence” (118); continuing with: “Its [djed pillar] upright stance was supposed to portray life overcoming the process of death and decay, the cosmic victory of order over disorder” (119); and finally ending with: “The four tiers that cap the top of the djed indicate that the pillar symbolizes physical form, the number four being the traditional symbol for solid matter” (119). Such a solid line of argument, concerning the physicality of the djed, suggests a return to the matter at hand.

The djed is a manifestation of physical matter, the sustaining presence that yields to new manifestations of that matter, and the spirit and soul contained within the matter. If one accepts that Horus is soul, Osiris is (passive)-spirit, and Isis is (active)-spirit, and further that the trinity has merit in its esoteric teachings, then erecting the Djed pillar would definitely point toward a reinvigoration of spirit, soul and matter, and as such, represent them symbolically. Laviolette continues:

A myth dating from the Old Kingdom compares the first creation to the opening of a lotus flower. It states that prior to physical creation, there existed an ether resembling a dark sea of limitless expanse. One day from the sea’s ‘surface’ emerged an immense luminous lotus bud. With the bud’s opening, light and life came into being. […] The Pyramid Text relates that when the lotus appeared, ‘Order was put in the place of Chaos’ (121).

Order is generally accepted as being represented by Ma’at, while chaos and disorder generally represent Set, however, in this context, with lotus blossoms underneath Osiris’ bier, they could be construed as being an aspect of Osiris, or that Osiris has the blessings (read: power) of Ma’at. One could also see this example of order replacing disorder as Horus overcoming Set allows Osiris to rearise and to assume his Lordship over the realm of Duat or the underworld. According to Laviolette, the Djed pillar portrayed “life overcoming the process of death and decay, the cosmic victory of order over disorder” (119). If both notions are acceptable, then the lotus symbolizes much the same as the Djed pillar concerning cosmic order and disorder. Seeing Set as Chaos or Disorder and Osiris or Horus as Order, and these two/three embodied in one symbol, the Djed pillar—which I see as a stylized representation of the tree that formerly was or contained Osiris—suggests that the tree at one point may have represented both order and disorder in interrelationship for the Egyptians.

EndNote 3—Osiris-Isis and Horus
The Osiris-Isis myth as indicative of the interrelationship between consciousness and unconsciousness
The following two diagrams are adapted from ones of the psyche contained within Jung’s opus.
Physical

Emotional Spirit-Soul

Mental
The quaternio above represents the bodies as seen in esoteric tradition.

Body-Nephthys

active-spirit-Isis soul-Horus passive-spirit-Osiris

ego-Set

This quinio above represents a way of seeing the Egyptian concepts of the Jungian psyche as a diagrammatic wholeness, which, when viewed in this light and with the full knowledge that these ‘opposites’ act in concert with one another and never in utter totality (rather in helixical fractality) demonstrates further the interrelationship of the psychic parts that have been far too long seen as separate and distinct from each other.

The concept of the diagram owes its profundity in the realization that these various aspects outlaid as opposites can and do ‘switch places’ with one another throughout a lifetime; so one could view them as pairs of ‘opposites’ within pairs, a heiros gamos that occurs within another heiros gamos, so that there is a marriage of the entire psyche that one can view if one is open enough to see it.

The passive-spirit-Osiris could also be seen as Adams’s cultural unconscious, active-spirit-Isis as the Jungian personal unconscious, soul-Horus as the Jungian collective unconscious in union to separation with the collective conscious, ego-Set as the collective consciousness and body-Nephthys as the personal consciousness. The underlying layers here, however, are the ‘parents’ of these aspects that are married twins in Egyptian mythology. Soul-Horus is in constant struggle and confrontation with ego-Set. Ego-Set initially kills passive-spirit-Osiris, which is in reality necessary for the soul-Horus to be born from the union of the active-spirit-Isis with the dead passive-spirit-Osiris. Active-passive-spirit-Osiris mistakes body-Nephthys, the twin sister of active-passive-spirit-Isis, in a drunken stupor and the offspring is shadow-Anubis. Shadow-Anubis is both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ contents of that which we do not know about ourselves and continually admonishes and congratulates soul-Horus according to soul-Horus’s actions throughout his mythological meanderings. Shadow-Anubis is the maker of the footprints in the sands of Egyptian time…through him we determine whether our soul is light as a feather or heavy as a brick.

Isis affiliations
The bird is commonly associated with spiritual transcendence in dreams and myths. Thus, Isis, when appearing in the form of a swallow or some other bird could be said to connote a stage or period of spiritual transcendence, and certainly as Osiris reanimates after imprisonment in the coffin, tree and column, resurrecting, the significance of Isis in the form of the swallow or hawk flapping its wings above his corpse appears to impart such import. The image of her as a swallow flittering and twittering about the column then acts as a foreshadowing technique along with the admission that such transformational processes require more than one step. Hooke writes: “[…] swallows are connected with fertility and childbirth” (93). This makes the appearance of Isis as a twittering swallow flying about the pillar Osiris is contained within a foreshadowing event of her future impregnation.

Ashby credits the discovery of wheat and barley to Isis/Aset and the development of its cultivation to Asar/Osiris, while explaining Osiris/Asar’s ability to spread cultivation and civilization through his employment of hymns, songs and instrumentation (55).

Laviolette sees a connection between the recovery of the dismembered parts and transformation. He writes: “It is also significant that she is only able to recover thirteen of Osiris’s pieces, because this number is the esoteric symbol for death and transformation to a new state of being, a concept depicted in Arcanum 13 of the Tarot” (112).

Aset/Isis then cut into the pillar and removed the chest, wrapping the remainder of the pillar in linen drenched with perfumed oil, which piece of wood was allegedly preserved in a temple in Byblos and was then worshipped (Ashby 63).

In comparing two scenes from New Kingdom Egypt, Hestrin, in “The Lachish Ewer” tries to demonstrate the religious significance of the asherah in Jewish mythology. Mark Smith, in The Early History of God: […], comments on these images, saying: “One shows the goddess Hathor as a tree giving nourishment to the king, and another renders Isis in the form of a tree giving suck to a noble and his wife” (113).

In this quick look at some elements of or pertaining to Isis, her complementarity to Osiris appears as necessary to the action of transformation that he will undergo. It is his initial action, being born first, and then dying first, that then require her further action to ensure his being born again and perhaps dying again. Isis provides the feminine side to Osiris that once activated allows him to complete himself and through their union produce a son. Whether this son was conceived in the womb of their mother or later through wooden-immaculate conception matters little in considering his influence on Osiris. The son is an extension of their union, and of Osiris, and provides an additional complement to Osiris, since one rules the living on the earth and the other the dead in the underworld or afterworld. Without Isis, Horus does not exist; without Isis, Osiris dies and is replaced by Set. Isis fundamentally moves the action in the myth, and as such could be seen as the divine essence of procreation and regeneration, while Horus is the manifestation of divine procreation and Osiris is the manifestation of divine regeneration.

Laviolette explains the Isis, Osiris, Horus myth of spontaneous conception, which sounds a lot like the mystery surrounding the immaculate conception, in interesting psychologically charged jargon of the Physics field. He writes: “Thus the seed from which Horus sprang does not come from his parents but emerges spontaneously in their midst as a fluctuation arising from the ether itself” (112-13). The ether sounds like the Third—a field of unequal to co-mutual to directive energy created by the interaction and interrelationship of two entities or objects or fields possessing magnetism—such an idea works on many levels simultaneously. He continues: “Isis and Osiris contribute to his generation by forming a matrix of circular causality that nurtures Horus into being” (113). Horus may also sing harmonies of synchronicity. Laviolette states: “Isis is the prime actor here in that she consummates her union with Osiris by marginally reviving him from his death state” (113). To consummate a union resulting in spontaneous conception would require great energy of intention from the female as well as male participant. Such a procreative act created between two parties, resulting in a manifestation of poesis, is akin to fire stealing Prometheus, meditating consciously Gautama, redemptive hanging Christ, or the runes being acquired from Yggdrasil by hanging Odin, in that each time a new procreative act comes into being, it is preceded by a sacrifice of some sort that is inherent in the realm of change. What I am saying is that perhaps Osiris was in such deep meditation that even the loss of sexual organs or body parts was not enough to curtail his procreative powers: his ability to tap into the archetypal field of poesis kept his soul energy alive. Life seeks to continue more than it does to end. Finally, Laviolette says: “This emphasizes the feminine, formal aspect of process as being the primary seat of generation” 113). Horus also provides alternatives, such as reversals of energy and generations of gender—as a disembodied embodiment. Horus represents an evolution of consciousness in the metaphorical field of spontaneity. Horus sings as the Self in journey, accompanied by the trusty shadow his brother/uncle. The shadowy uncle, Scar, presents very well in the popular children’s movie “Lion King,” foiling Simba’s attempts to grow up too fast, allowing him to blunder.

In Knowledge for the Afterlife: […], Theodor Abt and Erik Hornung discuss the uniting of Re and Osiris as being that of a “reunion of soul and body” (84), and later Abt refers to Osiris as being equivalent to the unconscious that manifests in dreams and sleep (94). Abt continues: “Osiris is another part of the whole [psychic identity of an individual], a mirror image of Re. He supports and purifies consciousness by reflecting its shadow aspects” (94). Osiris as a moon god would certainly be considered shadowy and part of the unconscious to Jungians. That unconscious aspect of Osiris is the spirit energy of the tree that remains latent until being activated by contact with a compassionate human being.

In Resurrecting Osiris: [...], Ashby relates that Anu, Abydos, Philae, Denderah and Ombos all developed theologies centered on Osiris-Isis-Horus as a Trinity (18). He continues: “From a mystical standpoint, the Trinity of Asar[/Osiris]-Aset[/Isis]-Heru[/Horus] represents the movement of the spirit as it manifests in Creation” (Ashby 132).

Since Massey depicts Horus as being double-everything, including equinox, using such logic to connect Horus to the double helix proves an interesting point of departure from his astronomical and into a more scientific interpretation of Egyptian myth. If each of the figures within Egyptian myth represents a type of cellular or biological function, as in those common to living beings, then the transformations and action within the myths, already being favorably compared to the life of the psyche and/or soul, could lead to other illuminating discoveries such as scientific formulas as shown by Paul Laviolette in Beyond the Big Bang: […].

EndNote 4-Egyptian Mythological Trees
In The Golden Bough: […], Frazer writes: “O s i r i s w a s m o r e t h a n a s p i r i t o f t h e c o r n ; h e w a s a l s o a t r e e-s p i r i t , a n d t h i s m a y p e r h a p s h a v e b e e n h i s p r i m i t i v e c h a r a c t e r , s i n c e t h e w o r s h i p o f t r e e s i s n a t u r a l l y o l d e r i n t h e h i s t o r y o f r e l i g i o n t h a n t h e w o r s h i p o f t h e c e r e a l s” (254) . This is not to state that the trees themselves were worshipped, although as is the case most often amongst religions, the referent almost always becomes worshipped by some, rather to state that the metaphorical methodology of embodying deities nearly universally finds its form as a tree. Massey writes:

‘Tree worship’ was the propitiation of a power in nature that was represented by the tree and by the vegetation that was given for food. Although the votive offerings were hung upon its branches, the tree itself was not the object of the offering, but the power personified in Hathor or Nut as giver in the tree (181).

It seems rather obvious to mythologists familiar with ‘tree worship’ that the tree was not actually intended to be worshipped within the myths as handed down, but, rather were vehicles for the metaphor behind the form of the tree. Yet, that trees at one time were or were not worshipped is another matter. Mercantante writes:

The Egyptians believed that some deities lived in trees, thus making those trees sacred. The persea tree, for example, was sacred to Ra, who, as Mau, in the form of the cat, defeated the archserpent of darkness Apohpis at its base. An olive tree at Heliopolis was sacred to Horus, while the sycamore was sacred to Ra, Hathor, Isis and Mut (195).

In The Priests of Ancient Egypt, Serge Sauneron places a photograph from the Archives Photographiques, in which a goddess is shown in tree form, or emerging from the tree, with a vase dispensing water for a woman kneeling underneath the branches (111). A tree goddess bestowing water upon the fervent must trace back to earlier myths in more ancient Egyptian history. Massey writes:

The tree of dewy coolness, the Sycamore of Hathor, or of Tefnut, was the evergreen of Dawn, and the evergreen as fuel may be full of fire […]. The Water of Heaven and the Tree of Dawn precede personification, and the name of Tefnut, from Tef (to drip, drop, spit, exude, shed, effuse, supply) and Nu, for Heaven, shows that Tefnut represented the dew that fell from the Tree of Dawn. She is the giver of the dew; hence the water of dawn is said to be the water of Tefnut (29).

Egyptian myth, as all other global myths, has its singularities and in its uniqueness represents tree related deities as being both feminine and masculine (Osiris in the djed, sycamore, persea, erica or tamarisk, Ra and the sacred persea, Taht in palm tree, the palm of Amsu, Geb in shrubs and plants, Horus in papyrus, and Unbu in golden bough—although admittedly stressed more in the feminine form: Isis in the persea tree, Hathor, Nut and Tefnut in the sycamore). Most other myths represent the tree as feminine or masculine, not as both, and the majority see trees as feminine.

Sacred Grove on Primeval Mound: Pinch states: “The trees that are sometimes shown growing out of the Mound may be the sacred grove from which falcon gods such as Horus and Sopdu are said to have emerged” (180). She continues: “This Sopdu falcon [warrior god] dwelled in a sacred grove, which probably grew on the Primeval Mound” (205).

Horizon Trees: Pinch writes of Akhet, a transitional horizon for gods and the dead, which consisted of a Double Horizon: “the Western Horizon “where the sun god died at sunset and the Eastern Horizon “where he was reborn at sunrise. The standard image of the horizon was a sun disk between two mountain peaks. Two shining trees grew on these mountains, and the Double Horizon was guarded by a double sphinx or twin lions” (99-100). Massey states: “These are equivalent to the Kamite two sycamore-trees of the North and South, as types of the original division of the earth, and of the later earth and heaven; also called the two trees in the garden of the beginning” (83).

Ished tree: Pinch states: “The key event was the slaughter of the chaos monster Apophis under the ished tree. This was a sacred tree growing in Heliopolis that was linked to the destiny of all things” (112). She goes on with: “One terrible night Ra himself took the form of the Great Tom Cat and fought the Apophis serpent under the ished tree at Heliopolis. He sliced up Apophis with his knife and split the ished tree in two, creating the twin trees of the horizon” (134). And continues with:

Seshat was the goddess who measured and recorded the world. […] Seshat was an assistant or female counterpart of Thoth, the god of wisdom and knowledge. She and Thoth fixed the length of a king’s reign by inscribing his name on the leaves of the ished tree at Heliopolis (190).

Pinch states that Thoth and Seshat knew future and past, inscribing the fate of newborns on birthing bricks and kings’ reigns on leaves of the ished tree (210).

Willow tree: Pinch writes: “In Heliopolis, the center of solar worship, the benu bird was said to perch on the benben stone, a kind of primitive obelisk, or in the branches of a sacred willow tree” (117).

The date palm was considered to be Tree of the Year or Calendar Tree (new branch each month), according to Ernst and Johana Lehner in Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees (26). Neumann writes: “The goddess as the tree that confers nourishment on souls, as the sycamore or date palm, is one of the central figures of Egyptian art. But the motherhood of the tree consists not only in nourishing; it also comprises generation, and the tree goddess gives birth to the sun” (The Great Mother 241). Pinch states: “[Seshat] sometimes carries a palm frond carved with notches to mark the passing years” (190). Hart writes: “[Re] also sails past gods holding palm-branch scepters who are responsible for carving trees or plants” (54).

Persea tree is considered a symbol of everlasting fame (Lehner & Lehner 45). Thoth, Safekh “A sacred tree in ancient Egyptian belief that was often shown in temple scenes of the king’s coronation. The king’s name was inscribed by the gods on the persea tree. Opinions about which tree in the natural world the Persea represents vary” (Mercantante 121).

Nut as Tree of Heaven: In speaking of Nut, “as tree of heaven,” Neumann writes: “The earthly tree with its roots in the depths, and the astral tree of the heights, are symbols of time” (The Great Mother 244-45). The females are Hathor and Nut, who personate the divine mother, not the human mother, in the tree, as the giver of food and drink provided by the Mother-earth (Massey 140). Involution (making things or being more complicated) and evolution (pattern formed by series of movements): each of the two horizon trees represents one of these processes according to Alvin Boyd Kuhn in The Tree Of Knowledge. The trees might also aptly be said to represent the god within and the god without.

Pine tree: Frazer writes:

B ut O s i r i s w a s m o r e t h a n a s p i r i t o f t h e c o r n ; h e w a s a l s o a t r e e- s p i r i t , a n d t h i s m a y p e r h a p s h a v e b e e n h i s p r i m i t i v e c h a r a c t e r , s i n c e t h e w o r s h i p o f t r e e s i s n a t u r a l l y o l d e r i n t h e h i s t o r y o f r e l i g i o n t h a n t h e w o r s h i p o f t h e c e r e a l s . T h e c h a r a c t e r o f O s i r i s a s a t r e e- s p i r i t w a s r e p r e s e n t e d v e r y g r a p h i c a l l y i n a c e r e m o n y d e s c r i b e d b y F i r m i c u s M a t e r n u s . A p i n e-t r e e h a v i n g b e e n c u t d o w n , t h e c e n t r e w a s h o l l o w e d o u t , a n d w i t h t h e w o o d t h u s e x c a v a t e d a n i m a g e o f O s i r i s w a s m a d e , w h i c h w a s t h e n b u r i e d l i k e a c o r p s e i n t h e h o l l o w o f t h e t r e e (254).

von Franz also details the same type of ceremony. She writes: “In late antiquity, for instance, in many Egyptian towns there were rituals during which a pine tree was cut down and hollowed out, representing the body of Isis, or the coffin—the coffin is the mother goddess, as you know” (73).

Erica tree: Frazer writes:

T h e c e r e m o n y o f c u t t i n g t h e t r e e , a s d e s c r i b e d b y F i r m i c u s M a t e r n u s , a p p e a r s t o b e a l l u d e d t o b y P l u t a r c h . I t w a s p r o b a b l y t h e r i t u a l c o u n t e r p a r t o f t h e m y t h i c a l d i s c o v e r y o f t h e b o d y o f O s i r i s e n c l o s e d i n t h e e r i c a-t r e e . I n t h e h a l l o f O s i r i s a t D e n d e r a h t h e c o f f i n c o n t a i n i n g t h e h a w k- h e a d e d m u m m y o f t h e g o d i s c l e a r l y d e p i c t e d a s e n c l o s e d w i t h i n a t r e e , a p p a r e n t l y a c o n i f e r , t h e t r u n k a n d b r a n c h e s o f w h i c h a r e s e e n a b o v e a n d b e l o w t h e c o f f i n (254).

Sycamore: Tree of Life, Hathor, Nut (provided souls drink and nourishment after death) (Lehner & Lehner 49). The sycamore grew up around the dead Osiris at Byblos in his sarcophagus according to Plutarch (Hooke 68). Mackenzie writes: “In the Nineteenth Dynasty Thoth was shown recording the name of a Pharaoh on the sacred sycamore. He must have been, therefore, at one time a tree spirit, like Osiris. Tree spirits, as well as corn spirits, were manifestations of the moon god” (8). He continues:

The Egyptian tree worshippers conceived of a tree goddess which gave food cakes and poured out drink to disembodied Kas. The influence of this ancient cult is traced in the Osiris and Bata folk tales. In late Dynastic times tree worship was revived when the persisting beliefs of the common people gained ascendancy, and it has not yet wholly disappeared in the Delta region. The sacred tree and the holy well are still regarded with reverence (56).

And goes on:

An immense sycamore tree towers before [the dead soul in the Kingdom of the Dead] with great clusters of fruit amidst its luxuriant foliage. As he approaches it a goddess leans out from the trunk as from a window, displaying the upper part of her body. In her hands she holds a tray heaped with cakes and fruit; she has also a pot of clear fresh water. The soul must needs eat of the magic food and drink of the magic water, and thus become a servant of the gods, if he is to proceed farther. If he rejects the hospitality of the tree goddess, he will have to return again to the dark and narrow tomb whence he came, and lead forever there a solitary and joyless existence (58).

Neumann states: “Hathor, the sycamore goddess, who is the ‘house of Horus’ and as such gives birth to Horus, bears the sun on her head; the top of the tree is the place of the sun’s birth, the nest from which the phoenix-heron arises” (The Great Mother 241). Neumann discusses the sycamore as being represented by the Book of the Dead as two turquoise trees standing at the eastern gate of heaven; the “tree of the worlds” upon which sit the gods, which links the sycamore with the birth of Ra as the sun god; and that it is identical with the goddess of heaven, Nut, the “coffin goddess of rebirth.” He continues to correlate the two in their sycamore form with Osiris in his Djed pillar form and states: “For Osiris is also a tree god and a god contained in a tree” (The Great Mother 242). Mercantante writes:

The sycamore tree was sacred to Ra, Hathor, Isis, and Mut. In one work the goddess Mut is said to pour water from the sycamore tree over both the deceased and his Ba, or soul, which is portrayed as a human-headed bird. Ra appeared each morning from between two sycamore trees of turquoise (170).

On page 99, Mut is depicted as rising or standing upright in the middle of a tree, coming up out of its inner trunk, curiously enough, this appearance from a tree is not explained or even described. Pinch writes: “In the Book of the Dead and in decorated tombs [Nut] was shown in a paradise garden as the goddess of the sycamore-fig tree. In this role, Nut gave water and food to refresh the newly dead and strengthen them for their journey through the underworld” (175).

EndNote 6—History and Egyptian myth
Even archeological records are disputed. In considering what the following mention of archeological evidence might mean to the study of mythology, one needs a bit more detail in order to formulate an informed opinion. Ashby writes: “[..] new archeological evidence shows that the worship of the Supreme Being as Asar[/Osiris], Horus, Hathor and Aset[/Isis] all date back to an ancient period in the pre-dynastic period perhaps dating back to 50,000 B.C.E.” (206). I think Egyptian history definitely predates what is commonly accepted as history.

Sauneron discusses the nomes, lists or catalogues that are “veritable monographs of religious geography,” identifying the most famous as being at the temple of Edfu. Contained within each of these lists, named along with Gods and Goddesses worshipped, priests and priestesses, sacred ships, principal feasts, religious commandments, and place specifications, were the names of the sacred treed that grew on the holy places (148). Thus, tree worship appears to have been replaced, even during the Egyptian dynasties, if not before their recorded history, by a view of trees as sacred, although in some myths, the deity is the tree and vice versa.

EndNote 8—A Treed Osiris in the Temple of Denderah
The Temple of Denderah shows eighteen scenes of the resurrection of Asar/Osiris, as reproduced by Ashby, in which four contain tree references. Four other scenes also represent Asar/Osiris in an ithyphallic state, in all four swallow-hawks accompany him and in three the swallow-hawked Aset/Isis hovers above his phallus. Additionally, in two of the scenes, lotus flowers are included and in one of these, a papyrus plant as well (allegedly representing both Lower and Upper Egypt). The appearance of plants and trees in a third or more of the scenes, speaks to the lessening importance of trees and Osiris’ vegetative rejuvenating function, but, nonetheless, it still speaks that importance.

The old image of the tree continues to resurface in Osiris’ myth, as does the symbol of Osiris as tree and Djed pillar. In the first of the tree-related scenes, Asar/Osiris lays supine on a lion table with a persea tree at his head and his soul at the top of the tree (from this one could say the Bata legend evolved). The next scene shows Heru/Horus, Aset/Isis and Nebthet/Nephthys raising the pillar of Asar/Osiris and raising Asar/Osiris himself. In the next tree-related scene Asar/Osiris lies supine as a hawk-headed mummy and underneath his lion-headed bier three trees (which could be symbolic tamarisk bushes) grow. The next tree-related scene shows Asar/Osiris in his chest on the lion-headed bier with Aset/Isis on a column at his head, and outside the bier, Asar/Osiris in Djed pillar form, holding crook and flail (70-71).

EndNote 9—Tamarisk tree
The Tamarisk, genus Tamarix of the family Tamaricaceae, is pentamerous, which means it has its parts (leaves and petals) in fives, an obvious connection to fingers and toes and humanity; it is also a deciduous tree, which means it follows a predictable pattern of shedding leaves and then re-growing them. After suffering being cut down, the tree will rejuvenate and grow. These elements alone would not be enough to convince me of the identity of the tree that enveloped Asar/Osiris, for within the stories pertaining to this episode, there appears to be an element of the impossible or miraculous that is lost in translation choices. The major problem is that the Tamarisk does not ordinarily grow extremely large. “With a height of rarely more than 5-6 m, and sometimes found in bush form, this species is recognised by its small leaves growing on very thin branches, which give the tree a permanently stringy look, and on occasions seems as if it has died. […] A single, large tamarisk can transpire up to 1100 liters of water per day. […] A mature saltcedar plant can produce 600,000 seeds annually and can become more than 100 years old” (sfakia-crete.com).

The following two quotes are excerpted from Larry Stevens, a consulting ecologist for the Exotic Tamarisk on the Colorado Plateau, an online publication.

Its seeds are short-lived (less than 2 months in summer), have no dormancy requirements, and germinate in less than 24 hr. Saltcedar seeds require a moist, fine-grained (silt or smaller particle size) substrate for eccesis, such as is found in southwestern riparian habitats after flood waters subside (Stevens 1989a, b).

Such soil is also found along the Nile and surrounding area.

Saltcedar was more drought tolerant and inundation tolerant than any native species. Some saltcedar survived more than two years of root-crown inundation in the Grand Canyon during high water events from 1983-85 (Stevens and Waring 1988) […].

In addition to the right soil, the Nile also inundates regularly, and so it seems appropriate to identify the tree as the tamarisk, unless one considers the mammoth size of the tree in the myth. Nonetheless, in examining the tamarisk, even briefly, one can see obvious affiliations with Osiris in the productivity, regeneration, tenacity, and connection to water (Nile and inundation). Perhaps part of the power of the myth revolves around the idea of an image of a gigantic tamarisk tree supporting a palace, when in normal everyday occurrences, the shrub can be a nuisance.

Note 1—Mythology Mirrors Human Consciousness
If one accepts that mythology began through observing phenomenon by the earliest of human ancestors, then, it would follow that the pre-historical forms of natural things—before the advent of sculpture or the arts in enduring materials—to be worshipped as representatives of deities would be the most majestic and powerful occurrences in nature: the sun and moon, stars, seasons, cycles, mountains, trees, oceans, rivers, storms and so forth. This would then equate to the idea advanced by Frazer, Jung, Eliade and Campbell of a naïve or primitive human mind, or, as I prefer to call it an underdeveloped state of consciousness. Such a state of consciousness is predicated upon drives and instincts, with limited awareness of what a deity does or means by its manifestations, and certainly lasted much longer than any stage thereafter. Surely, we can map developments in the consciousness of humanity, as Coppin and Nelson have done in The Art of Inquiry: […]. Only after these first deity embodiments failed to represent the deities well enough would humans and animals and other living creatures on the planet be seen as potent examples of the personification of the deities. This would equate to the developments in human consciousness as seen in shortly preceding and following the Iron or Bronze Ages, and, I think is exemplified by the development of memory and speech and related methodologies. Science and other higher thinking naturally comes much later than the animism common in earliest cultures, and would represent another phase in the development of human consciousness. I think that Egyptian myth is no different in its process of development and surely the forms we see now carved and etched on various stone and wood found its predecessors.
Note 14: Pre-historic models (http://www.becominghuman.org/) lead back 100,000 years or so.

If such a proposed progression of mythological development mirroring that of human consciousness is accepted, and one also accepts the notion that myths represent the logical life of the soul (Wolfgang Giegerich), or that mythology is a map of the soul’s progression in life, then we can effectively map the progression of the human soul through analyzing and interpreting prior mythologies.

Note 2—Universal Being
Ashby relates the following way of classifying parts of the human being, universe and human spirit. Universal Self, leads to the human being: Causal Body (Heaven), Astral Body (Duat) and Physical Body (Earth and Ta), which correlate with Neter (Universal Self), which leads to the universe: Heaven, Duat (Underworld) {unconscious mind}, and Earth (Ta). He then provides nine different classifications of the human spirit: Ba, Sahu, Khaibit, Khu, Ka, Sekhem, Ab, Khat and Ren. These can be grouped as follows: Causal Body (Ba, Sahu, Khu and Khaibit), Astral Body (Ka, Sekhem and Ab) {mind}, and Physical Body (Khat and Ren) (246-47).

Note 3—The New Osiris Tree
Neter-Pet-Ta-Duat is Universal Self-Heaven (Grosser Astral Plane)-Earth-Underworld (Subtler Astral Plane) and signifies the new name of the mystical tree from within and without that Asar/Osiris grows from, into and is raised from. In such format, it is very much like considering Asar/Osiris in his form of Neter-Pet-Ta-Duat Tree as an origination of Kabbalah and the idea of the Shekinah, Yggdrasil, The Unification Tree (Holy Tree {Cross}-Knowledge Tree-Life Tree of Christianity and/or partially Judaism and Islam), Bodhi Tree and numerous other global Cosmic Trees.

Note 4—The Sycamore Song
The following song is excerpted from MacKenzie’s Egyptian Myth and Legend.

A sycamore sang to a lady fair, / And its words were dropping like honey dew. / ‘Now ruby red is the fruit I bear / All in my bower for you. / ‘Papyri green are my leaves arrayed, / And branch and stem like to opal / Now come and rest in my cooling shade / The dream of your heart to dream. / ‘A letter of love will my lady fair / Send to the one who will happy / Saying: ‘Oh, come to my garden rare / And sit in the shade with me! / “‘Fruit I will gather for your delight, / Bread I will break and pour out wine, / I’ll bring you the perfumed flow’rs / On this festal day divine.’ / “My lady alone with her lover will / His voice is sweet and his words / Oh, I am silent of all I see, / Nor tell of the things I hear!’ (42-43).

Note 5—Osirian Festivals
The following is excerpted from James Frazer’s Golden Bough.

T h e r i t e s l a s t e d e i g h t e e n d a y s , f r o m t h e t w e l f t h t o t h e t h i r t i e t h o f t h e m o n t h K h o i a k , a n d s e t f o r t h t h e n a t u r e o f O s i r i s i n h i s t r i p l e a s p e c t a s d e a d , d i s m e m b e r e d , a n d f i n a l l y r e c o n s t i t u t e d b y t h e u n i o n o f h i s s c a t t e r e d l i m b s . I n t h e f i r s t o f t h e s e a s p e c t s h e w a s c a l l e d C h e n t-A m e n t ( K h e n t i-A m e n t i ) , i n t h e s e c o n d O s i r i s-S e p , a n d i n t h e t h i r d S o k a r i ( S e k e r ) . S m a l l i m a g e s o f t h e g o d w e r e m o u l d e d o f s a n d o r v e g e t a b l e e a r t h a n d c o r n , t o w h i c h i n c e n s e w a s s o m e t i m e s a d d e d ; h i s f a c e w a s p a i n t e d y e l l o w a n d h i s c h e e k-b o n e s g r e e n . T h e s e i m a g e s w e r e c a s t i n a m o u l d o f p u r e g o l d , w h i c h r e p r e s e n t e d t h e g o d i n t h e f o r m o f a m u m m y , w i t h t h e w h i t e c r o w n o f E g y p t o n h i s h e a d . T h e f e s t i v a l o p e n e d o n t h e t w e l f t h d a y o f K h o i a k w i t h a c e r e m o n y o f p l o u g h i n g a n d s o w i n g . T w o b l a c k c o w s w e r e y o k e d t o t h e p l o u g h , w h i c h w a s m a d e o f t a m a r i s k w o o d , w h i l e t h e s h a r e w a s o f b l a c k c o p p e r . A b o y s c a t t e r e d t h e s e e d . O n e e n d o f t h e f i e l d w a s s o w n w i t h b a r l e y , t h e o t h e r w i t h s p e l t , a n d t h e m i d d l e w i t h f l a x . D u r i n g t h e o p e r a t i o n t h e c h i e f c e l e b r a n t r e c i t e d t h e r i t u a l c h a p t e r o f " t h e s o w i n g o f t h e f i e l d s . " A t B u s i r i s o n t h e t w e n t i e t h o f K h o i a k s a n d a n d b a r l e y w e r e p u t i n t h e g o d ' s " g a r d e n , " w h i c h a p p e a r s t o h a v e b e e n a s o r t o f l a r g e f l o w e r- p o t . T h i s w a s d o n e i n t h e p r e s e n c e o f t h e c o w-g o d d e s s S h e n t y , r e p r e s e n t e d s e e m i n g l y b y t h e i m a g e o f a c o w m a d e o f g i l t s y c a m o r e w o o d w i t h a h e a d l e s s h u m a n i m a g e i n i t s i n s i d e . " T h e n f r e s h i n u n d a t i o n w a t e r w a s p o u r e d o u t o f a g o l d e n v a s e o v e r b o t h t h e g o d d e s s a n d t h e ' g a r d e n , ' a n d t h e b a r l e y w a s a l l o w e d t o g r o w a s t h e e m b l e m o f t h e r e s u r r e c t i o n o f t h e g o d a f t e r h i s b u r i a l i n t h e e a r t h , ' f o r t h e g r o w t h o f t h e g a r d e n i s t h e g r o w t h o f t h e d i v i n e s u b s t a n c e . ' " O n t h e t w e n t y- s e c o n d o f K h o i a k , a t t h e e i g h t h h o u r , t h e i m a g e s o f O s i r i s , a t t e n d e d b y t h i r t y-f o u r i m a g e s o f d e i t i e s , p e r f o r m e d a m y s t e r i o u s v o y a g e i n t h i r t y-f o u r t i n y b o a t s m a d e o f p a p y r u s , w h i c h w e r e i l l u m i n a t e d b y t h r e e h u n d r e d a n d s i x ty - f i v e l i g h t s . O n t h e t w e n t y-f o u r t h o f K h o i a k , a f t e r s u n s e t , t h e e f f i g y o f O s i r i s i n a c o f f i n o f m u l b e r r y w o o d w a s l a i d i n t h e g r a v e , a n d a t t h e n i n t h h o u r o f t h e n i g h t t h e e f f i g y w h i c h h a d b e e n m a d e a n d d e p o s i t e d t h e y e a r b e f o r e w a s r e m o v e d a n d p l a c e d u p o n b o u g h s o f s y c a m o r e . L a s t l y , o n t h e t h i r t i e t h d a y o f K h o i a k t h e y r e p a i r e d t o t h e h o l y s e p u l c h r e , a s u b t e r r a n e a n c h a m b e r o v e r w h i c h a p p e a r s t o h a v e g r o w n a c l u m p o f P e r s e a- t r e e s . E n t e r i n g t h e v a u l t b y t h e w e s t e r n d o o r , t h e y l a i d t h e c o f f i n e d e f f i g y o f t h e d e a d g o d r e v e r e n t l y o n a b e d o f s a n d i n t h e c h a m b e r . S o t h e y l e f t h i m t o h i s r e s t , a n d d e p a r t e d f r o m t h e s e p u l c h r e b y t h e e a s t e r n d o o r . T h u s e n d e d t h e c e r e m o n i e s i n t h e m o n t h o f K h o i a k (251).

Note 6—On Bata
In the Bata tale, Bata ‘keeps’ his soul in an acacia tree blossom, which is cut down through trickery, and then transforms into either two sycamore or persea trees, during his transformational period of different forms, in which his ex-wife continually directs his slaying. His ex-wife desires the two trees be carved into two seats in the palace. When the trees are cut down, a splinter falls into her mouth and she becomes pregnant. Neumann writes: “[…] like the ocean, blossom and tree are archetypal places of mythical birth” (The Great Mother 241). Osiris and Bata both transform into bull and tree, among other manifestations. Neumann purports that Osiris’s emblem is the felled tree and that Isis found Osiris in the form of a tree in Byblos (The Origins and History of Consciousness 72). Neumann wants to correlate Bata and Osiris with Adonis, Attis and Tammuz as vegetation deities in relation with the Great Mother (ibid 73).

Osiris appears in a coffin in Byblos that bumps into a small shrub or tree and rests there. The tree quickly encases the coffin (variously identified as a tamarisk, Erica, sycamore or persea tree), while in the Bata legend, his soul hides in the blossom of an acacia tree, and later, in his second or third major transformation (the first being from human to human/acacia blossom or seed, the second from human to bull, and the third from bull’s blood to sycamore or persea trees), he becomes a pair of sycamore trees. [EndNote 15]
EndNote 15: Hathor, Nut and Tefnut are the goddesses most often affiliated with the sycamore tree, although Isis sometimes also makes an appearance as a sycamore goddess.

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Laviolette, Paul A. Beyond the Big Bang: Ancient Myth and the Science of Continuous
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Mackenzie, Donald. Egyptian Myth and Legend. Blackmask Online:
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Neumann, Erich. The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Bollingen Series 47. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1955.

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Potter, Scott Michael. “Nature’s Tenor: Trees as Vehicle.” Carpinteria, California: Pacifica Graduate Institute, Winter Quarter 2004.

Romer, John. Valley of the Kings. 1981. Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 2003.

Sauneron, Serge. The Priests of Ancient Egypt. Trans. Ann Morrissett. New York: Grove P, 1960.

Smith, Mark S. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. 1990. 2nd Ed. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 2002.

Stevens, Larry E. Consulting Ecologist. Exotic Tamarisk on the Colorado Plateau. http://www.cpluhna.nau.edu/Biota/tamarisk.htm. 14 June 2005.

von Franz, Marie-Louise. Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1980.

--. On Dreams & Death: A Jungian Interpretation. 1984. Trans. Emmanuel Kennedy-Xipolitas and Vernon Brooks. Chicago: Open Court, 1998.

--. “The Process of Individuation.” Man and His Symbols. By Eds. C.G. Jung and Marie-Lousie von Franz. New York: Dell Publishing, 1968. 157-254.

World2C TM Multimedia. Sfakia-Crete. Last update: 3 May 2003. http://www.sfakia-crete.com/sfakia-crete/tamarisk.html. 14 June 2005.

Long overdue eulogistic post

2005-07-15T02:36:00.000-07:00

News of my father’s death, which solidified his passing, filled me with odd mixtures of emotions and feelings some wrapped up securely in afterthoughts of long ago and others still feeling the glow of new. Every so often now, unlike each prior passing moment to minute to hour to period to afternoon to day to week to month, a ghost voice calls in my head…just so every often now, hear? That voice commands and deserves respect from surviving flame and rock, water and space, for it emanates from that same place from which all does. Commonly human beings speak of divine love, but rarely do they truly know its terror. For, only the most righteous of character, those who do not wrong any-thing or –one and love concretely to universally, will see the next phase in goodly manner. It prophetically utters of something unknown that will manifest later. Not now, for he is tired….

The Eulogy for James Nicholas Potter I follows:

Who was Jim Potter?

Was he the man of his plethora of stories?
An athlete of considerable prowess…
A hellion in Grandville forced into the Marines…
A fisherman—from whom not many got away…
A hunter at one with the land…

Or was he the man that some others saw?
A strict authoritarian…
A generous and benevolent friend…
A quick temper…
A beekeeper and tree-trimmer…
A fishing-hole zealot…
A gatherer of wildlife out of sanctioned season…

I know he was
A father…
A husband twice over…
A man bent on correcting the wrongs in his life…

In the end, if we face not ourselves and that part of us others know, unknown to us, with equanimity and candor, then we know little more than what we want to say we are…The Jim Potter I knew was headed down a path that wanted to move between the lines, blurring them into obscurity.

A Transformational Journey Through Dante’s Trees

2005-05-10T14:11:00.000-07:00

copyright 2005 Scott Michael Potter

A tree represents far more than its physical embodiment. In Aion: […], C.G. Jung writes: “The tree stands for the development and phases of the transformation process, and its fruits or flowers signify the consummation of the work” (235). Just as the tree stands for transformative elements according to Jung, it is my contention that trees also symbolize the current state of humanity, in moment and in transformation; so that a tree, in its condition as observed and described by Dante in Commedia, serves to illuminate how Dante views the condition and state, not only of himself as pilgrim on a journey, but of himself in a corresponding life moment. (Footnote 1) In The Origins and History of Consciousness, Erich Neumann writes of Adam as the “hero who imparts the new knowledge to mankind” (178). Since Dante imparts a new synthesis of Arabic thought, as well as of Islamic mythology (Joseph Campbell: Creative Mythology 128-144), Greek mythology (especially Apollo and Minerva), alchemical language (Footnote 2) and kabbalistic visions (Footnote 3)—all founded in Judeo-Christian mythology—Dante represents a new sort of Adam. In fact, the Commedia (organized by and through three terza rima poems), is a collection of three such transformative endeavors that serve to remythologize Christianity and combine it alchemically with Greek Mythology—while synthesizing time from its former linear passage to a course that spirals in eerie semblance of the psyche itself, with trees appearing at critical junctures to point out a new way. Dante, as pilgrim, finds journeying through the first two poems most difficult: transformations wrestle with his soul inducing bewilderment, fear, shame, terror, sleep, and passing out (the greatest moment of psychic upheaval). However, the ever-vigilant Virgil and the ever-present Beatrice, for whose love (and love of her) the journey unfolds bless Dante in their accompaniment to the final poem, wherein transformations of a deeper sort occur, such as faith and intelligence of the heart. All three poems require Beatrice’s love, and woven within the text, the Cosmic Tree flourishes as the Tree of Wisdom and The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This paper begins with the significance of the Cosmic Tree and then explores some of the trees and tree references that occur within each of the poems, in succession. The focus is on transformation throughout, with Love and Poesis in their archetypal fields, the main driving powers of it.

A brief exploration of the Cosmic Tree will demonstrate how it grows within the poem. The designation of a World Axis, World Tree, Cosmic Tree, Axial Tree, navel of the earth, and other terms that represent the center of the earth and a means to reach both above and below are represented by both tree and mountain most commonly. In A History of Religious Ideas: […], Eliade writes: “The Cosmic Tree is held to be at the center of the world, and it unites the three cosmic regions, for it sends its roots down into the underworld, and its top touches the sky” (42). In Images and Symbols […], Eliade states: “The soul of the deceased ascends the pathways up a mountain, or climbs a tree or a creeper, right up into the heavens” (49). That the Cosmic Tree informed Dante’s treatment of trees in Commedia proves self-evident, upon examining his usage of trees as portal-like thresholds to Hades, Purgatory and Paradise.

Footnote 1
If readers inquire as to how they feel while reading Commedia, it may also reflect the trees within. That the rose appears at the end of Paradiso concurs with Jung’s statement. Dante’s journey also resonates profoundly with the journey in which I now find myself, from the moment in the dark wood whilst hiking and filled with an ineffable anxiety the day of my father’s death; to later, upon hearing of my father’s death, experiencing that anxiety quickly transform into the descent into Hell; to continuing to make my way through the various stages of grieving and re-emergence. As this personal descent into Hell at first prevented me from writing and the later journey of it became integral to the writing process, I will share the parallels of Dante's journey with my own in the Appendix.

Footnote 2
Within Inferno, Dante names Simon Magus, the alchemist, along with his disciples, labeling them “Rapacious ones” who transform things of God into gold and silver (19.1-4); and speaks of alchemy counterfeiting “fine metals” (29.137); and relates the “falsifying of the coin” (30.115). The paper cites from Allen Mandelbaum’s translation.

Footnote 3
Possible Adam Kadmon references occur in Purgatorio, in Canto 22 (130-144); Canto 32, specifically: “‘Adam,’ I heard all of them murmuring, / and then they drew around a tree whose every / branch had been stripped of flowers and of leaves” (Purg. 32.37-39); and Canto 33 (64-72).

Moreover, it is not by accident that Dante writes trees and the mountain he climbs out of purgatory into the cantos, as they represent both threshold (Footnote 4) and transformative indicators for his personal changes and growth within Commedia. Dante names the Cosmic Tree that he employs as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree makes what may be its first appearance, analogously in Canto 16 of Purgatorio, when Marco, the Lombard, says: “[…] you have received both light / of good and evil, and free will, which though / it struggle in its first wars with the heavens, / then conquers all, if it has been well nurtured” (75-8). Marco refers to a knowing that Dante has already consumed of this Tree, which establishes an earlier influence, and I think means the life lived before this journey alongside the entire journey—in mythic time. (Footnote 5) In Canto 24, Dante states: “[…] and we—immediately—reached that great tree, / which turns aside so many prayers and tears. / ‘Continue on, but don’t draw close to it; / there is a tree above from which Eve ate, / and from that tree above, this plant was raised’” (Purg. 113-18). This is the first direct naming of the Cosmic Tree, whose doppelganger above breathes along with each word sung or uttered.
An exploration of Dante’s treatment of trees in Inferno must begin with its first three oft-quoted lines. Dante writes: “When I had journeyed half of our life’s way, / I found myself within a shadowed forest, / for I had lost the path that does not stray” (Inf. 1.1-3). Dante begins the first terza rima poem by placing special emphasis on the psychic and mythic parallels between the forest, and trees by extension, and a human life, the human condition or state of the soul. (Footnote 6) Journeying starts first within a shadowed forest, the dark wood where animals frighten and threaten (complexes and instincts) him (Inf. 1.1-12). The dark wood in the Middle Ages equated to being lost, black magic, the devil’s minions and fear, among others. (Footnote 7) He meets Virgil, the first guide, receiving some comfort, at the edge of the dark wood (Inf. 1.61-136). A few lines later, Dante says: “Therefore, if I consent to start this journey, / I fear my venture may be wild and empty” (Inf. 2.34-35). His hesitation, as a writer, mirrors the state of human psychological emotions and complexes related to the forest held among many of his contemporaries.

Footnote 4
Helen Luke, in Dark Wood to White Rose: […], writes: “The threshold of the entire journey is the dark wood of the beginning” (3).

Footnote 5
The Appendix has a short look at existence and the terza rima.

Footnote 6
Dante also names an underlying fear in Christianity of the woods, motivated mainly by the superstitions promulgated by the Church of witches and sorcerers that lived therein. Robert Pogue Harrison, in Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, writes: “[…] we may remark that the opening of the Divine Comedy may well be the first occurrence in literature of a motif that will later become archetypal: fear of the forest” (82). Although the fear of the forest may have become archetypal, and the rapid deforestation of much of Europe in the Middle Ages attests to this idea, the archetypal distinction of forest and trees as emblematic of the human condition is the focus of this paper.

Footnote 7
The authors Bechmann, Campbell, Chase, Frazer, Gaster, Gifford, Hageneder, Harrison, Lehner, Luke, Maser, Paterson, Perlman, Porteous, Skinner, and Telesko, among others, make this point.

He continues through an unidentified forest—a wood of limbo of sorts (Inf. 4.64-66), for it is mentioned as a passage to elsewhere and later something to be avoided and represents an extension of the dark woods—that recurs until the icy alpine (Inf. 12.1-2), the wood of the suicides (Inf. 13) and the wood of sorrow (Inf. 14). Dante, thus steps forward, in large part as a result of the comfort Virgil gives, reducing his fear, but needs to step backward again, which action is the giving into fear at the wood of the suicides, a movement that echoes the terza rima scheme. (Footnote 8) He describes his experience in the wood of the suicides, where he is terrified. Dante and Virgil encounter a modified Virgil’s Aeneid (Notes Inferno 574), where Harpies besiege the shades that become knotted, bleeding thornbushes (Inf. 13.1-151 and 14.1-3). Dante continually, from this point forward mentions knots and in so doing, has first Virgil and then other shades and finally Beatrice untying them. The metaphorical nature of knots then is not simply that of the twisted and deformed trees in the wood of the suicides, nor is it related only to the condition of the soul in torment, but, rather it is also related to the soul and trees becoming, metamorphosing, transforming into something more beautiful through the power of love and intelligence. The wood of the suicides rises up in a chorus of wailing, which may be seen as the very complexes or instincts in turmoil in their bleeding, filthy and forlorn misery. (Footnote 9) It is in the wood of the suicides that Dante encounters again the dead in fear of never being able to leave Hell, of waiting for someone, and/or of not ever being remembered as before in Cantos 4.76-78, 5.107, 6.40-42, and 10.60-72.

Footnote 8
As observed and stressed by Dennis Patrick Slattery (Pacifica Fall Lectures 2004).

Footnote 9
The occurrence of green, as a specific color mentioned by Dante numerous times throughout Commedia, gave rise to speculation about what he intended by its application. Marie-Louise von Franz, in On Dreams & Death: […], writes: “In the Middle Ages, green was considered to be the color of the Holy Spirit, of life, procreation and resurrection” (24). Thus, it is significant that the trees in the wood of the suicides had no green and were rather black, and only later, in purgatory and paradise is green mentioned. See Appendix for tree type speculation.

Consistent with Dante’s passion for setting the reader in the emotional quality of a theme, Dante first sets the feeling-tone in the woods, which will appear throughout the cantos, of the dead being in relationship with the living, just as the pilgrim is in relationship to his higher Self. He writes: “Love of our native city overcame me; / I gathered up the scattered boughs and gave / them back to him whose voice was spent already” (Inf. 14.1-3). Dante gathers up the complexes and instincts that induced terror and fear in him to transform into sorrow at such exposures as he has seen. This transformation is evidenced by the next woods encountered: “The wood of sorrow is a garland round it, / just as that wood is ringed by a sad channel” (Inf. 14.10-11). The dead continue to ask for Dante’s prayers even as far as his trek in Purgatory. As such, the feeling-tone of the wood of sorrow naturally shades Infernoand Purgatorio; until the first mentioning of the trees in that second book, for it is there that the next trees after the wood of sorrow finally appear.
The woods, then, become a place in which a transformative journey is enacted, from its less frightening aspects to its more terrifying ones. As Virgil guides Dante from the dark wood through the wood of limbo and the alpine unto the wood of the suicides and the wood of sorrow through the various circles of Hell, Virgil guides Dante through the course of his own psyche. (Footnote 10) The repeated emotions occurring throughout Inferno, reflective of the wood of sorrow, include grief, guilt, sorrow and mourning. Moreover, when Virgil instructs Dante to break a twig off of a thornbush in the wood of the suicides, and Dante instead tears a branch off, grievously harming the tree-shade, Dante faces his own psychic upheaval that begins with the dark wooded path, so that he might better ascend unto unity with Beatrice and eventually God, the Self. Dante writes:
“and from a great thornbush snapped off a branch, / at which its trunk cried out: ‘Why do you tear me?’ / And then, when it had grown more dark with blood, / It asked again: ‘Why do you break me off? / Are you without all sentiment of pity? / We once were men and now are arid stumps: / your hand might well have shown us greater mercy / had we been nothing more than souls of serpents’” (Inf. 13.32-9).

I think the dark aspects of the trees of Infernoreflect the shadow side of the Cosmic Tree and definitely form the basis for an understanding of the evil aspect contained in the Knowledge Tree. (Footnote 11)
The first significant tree appearance in Purgatorio is the downward tapering tree of Cantos 22 (130-144) and 23. Before this, however, Dante foreshadows his perch upon the Tree of Wisdom, when in Canto 7, Sordello says: “How seldom human worth ascends from branch / to branch, and this is willed by Him who grants / that gift, that one may pray to him for it” (Purgatorio 7.21-23). Emblematic of the transitional nature of the second terza rima poem, itself, the tree of Cantos 22 and 23 does not provide true sustenance; rather, it serves to feed the endless need of gluttony. However, it also foreshadows many more trees in Purgatorio to come. (Footnote 12) In Cantos 28-33 of Purgatorio, Dante experiences the following transformations requiring sacrifice: amazement due to lack of comprehension, not seeing deeper meanings, lamentation and anxiety related to sin (Purg. 28.1-142); the question that suggests he see deeper (Purg. 29.61-63); the tears shed for the loss of his guide Virgil (Purg. 30.49-57); his shame and guilt at being led astray by other countenances since Beatrice’s first struck him when nine, which allows him to see deeper (Purg. 30.94-145); unto a temporary loss of sight (Purg. 32.10-12) and return of it (Purg. 32.13-18); sleep (Purg. 32.62-69); then a reunion with Beatrice sitting on the root of Adam Kadmon (Purg. 32.85-108); the symbolic giving up of other women and amazement itself, “into the wood, so that I could not see / either the whore or the amazing beast” (Purg. 32.148-160); the disentanglement from fear and shame urged by Beatrice (Purg. 33.31-32); and, finally, the infusion of noble memories that illuminate his sight at the drinking of Eunoe: “I now returned / to Beatrice; remade, as new trees are / renewed when they bring forth new boughs, I was / pure and prepared to climb unto the stars” (Purg. 33.124-45). In Creative Mythology, Joseph Campbell suggests that Dante viewed Purgatory as “[…] the condition of a soul being purged of its pride and so readied to respond to the radiance of God’s love […]” (664). Yet, I think also, that the way to God’s radiant love is paved by the blissful and illuminating love of Beatrice, Dante’s anima, who is integrally interrelated to Virgil, his animus. One could see Beatrice as the guiding love that allows the lessons Virgil teaches to be grasped and integrated by Dante, in direct preparation for the lessons Beatrice will reveal in order for Dante to be open enough to receive God’s love.

Footnote 10
Virgil says: “[…] ‘The time has come to quit / this wood; see that you follow close behind me’” (Inf. 14.139-40).

Footnote 11
In the paper, “‘Crossing’ the Tree of Life,” I revision the biblical trees; this is The Tree of Knowledge of G. & E.

Footnote 12
Please see Appendix for a list of the main trees in Purgatorio.

The description of the final actual tree to appear in Purgatorio (as opposed to the reference to tree as metaphor or simile, as in the above-referenced final lines) occurs in Canto 33, where the inverted tree is described as emblematic of God’s justice:
“Your intellect’s asleep if it can’t see / how singular’s the cause that makes that tree / so tall and makes it grow invertedly. / And if, like waters of the Elsa, your / vain thoughts did not encrust your mind; if your delight in them were not like Pyramus / staining the mulberry, you’d recognize / in that tree’s form and height the moral sense / God’s justice had when He forbade trespass.” (Purg. 33.64-72).
Adam Kadmon, the upside down tree in kabbalistic practice, surely informed Dante’s inverted tree in Purgatorio. Kabbalists viewed the Tree in a similar fashion to Alchemists, in that everything that happens in our world affects the Tree, and conversely, everything that happens with the Tree affects our world—in other words: as above so below. This implies, not only an inclination toward equilibrium or balance, (Footnote 13) but also reiterates the archetypal significance of the Tree as indicative of human nature, as well as underscores the transformative influence of the Tree upon humanity. That the influence or significance of trees begins to shift in Purgatorio—such that the second movement ends with trees providing a wholly positive influence (if one is intelligent or awake enough to see), when in the Inferno, the trees of the dark wood, the wood of the suicides, and the wood of sorrow paused the action—parallels the dramatic shift in the attitude of the pilgrim, in the very state of the human condition, from where it starts to where it is capable of ending. From the transformation of the state of the human soul in its suffering and torture in Inferno, through the experiences of sorrow, penitence and eventual rapture in Purgatorio, leading finally, in Paradiso, to awe, as Dante writes: “the Love that moves the sun and other stars” (Paradiso 33.145), the trees reflect humanity’s state as they transform with humanity (as ever present at the transformation).
The abovementioned transformations occur within the Garden of Paradise, first at his entrance to it, then at the edge of it near the banks of the river Lethe, underneath the seven candelabra trees, and then unto Adam Kadmon, or Adam’s tree Footnote 14) as Mandelbaum identifies it, and finally at the river Eunoe, within earthly Paradise, from which underneath the Tree of Life flow four rivers, two of which are identified as Lethe and Eunoe. (Footnote 15) When Dante begins his trek to paradise, he does so in the final stanza of Purgatorio; as quoted above, he is remade and renewed, pure and prepared. Thus, the comparison of himself, and Beatrice by extension, to the rejuvenated tree reflects the notion of wholeness and integration, the kind required to visit heaven. Beatrice and Dante have formed a union, the first coniunctio in alchemical terms, which later will lead to further coniunctios.

Footnote 13
Dante makes the connection between tree and man a rather veiled one, but, his invoking of Adam Kadmon combined with his alchemical sensibilities make for what could be an interesting study on cultural exchange during his time. Please see Appendix for further thoughts on possible kabbalistic connections.

Footnote 14
For a cursory look at the meaning of ‘defrocking the tree’ as intentional deforestation, please see Appendix.

Footnote 15
See the Appendix for translation differences of Mandelbaum’s ‘visitor’ versus Harrison’s ‘forester.’

While it could be said that the most difficult part of the pilgrim’s journey is undertaken in Infernoand Purgatorio, nevertheless, a profound continuance of transformation unfolds in Paradiso, for it is Dante’s creative imagination and intelligence of the heart that continues to undergo transformation with the assistance of Beatrice, as well as the development of his faith.
Dante’s usage of forests and trees to approximate the state of his psyche throughout his journey makes the idyllic paradisal forest an apt allegory for the condition of his soul after the alchemical journey through Inferno and Purgatorio. Jung, in Four Archetypes: […], writes:
The alchemist saw the union of opposites under the symbol of the tree, and it is therefore not surprising that the unconscious of present-day man, who no longer feels at home in his world and can base his existence neither on the past that is no more nor on the future that is yet to be, should hark back to the symbol of the cosmic tree rooted in this world and growing up to heaven—the tree that is also man. In the history of symbols this tree is described as the way of life itself, a growing into that which eternally is and does not change; which springs from the union of opposites and, by its eternal presence, also makes that union possible (43-44).
In Canto 24 of Paradiso, faith as substance and as evidence requires the expression of its truth in order to be proven by its acts unfolding within the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; and I would say the Tree of Wisdom, or Sophia, is exactly the tree Dante climbs with St. Peter (Par. 24.115-123). The encircling of Dante three times by the “apostolic light” of St. Peter (Par. 24.151-154) again reminds the reader of the importance of more than polar oppositions in tension, and is indicative of attainment of deeper wisdom, along with the acceptance of Dante’s faith (Footnote 16) as worthy of further spheres of heaven. Without climbing the Tree of Wisdom, which is the Cosmic Tree in another form, Dante would not have transformed and the journey would end.
The trees within the Commedia act as threshold and liminality signposts or billboards of what is to come, and in some cases, more aptly than words describe, the situation and quality of Dante’s transformation within his pursuit of Beatrice. (Footnote 17) The trees also represent a threshold of psychic disintegration, integration and reintegration of not only death, but also rebirth and love. Jung, in Jung on Christianity, states: “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell” (82). For Dante, the trees signify an entry into hell and while there, the misery of the fractured psyche; (Footnote 18) and then in purgatory, the continual process of transformation and its associated pains; while in paradise, the forest is emblematic of Eden, representing his achievement of psychic rebirth and renewal. However, it is not simply love or even divine love that moves Dante forward on his trek. It is, rather, an individuated seeing and then a unification of his animus merging with his anima. Even after this unification, Dante does not wholly leave behind the image of the tree. (Footnote 19) The garlands change from those of laurel to various flowers (lilies or roses most often) to angelic lights. Nevertheless, the garlands continually remind this reader of Daphne, the unrequited love of Apollo, whose transformation into a laurel tree denied Apollo the chance at consummation and led to his wearing (and much later conferring of it to victorious poets in Olympic games) of the crown of laurel. Thus, Dante overcomes the same error by transforming at Beatrice’s behest. Like Dante, as I see it, the importance of trees in psychic transformation and renewal has made itself clear as light that blinds and rekindles vision.

Footnote 16
The Appendix contains an exploration of Dante’s faiths.

Footnote 17
Before concluding, I believe that it would be particularly relevant to compare certain of the “same” lines in each of the terza rimas to one another (Cantos 24, lines 115-17); please see Appendix for the breakdown.

Footnote 18
In the Appendix is an exploration of Psyche as Dante and Eros as Beatrice.

Footnote 19
The Appendix also contains a quick look at transformation relating to Dante’s trees.

Appendix

In the Appendix are footnotes and notes. Footnotes 1, 5, 9, and 12-19 address the following, in succession: personal journey (12-19), existence is a terza rima (19), tree type speculation (19-20), main trees in Purgatorio (20), possible Dantean kabbalistic connections (20-21), defrocking the tree (21), visitor or forester (21), Dante’s faiths (21-22), Christianity in a nutshell (22), Psyche-Dante/Eros-Beatrice (22-25), and Dante’s trees in transformation (25); Notes 1-5 address the following ideas: Life Tree (25-26), stages of alchemical process (26), the seven women in Commedia (26), Dante’s revisioning of deforestation (26-27), and the trees of Commedia (27-41).

Footnote 1: Personal journey [material contained in the body of the paper will be in brackets]

Dante’s journey resonates profoundly with my current journey: from the moment in the dark wood whilst hiking and filled with an ineffable anxiety the day of my father’s death; to later, upon hearing of my father’s death, experiencing that anxiety quickly transform into the descent into Hell; to continuing to make my way through the various stages of grieving and re-emergence. As this personal descent into Hell at first prevented me from writing—the wood of the suicides rose up in a chorus of wailing, as the branch that was my father broke from the living family tree to be rejoined to the dead family tree—and the later journey of it became integral to the writing process, it is a process that is critical to this paper, albeit beyond the scope of the body. It is only through the grace of Lisé’s love, just as in Dante’s case Beatrice’s love motivates him to endure and persevere through imagined horrors, and the energy of poesis, which Dante sees in Virgil’s form while invoking the Muses and Apollo, that I am able to finally complete this paper.

The following is the eulogy written for my father’s funeral:

Who was Jim Potter?

Was he the man of his plethora of stories?
An athlete of considerable prowess…
A hellion in Grandville forced into the Marines…
A fisherman—from whom not many got away…
A hunter at one with the land…

Or was he the man that some others saw?
A strict authoritarian…
A generous and benevolent friend…
A quick temper…
A beekeeper and tree-trimmer…
A fishing-hole zealot…
A gatherer of wildlife out of sanctioned season…

I know he was
A father…
A husband twice over…
A man bent on correcting the wrongs in his life…

In the end, if we face not ourselves and that part of us others know, unknown to us, with equanimity and candor, then we know little more than what we want to say we are…The Jim Potter I knew was headed down a path that wanted to move between the lines, blurring them into obscurity.

Overall, he was a storyteller

In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell writes: “The man hero […] must ‘descend’ to re-establish connection with the infrahuman” (319). This infrahuman might be a shade in Dante’s Commedia, as in my father’s spirit or soul in the afterworld, or it could also be seen as the psychological characteristics of the psyche in rupture (as during grieving), such as activated complexes and instinctual processes gone dormant or in turmoil. [Thus when Virgil instructs Dante to break a twig off and Dante instead tears a branch off, grievously harming the tree-shade-soul-spirit, Dante is indeed facing his own psychic upheaval that begins with the dark wooded path, so that he might better ascend unto unity with Beatrice and eventually God, the Self.] I see this as relevant in the grieving process already underway, as I am continuously facing activated complexes and bloody stumpy instincts calling for misery and wallowing.

Dante knew the process of grieving, which is exemplified by the following passage from Inferno. He states: “I did not die, and I was not alive; / think for yourself, if you have any wit, / what I became, deprived of life and death” (34.25-27). This idea of a tension of the opposites of life and death, of living and being dead, revolves at the heart of the grieving process for one’s parent, particularly in experiencing the first death of an immediate family member. Whilst grieving, especially in the first week, writing a eulogy, traveling from West to Midwest, placing my hands upon my dead father as I voiced my sadness at his passing and joy for the lessons he imparted, attending the funeral and speaking the eulogy, placing my hands upon the casket in the hearse and saying goodbyes, there were times when I watched the veil between the living and the dead obscure and when I knew not whether I myself were actually in the land of the dead, bleak as it was in my dreams. (The fact that my father was a storyteller is made: thus, he actively mythified, or mythologized, his life.)

This inner guide, the one who illuminates and opens vision and heart to the path out of Hell, must then be one that is rooted firmly within the psyche, an anima and/or animus of known and experienced dimensions. Campbell relates some passages from Dante’s Vita Nuova that speak directly to his encounter with Beatrice when they were but nine. The passion and possession-like quality of Dante’s words speak not only to love, but also to the affect she had on his spirit: a trembling knowledge of his bliss appearing before him (Creative Mythology 68). This trembling of the spirit, upon meeting Lisé and conversing with her, initially, and then, much greater affectation during the private performance of our marriage ceremony, which brings with it knowledge of many past journeys together forms the kernel of an expanding and deepening love beyond Adolescence comprehension, and perhaps only possible in Manhood or later.

That Lisé and I performed our wedding ceremony on Pentecost—the commemoration of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles on the seventh day after Easter—provides even deeper affiliations with a Dante-esque journey, as it provides the allegorical reference to the calendar and is a religious holiday, not too far removed in a year (ten days separate them) from the Good Friday—the commemoration of Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, the Friday before Easter—on which Dante’s journey begins. Paul Ricoeur, in “Introduction: The Symbolic Function of Myths,” writes of the Christian myth: “Thus the myth has an ontological bearing: it points to the relation […] between the essential being of man and his historical existence” (329). Thus, the parallel between the significance of having lived several lives with another before being with them again in recognition surfaces.

Lisé is Virgil and any other tapped into poesis, but, also, simultaneously the passionate ardor of love that swells within and spreads to all branches of my existence and essential beingness during this unique incarnation. In Lisé, I have found the combination of Virgil and Beatrice (and one could argue Statius as well, since she is a phenomenal editor): the androgynous, yet completely either gender as needed or provided, for she guides me into and through situations formerly only read and imagined with loving kindness and spiritual wisdom, both expanding continuously. J.F. Bierlein, in Living Myths: […], writes: “For us, myths are a way to know where we have been and work through the complex maze of our own existence. And for us, [as for Dante], love guides us through that maze” (136). As the loving Virgil, and then Beatrice guided Dante, Lisé guides me through this particular maze of grieving, a rite of passage, initiation and descent to ascent.

Dante’s usage of four senses: literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical, in constructing and weaving the greatest spiritual Christian and Greek Mythological poem, find some similarities in the journey I now embark upon. The literal aspect is as Campbell, in Creative Mythology, states: “[…] the passage of himself out of the ‘dark wood’ in which he had been lost […]” (540), In Thinking Through Myths: […], Mary Gerhart and Melvin Russell write: “Myth is a narrative that, because it is a narrative, must contain elapsed time (which is the same as scientific time). But a myth is a narrative that takes place not at a particular time in history (historical time) but at any time” (200). Dante’s journey certainly contains both scientific time with its myriad historical references, and mythic time in that it resonates today with not only others, but the journey that I am on. He captures the archetypal journey, and presents it alongside the archetypal fear of the forest, guilt, sorrow and love, and more relevant to this paper than any other—the illumination of conscious transformation through treed poesis. In doing so, Dante provides a metaphorical account of inner workings of some mythologies previously identified. Vincent Hopper, in Medieval Number Symbolism: […], writes: “At night, Dante is in the forest, the ‘state of misery’” (156). That state of misery corresponds to the grief that overwhelms at times, incapacitating me, and that blocked writing in meaningful fashion. The moral aspect is identified by Campbell as being “the turning of the heart from sensual to spiritual concerns” (Creative Mythology 540), and it is within this realm of turning I now find myself thanks to the abiding and guiding love and spirituality of Lisé.

We have begun anew the Tibetan Rites, which truly open the heart and mind, and, as they reorient the chakras or energy systems within the body, it allows for a more full experience of any emotions, especially those affiliated with grief and love. Practicing the Tibetan Rites combined with speaking of the psychological ramifications of my father’s death, seeing the alchemical sense of this grieving process and then also expressing it through an embodied dialogue that utilizes and sees the psyche as only whole when unified in gender and with transforming nature, imbues Lisé and I with connectivity beyond our initial coniunctios. I think that eventually, our developing dialogue, opening love and spiritual practices, since they point upward, inward and outward to, as Campbell writes about Dante’s anagogical sense: “mysteries beyond the reach of sight sound, word, or symbol” (Creative Mythology 541), shall lead unto another coniunctio comparative to the third coniunctio as defined by Jeffrey Raff in The Wedding of Sophia: […]. In Myths to Live by, Campbell also speaks of the Dantean voyage being both outward and inward, “to the sources of all great acts, which are not out there, but in here, in us all, where the Muses dwell” (233).

According to Campbell, Dante writes of four stages in a life compared to an arch in the Convito, that of Adolescence, Manhood (twenty-five to forty-five, with temperance, courage, love, courtesy and loyalty as virtues), Age, and Decrepitude (Creative Mythology 633-34). Thus, as I am thirty-nine, I am in Dante’s Manhood stage, and am relying mainly on the virtues of courage, temperance and love to wind my way from the current purgatory, which ascent has been achieved after first climbing out of the initial icy and fiery Hell of great sorrow after hearing of my father’s death. Campbell writes:
The critical period of the transit, then, […] is the period of the mid-span of twenty years of manhood, at the middle of which, at the apogee, the adventure of the dark wood will occur: the crucifixion, death, descent to Hell, and passage through Purgatory to Paradise—and return, then, to the service of the world (Creative Mythology 634).
With only six years of Manhood left, and having already decided to be led, to be open to life and allow whatever unfolds to present itself, to listen consciously to what my inner voices tell me and what they reveal, Pacifica revealed herself inside a trial Parabola, and the service to others could best be exemplified by the editorial duties for between. What rumbles between the words freshly stated, percolates as the creative illness (what I had always been referring to as the point in my life when I just let myself go crazy for a year and a half, living in subsidized housing and only waiting tables within walking distance at a fine dining restaurant in downtown Grand Rapids, quickly became a creative illness after reading Ellenberger) endured a full year before ordering a trial subscription to Parabola. Undergoing that experience opened the floodgates, as did one much shorter experienced five years previous, of emotional, psychological and spiritual growth. Without that experience, this journey underway would not be possible at the depth with which it does fill me.

Additionally, Campbell relates that servant to master, friend to friend, parent for child, spouses for each other, and passionate illicit love, comprise the five categories of love recorded in Hindu scriptures. He sees passionate love and compassionate love forming poles of opposites in tension (Myths to Live by 151-53). Lisé and I experience a little of each of these types of love, and throughout our mythical interaction, we have each fulfilled the opposite roles and poles of love and loving. In Transformation: Emergence of the Self, Murray Stein writes: “The power of Eros to constellate the psyche and to change human lives has been acknowledge from time immemorial” (72). What remains central in our mutual transformation, especially considering my father’s death and her mother’s current heart condition, is abiding and tended love. Such love, when regularly tended, yields a timeless quality to existence. Hubert Benoit, in Zen and the Psychology of Transformation: […], writes that such “suspension of time announces our reintegration with the eternity of the instant” (232). The ‘eternity of the instant’ is central to Dante’s Commedia, even as it blooms within the wrapping, paradoxically, of a calendrical Christian cycle. His encounters and travels defy time and although adhering to the day and night cycles—of movement, reflection and rest to action, reflective of the terza rima structure, psyche and nature in its system of changes—there yet remains that timeless quality best exemplified by love and its transformative power.

The trees of Commedia, in demonstrating the parallels in Dante’s psychic transformation along his journey to Beatrice, speak to his successful integration of both death and love, among other things. Alchemy embraces love and death as integral motivators to transformation, just as psychic transformation finds few motivators more vital than love or death. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung writes on death: “[…] it is brutal not only as a physical event, but far more so psychically: a human being is torn away from us, and what remains is the icy stillness of death” (314). The manner in which we understand and deal with the death of a loved one, the beloved dead as they lay, and the delayed dying of dearly loved critically ill or incapacitated, owes its foundations to the parental unit and early foundational authorities who imparted their versions of wisdom to comprehension, love to compassion, and understanding to empathy.

Such a methodology of grieving, sadness, joviality and denial, thinking abstractly to logically imaginative to imaginally-creative taps into poesis and aesthesis as two energies of creating and perceiving fill us with insights and whimsies. Campbell writes: “Creativity consists in going out of the way to find the thing that society hasn’t found yet” (The Hero’s Journey 192). Creativity exists inside, and the gift of poesis, of making or creating things, resides within each of us. It is not so much that society has not found creativity, but rather that they forgot they had it. And if we read, alternatively, that Campbell meant to say that the artist engages in creativity by discovering unknowns that society has no knowledge of, then this lumps science in with the arts and goes to prove the point further, that we all retain poesis within—what we need do is find that which we did not know, namely the poesis within and creation opens to us. Frithjof Schuon, in Esoterism as Principle and as Way, writes: “The aesthetic sensation—as we have often remarked—possesses in itself an ascending quality: it provokes in the contemplative soul, directly or indirectly, a recollection of the divine essences” (234). Openness of mind, heart and body is a state that is necessary to reclaim the aesthesis-poesis connection. It is a way to climb the trees to get in touch with the Garden. The crucial manner in which aesthesis and poesis interrelate, in a helixically fractal way, has been covered in greater detail in several other papers. The idea of interrelationship and interconnectedness is an ancient one that enjoys an upsurge of recent scientific endorsement with systems process theory and confluences of fields emblematic in such books as Michael Conforti’s Field, Form, Fate: […], and Paul Laviolette’s Beyond the Big Bang. As I see aesthesis and poesis as archetypal energies, they necessarily exist and exert influences—one example is the creative genius of Dante, another one could be seen as filling the minds of all writers, especially poets, with erospoetic energy—and interrelate, so that when one is present, the other has the potential to arise and take possession of the field at any moment. The bridges between the two fields of energy, as wormholes in space (now since proven to exist at the molecular level in measurements that suggest possibilities on larger scales), provide for either energy, or the possibility of others, if the conduit is availed.

The methodology of grieving, once scrutinized, also transforms into various veins, but, one in particular pulses loudest, that of the journey. A journey, however, understates the gravity of the situation at hand, for, now this journey undergone, paints and jousts a Dantesque meaning and process. Truly, if one actively reads Dante’s masterful Commedia, one cannot help but witness complementarities to synchronistic events unfolding in one’s surround, thus, proving the veracity of Dante’s psychologizing and philosophical intelligence flexing in the act of poesis to the highest degree. Yes, the lives of readers of Dante’s entire treatment of Eros and Psyche—only reversing the gender and with minor variations and adaptations to more closely resemble Christianity—shall see the beginning of the journey to find the coveted prize leads to the deepest descent beyond reckoning in the Arabic icy cellars of the 12th-13th century Hell. It is such an icy chill that fills one’s body upon hearing of the death of their father, a veritable living Hell; the same place as the bottom of the nigredo in alchemical treatments that leads unto the albedo and rubedo and others, depending, which also parallel the trek to Eros/Beatrice that Dante makes.

The three stages in the Lesser Mysteries involve confronting the contents of one’s own unconscious, especially helpful and healing during the grieving process (which could be seen as an illness). Robert Sardello, in the Foreword to Ziegler’s Archetypal Medicine, writes: “If one tries to begin to work with one’s own illnesses in an archetypal way […] it may at first be like entering a dark forest, where shadows constantly pop up as seeming realities” (iii). This dark forest is the Dantesque dark wood that opened before me a month ago. Alchemically, it would be similar to the dissolution phase. According to Dennis William Hauck, in The Emerald Tablet: […], calcination, the first step of alchemy in many systems, represents “a burning off of pretenses and unworkable belief systems that hinder our progress.” Dissolution marks the descent into the deep unconscious “to free us from unexamined compulsive or obsessive behavior,” which the undesirable or inferior aspects of the personality are then “cast out in Separation.” Once these find completion and are brought together in the Conjunction, a “new belief system and union of opposing mental forces” provides harmonic “balancing and compatibility of the elements within” (420). What one then faces in the alchemical process of transformation presents similars in the Buddhist traditions: the sacrificing of the ego in order to realize a connection with the innermost guide and God-image, the Self. Virgil and Beatrice form this image of the Self for Dante, as Lisé fills the role for me.

The following alchemical stages form the Greater Mysteries. The first step of which is characterized by the terms Putrefaction (the Dark Night of the Soul) and Fermentation: “a combination of death and rebirth,” new life infusing the old ego (or self), until the Quintessence—the soul and unborn or transforming Self remains. Fermentation (inspiration and living imagination), Distillation and Coagulation revolve around transforming the Quintessence (Hauck 421). Dante (and I through reading the Commedia and my father’s death and ensuing grieving process) finds the death and rebirth phases in the descent into Hades and the climb upwards in purgatory. Statius appears as a manifestation of this rebirth, a soul awakened and called to Paradise, echoing the movement of Dante’s pilgrim (his psyche) to reunion with Beatrice. Distillation forges a transcendence of archetypal energies and a raising of consciousness in order to do so, unto bonding with the Self. In Coagulation, then, one centers and accepts this transformation (Hauck 423), which could be seen as conforming to Jung’s notion that without reflection there is no real experience. It is not until Dante revisits a number of his ailments, shame and guilt among them, that he is able to form a union with Beatrice such that she guides him into the realms of Paradise.

Dante first must confront memories and the eradication of his attachments to them, as he does when baptized in Lethe (the rebirth symbolized), and then secondly, learn the art of rememory and keener sight, as he does after drinking from Eunoe (symbolizing the transforming self). The seven Arcanum of alchemy as detailed by Hauck’s interpretation of the Egyptian Emerald Tablet include the following: 1) Whatever remains Below becomes its own worst enemy. 2) The way to truth is through Intelligence of the Heart. 3) Every created thing carries the signature of its creator. 4) Continued enlightenment comes from living within the Operation of the Sun. 5) The gateway to the Above is through the True Imagination. 6) Your feelings and thoughts are the feelings and thoughts of the Whole Universe. 7) The Stone is a purified consciousness that remains intact on all levels of reality (424-31). Dante does not remain below, and in fact, those parts of him relating to the various circles of Hell could be said to have been revisited and then exorcized therein, partially, and then more fully as both Virgil and Beatrice point them out during their interactions. Dante’s intelligence of the heart rings throughout the Commedia, in which he sees interconnectedness of all. Dante continually requests aid from Apollo, the sun-god, and in numerous passages describes the brightness of the sun. Only through Dante’s imagination does the journey unfold, and he repeatedly understands that feelings and thoughts are universal. Dante finally demonstrates that he grasps the Stone in his explanation of the “Living Light.” He writes: “for It is always what It was before” (Par. 33.111). Dante expresses his intelligence and erospoetic qualities with the expert syncretizations of Beatrice, Apollo and Virgil. The ability to transform manifests in Statius, as he ascends out of purgatory, but, as I argued in the paper and will again, the trees truly perform this function with greater degrees of obviousness to subtlety and dimensions.

I too have entered the underworld, whose heaving underbelly was unbearable grief, and I too have a love that brings me up from such depths of sorrow as never experienced, and asks of me to climb even higher than the heights of keenest sight. Lisé unconsciously and consciously fills the roles that Beatrice filled for Dante, and it is precisely her love that empowers me to continue to write, to research, and to finish this dissertation. Upon my father’s death, the numbness that filled me overwhelmed. It was that Arabic icy chill of Hades Dante names wherein I anguished. Lisé offered wisdom, compassion, silence when needed, love beyond what naming can accomplish, an attentive ear, and admonishments and encouragement to continue this process. I see an alchemical marriage that we live, without trying to make it so, a marriage of tensions of opposites living harmoniously. I see this as what the divine couples of Apollo-Daphne, Psyche-Eros and Persephone-Hades desired and the latter two did achieve. The latter two succeeded because both pairs eventually forged a unified approach, the former because they did not.

Dante demonstrates a move from the archetypal field of Apollo-Daphne unrequited love unto a more realized love of Psyche-Eros and Persephone-Hades. His love becomes more adult and more aware through transformation, whereas the love of Apollo for Daphne was barred by her transformation, Dante’s transformations (and mine) allow for deeper love with Beatrice (or Lisé). As sad as it may sound, the love I have for Lisé may have contained a bit of the Apollo-Daphne unrequited love remnants while my father yet lived. For, unconsciously, I have realized, that there remained a part of me who knew my father would rescue me (as Daphne was rescued after requesting her beauty be transformed) if I needed such assistance and once he died, that complex surfaced within my mourning. The past five years his rescue function related to finances and to blame for certain wrong actions, but prior to that it included a litany of things. My father no longer lives, physically, and so to rely on him to save me from financial ruin or to blame him for my own actions results in a vicious loop that I cannot afford to travel any longer: an unending circularly gray treadmill in purgatory. Lisé has shown these realizations to me, in her wise admonishments, soothing and calm presence, both in a lunar and solar consciousness, as displayed in Beatrice’s aid to Dante.

In The Hero’s Journey, Campbell refers to the four major functions of myth, the last being “pedagogical, carrying the individual through the stages of his life” (161); this then, is the mythological function that Dante’s masterpiece serves, and is also a parallel guide to Lisé’s function in my life. Further growing the role of Lisé as guide, is the fact that her birth force number, determined by adding up all the numbers of one’s day of birth, numerologically is a 2, and my father died on April 2nd, which is the 92nd day of the year. 9+2=11, and 1+1=2, so that, numerologically, my father died on the same day as the number significance of my guide’s day of birth. Hopper relates that Hugo of St. Victor designated the two as symbolic of the “love of God” (102), and, that the Duad represents evil as well (108). Therefore, the symbolic import of the two could be seen as both the evil that stopped a heart and the love of God that some say my father would meet in heaven, as well as the evil of melancholic sorrow that drew me into hell and the love of God that I am enveloped by in Lisé. The fact that Pope John Paul II died on the same day only lends greater meaning to the numinous currents of the journey underway.

The strongest power in Dante’s Commedia that resonates with me is love. J. F. Bierlein, in Living Myths: […], writes: “It is in romantic love that we see the enormous transforming power of love at work in the process of becoming” (40). Bierlein continues: “Our process of becoming is always in, with, and through others” (40). Dante’s pilgrim, Dante, Virgil, Statius, Beatrice and the reader, all transform through the power of love, even if the reader only reads of love and knows it not, transformation yet occurs. Frithjof Schuon, in Roots of the Human Condition, writes: “‘All my thoughts speak of love,’ said Dante in a sense at once terrestrial and celestial” (119). Love serves to transform him as he seeks to discover the mysteries of the afterlife. Schuon continues: “In loving woman, man tends unconsciously towards the Infinite, and for that very reason he has to learn to do so consciously, by interiorizing and sublimizing the immediate object of his love; just as woman, in loving man, tends in reality towards the Absolute, with the same transpersonal virtualities” (43). The complete transformation of Dante, through his love of Beatrice, parallels the transformation of myself through the love of Lisé. But, it is more than my love of Lisé, or Dante’s love of Beatrice that makes such monumental transformation possible, it is additionally the love of Lisé for me and Beatrice for Dante, as well as the energy that is created by these loves—the Third—that moves one through difficult transitions. The love Lisé and I share grows within the aegis of the old-growth Coastal Redwoods of northern California, twelve of which grow on our property, accompanied by the recently planted four maples, fourteen birches, crab apple, and flowering Anjou. [Like Dante, as I see it, the importance of trees in psychic transformation and renewal has made itself clear as light that blinds and rekindles vision.] Within this section, I have discussed numerous topics, all relating in one way or another to my own journey that began the moment my father’s ‘shade’ followed me in the woods the day he died. Dante knew grieving and alchemy, even though he mentions it with disdain in most cases, the continual usage of symbolism and the colors of alchemical language force the question as to whether or not he himself was an alchemist. The journey for me opens a path filled with mythic and scientific time in cahoots that wends its way in literal, moral, anagogical, allegorical and metaphorical manner with expert guidance by Lisé. It is her love that keeps me moving through the most difficult of times, as Beatrice aided Dante.

Footnote 5: Existence is a terza rima

David Loye, in An Arrow Through Chaos: […], succinctly sums up David Bohm’s notion of existence as being the following: David Bohm saw the implicate order consisting of an unseen reality of nonmanifested hologrammic potential being unfolded in manifest form in the explicate order of seen reality, which then enfolded back into the nonmanifested unseen reality (154). As Bohm sees manifest and nonmanifest realities or orders, correspondingly, Jung saw the unconscious archetypes, drives and instincts informing consciousness, which then in turn informed the unconscious in similar terms, and so too, Dante’s terza rima invention moves the psyche to and fro and back and forth in time between nonmanifested unseen reality or the unconscious—imaginary creations of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven based partially on read material and partially on dreams and engaged and active poesis—and manifested seen reality or consciousness: historical characters, places, referents, etc.

Footnote 9: Unconscious and conscious potentials for wood of suicides trees and cosmic tree

What type of trees might Dante have been unconsciously reminded of when contemplating the wood of the suicides? Quite possibly, the stunted and twisted elder, for, according to Jane Gifford in The Wisdom of Trees, it was long associated with the underworld, witches, death and related inner mysteries, and was said to contain the power of a goddess to heal, while also asking of people to accept the inevitability of death and how one might be remembered after death (134). Certainly, with the naming of thorns and briers, consciously, Dante imagined a connection to a thorny tree, such as the blackthorn, a knobby and twisted shape, which sports vicious thorns and which also has connections to the underworld and Hecate. In Tree Wisdom […], Jacqueline Memory Paterson writes: “Blackthorn was condemned as a ‘witch’s tool’ and was purposefully used as a wood of the pyres to burn countless innocent people to death” (87-88). Paterson continues: “An added incentive to the witch-hunt was that if when you broke the branch it turned red and ‘bled’, you would be granted an extra boon” [my italics] (280). With such superstitious knowledge of the blackthorn in common parlance by the seventh century in European literature, Dante surely would have heard of this in his varied learning, and thus, it seems hardly a stretch to connect the elder and blackthorn to Dante. That both the blackthorn and elder have healing properties as well only serves to remind of the alchemical process and movement of the terza rima, for it requires the descent to ascend, the death for rebirth, and so on. However, when watching a movie recently, “The Princess Bride,” the coppiced trees of the English countryside made many appearances in the background. Willows and oaks that have been coppiced for thousands of years contain so many faces and body parts in their knobby and twisted trunks, that I cannot help but think that Dante, having seen such trees in smaller form most likely (probably only five- to eight-hundred years at his time) would have been captivated by the anthropomorphic pulsing of the bark.

In Patterns in Comparative Religion, Mircea Eliade mentions a number of potential influences on Dante’s thought concerning the inverted tree of Purgatorio. The inverted tree occurs in cultures sure to have exerted some ‘mythological background programs (in a Millerian sense)’ to that of Christianity. Eliade lists inverted trees from the Babylonian tradition, the black Kiskanu (which inversion is inferred, the rest definitely); Indian tradition, the Asvattha; the Sabean-Platonic tradition whereby Plato compares man to an inverted tree; the Zohar (ascribed to 2nd century, but most likely translated or written by Moses de Leon who died in 1305, while Dante wrote Commedia after he was banished in 1302, there is no doubt that the Kabbalah had already spread from Spain by then)—with Adam Kadmon; and, the Islamic tradition with the “Tree of Happiness” (271-75). The notion of the cosmic tree was surely firmly rooted in Dante’s unconscious: with Yggdrasil to the north/northeast, and the Trees of Life and Knowledge of Good and Evil from his revered Christianity within, Kiskanu to the southeast/east, Asvattha to the southeast, Plato to the East, Osiris to the south/southeast, Adam Kadmon to the west, Asherah and Astarte (who also occur in biblical scripture) in Mesopotamian cultures to the east/southeast, among others.

Footnote 12: The main trees in Purgatorio

The Eve-eaten-tree offspring in Heaven in Canto 24; the divine forest of Canto 28; the seven golden trees in Canto 29; the empty tall woods and the reflowering tree named Adam of Canto 32; and Adam the inverted tree of Canto 33. All of these trees serve to drive the Jewish, Christian and Pagan mythological views of the tree in a serious thrust to warrant Dante’s push onward into Paradiso.

Footnote 13: Possible kabbalistic connections to Dante

Robert Valens Rugl, in The Glory of the World (part 3), writes: “Hence man may be compared to an inverted tree: for he has his roots, or his hair, in the air, while other trees have their hairs, or their roots, in the earth” (Sacred Texts). What proves significant about Rugl’s comparison, is that he makes it in the case of Alchemy, not Kabbalah, where the Tree is seen as inverted. He goes on to say, “And of our Stone, too, the Sages have justly said that it has its head in the earth, and its root in the air” (Sacred texts). Rugl, hereby demonstrates a stunning analogy between the Arbor philosophica, which is the Philosopher’s Stone, and the inverted Kabbalah Tree. That Dante knew of both Alchemy and the Kabbalah hardly seems questionable today. In The Heritage of Trees: […], Fred Hageneder relates the spread of kabbalism in Europe during the twelfth century. He writes: “In the twelfth century, the ancient lore of Judaism, the Kabbala, started to spread, and blossomed through the Middle Ages, especially in Spain, France and in Germany south of the river Rhine” (162). Certainly, if the Kabbalah spread to Spain, then it reached Italy by Dante’s time and must have formed one of the areas of study for the intellects. The manner in which some of these texts depicted trees shows striking similarities with Dante’s trees, which might be coincidental, but hardly seems so.

Footnote 14: ‘Defrocking the tree’

Luke writes: “They come to a huge barren tree in the midst of the green wood, the Tree of Knowledge; and here Beatrice descends from the car and the Gryphon binds the pole of the chariot, which is the image of the Cross, to its trunk” (112). Scholars seem wont to focus on the allegory of the Church and papal splitting in this passage, yet in this imagery, of the Church ‘defrocking’ the tree (which is arguably Adam, Beatrice and Adam Kadmon at the same time), is a reality of the Church irresponsibly chopping down all trees determined to be focal points of Pagan worship. Why is this obvious reference not made and so oft overlooked by scholars? I think it is a conditioned response; one borne of the unconscious state of awareness of separation from Nature, a shadow of this condition. We must ask ourselves in a work so densely packed as Dante’s, why would Beatrice and the others be seated on the root of the tree when Dante comes to and sees them? The position of being in or on a tree or parts of it is akin to that of the seeker and attainer of enlightenment, one reflective of not only Buddha and Odin, but also Christ.

Footnote 15: Translating ‘visitor’ or ‘forester’

It is significant that in discussing the import of the paradisal forest of Purgatorio, Harrison uses a translation that speaks to Dante being a ‘forester’ (Forests: […] 85), versus the Mandelbaum translation of ‘visitor’ in canto 32, line 100, because this puts the emphasis more squarely on the mythical nature of forests as integral and vital places of renewal and reinvigoration. Instead of stressing the fact that one visits them, as in one only sees and possibly treks throughout them, one communes with them, as only a forester can and does in the process of maintaining the forest. The maintenance of his newly forged psyche after probing the perils of Hell proves paramount to Dante in order for him to fully engage the potentialities of Heaven and his ‘reunion’ with Beatrice. In this sense, Dante has newly emerged from his brush with death, the dead and condemned, those in penitence and bewildered to hopeful to freshly promoted—as in Statius, who then demonstrates to Dante, as well as foreshadowing, his capacity for complete renewal despite his ‘sins’ during his previous life stage—to find himself in the forest of earthly delights, in paradise.

Dante contrasts the two working polarities of forests common in his time and unto ours, that of the forest as a place to be feared and indicative of being lost and that of the forest as a place to be revered and that provides salve for the soul. The oracular nature of oaks and laurel were well-known to Dante, if only through literature, but most likely also through remnants of tree worship that continued despite the Church’s attempts to eradicate it. Harrison later suggests that the paradisal forest is redemptive to Dante because it has been denatured, as in the wild animals no longer threaten, and thus has become a Christianized “municipal park” (85). However this may be true literally, and points toward the desire to subjugate the wild and pagan worship of trees that was attitudinally commonplace in Dante’s time, the striking similarity in Dante’s usage of forests and trees to the state of his psyche throughout his journey makes the idyllic paradisal forest an apt allegory for the condition of his soul after the alchemical journey through Inferno and Purgatorio.

Footnote 16: Dante’s faiths

After having first lost faith in himself (in Inferno and Purgatorio), Dante continues on his journey in Paradiso filled with three main faiths: faith in Virgil, Beatrice and God. Each of these symbolic figures embodies many characteristics. Virgil represents creative imagination, intelligence and logos, poetic genius, a Father figure, animus, and part of the self more closely related to the mind and spirit. Beatrice fulfills the roles of love, concrete thinking, spiritual enlightenment, a Mother and Lover figure, anima, and that aspect of the self more affiliated with the heart and soul. (While one may take issue at, and while I myself can see paradoxes and contradictions within my symbolic descriptions of these two figures, especially insofar as the parsing out of the divisions of the heart and mind are concerned (e.g., the identification of the heart (Beatrice) and not the mind (Virgil) as most often associated with imagination), nevertheless, I believe that, Dante clearly holds Virgil up as serving the imaginative function.) Dante’s faith in the Christian God constructs the basic architecture of each of the realms, relying on his imagination and thought to develop Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, while synthesizing Greek mythology, Arabic thought, and alchemical and kabbalistic notions to revision that Christian faith in an orientation of love as salvation. {Virgil says that lack of faith kept him from Heaven (Purgatorio 7.7-8).} Luke writes: “Faith is the quality which gives birth to the creative imagination […]” (175). Although this may be true for Dante and those who display the faith of Christians or other religions, it is precisely Dante’s faith in the three metaphorical figures abovementioned that flowers his creative imagination: from the dark wood to the woods of the suicides and sorrow, and from the kabbalistic Adam Kadmon to the edenic woods, and ultimately unto the rose of heaven. (Please see Note 4 for the notion of Dante revisioning deforestation while in its European heyday.)

Footnote 17: Dante’s genius

In Cantos 24, lines 115-17, Dante threads together an intentional or accidental overview of Christianity. The following seeks to briefly explore these passages in order to glimpse just one of the ways in which Dante was an absolute genius in his writing style. It is significant that Dante relates the following about two trees, one in Purgatorio, and the other in Paradiso, the first a physical manifestation complete with hidden voice, the second a metaphorical referent to Wisdom, while setting up in Inferno the action to occur in the later poems. In the Inferno, Dante writes: “who, when he rises, stares about him, all / bewildered by the heavy anguish he / has suffered, sighing as he looks around” (Inf. 24.115-17). In Purgatorio, he writes: “‘Continue on, but don’t draw close to it; / there is a tree above from which Eve ate, / and from that tree above, this plant was raised’” (Purg. 24.115-17). Finally, in Paradiso, he writes: “Then he who had examined me, that baron / who led me on from branch to branch so that / we now were drawing close to the last leaves” (Par. 24.115-17). The action and that implied through the three cantos and lines addressed is as follows: a man rising, staring, bewildered, suffering, sighing, and looking around (Inferno); moving forward, drawing back, Eve eating from a tree above, the tree above parented the tree below (Purgatorio); and, an examination, a guided climbing of a tree, nearing the top of that tree (Paradiso). What has been related, in the same numbered Cantos and lines, is the story of Christianity, in a nutshell, through the vehicle of a pilgrim climbing a tree. The journey also indicates an understanding of an alchemical transformation, which requires first the descent, then the search, movement, symbolical representation of the process in imagery (the forest and tree in Dante’s case as presented), and reflection and self-examination in order to transform while the image changes.

Footnote 18: Dante and Psyche compared and contrasted

What are the major components of Psyche and Eros, of Dante and Beatrice, when considering the descents and ascents to and from the underworld? A journey that involves the following comes to mind immediately: Beauty and Love, transformation and individuation, psychic renewal, death and rebirth, and of course, guides of some sort to facilitate a ‘successful’ journey.

Dante Psyche
Dark wood—nature threatens* Tasks assigned—nature assists
Underworld trip with guide Virgil Underworld trip with helpful suggestions
Descent and ascent to Heaven Descent and ascent back to earth
Terrified in descent and joyous in ascent Terrified in initial descent only to succeed
Symbolic death Joyous at reunion with Eros in ascent after
first literally dying to love

*nature threatening in Dante’s time is indicative of the archetypal field of separation from nature that was influenced mainly by the instituting of citystates and ensuing physical act of deforestation…

Dante Psyche
Individuates through influence of love—Beatrice Performs tasks out of love for Eros, which upon closer inspection resembles an individuation less defined than Dante’s, which is informed by Kabbalah-Alchemy, etc.
Ascent to paradise is indicative of Christian Ascent to earth, which is still viewed as a
Message that God is ‘up there’ away from visitation place of the Gods, if not home for
Earth… them…

Encounters beasts, shades, angels, deities Encounters beasts, shades, deities

The Guide for Dante and Psyche
Beatrice/Virgil Eros/Aphrodite
Beatrice plays the role of Eros—love is the Eros is the initial cause of Psyche’s
Initial cause of Dante’s fractured soul, nekyia, ordeal—his love is what pulls her through
descent and nigredo, but it is her love that it and then rescues and revives her…
sustains, nourishes and comforts Dante so Venus sets boundaries and rules in a coarse
that he can continue…Beatrice is also as and demeaning way—as competitor and
beautiful as Psyche, Aphrodite & Eros… with the desire to see her demise or death,
Virgil is the psychopomp and sets boundaries not the role of a traditional psychopomp
and rules in a loving parental way—as mentor Ants, a reed, an eagle (Zeus), and a tower
unto friend, father to son help her to accomplish the labors

Although Dante has reversed the roles of Psyche and Eros, taking on the role of Psyche and attributing the role of Eros to Beatrice, the transforming affects seen in the Greek myth hold. Erich Neumann, in Amor and Psyche: […], writes: “Through Eros, through her love of him, Psyche develops not only toward him, but toward herself” (110). Dante develops toward Beatrice and her love, while at the same time individuating, growing toward and within himself. Dante utilizes Virgil as his guide into this descent and eventual ascent; I know Lisé, my love of life and mate for many, as the like guide, which accords more closely with Eros on many levels than that of poetic genius preceding, for it is erospoetic genius, the most potent form, archetypally, of love or creativity that exists. One could argue that Dante also utilizes erospoetic genius in the Commedia, if one combines the two guides of Virgil and Beatrice into one figure. However, the fact that they remain separated and one guides in the lower two realms and the other on the higher plane does not truly allow for a full integration of them, whereas for me, Lisé is both simultaneously. I love poets, many existent, yet, not any of these do I love more than Lisé. I love creating paintings, sculptures, gardens, bouquets, photoscapes, drawings, poetry, scholarship, and more, but, none of these do I love more than Lisé. Even family has not known this love given freely of me, as surely I know not their similar loves.
The shedding of tears at Virgil’s departure gives further indication that Dante has not fully assimilated Virgil as guide in an alchemical sense. Thus, Dante has more to learn, as Beatrice quickly shows him.

The manner in which he transforms also ‘corrects’ the unrequited love of Apollo for Daphne, since Beatrice willingly guides him to Paradise. Dante also accomplishes a rare synthesization of the Apollo-Daphne myth with that of the Eros-Psyche myth, and one could also argue that the Hades-Persephone myth echoes in part of that mix. Dante is Apollo, Psyche and Persephone; Beatrice is Daphne, Eros, Hades. Dante dons the laurel crown of Apollo and succeeds in writing a re-visioning of the Christian myth infused with Alchemy, Kabbalah and Greek myth; he journeys into the underworld and purgatory to accomplish tasks as Psyche enters Hades to accomplish hers; and he spends part of his time on earth and part of it in otherworldly places, as Persephone does. Beatrice, on the other hand, is the object of Dante’s youthful love, as Daphne is to Apollo, and the transformation of both young women unto death or a tree, disallows that love’s realization; she acts as Eros in guiding Dante out of Hades, by the love she represents is he strengthened, and revivifies him in order to fully see his way to paradise; and she is the love that abducts him from earth to undergo the journey initially, as well as that which will encourage his return to death.

As the structure of the innovative terza rima suggests, the reader follows Dante’s movements as both poet and pilgrim (soul), in a watery fashion of ebbing and flowing that only later resembles the unfolding of a helix. One must reflect upon the journey undergone in order to see its structure, the hidden substructures that operate as the interlinking bridges in DNA. In Commedia, one could take the structure of the helix and apply a great many dualities or oppositional pairs to that model. It is my suggestion that none of these oppositions work in concert doubly or singly alone, but, rather require at minimum three different interrelated aspects to effectively thread their way throughout the entire poem. That the poem follows a loose interpretation of Psyche and Eros seems rather elementary and being as obvious as it is, predicts deeper significance or else Dante would not have resorted to its loose model. One can say that love and poesis (creative genius infused with passion in this application) work together to move pilgrim, poet and reader through the poem, but, the lacking thread is soul transformation, for without transforming, Dante would never have left the dark wood or Hades for that matter. Larry Allums provides comfort in Dante’s Transformation of Epic, when he writes: “All of heaven bends weeping yet hopeful toward every pilgrim lost in a dark wood” (162). As Beatrice summons Virgil to be Dante’s initial guide, her appearance demonstrates the power of Allums’s recognition of Dante’s words.

Dante found a father figure necessary—in the tradition of alchemy, mythology, psychology and religion that continues today to obscure and defeminize the world (although numerous exceptions exist, they are uncommon considering the sum, such as the arbor philosophica, Asherah, Kabbalah, Isis, Osiris, Great White Pine, Odin, Yggdrasil, Zeus, Hera, Atys, Adonis, Pitys, Daphne—if read corresponding to an alchemical interpretation—etc., and in this case I give preference to tree-related mythical entities and systems)—to be his guide, his psychopomp. However, whomsoever could invalidate his choice of Virgil in his time would find few substitutes as readily capable to guide than one who had actually already seen the stories, lived, spoke, thought and wrote them. Dante writes: “my more than father […]” (Purg. 23.4).

In Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, Robert Pogue Harrison writes: “Dante’s pilgrim depended on divine assistance to get out of the forest. It came to him in the figure of Virgil” (111). Virgil, the psychopomp father figure, guided Dante out of the forest, the wood of the suicides and through purgatory. Campbell writes of another guide:
Whereas in Wolfram the guide is within—for each unique; and I see in this the first completely intentional statement of the fundamental mythology of modern Western [humanity], the first sheerly individualistic mythology in the history of the human race: a mythology of quest inwardly motivated—directed from within—where there is no authorized way or guru to be followed or obeyed, but where, for each, all ways already found, known and proven, are wrong ways, since they are not his [or her] own (Creative Mythology 553).

Footnote 19: Did Dante understand trees?

The series of transformations Dante undergoes prepare him for the ascent into Paradise. Some of them have been revisited numerous times, which indicates the natural alchemical progression of the psyche evidenced by the terza rima structure itself, of continual progression and regression to progress forward. The fact that a great many of his personal transformations occur within the aegis of forests, trees, woods, or before, at or after their thresholds, demonstrates that Dante knew the symbolic nature of trees in deep metaphorical ways uncommon in his days.

Note 1: On tree of life or Life Tree as I have renamed it

“‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is the tree of life’ (Pr 13:12).
This is a psychological observation. It does not attempt to teach a lesson or make a judgment about life-style. It informs the reader about reality” (Murphy 8). Yes, it does inform the reader about reality, but, it also informs the reader about things lurking behind the reality of the writer and their epochal milieu as well. The tradition of a tree of life as an axial or cosmic tree has been, by the time of this writing, long buried in the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean culture, which makes its resurfacing in Biblical Wisdom literature all the more telling, psychologically. What humanity suppresses or sublimates, relegating rites, ceremonies, religions, ideas, concepts, thoughts, and ways of being into the unconscious, is King Solomon’s unclaimable treasure, as a whole. However, aspects of this treasure trove certainly resurface, and especially strong and poignant connections tend to reappear with some regularity.

The cosmic, universal, axial or world tree, the Torah tree of life and knowledge combined (synonymous with the Biblical Christian cross according to some), represents a very strong archetypal image of the most persistent and pervasive fabric. Why trees form some of the most important structures in our lives as humans has not been examined nearly sufficiently enough! Structures, here, is used both literally and metaphorically, so that breath of life to shelter to communication are invoked. How long has humanity known that oxygen is manufactured mainly by trees, and how often have they neglected that knowledge? If knowledge as wisdom in a treasure trove follows a nontemporal nonlinear route, similar to Remote Viewers who can be sitting in a Carpinteria, California classroom while roaming on safari in Kenya and reporting accurately what is going on there, which I accept (especially since the U.S. military used such gifted people in the past few wars), then who is to say the knowledge gained by scientists about trees’ ability to manufacture oxygen, to conduct electricity from the atmosphere through their roots, and to grow according to planetary influences, did not avail itself to those shamanic or mystical figures who tapped into that Jungian ‘collective unconscious’ or collective conscious?

If one fulfills a desire, then happiness follows as a normative effect, and for happiness to occur, the brain sends electrical signals to the receptors that are responsible for releasing serotonin. Regular serotonin releases in the brain balance the body’s chemistry and lead to a happier and healthier, as well as, I think, a longer life. The Torahaic tree of life concerns immortality, longevity, and as such, any activity that serves to prolong one’s life, is an act that partakes of the wisdom of the tree of life. Therefore, this is a psychological and mythological observation of the highest order that speaks to the resurfacing of ancient mytho-theological understandings of the construction of life and the essence of being itself reinterpreted throughout human existence since humans first began thinking and reasoning about such meanings.

Note 2: On some differing views of the stages of alchemical process

In The Secrets Of Alchemy, Michael Maier lists ten steps of Alchemy: Calcination (mortification), Dissolution, Separation, Conjunction (Recombined & Impregnated), Putrefaction, Distillation, Coagulation (perfection or maturing), Sublimation, Fixation and Exaltation; while, in his Key to Alchemy, Samuel Norton lists fourteen steps: Solution, Filtration, Evaporation, Distillation, Separation, Rectification, Calcination, Commixtion, Purification, Inhibition, Fermentation, Fixation, Multiplication and Projection; and, Sir George Ripley lists twelve: Calcination, Solution (purification), Separation, Conjunction, Putrefaction, Congelation, Cibation, Sublimation, Fermentation, Exaltation, Multiplication and Projection (Sacred Texts).

Note 3: On the seven women in Commedia

Isaiah, in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: […], writes: “Seven women shall take hold of one / man in that day, saying, / ‘We will eat our own bread and wear / our own clothes; / just let us be called by your name; / take away our disgrace’” (Isa 4.1). Could these be the seven women in Dante’s Divine Comedy, not the seven virtues as suggested by others? These women in the Biblical prophecy approach the same man due to the attrition of men from battle, in order to save face. This would greatly change the feeling-tone of Dante’s passage, and perhaps represents their purgatory or perhaps their salvation proffered by Dante.

Note 4: Dante’s revisioning of deforestation

Harrison writes: “The ‘dark forest,’ then, is not a refuge from the law’s injustice but an allegory for Christian guilt in general” (81). Certainly, Dante’s use of the dark forest as an opening allegorical and metaphorical image of being lost speaks to Christian guilt, especially that of literal deforestation of Europe which was well underway during Dante’s time (and could also be thinly veiled symbolism of atrocities committed against non-Christians), the psychological emphasis remains that of the crisis of the soul seeking integration. I think that the soul achieves integration, or Jungian individuation, through the archetypal energy of poesis, which has predated Christianity and all religions and mythologies. Poesis allowed the first tools to be created, the first hunting and agricultural advancements, the artistic creations on caves and rocks to modern bus-stops, websites, and wall murals, the building of musical instruments (such as monkey thigh bone whistles), and the development of language.

It is a pure acceptance of all aspects of poesis that gives deeper insights of and connectedness to poesis that opens up an individual’s ability to think imaginatively, creatively, to create, and to through this see the interconnectedness of all life—thereby, regaining the awareness of the separation from Nature relies on the reattunement with poesis, which then provides keys to moving into the state of conscious living interconnectedly. Harrison writes: “[…] deforestation in the broad allegorical sense would seem to be the essence of the purgatorial process that leads Dante up the mountain of Purgatory. But this is a strange kind of deforestation indeed, for at the top of the mountain Dante in effect finds himself once again in a forest” (84). During Dante’s epoch the separation from nature, especially in Europe, resulted in massive deforestation, and is partly a background contributor to his work.

I see this background manifesting in his tribute to Greek mythology and Virgil—arguably when the separation had gained momentum—and in the depiction of the trees in a largely unfavorable fashion: dark woods, wood of suicides, tree of Tantalus, and deflowered and upside down tree. However, in order for a culture to shift from a state of ignorance of their separation from Nature to that of awareness of the separation from Nature, and then into a reconnection with Nature does not equate with a simplistic move of remembering the past ways of being. When the prior state has long been forgotten and neglected so that a new state arises, then the prior state is forever lost to that culture as a possible option—for the culture as a whole (certainly individuals can return to Nature in a non-technological influenced way) cannot possibly shake off all the fetters of their advancement along the way.

Therefore, a new paradigm needs developing, one that seeks a merging of old wisdom with new wisdom and accounts for the technological and scientific evolution of the culture in question (and as this is cyclical, I mean the latest new paradigm). This type of culture building requires a historical accounting, and an accurate one, to see the shadows of the mythological, religious, scientific and psychological underpinnings of its currents and eddies, its memories stored in its places. Dante began such a revisioning of culture and of the individuation process in Commedia: it is the task for those who accept it in whatever age since to launch daringly beyond what he and others since have provided as templates to revision and redefine succeeding cultures.

Note 5: The trees of Commedia and related quotes and notes

A number of the key transformative moments in Commedia foreshadow their appearance through Dante’s employment of forests or trees. In a close reading of Commedia, I searched for tree references and have found a rather large number of them outside the obvious occurrences of the dark wood, wood of the suicides, wood of sorrow, Adam Kadmon, the clone of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the seven golden candelabra trees, and the earthly paradisal woods. Dante invokes the powers of the Nine Muses and Apollo, and in doing so, repeatedly places garlands on others’ heads. In The Tree of Life: […], Roland Murphy quotes Burton Mack from Logos und Sophia, part of that quote follows: “She is the tree of life, the water of life, the garment and crown of victory. She offers to human beings life, rest, knowledge and salvation” (149). It is the tree of life aspect that pertains most to the exploration in this paper; however, it is interesting to note how many instances of garlanded heads occur within Dante’s poems. If one considers the persistent references to laurel and Apollo throughout the poems, then such a line of inquiry as to the connection between laurel garlands and other garlands that Mandelbaum sometimes calls angels, and the tree of life as Sophia, seem to be somewhat conflated with Daphne, and I think there lies a deeper substrata to the mythology and theology of Dante. That substrata may represent a different revisioning of the Christian mysteries than what other scholars have demonstrated or considered: specifically that Dante regarded Beatrice as a Daphne/Sophia persona, and as such, had identified and described his animus as succinctly as any author since or previously.

Inferno Tree and related quotes and notes

Canto 1

“When I had journeyed half of our life’s way, / I found myself within a shadowed forest, / for I had lost the path that does not stray” (Inferno 1.1-3).
“2 a shadowed forest a realistic image of the darkness and tangle of the world in which Dante has lost the path to truth and goodness” (Notes Inferno 543).

Canto 3

“As, in the autumn, leaves detach themselves, / first one and then the other, till the bough / sees all its fallen garments on the ground” (Inferno 3.112-14).

Canto 4

“we still continued onward through the wood— / the wood, I say, where many spirits thronged” (Inferno 4.65-6).

Canto 6

“[…] the party of the woods / will chase the other out with much offense” (Inferno 6.65-6).

“65 […] the party of the woods the White Guelphs, led by Vieri de’ Cerchi, whose family originated in the countryside. 66 the other the Black Guelphs, whose leaders were sent into exile by the White government which Dante served in 1300-1301” (Notes Inferno 559).

Canto 9

“a reboantic fracas—horrid sound. / […] / a sound not other than a wind’s when, wild / because it must contend with warmer currents, / it strikes against the forest without let, / shattering, beating down, bearing off branches,” (Inferno 9.65 and 67-70).

Often, when Dante refers to branches, he means parts of families, especially as he refers to himself and the meeting with his great-great-grandfather in Paradiso. Since Dante does use branches in this way, what the horrid sound may represent is war itself. For war in Dante’s time consumed whole forests for ship-building, lances, siege machines, supply carts, fuel for fires and so on, as has been written about by Middle Ages’ scholars. Psychologically, it may also represent the tempest that is the descent into the nigredo.

Canto 13

“Nessus had not yet reached the other bank / when we began to make our way across / a wood on which no path had left its mark. / No green leaves in that forest, only black; / No branches straight and smooth, but knotted, gnarled; / No fruits were there, but briers bearing poison” (Inferno 13.1-6).

“This is the nesting place of the foul Harpies, / […] / they utter their laments on the strange trees” (Inferno 13.10-15).

“and from a great thornbush snapped off a branch, / at which its trunk cried out: ‘Why do you tear me?’ / And then, when it had grown more dark with blood, / It asked again: ‘Why do you break me off? / Are you without all sentiment of pity? / We once were men and now are arid stumps: / your hand might well have shown us greater mercy / had we been nothing more than souls of serpents’” (Inferno 13.32-9).

“48 within my poetry in Virgil’s own Aeneid where Aeneas plucks saplings growing on a mound; they ooze blood, and the voice of the murdered Trojan prince, Polydorus, speaks from his grave beneath: ‘Why do you tear me, Aeneas, wretch that I am? Spare me now in my grave’ [Virgil]. In Dante’s adaptation of this episode, the soul is literally enclosed within its tree-body. Having deliberately deprived themselves of their bodies, the suicides may never re-inhabit them, even after the resurrection; instead, in Hell, they sprout the ‘bodies’ of plants, the lowest form of living things (lines 93-108)” (Notes Inferno 574).

“so from that broken stump issued together / both words and blood; at which I let the branch / fall, and I stood like one who is afraid” (Inferno 13.43-5).

“Then he began again: ‘Imprisoned spirit, / so may this man do freely what you ask, / may it please you to tell us something more / of how the soul is bound into these knots; / and tell us, if you can, if any one / can ever find his freedom from these limbs.’ / At this the trunk breathed violently, then / that wind became this voice, ‘You shall be answered / promptly. When the savage spirit quits / the body from which it has torn itself, / then Minos sends it to the seventh maw. / It falls into the wood, and there’s no place / to which it is allotted, but wherever / fortune has flung that soul, that is the space / where, even as a grain of spelt, it sprouts. / It rises as a sapling, a wild plant; / and then the harpies, feeding on its leaves, / cause pain and for that pain provide a vent” (Inferno 13.85-102).

Dante continually, from this point forward mentions knots and in so doing, has first Virgil and then other shades and finally Beatrice untying them. The metaphorical nature of knots then is not simply that of the twisted and deformed trees in the wood of the suicides, nor is it related only to the condition of the soul in torment, but, rather it is also related to the soul and trees becoming, metamorphosing, transforming into something more beautiful through the power of love.

“88 knots of the twisted trees (line 5)” (Notes Inferno 575).

“‘[…] We’ll drag / our bodies here; they’ll hang in this sad wood, / each on the stump of its vindictive shade’” (Inferno 13.106-8).

“[..] fled so violently that / they tore away each forest bough they passed” (Inferno 13.116-7).

The two are hunted by hounds, which seems like Artemis’ hand somehow.

Canto 14

“Love of our native city overcame me; / I gathered up the scattered boughs and gave / them back to him whose voice was spent already” (14.1-3).

Dante gathers up the complexes and instincts that induced terror and fear in him to transform into sorrow at such exposures as he has seen. This transformation is evidenced by the next woods encountered.

“The wood of sorrow is a garland round it, / just as that wood is ringed by a sad channel” (14.10-11).

Virgil warns Dante to keep his feet close to the forest.

“In silence we had reached a place where flowed / a slender watercourse out of the woods” (Inferno 14.76-7).

“[…] ‘The time has come to quit / this wood; see that you follow close behind me’” (Inferno 14.139-40).

Canto 15

“By now we were so distant from the wood / that I should not have made out where it was— / not even if I’d turned around to look—” (Inferno 15.13-5).

Canto 20

“‘Last night the moon was at its full; you should / be well aware of this, for there were times / when it did you no harm in the deep wood’” (Inferno 20.127-9).

The moon at its full is a thinly veiled reference to both Artemis and Daphne as moon goddesses, in addition to that of the Christian fear of witches and the unconscious.

Canto 25

Dante describes a serpent strangling a shade with tree terms.

“No ivy ever gripped a tree so fast” (Inferno 25.58).

Purgatorio Tree and Related Quotes

Canto 1

“bears rushes upon its soft and muddy ground. / There is no other plant that lives below: / no plant with leaves or plant that, as it grows, / hardens—and breaks beneath the waves’ harsh blows” (Purgatorio 1.102-5).

“102 rushes simple and pliant plants (lines 103-5). Dante’s girding with one of them (line 133) symbolizes the humility and pliability of the will which are needed in those who embark on the process of purification from sins” (Notes Purgatorio 629).

“[..] Where he plucked the humble plant, / that he had chosen, there that plant sprang up / again, identical, immediately” (Purgatorio 1.134-6). Unlike the broken branch that engenders suffering and misery for trees of the Woods of the Suicides.

“134 humble plant the reed. Like the golden bough which the Sibyl plucked at the start of Aeneas’ visit to the underworld [Virgil], it miraculously grows again. Purgatory will be a realm of supernatural renewal” (Notes Purgatorio 629).

Canto 3

“Despite the Church’s curse, there is no one / so lost that the eternal love cannot / return—as long as hope shows something green” (Purgatorio 3.133-5).

What is the meaning of green here? See Luke’s green words: “The angels are green—the color of hope and of the natural growing things of the earth, which emerge in their own time” (Luke 68). and von Franz’s: “In the Middle Ages, green was considered to be the color of the Holy Spirit, of life, procreation and resurrection” (von Franz 24). … also note 26, Canto 8, deals with green angels….

“Their garments, just as green as newborn leaves, / were agitated, fanned by their green wings, / and trailed behind them; and one angel came / and stood somewhat above us, while the other / descended on the opposite embankment, / flanking that company of souls between them” (Purgatorio 8.28-33).

“26 two angels sent from Heaven, where Mary is queen (line 37). Their colour, green, represents hope; their blunted swords evoke God’s justice tempered by mercy” (Notes Purgatorio 646).

Jung writes about the significance of the swords in an Eranos Conference essay in reference to the Mass. But, within his ideas on the sword, the notion that it represents the cutting edge of transformation in the process of individuation stands out most.

Canto 7

Sordello says:

“How seldom human worth ascends from branch / to branch, and this is willed by Him who grants / that gift, that one may pray to him for it” (Purgatorio 7.21-23)!

Canto 11

Oderisi says:

“‘How briefly green endures upon the peak— / unless an age of dullness follows it’” (Purgatorio 11.92-3).

“92 green an image of fame which passes away like a leaf on a tree, lasting a little longer only if the next age produces no famous people” (Notes Purgatorio 654).

Oderisi again:

“‘Your glory wears the colors of the grass / that comes and goes; the sun that makes it wither / first drew it from the ground, still green and tender’” (Purgatorio 11.115-7).

“115 grass an image of fame, which is born and dies under the same force, the sun (time)” (Notes Purgatorio 655).

Canto 14

“‘Bloody, he comes out from the wood he’s plundered, / leaving it such that in a thousand years / it will not be the forest that it was’” (Purgatorio 14.64-6).

This is the grandson, as identified by the shade Rinieri, or humanity in many generations to come in a metaphorical sense, but specifically his kin and all those

“[…] between the Po / and mountains, and the Reno and the coast, / who’ve lost the truth’s grave good and lost the good / of gentle living, too; those lands are full / of poisoned stumps […]”(Purgatorio 14.91-5).

Canto 16

Marco, the Lombard, says:

“[..] you have received both light / of good and evil, and free will, which though / it struggle in its first wars with the heavens, / then conquers all, if it has been well nurtured” (Purgatorio 16.75-8).

Marco refers to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil here.

Marco continues:

“for every plant is known by what it seeds” (Purgatorio 16.114).

Human nature mirroring Nature.

Canto 18

“[..] it’s nature / that joins the soul in you, anew, through beauty” (Purgatorio 18.26-7).

The importance of beauty in transformation…the beauty that is represented by Beatrice, and is beauty of the kind that Schuon and Hillman write.

“every substantial form, at once distinct / from matter and cojoined to it, ingathers / the force that is distinctly its own, / a force unknown to us until it acts— / it’s never shown except in its effects, / just as green boughs display the life in plants” (Purgatorio 18.49-54).

A mighty throng says:

“‘where urge for good is keen, grace finds new green’” (Purgatorio 18.105).

Canto 20

Hugh Capet says:

“I was the root of the obnoxious plant / that overshadows all the Christian lands, / so that fine fruit can rarely rise from them” (Purgatorio 20.43-5).

Canto 22

“And know that when a sin is countered by / another fault—directly opposite / to it—then, here, both sins see their green wither” (Purgatorio 22.49-51).

“51 their green like dying plants, both sins gradually wither away in Purgatory” (Notes Purgatorio 679).

Yet earlier green has been identified by Mandelbaum as signifying hope and fame, so in this instance would it not be safe to say that both sins see their hope and fame wither?

“as many other Greeks who once wore laurel / upon their brow […]” (Purgatorio 22.108-9).

“108 laurel the crowns of laurel leaves awarded to great poets” (Notes Purgatorio 681).

Surely, this line requires more unpacking, as the laurel leaves are only procured by Apollo, the God of Consciousness or solar consciousness, through his inability to conquer Daphne’s affections, the Goddess of Unconsciousness or of lunar consciousness, so that she was transformed into a laurel tree. This infers an entire reference to the forlorn and unrequited love of Greeks in general, for it was also awarded to athletes, not just bards.

“But their delightful conversation soon / was interrupted by a tree that blocked / our path; its fruits were fine, their scent was sweet, / and even as a fir-tree tapers upward / from branch to branch, that tree there tapered downward, / so as—I think—to ward off any climber. / Upon our left, where wall enclosed our path, / bright running water fell from the high rock / and spread itself upon the leaves above. / When the two poets had approached the tree, / a voice emerging from within the leaves / cried out: ‘This food shall be denied to you.’ / Then it cried: ‘Mary’s care was for the marriage- / feast’s being seemly and complete, not for / her mouth (which now would intercede for you)” (Purgatorio 22.130-144).

What climbs trees? Vines, mosses, lichens, epiphytes, other trees (strangler figs), insects, slugs, snails, frogs, snakes, other animals and people climb trees mostly. Of these, what would concern Dante most would be snakes, and shades as people climbing trees. This implies some sort of strategy for the tree to ward off climbers. But, then, is the strategy the trees or God’s, or both or neither? Could it be that Dante here names Adam Kadmon, the downward growing tree of Jewish Mythology? With the mentioning of the denial of food and as the notes suggest this food may signify the forbidden fruit of Eden, then the refusal of the tree to allow climbers may also be seen as more applicable to the serpent. This would then imply that temptation has been removed from this tree.

“The first age was as fair as gold: when hungry, / men found the taste of acorns good; when thirsty, / they found that every little stream was nectar” (Purgatorio 22.148-150).

“148 first age the primeval Golden Age of human innocence and the simple life, when people lived on acorns and water (Purg. 28, 139-44)” (Notes Purgatorio 682).

Canto 23

“While I was peering so intently through / the green boughs, like a hunter who, so used, / would waste his life chasing after birds, / my more than father said to me: ‘Now come, / son, for the time our journey can permit / is to be used more fruitfully than this’” (Purgatorio 23.1-6).

“Who—if he knew not how—would have believed / that longing born from odor of a tree, / odor of water, could reduce souls so” (Purgatorio 23.34-6).

“‘But tell me, for God’s sake, what has unleaved / you so; don’t make me speak while I’m amazed— / he who’s distracted answers clumsily.’ / And he to me: ‘From the eternal counsel, / the water and the tree you left behind / receive the power that makes me waste away. / All of these souls who, grieving, sing because / their appetite was gluttonous, in thirst / and hunger here resanctify themselves. / The fragrance of the fruit and of the water / that’s sprayed through that green tree kindles in us / craving for food and drink; and not once only, / as we go round this space, our pain’s renewed— / I speak of pain but I should speak of solace, / for we are guided to those trees by that / same longing that had guided Christ when He / had come to free us through the blood He shed / and, in his joyousness, called out: ‘Elì’” (Purgatorio 23.58-75).

“58 unleaved stripped of flesh, through starvation” (Notes Purgatorio 682).

“Dante stares into the Tree of Grace […]” (Mandelbaum 324b).

Canto 24

“[…] the branches of another tree, heavy / with fruit, alive with green, appeared to me / nearby, just past a curve where I had turned. / Beneath the tree I saw shades lifting hands, / crying I know not what up toward the branches, / like little eager, empty-headed children, / who beg—but he of whom they beg does not / reply, but to provoke their longing, he / holds high, and does not hide, the thing they want. / Then they departed as if disabused […]”(Purgatorio 24.103-12).

“[…] and we—immediately—reached that great tree, / which turns aside so many prayers and tears. / ‘Continue on, but don’t draw close to it; / there is a tree above from which Eve ate, / and from that tree above, this plant was raised.’ / Among the boughs, a voice—I know not whose— / spoke so; thus, drawing closer, Virgil, Statius, / and I edged on, along the side that rises. / It said: ‘Remember those with double chests, / the miserable ones, born of the clouds, / whom Theseus battled when they’d gorged themselves; / and those whom Gideon refused as comrades— / those Hebrews who had drunk too avidly— / when he came down the hills to Midian’” (Purgatorio 24.113-26).

“116 a tree above the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, on the summit of Mount Purgatory” (Notes Purgatorio 685-86).

Canto 25

“Having become a soul (much like a plant, / though with this difference—a plant’s complete, / whereas a fetus still is journeying), / the active virtue labors, so the fetus / may move and feel, like a sea-sponge; and then / it starts to organize the powers it’s seeded” (Purgatorio 25.52-7).

“54 journeying on the way to becoming a higher form of life” (Notes Purgatorio 687).

“[…] ‘Diana / kept to the woods and banished Helice / after she’d felt the force of Venus’ poison’” (Purgatorio 25.130-3).

“130 Diana the chaste goddess who lived in the forests with her company of nymphs, one of whom, Callisto (Helice), was driven away after she was seduced by Jupiter [Ovid]” (Notes Purgatorio 688).

Artemis makes a direct appearance here, thereby, she appears elsewhere by virtue of the Terza Rima and Dante’s application of stepping forward to move backward to move forward. More importantly, though, as Artemis and Daphne—in their ancient namesakes: Daphnaia or Daphnia for the former and Daphoene for the latter are obviously related in that the laurel tree forms the etymological root of their names and both are moon-goddesses—move back and forth and back again in the light of Apollo and shine the reflected light of the moon. What better anima representation than that of a moon goddess, when the animus is depicted by Apollo the sun-god, could there be? The light becomes ever brighter as Dante moves closer to the end of his trek, but, never does he lose completely the elements of the darkness.

“132 Venus’ poison illicit love” (Notes Purgatorio 688).

Canto 26

“[…] ‘O souls who can be sure of gaining / the state of peace, whenever that may be, / my limbs—mature or green—have not been left / within the world beyond; they’re here with me, / together with their blood and with their bones. / That I be blind no longer, through this place / I pass; above, a lady has gained grace / for me […]” (Purgatorio 26.53-60).

Canto 27

“As, at the name of Thisbe, Pyramus, / about to die, opened his eyes, and saw her / (when then the mulberry became bloodred) […]” (Purgatorio 27.37-9).

This mythic message from Ovid describes true love thwarted by misperception, which led to double suicide and their blood staining the mulberry tree. It is an invitation to recall pain and sorrow, mourning and great loss, alongside the paradoxical dying glimpse of love thought dead. It is a complex and paradoxical recall of the eternal hope of love, glimpsed even by the dying as a sort of salvific remedy or nurturing salve to death.

“[…] in my dream, I seemed to see a woman / both young and fair; along a plain she gathered / flowers, and even as she sang, she said: / ‘Whoever asks my name, know that I’m Leah, / and I apply my lovely hands to fashion / a garland of the flowers I have gathered. / To find delight within this mirror I / adorn myself; whereas my sister Rachel / never deserts her mirror [...]” (Purgatorio 27.97-105).

“100 Leah Jacob’s first wife, the sister of his second wife, Rachel [Genesis]. She symbolizes the Active Life on earth, in which the soul must work to adorn itself with virtues and honour; Rachel represents the Contemplative Life, the study of heavenly truths which leads to the eternal vision of God’s beauty, as in a mirror, in Paradise (lines 103-8)” (Notes Purgatorio 691).

What reference to Psyche, Persephone and Narcissus have we lost here? Surely, Dante intended us to combine the Biblical and Greek ideas… Additionally, there is something to the reference to Averroes sticking in my mind here… Didn’t he purport the Aristotelian notions of Active and Passive Intellect? In which case, Leah would be the Active Intellect and Rachel the Passive. If we combine these ideas with Narcissus for Passive Intellect and Persephone for Active Intellect, and Psyche wandering between them, then perhaps there is some alchemical magic Dante has cooked in these very lines…

“‘Today your hungerings will find their peace / through that sweet fruit the care of mortals seeks / among so many branches’” (Purgatorio 27.115-17).

“Look at the sun that shines upon your brow; / look at the grasses, flowers, and the shrubs / born here, spontaneously, of the earth” (Purgatorio 27.133-35).
The chase for Beatrice—for love—forms and informs Dante’s will!

Canto 28

“Now keen to search within, to search around / that forest—dense, alive with green, divine— / which tempered the new day before my eyes […]” (Purgatorio 28.1-3).

“2 forest the paradise or garden of pleasure, planted by God in the beginning, and containing all kinds of beautiful trees and fruit. God placed Adam and Eve in the garden to tend it, forbidding them, on pain of death, to eat the fruit off the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When they disobeyed Him, they were cast out and, with their descendents, the whole human race, were condemned to labour and toil for a living and to die [Genesis]. In contrast to the terrifying dark forest of Inferno 1, Dante’s Garden of Eden is a primeval living forest of perpetual spring and perfect natural beauty, situated on the summit of Purgatory. The paradise lost by sin is the goal of the journey by which the soul, purified of the effects of sin, is restored to humanity’s original condition of innocence and earthly happiness before ascending to eternal happiness in the Heavenly Paradise” (Notes Purgatorio 692).

“[…] a wind that made the trembling boughs—they all / bent eagerly—incline in the direction / of morning shadows from the holy mountain; / but they were not deflected with such force / as to disturb the little birds upon / the branches in the practice of their arts; / for to the leaves, with song, birds welcomed those / first hours of the morning joyously, / and leaves supplied the burden to their rhymes— / just like the wind that sounds from branch to branch / along the shore of Classe, through the pines / when Aeolus has set Sirocco loose. / Now, though my steps were slow, I’d gone so far / into the ancient forest that I could / no longer see where I had made my entry; / and there I came upon a stream that blocked / the path of my advance; its little waves / bent to the left the grass along its banks” (Purgatorio 28.10-27).

“18 burden their rustling, which provides a musical accompaniment to the birdsong” (Notes Purgatorio 692).

“20 Classe a region with pine-trees, once the site of a Roman port, on the Adriatic coast near Ravenna” (Notes Purgatorio 692).

“21 Aeolus the god who controls the winds, imprisoning and releasing them” (Notes Purgatorio 692).

“I halted, and I set my eyes upon / the farther bank, to look at the abundant / variety of newly-flowered boughs […]” (Purgatorio 28.34-6).

“I said: ‘The water and the murmuring forest / contend, in me, against the recent credence / I gave to words denying their existence” (Purgatorio 28.85-7).

“[…] and since these woods are dense, they echo it. / And when a plant is struck, its power is such / that it impregnates air with seeding force; / the air, revolving, casts this seed abroad; / the other hemisphere, depending on / the nature of its land and sky, conceives / and bears, from diverse powers, diverse trees. / If what I’ve said were known, you would not need / to be amazed on earth when growing things / take root but have no seed that can be seen” (Purgatorio 28.108-17).

“‘Here, mankind’s root was innocent; and here / were every fruit and never-ending spring; / these streams—the nectar of which poet’s sing’” (Purgatorio 28.142-4).

Canto 29

“[…] and I saw / a sudden radiance that swept across / the mighty forest on all sides […]” (Purgatorio 29.15-7).

“While I moved on, completely rapt, among / so many first fruits of eternal pleasure, / and longing for still greater joys, the air / before us altered underneath the green / branches, becoming like an ardent fire, / and now the sweet sound was distinctly song” (Purgatorio 29.31-6).

“Not far beyond, we made out seven trees / of gold, though the long stretch of air between / those trees and us had falsified their semblance […]” (Purgatorio 29.43-5).

“[…] the power that offers reason matter judged / those trees to be—what they were—candelabra, / and what those voices sang to be ‘Hosana’” (Purgatorio 29.49-51).

“Seven candlesticks the size of trees stand before twenty-four elders, symbolizing the twenty-four books of the Old Testament” (Mandelbaum 352a).

“[…]—four animals came on; / and each of them had green leaves as his crown” (Purgatorio 29.88-93).

“[…] except that these had no / garlands of lilies round their brow; instead, / roses and other red flowers wreathed their heads” (Purgatorio 29.146-8). Dante foreshadows the appearance of the rose of heaven, which he will explain later in Paradiso.

Canto 30

“[…] so, / within a cloud of flowers that were cast / by the angelic hands and then rose up / and then fell back, outside and in the chariot, / a woman showed herself to me; above / a white veil, she was crowned with olive boughs; / her cape was green; her dress beneath, flame-red” (Purgatorio 30.27-33).

“[…] her garland of olive leaves represents peace and heavenly wisdom” (Notes Purgatorio 698).

But it also represents the qualities of the Greek Goddess, Athena (Minerva), who planted the olive tree to win the namesake of the city.

“Although the veil she wore—down from her head, / which was encircled by Minerva’s leaves— / did not allow her to be seen distinctly” (Purgatorio 30.67-9).

“68 Minerva the goddess of wisdom, to whom the olive-tree was sacred” (Notes Purgatorio 698).

“Even as snow among the sap-filled trees / along the spine of Italy will freeze / when gripped by gusts of the Slavonian winds, / then, as it melts, will trickle through itself” (Purgatorio 30.85-8).

“Not only through the work of the great spheres— / which guide each seed to a determined end, / depending on what stars are its companion” (Purgatorio 30.109-11).

The now-‘proven’ (scientifically) astrological impact on plants—an ancient wisdom that Dante invokes!

Canto 31

“No green young girl or other novelty— / such brief delight—should have weighed down your wings, / awaiting further shafts […]”(Purgatorio 31.58-60).
Here, green is youthful and attractive, fresh and virginal…not indicative of the green of the Holy Spirit as suggested by von Franz.

“There’s less resistance in the sturdy oak / to its uprooting by a wind from lands / of ours or lands of Iarbas than I showed / in lifting up my chin at her command” (Purgatorio 31.70-3).

Canto 32

“The lovely lady who’d helped me ford Lethe, / and I and Statius […] / were slowly passing through the tall woods—empty / because of one who had believed the serpent” (Purgatorio 32.28-32).

“32 one Eve, tempted by the Devil in the form of a serpent” (Notes Purgatorio 701).

“‘Adam,’ I heard all of them murmuring, / and then they drew around a tree whose every / branch had been stripped of flowers and of leaves. / As it grows higher, so its branches spread / wider; it reached a height that even in / their forests would amaze the Indians” (Purgatorio 32.37-42).

“38 a tree the tree whose fruit Adam and Eve ate. Its bareness signifies the effect of the first sin” (Notes Purgatorio 701).

“42 Indians who, it was believed, lived where there were immensely tall trees” (Notes Purgatorio 701).

“So, round the robust tree, the others shouted; / and the two-natured animal: ‘Thus is / the seed of every righteous man preserved.’ / And turning to the pole-shaft he had pulled, / he drew it to the foot of the stripped tree / and, with a branch of that tree, tied the two. / Just like our plants that / […] swell / with buds […] / […] so the tree, / whose boughs—before—had been so solitary, / was now renewed, showing a tint that was / less than the rose, more than the violet” (Purgatorio 32.46-60).

“52 when in spring, when the sun is in Aries (the constellation which follows Pisces) and before it passes into the next sign (Taurus) (lines 56-7). According to theologians, the tree of the Fall prefigured the tree of the cross, and Dante’s scene, in which the griffin (the justice of Rome) joins the chariot (human society) to the bare tree, renewing it with leaves and flowers colour of venous blood (lines 59-60), is a symbolic dramatization off the crucifixion when Christ, the new Adam, shed His blood to redeem the whole human race from Adam’s sin [Monarchia] (Par. 6, 82-90). It is also a millenarian vision of a future time when God’s Justice would again be renewed in the world (Purg. 33, 70-2)” (Notes Purgatorio 701).

“Even as Peter, John and James, when brought / to see the blossoms of the apple tree— / whose fruit abets the angels’ hungering, / providing endless wedding-feasts in Heaven— / were overwhelmed by what they saw, but then, / hearing the word that shattered deeper sleeps, / arose and saw their fellowship was smaller” (Purgatorio 32.73-79).

“bewildered, I asked: ‘Where is Beatrice?’ / And she: ‘Beneath the boughs that were renewed, / she’s seated on the root of that tree; see” (Purgatorio 32.85-7).

“The tree (right) is the focus of an allegory representing the Vicissitudes of the Church. At its root sits Beatrice as Sapientia, surrounded by the Seven Virtues, instructing Dante in the allegory” (Mandelbaum 368b).

“[…] the bird of Jove that I saw swoop / down through the tree, tearing the bark as well / as the new leaves and the new flowering” (Purgatorio 32.112-14).

“Then I could see the eagle plunge—again / down through the tree—into the chariot / and leave it feathered with its plumage […]”(Purgatorio 32.124-26).

“[…] then, swollen with / suspicion, fierce with anger, he untied / the chariot-made-monster, dragging it / into the wood, so that I could not see / either the whore or the amazing beast” (Purgatorio 32.156-60).

Canto 33

“And when you write them, keep in mind that you / must not conceal what you’ve seen of the tree / that now has been despoiled twice over here. / Whoever robs or rends that tree offends, / with his blaspheming action, God; for He / created it for His sole use—holy. / For tasting of that tree, the first soul waited / five thousand years and more in grief and longing / for Him who on Himself avenged that taste. / Your intellect’s asleep if it can’t see / How singular’s the cause that makes that tree / So tall and makes it grow invertedly” (Purgatorio 33.55-6).

Dante writes:

if “vain thoughts did not encrust your mind; if your / delight in them were not like Pyramus / staining the mulberry, you’d recognize / in that tree’s form and height the moral sense / God’s justice had when He forbade trespass” (Purgatorio 33.68-72).

“71 moral sense as a moral example, the tree symbolizes divine Justice, first expressed in the ban placed on it by God, and thus as a lesson to humans not to violate God’s Law (lines 58-60)” (Notes Purgatorio 705).

“the seven ladies halted at the edge / of a dense shadow such as mountains cast, / beneath green leaves and black boughs, on cold banks” (Purgatorio 33.109-11).

“From that most holy wave I now returned / to Beatrice; remade, as new trees are / renewed when they bring forth new boughs, I was / pure and prepared to climb unto the stars” (Purgatorio 33.142-5).

Paradiso Tree and Related Quotes

In Canto 1, Dante implores: “O good Apollo, for this final task / make me the vessel of your excellence, / what you, to merit your loved laurel, ask” (Paradiso 1.13-5); and writes: “then you would see me underneath the tree / you love; there I shall take as crown the leaves / of which my theme and you shall make me worthy. / So seldom, father, are those garlands gathered / For triumph of a ruler or a poet—[…] / that when Peneian branches can incite / someone to long and thirst for them, delight / must fill the happy Delphic deity” (Paradiso 1.25-33). In the notes, Mandelbaum suggests that Dante invokes Apollo instead of the nine Muses as previously because the “greatest test of his ability” requires the “help of the divinity himself” (Notes Paradiso 707).

Could it also be that because Dante is trying to reveal the mysteries, “above all, of light” that are the realm of Apollo whom he invokes instead of the nine Muses whom Apollo controls, he needs to invoke the god himself instead of his minions of creativity? Who better to inspire a poet writing about light than the god of poetry and the god of the sun in the Greek pantheon? Dante writes: “our intellect sinks into an abyss / so deep that memory fails to follow it” (Paradiso 1.8-9). This seems to be a direct inference of the need for the god of consciousness to assist where Mnemosyne cannot, and directs the reader to reconsider the former journey. Mandelbaum also writes: “25 the tree the laurel. Apollo loved the nymph Daphne, but she escaped from him by being changed into a laurel-tree [Ovid]. The myth symbolizes a poet’s pursuit of fame, the laurel-leaves with which, in ancient Greece and Rome, great poets were crowned and which Dante too desires to win (lines 15, 26-7; Par. 25, 9)” (Notes Paradiso 708). The myth itself symbolizes anything but the crowning of great poets! The crowning of poets with laurel leaves happened well after the myth was penned, and the myth might be said to represent the tragedy of unrequited love, an alchemical journey as I explored in a previous paper, or, it might be said to represent the pursuit of a coniunctio of solar and lunar consciousness, but, certainly not the pursuit of fame! Also, in lines 26-7, Dante is not desirous of fame—a sin he has overcome previously in order to reach Paradiso to begin with—rather, he seeks to be worthy of such honor as being crowned by the symbolic representation of Apollo’s love, Daphne’s boughs! How many people would want to see their dead or divorced love’s hair on someone else’s head? How many would willingly place that hair on the head of another?

This is an intimate moment, completely downplayed by Mandelbaum in his blindness not only to Dante’s transformation, a prerequisite to entering paradise, but also to the true honor it would be to have Apollo consent to a poet placing the laurel leaves on his own head, or, at the very least declaring them as being rightfully his. It is also a mark of another transformation in Dante, one of moving beyond the desire of fame and into the recognition of his own achievement, talents and consummate skill. As a poet, one recognizes this immediately, however, if one has not written poetry, then perhaps it will be misperceived as more sinful fame-chasing. Additionally, Dante invites Apollo to “Enter into my breast; within me breathe / The very power you made manifest / When you drew Marsyas out from his limbs’ sheath” (Paradiso 1.19-21). Such an invitation is not one made lightly, especially by Dante, a poet of incredible talent. Dante is asking Apollo to bestow the power that either Apollo had in creativity when he outplayed Marsyas during the music challenge, or, the power Apollo used to remove Marsyas from his skin after Apollo won the contest. Dante also requests Apollo help him show the shadow of heaven; the shadow could be said to represent Daphne’s lunar consciousness (or the unconscious), and since as a reward for helping Dante, Dante informs Apollo that he will see Dante underneath Daphne wearing a crown of her laurel. This, then, is a fitting tribute to Apollo and Daphne and Apollo’s love for her.

What I would suggest is that to truly find poesis at its highest levels, passion (eros) or love is necessary, and that this is what Dante signifies throughout this passage by invoking Apollo and mentioning Daphne, garland, branches, laurel or leaves five times. Immediately following this passage, it is of no coincidence that Beatrice stares intently into the rising sun, which action fires Dante’s imagination. It is Apollo who fills Dante’s mind by breathing in his chest as Beatrice fills his heart; Dante has been renewed with inspired poesis via his passion and love for Beatrice, a kindred passion that Apollo surely recalls for Daphne. This is how the memory of a place recalls itself, through the passionately inspired poesis revealed by divine love that opens imagination and brightens consciousness.

Mandelbaum seems to agree with the idea of divine poesis. He writes in the notes: “21 Marsyas a satyr who challenged Apollo to a musical contest, lost, and was punished by being skinned alive, during which he asked the god, ‘Why are you drawing me out of myself? [Ovid]. Recalling Apollo’s victory, Dante wants to be emptied of himself so that he may be filled with divine, poetic power (lines 14, 19)” (Notes Paradiso 708). Mandelbaum continues in the notes: “31 Peneian of the laurel (Daphne, daughter of Peneus)” (Notes Paradiso 708). Peneus is the god of tributaries or at least a river. Dante continues later on in numerous Cantos with the symbolism of trees, garlands, and fountains, springs, or rivers. Another aspect of the laurel that is not mentioned in the notes is that the priestesses of Apollo chewed the leaves of the laurel for divination or oracular purposes. Mandelbaum writes: “Leaving the Sacred Wood, Dante begins the ascent to Paradise with Beatrice. He sees the planets and hears their music” (380b). The sacred wood is the transformed dark wood, and offers itself as the threshold for Dante to move into Paradise.

In Canto 4, Dante writes of the “fountain from which springs / all truth” (Paradiso 4.116-17); and says: “Therefore, our doubting blossoms like a shoot / out from the root of truth […]” (Paradiso 4.130-31). He continues with the analogy of truth as a tree to spur humanity onward “from height to height” (Paradiso 4.132). The reference is to that of the biblical Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, from which four rivers were said to flow, combined with the notion of Wisdom (Sophia) as the Tree of Life.

In Canto 7, Beatrice explains the nature of the sacrifice Christ made on the Cross (Paradiso 7.25-92), and names love as the reason and resulting gift of it.

In Canto 9, Cunizza da Romano associates herself with another as being from the same root (Paradiso 9.31); and Folco of Marseille speaks of Christ’s death on the cross (Paradiso 9.123).

In Canto 10, Dante mentions the fixed poles again (Paradiso 10.78); and one of the heavenly lights names the garland again (10.91). This time, the garland is named in direct correlation with love and Beatrice as the “fair / lady who strengthens” his “ascent to heaven” (Paradiso 10.92-93).

In Canto 11, St. Thomas mentions Mary suffering with Christ as he suffered on the cross (Paradiso 11.70). I see this as a conscious or unconscious understanding of the sacrifice that both Beatrice and Dante made, transforming from death to rebirth and Hell through Purgatory unto Heaven, which journey Beatrice makes with Dante (at least in spirit for the beginning of it).

In Canto 12, Dante writes: “[…] And from him / there sprang the streams with which the catholic /garden has found abundant watering, / so that its saplings have more life, more green” (Paradiso 12.102-5).

In Canto 13, St. Thomas says: “Thus it can be that, in the selfsame species, / some trees bear better fruit and some bear worse, / and men are born with different temperaments” (Paradiso 13.70-2).

In Canto 15, Dante’s great-great grandfather says: “‘O you, my branch in whom I took delight / even awaiting you, I am your root’” (Paradiso 15.88-9). Mandelbaum interprets the root as follows: “89 root the founder of Dante’s family” (Notes Paradiso 748). The family tree, in this way symbolic of the tree of life, cements Dante’s self- and human-affiliation with the tree. In

In Canto 17, Cacciaguida explains to Dante the reason for famous shades providing conversation because if those less famous provided them then those reading might not believe “examples with their roots unknown and hidden, / Or arguments too dim, too unapparent’” (Paradiso 17.138-42).

In Canto 18, Cacciaguida continues: ‘In this fifth resting place, upon the tree / that grows down from its crown and endlessly / bears fruit and never loses any leaves, / are blessed souls that, down below, before / they came to heaven, were so notable / that any poem would be enriched by them. / Therefore look at the cross, along its horns: / Those whom I name will race as swiftly as, / Within a cloud, its rapid lightnings flash’ (Paradiso 18.28-36).
Several spirits flash across the cross as Dante watches. Here, Mandelbaum interprets the tree as emblematic of Paradise: “28 […] tree Paradise” (Notes Paradiso 757). I agree with Mandelbaum in his interpretation of the tree as Paradise, and, as it is tapered downward, then it appears as a mirror reflection of the Kabbalah or Adam Kadmon tree in Purgatorio. This move obviously lends superiority to the Christian message over the Jewish one. Dante mentions the sparks of burning logs being read as auguries by fools (Paradiso 18.101-02), a definite strike against superstition.

In Canto 20, Dante shows the shadow side of good intentions bearing “evil fruit” (Paradiso 20.55-56), which refers directly to the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil.

In Canto 21, Dante introduces the golden ladder that leads up into the final sphere (Paradiso 21.28-42 and 137).

In Canto 22, Dante continues with the imagery of the ladder to ascend unto the final sphere (Paradiso 22.67-105). The ladder, as related by Eliade, also is indicative of the axial pole.

In Canto 23, Dante likens Beatrice to a mother bird alighting on the branches of a tree (Paradiso 23.1-9); and depicts Beatrice as wearing a “revolving garland” (Paradiso 23.96) made of a living star, which imagery intends to remind the reader of Daphne, especially as “everlasting nymphs” are previously mentioned in line 26.

In Canto 24, Dante explains how Beatrice and “these delighted souls / formed companies of spheres around fixed poles” (Paradiso 24.10-11); and compares his examination to that of a guided voyage through a tree: “from branch to branch so that / we now were drawing close to the last leaves” (Paradiso 24.116-17). The fixed pole is a thinly veiled reference to the axial pole, and the tree through which Dante’s examination takes place appears to be the Wisdom tree, or Sophia.

In Canto 25, Dante declares that he “shall return as poet and put on, / at my baptismal font, the laurel crown; […]” (Paradiso 25.8-9). This is a direct reference, again, to himself as a victorious poet of Apollo’s tutelage, and in this instance also could be seen as referring to Beatrice as Daphne, even though he states that Peter placed the latest garland upon his brow. The reason for the crowning of his head by the garland owes to his faith as outlined in Canto 24.

In Canto 26, Dante states: “The leaves enleaving all the garden of / the Everlasting Gardener, I love [….]” (Paradiso 26.64-65); and writes: “As does a tree that bends its crown because / of winds that gust, and then springs up, raised by / its own sustaining power, so did I […]” (Paradiso 26.85-87); Adam speaks of the trespass of tasting of the tree and relates: “‘the ways that mortals take are as the leaves / upon a branch […]’” (Paradiso 26.137-38).

In Canto 27, Beatrice explains that “‘The nature of the universe, which holds / the center still and moves all else around it, / begins here as if from its turning post’” (Paradiso 27.106-08); compares time to a tree: “‘time has roots within this vessel and, / within the other vessels, has its leaves’” (27.119-20); and describes how Providence will make everything right, ending with, “‘and then fine fruit shall follow on the flower’” (Paradiso 27.148).

In Canto 31, Dante writes: “‘O lady, you in whom my hope gains strength, / you who, for my salvation, have allowed / your footsteps to be left in Hell, in all / the things that I have seen, I recognize / the grace and benefit that I, depending / upon your power and goodness, have received’” (Paradiso 31.79-84). It is with similar raptness, humility and gratitude that I daily express to Lisé the love and thankfulness for her presence in my life. Beatrice empowered Dante to struggle through his arduous journey, and as she did so for him, Lisé does the same for me.

In Canto 33, as St. Bernard prays to the Virgin Mary, he refers to Dante as “This man—who from the deepest hollow in / the universe, up to this height […]” (Paradiso 33.22-23), which evokes the image of the cosmic or axial tree. The choice by Dante to use a rose instead of a tree for the central axis in heaven owes its roots to numerous influences, nonetheless, it is a symbol that equates to that of the cosmic tree or tree of life. Even naming Beatrice or speaking of her and his love for her induces another vision of the tree that is the two entwined: as a strangler fig wraps around its host tree, yet without the actual literal strangling or death of that host tree, instead as a symbiotic merging of the two.

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Myth Ramble February 7 2005

2005-02-07T19:36:00.000-08:00

Myths represent more than simple aetiogical, alchemical, biological, theosophical, theological, religionical, magical, metaphysical, psychological, sociological, scientifical, technological, philosophical, mythopoeical, or mythological methodology or functions and causes; they represent all of these things and more, as C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell after him have suggested, myth is expansive. If Romulus and Remus are viewed as two incomplete parts that become whole once unified, then they can be seen as an apt representative of the human psyche, in that one is the ego and the other the Self, for once these two are unified much can be accomplished. The founding of a city, Rome in the case of the twins above, a religion, the exploration of a psychology and/or the furtherance of technology require some key fusions in order to work. Such fundamental road maps, mythology provides.

Mythology, then, gives humanity much more than the magic and mystery of simplistic stories that may be based on some historicity (that alone would be endowment enough), they gift us continuing survival strategies that as we mature as a civilization, we become more and more aware of, seeing the deeper layers as peeled onions of thousands of years of unfoldment. In Hindu mythology, Shiva the destroyer of worlds shows us that humanity nearly extincts and then miraculously continues, relearning and reembodying the myths that are left behind in treasure troves to be discovered by later civilizations looking at the ashes and sorting through the rubble of human societies past, present and future.

If each of the mythology systems open their secrets to humanity, and all are taken as various integral subsets of interrelated wisdom, then what is needed to survive as a species presents within the various stories related. In some creation myths systems process theory is embedded, according to Paul Laviolette—and he argues his case brilliantly. In others, we can see societal lessons and behavioristic blueprints, which upon further reflection by other scientists may also reveal other formulas. The layering within mythology is exhaustive, and thus parallels the layering of the human consciousness and unconsciousness: there are no real observable limits or borders, other than in very extreme conditions, which occur infrequently to rarely and are not indicative of the human condition, but, rather represent radical external influences to earth’s biosphere, such as cometary or asteroidal interruption.

Whether or not we choose to believe and hold desperately to outmoded false scientific information such as the Bering Strait Theory, which Vine Deloria exposes for its insidiousness and blatant disregard of scientific facts in Red Earth White Lies, or archeological ones like the one that civilization began in Mesopotamia alone, since Egyptian, Indian and Mesopotamian civilizations appear to have coexisted simultaneously—and all of them appear at the outset to be complete cultures—which speaks to other origins, determines in part how we as human beings view the rest of the world. Interpretive frames, lenses, attitudes, and ways of seeing all mean, basically, hermeneutics and that process involves aesthesis: a participative way of perceiving life around us, and poesis: a way of participatively co-creating that life around us. Aesthesis and poesis work tandemly to reveal and to hide (and a host of activities between and beyond) the numinous withal, without and within, above and below.

Aesthesis and poesis are two abovementioned critical fusionary archetypal energies that open up mythologies to humanity in the manner that they are ready to receive them, thus for some, they have become lies (and these would be the least open to aesthesis or poesis); for some, they are functional only in origin and now dried out husks (somewhat open to archetypal energies); for some they are psychological markers (Freud and Jung, much more open to archetypal energies); while for others they unveil scientific theories (like Laviolette’s Beyond the Big Bang, very open to archetypal energies); and for others, they provide road maps to human evolution (those who continue to work with not on the myths: extremely open to archetypal energies). To each of us, depending on our current states of being, as humans, we open ourselves to archetypal energies constantly, either consciously or unconsciously (read also aware or unawares), and in my humble opinion it is wise to be aware of these energies and how they influence us, and reflect themselves within cultures, for otherwise they enact myths through us, without us knowing. James Hillman and others have succinctly to exhaustively demonstrated the importance and significance of learning to discern which myth we as humans are living, or which myth lives us (especially when unaware), and the conceptualization of a structure that one exists within, drinking, eating and breathing it, normally provides much comfort to humans.

As we become ever more aware of what myths we live within or that live us, then these archetypal energies driving those myths also become increasingly clearer, like multitudinous hues of brilliantly sparkling diamonds, some evanescently blue, others fascinatingly pink, some radiantly white and others unfathomably black. These, after a time or period of diligent reflection, also begin to show elements of the others within them, until one sees an interconnectedness and interrelatedness that reveals a throbbing celebration of birth in riotous coupling, splitting, singly operating and recoupling, alongside a thumping carnival of death in riotous coupling, splitting, singly decomposing and recoupling, and a pulsating festival of life in riotous coupling, splitting, singly operating and decomposing, and recoupling. Myths can show us portals into such observations and numinous encounters, for they show humanity how to be open and receptive to not only being human—to story itself—but also the hidden magic, science, mysteries and archetypal energies of which all thinking and being emanates.

This is based upon a dream partially and partially upon reflecting upon that dream while waking up, or on an experience as Jung would say, because an experience requires reflection. That moment represents one of the most fertile moments for human consciousness because it taps directly into the unconscious or storehouse of human wisdom and eternal experience, a threshold moment of liminal inexhaustible opportunity.

Life’s Force,

Scott Michael Potter

The Nature of Nature’s Nature—Our Nature!

2005-01-17T15:52:00.000-08:00

Our tender loins of deepening thoughts foster further…
But, fragmentary mordancy demolishes, disparages…
Yet the glowing sun, brightly stars, nimbly see easy passages,
as blinding shade pools darkness of ghostly follower

All perpetual curves, interlinking, whorl angles to undo straight missive
in infinite portions, larger to smaller to greater, protoplasm to ether:
they’re galloping, charging, circular swirlers, certain positive empowerers;
and hurtling, arraigning, spherical eddiers—negative directives

Who is hallowed and worthy of veneration, consecration amasses…
While disconnection results from disrespectful narrative
that fairies soothe with calm clarification, which punitive
damaging distortion of vicious intensity rarely surpasses

Repetitive sweet scents of wafting summery perfumed bouquets…
Putative wisdom discusses next-door sundry pithily spicy morasses
while fresh, warm and agreeable occurrences, pleasing to any senses, abashes
obnoxious, stale, cold and sour incidents, which curse our senses into malaise

As the infinitesimal miniscule inner can amaze
so too does the international and universal outer
Upstream, beyond and outside, what’s greater’s the gladder touter
of downstream depths and inside, underneath and lower than we appraise

Where silence feeds waking feelings and emotions, alert is utter,
lest natural needs of spirit and temperament makeup our whole
Wheneven creative dynamism and inspiration boil pyrrole
they butt against barren and sanitary notions aflutter

Wherefrom issues the satisfyingly impressive to exquisite splendor or the soul?
Like this query only repulsively nasty to hideous squalor, wherefrom?
Awe-inspiring mountains, and utmost spiritually, a poof of oxygen become
are not then profoundly wrong, malevolent in destructive energy, no matter the capriole

Seeing energy that makes speech, action, thought and imagination an encomium
participants, in listening, observing, reading, and seeing, perceive the numinous
Some encounters as a typical, prototypical or original cumulus;
others, form a storage of inert, passive and static her/history compendiums

Would a gaggle of lighthearted, exultant mother’s, in merriment voluminous
swap the heavyhearted dreariness of the dirge of oppressive solemnity
for the trickster of Earth who sustains the breathing witty ditty
past ceasing, reentering, rememories of reemergent nourishment in tumulous

Tree Talk

2005-01-14T10:30:00.000-08:00

Once a tree
Jumped and plumped itself
In front of me, as if to say that it had a right
To the place it had been growing there in the woods
In the middle of what I imagined would be the perfect bedroom
For it was feng shui and perfectly arranged, with light enough and oriented
Rightly so, and I decided that to assuage my guilt I would argue the saliency of this
Point, right then and there, with that all high-and-mighty tree, so full of itself
That it dared to trumpet its just cause to the ground it had claimed
As a seed and chartreuse seedling, growing form from the
Death on the forest floor, which now was mostly
Paved and roadways, highways
And bi-ways that
This tree yet
Fought…

Trees in a line
A puffy frilly line
Of attention
And attention-getting
Smite exhaustion
With their exhalation
And infuse me with great ponderances!

How is it these trees make joy
To manifest
Stirring with the breezes
My soul to flutter
Like leaves
Stutter in high winds
And bark shards, twists,
Flakes, peels and chips
Pitching to the ground?

Why do trees emit awe
Through their curvistically wending roots—
Engendering appreciation to love
Brides and bridegrooms they wed
High atop an airy perch
The dress and tuxedo
Seem like seagulls and crows
Convening for signals and chow—
Through their waxy to velvety
Rubbery to coarse skin;
Through their spiny to serrated
Smooth to geometric form;
Through their scratchy to squishy
Hard to brittle husk;
Through their gray to brown
Green to blue
Black to white
Red to yellow color;
Through their conical to spreading
Giant to miniature
Thick to scraggly shape;
The trees make us think
And fill us with emotion.

Whether seen in daylight or nightlight
Sunlight or moonlight
Brightlight or darklight
Weathering, weathered and weatherless,
Trees are our progenitors, parents
Ancestors, forebears and stewards
And at once our prodigies, progenies
Children, lineage, and family
And that is why we call out our
Family tree!
When once we said our
Tree of life…
And even before then, our
Entrance into this world
Was owed to the trees…
Whereas now,
They help house us
And make us comfortable
As we kill them slowly off
And us too….

Then that tree spoke again, and asked
If I had seen what this imagery meant, or if I still
Felt that I had the right to take a life of an elder by hundreds
Of years, and if in doing so, my bedroom now covering a rotting stump
Would I sleep better at night for knowing I had less oxygen to breathe
And less cool shade in the summer and less insulation from bitter wind
In the wintertime to keep me comfortable, and I thought a minute
Put on some gloves… Grabbed my chainsaw…
And cut off my legs at the ankles
Red sap oozing out
And the last thing I heard was a loud rending crash!

A Reaction to Paul Laviolette's "Beyond the Big Bang"

2005-01-14T09:38:00.000-08:00

I have been reading Paul Laviolette’s Beyond the Big Bang, and it is fascinating to see such a learned man in the field of system processes physics compare and contrast as well as explore Egyptian Creation Myths in relation to the theory of system process. His language constantly reminds me of psychological concepts.

Laviolette uses the following two terms “transmutative impulsion,” which I see as equivalent to the First Cause, Primal Mover, God, Change, and, “transmutative union” or “alchemical union” to describe important mytho-psycho-systemological-process events. The alchemical union, by no means an invented term and very old so as not to require quotes, is also known as the heirosgamos, while the “transmutative union” is therefore possibly the final and third comiunctio, which makes it the tri-transmutative coniunctionis: transmutative sounds like transformative, which is in part, Change. Considering these terms in the helixically fractal model, one can see that “transmutative impulsion” is the energy that makes the rest happen, and is therefore equivalent to Change, while “transmutative union” is the heirosgamos of the two archetypal energies in synergistic to synchronistic interrelationship.

Laviolette explains the Isis, Osiris, Horus myth of spontaneous conception, which sounds a lot like the mystery surrounding the famed immaculate conception, in further interesting psychologically charged jargon of the Physics field. He writes: “Thus the seed from which Horus sprang does not come from his parents but emerges spontaneously in their midst as a fluctuation arising from the ether itself” (112-13). The ether sounds like the Third—a field of unequal to co-mutual to directive energy created by the interaction and interrelationship of two entities or objects or fields possessing electrical energy or magnetism—such an idea works on many levels simultaneously. He continues: “Isis and Osiris contribute to his generation by forming a matrix of circular causality that nurtures Horus into being” (113). Horus may also sing harmonies of synchronicity. Laviolette states: “Isis is the prime actor here in that she consummates her union with Osiris by marginally reviving him from his death state” (113). To consummate a union resulting in spontaneous conception would require great energy of intention from the female as well as male participants.

Such a procreative act created between two parties, resulting in a manifestation of poesis, is akin to fire stealing Prometheus, meditating consciously Gautama, redemptive hanging Christ, or the runes being acquired from Yggdrasil by hanging Odin. In that each time a new procreative act comes into being, it is preceded by a sacrifice of some sort that is inherent in the realm of Change. What I am saying is that perhaps Osiris was in such deep meditation that even the loss of sexual organs or body parts was not enough to curtail his procreative powers, his ability to tap into the archetypal field of poesis kept his soul energy alive. Life seeks to continue more than it does to end, even as every change is an end, a death or dying, it is also a renewal, a rebirth, or a birthing. Finally, Laviolette says: “This emphasizes the feminine, formal aspect of process as being the primary seat of generation” 113). Horus also provides alternatives, such as reversals of energy and generations of gender—as a disembodied embodiment. Horus represents an evolution of consciousness in the metaphorical field of spontaneity. Horus sings as the Self in journey, accompanied by the trusty shadow his brother/uncle. The shadowy uncle, Scar, presents very well in the popular children’s movie “Lion King,” foiling Simba’s attempts to grow up too fast, allowing him to blunder.

Laviolette’s “ether transmutation network” (113), sounds like Jung’s archetypal fields, whereas the “emerging etheric fluctuation” (113), smells like engaging in imagination, logical abstract thought, aesthesis or poesis. The “statistical nature of the ether fluctuation process” (113), surely depends on the energies of souls as they engage the numinous while immersed in aesthesis or poesis.

Laviolette writes:

Horus’s name in its complete form is given as Horpi-chrud, which means “emergent child,” Hor deriving from hri, signifying ‘up, above, on top,’ and chrud signifying ‘child.’ In harmony with this imagery, Horus would represent the positive electric energy pulse (high y/low x fluctuation) that spontaneously arises in the ether and is destined to grow into a particle of matter (113).

The string of words “up, above, on top” compares positively in some ways with ‘as above, so below,’ for if one goes high enough they are beneath themselves, especially when one considers spatialtime. With “chrud” as child embracing, Horus smiles in the reflected pool of Hanuman—and are not children pond reflections of echoes gone, as tricksy as a big Monkey’s tail?—Horus is a trickster! Interestingly, so is his brother/uncle, yet I suspect that each of them exhibits a wide spectrum of tricksteriness that complements to conflicts with one another (for we must not neglect paradox).

Laviolette, Paul A. Beyond the Big Bang: Ancient Myth and the Science of Continuous
Creation. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street P, 1995.

Temple Trees

2005-01-14T02:03:00.000-08:00

earth creates trees
three special trees one before, one now and one after
trees that give and take
beings emerge to see the fires and beyond
unshackled and free they dance
impregnation flies in the air
one is life the other morals
both have breath filling them
both have breath leaving them
one is listening to serpently wiles
how to hang in the balance flies
another change claims craggy chance
whose beingness others may ponder upon
taking and giving trees
whose place is above to belower and way up beyonder
trees keep the earth

Asherah

Joseph Campbell: A Monotheistic Deconstructionist

2005-01-05T09:17:00.000-08:00

What I offer in the following text is a brief overview of Joseph Campbell’s thinking on Judaism and Christianity, which I sometimes refer to as biblical tradition. In examining Campbell’s work I have not tried to pick out his potentially inflammatory remarks about Jewish people or about Judaism, for that was not my focus or concentration when reading him. My focus was on trees and transformation while reading Campbell, the dissertation direction, and so most of the religious quotes pertaining to his work center on that theme or general mythological concepts, and sometimes alchemical ideas. The Campbellian quotes I resonated with fill over fifty pages of text, and it is from within that material that the following quotes were pulled. I leave the unveiling of allegedly anti-Semitic quotes to others such as Robert Segal who seem to be motivated to do so.

I am certain that this is the quote that Segal or whomsoever it was, refers to, when flagrantly and inflammatorily claiming that Joseph Campbell classified the Kabbalah as medieval. What actually occurs, is that Campbell is referring to a specific historical time period, writing in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and in doing so, speaks of the Kabbalah in an approving not disproving or ignorant fashion as the writer claims. Campbell writes: “The cabalistic teachings of the medieval Jews, as well as the Gnostic Christian writings of the second century, represent the Word Made Flesh as androgynous—which was indeed the state of Adam as he was created, before the female aspect, Eve, was removed into another form” (153). Campbell refers to the Kabbalah in approving, if not glowing, terms, seeming to praise it while describing its mysticism. He writes again: “The Hebrew cabala represents the process of creation as a series of emanations out of the I AM of the Great Face. […] The emanations are represented also as the branches of a cosmic tree, which is upside down, rooted in “the inscrutable height.” The world that we see is the reverse image of that tree” (271). This does not sound like someone who is trying to present the Kabbalah as a medieval Jewish mystical religion alone, but one that he is aware continues today and for which he has respect.

Campbell’s description, in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion, of the shift from the Mesopotamian Mythological mindset to that of the Jewish/Christian one is compelling and descriptive, not derogatory. He writes:

“Thus a completely new mythology arose, and instead of the ancient Sumero-Babylonian contemplation of the disappearances and reappearances of planets as revelatory of an order of nature with which society was to be held in accord, an idea of good and evil, light and dark, even of life and death as separable took hold, and the prophecy was announced of a progressive restoration to righteousness of the order of nature. Where formerly there had been the planetary cycles, marking days and nights, the months, years, and eons of unending time, there was now to be a straight line of progressive world history with a beginning, a middle, and a prophesied end—Gayomart, Zarathustra, and Soshyant: Adam, Jesus, and the Second Coming. Where formerly there had been, as the ideal, harmony with the whole, there was now discrimination, a decision to be made, “not peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34), effort, struggle, and zeal, in the name of a universal reform” (16).

However, if one clings, even unconsciously, to the truth-, validity- and historicity-claims of Christianity or Judaism, then this statement, opinion and observation would be offensive. The next quote of Campbell’s might also offend staunch fundamentalists: “The founding myth has been, of course, that of Man’s Fall by the Tree in the Garden (Genesis 3) and Salvation by virtue of the sacrifice of the God-Man Christ Jesus on the Tree of the Cross (Matthew 27:33-54; Mark 15:22-39; Luke 23:33-49; John 19:17-30), whereby a mythological Fall has become historicized as a prehistoric fact of c. 4004 or 3760 B.C., and a historical crucifixion, c. A.D. 30, mythologized as reparation for that Fall” (The Inner Reaches of Outer Space 33). Yet, if we read this passage for what it says, it is merely descriptive, not derisive.

Campbell challenges the current biblical tradition in its dualistic thinking. He writes:

“The axial tree of the universe, around which all revolves, that is to say, it’s still cut in two, as it was in Yahweh’s Eden of the two trees, one, of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the other, of the Knowledge of Eternal Life. Whereas in the unreformed, primeval archetype of the World Tree, such as appears in the Old Norse Yggdrasil and in the Navaho Blue Corn Stalk, the life-giving roots and the pollen-bearing flowerings, or tassels, are of a single, organically intact, mythological image” (The Inner Reaches of Outer Space 76).

In comparing the biblical tradition to Nordic and Navaho Mythologies, Campbell shows his preference for biological imagery, and offers a psychological insight made by Jung before him, among others.

Campbell’s approach to religion is best exemplified by the following: “The first step to mystical realization is the leaving of such a defined god for an experience of transcendence, disengaging the ethnic from the elementary idea, for any god who is not transparent to transcendence is an idol, and its worship is idolatry” (The Inner Reaches of Outer Space 18). His concept of how to best engage the mystical is a timeless one and wholly non-reflective of 19th or 20th century mythologists. His call to remember the mystical and metaphorical is oft-repeated and made in many ways. In The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, he writes: “Yet all religions, mythologies, and “proper” works of art both derive from and refer to it [Kant’s the causality of the highest cause = x], and so must remain, for all those inaccessible to the experience, mere shells to be applied to other use […]” (353). And, in Transformations of Myth Through Time, he writes: “The god within us is the one that gives the laws and can change the laws. And it is within us” (247). Campbell’s view of God and religion is a decidedly eastern one, but, it is not wholly eastern and seems not to conform exactly to any one tradition, which is fitting for a comparativist mythologist.

Seeing the utter destruction wrought by biblical tradition upon culture and society takes nothing more than dropping blinders and reading verifiable and accurate historical accounts. I think that Campbell saw this more clearly than many of his time, and as such, felt it a personal mission to deconstruct the biblical tradition through exposing many of its problems. He states:

“The common tendency today to read the word “myth” as meaning “untruth” is almost certainly a symptom of the incredibility and consequent inefficacy of our own outdated mythic teachings, both of the Old Testament and of the New: the Fall of Adam and Eve, Tablets of the Law, Fires of Hell, Second Coming of the Savior, etc.; and not only of those archaic religious Testaments, but also of the various, more modern, secular “Utopiates” (let us call them) that are being offered today in their place. Living myths are not mistaken notions, and they do not spring from books” (Flight of the Wild Gander xiii-xiv).

There is even a point in the book when he states that he is intentionally trying to offer a way to escape biblical tradition. I leave it for another to fish for the quote.

In writing about the psychological nature of myths, Campbell seeks to open myths up to all of humanity, and this is perhaps where some see him as the guru, which label and iconization others detest. He writes:

“Like dreams, myths are productions of the human imagination. Their images, consequently—though derived from the material world and its supposed history—are, like dreams, revelations of the deepest hopes, desires and fears, potentialities and conflicts, of the human will—which in turn is moved by the energies of the organs of the body operating variously against each other and in concert. Every myth, that is to say, whether or not by intention, is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors” (The Inner Reaches of Outer Space 28).

His concept of myth, as stated here, derives from a firm rootedness in comprehension of the world through a biological lens informed by Darwinism as seen in the Historical Atlas of World Mythology series.

Campbell’s four functions of myth as described in The Hero’s Journey and Thou Art That, include the mystical, cosmological, sociological and pedagogical. He stressed the metaphorical nature of myth over and against the literal and saw a religious function of myth that involved the mystical. He writes: “This I would regard as the essentially religious function of mythology—that is, the mystical function, which represents the discovery and recognition of the dimension of the mystery of being” (Thou Art That 3). Campbell continues in Thou Art That:

“The metaphors perform their function of speaking to these deep levels of human beings when they arise freshly from the contemporary context of experience. And a new mythology is rapidly becoming a necessity both socially and spiritually as the metaphors of the past, such as the Virgin Birth and the Promised Land, misread consequently as facts, lose their vitality and become concretized” (6).

Once again, his observations about the biblical myths could seem antagonizing if one was emotionally or psychologically attached to or invested in them, but, in reality, Jung and a host of others have made similar observations.

Campbell saw that the tradition out of which we had come had grown tired and nonapplicable, as did many others, however, he was staunch in his insistence on explaining this in as many different ways as he could, which is why I see him as the most vocal deconstructionist of biblical tradition that I have come across in reading. He writes:

“If, as has happened in the contemporary world, all of the backgrounds of the images of our religious heritage have been transformed, as occurs when we find ourselves in a world of machines rather than in a world of pastoral life, these changed images really cannot and do not communicate the feelings, the sentiments, and the meanings that they did to the people in the world in which these images were developed” (Thou Art That 8).

Although he did see biblical mythology as being outdated in its cultural context, Campbell also enjoyed the mysteries behind those myths. In Thou Art That, he writes:

“Paul also grasped that the Fall at the Tree of the Garden and the Redemption at Calvary on the Tree of Redemption are the two aspects of the two Trees in the Garden of Eden. The first, the Tree of the Fall, represents passage from the eternal into the realm of time. The second is the Tree of the return from the realm of time to the spiritual. So that Tree is the threshold tree, the laurel tree, which may be seen in its two aspects, going from the sacred to the profane and from the profane back into the sacred” (15).

And continues to explain one of the maladies of the culture that bases its existence on the biblical tradition of the Fall. “When Man ate of the fruit of the Tree, he discovered himself in the field of duality instead of the field of unity. As a result, he finds himself out, in exile” (15). Here, Campbell makes an obvious reference to Descartes whose dualistic notions were certainly informed by biblical tradition. The exilic mindset of the Jewish people could be said to have instigated numerous atrocities both done to others and to themselves by others, and continues unto today.

The idea of the biblical tradition causing dualism is not one that Campbell thought independently, but was shared by a great deal of writers. However, he wrote about it in a searching manner that seems to have raised the hair of many people, and perhaps that is owing to his comparing and contrasting biblical tradition with the yin-yang as below.

“There are two orders of religious perspective. One is ethical, pitting good against evil. In the biblically grounded Christian West, the accent is on ethics, on good against evil. We are thus bound by our religion itself to the field of duality. The mystical perspective, however, views good and evil as aspects of one process. One finds this in the Chinese yin-yang sign, the dai-chi” (Thou Art That 16).

Campbell continues with a brief exploration of how the biblical tradition informs an understanding of the natural world. He writes:

“We have, then, these two totally different religious perspectives. The idea of good and evil absolutes in the world after the fall is biblical and as a result you do not rest on corrupted nature. Instead, you correct nature and align yourself with the good against evil. Eastern cults, on the other hand, put you in touch with nature, where what Westerners call good and evil interlock. But by what right, this Eastern tradition asks, do we call these things evil when they are of the process of nature?” (Thou Art That 16).

Posing Judaism and Christianity side by side with Eastern traditions exposes the incredible dangers inherent in dogmatic interpretations of mythology. The Bible, especially the first eleven chapters of Genesis, as is well known amongst biblical scholars, represents an erudite collection of mythologies from cultures in the Mesopotamian, Mediterranean and Egyptian regions. The Egyptian mythologies were the underlying strata, as explained in convincing detail in Gary Greenberg’s 101 Myths of the Bible, upon which Sumerian, Babylonian, Akkadian, Hittite, Canaanite, Greek and Jewish (not in order of importance or affect) mythologies, as shown in S.H. Hooke’s Middle Eastern Mythology, were interwoven, combined, recombined and edited throughout history. Campbell’s following admonishment will prove true in any historical period to come; “One must search out one’s own values and assume responsibility for one’s own order of action and not simply follow orders handed down from some period past. Moreover, we are intensely aware of ourselves as individuals, each responsible in his or her own way, to themselves and to their world” (Thou Art That 30). He obviously is referring to biblical tradition, but, also to any culture or person that maintains a ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ in an ancient tradition, without exploring its mysteries themselves.

I think the main objection Campbell had to biblical tradition was that its dogma and doctrines put blinders on people so that they could not see much of the rest of humanity as viable. He also deeply disliked the biblical tradition’s disavowal of nature and stated ‘dominion over’ nature as seen in the Creation myth in Genesis. Campbell writes: “I deem this distinction of mythologies very important. We have the nature mythologies, which put us in touch with our own nature. But there also exist, one must note, antinature mythologies. These are the mythologies of the nomadic people” (Thou Art That 47). The Hebrew were a nomadic tribe, which Campbell was well aware of, and so, yes, he includes them in this observation. But, it is hardly an anti-Semitic statement of which others seem to see so much of in his work.

Campbell discusses his lack of comprehension of what the rabbis thought the tree of life was, writing; “What is that tree of immortal life? Even after examining in depth the rabbinical discussions of the two trees in the Garden, it remains something of an enigma” (Thou Art That 50-1). This statement shows that he read rabbinical discussions, Midrash, I will assume, and such reading would not be likely for an anti-Semite. His take on the Paradise myth, a psychological understanding of its application to his day, demonstrates that he does not despise the myth in biblical tradition. He writes: “That is what the story about the expulsion from the Garden of Eden is all about. It is not about an historical incident but about a psychological, spiritual experience, a metaphor for what is happening to us right now” (Thou Art That 51). This understanding is one that others would do well to see, especially those Christians, Jews and Muslims in conflict with one another.

The Devil had a hold of man, as Campbell puts it.

“How is God going to get Man back? The theological notion is that God offered his own son in exchange for Man’s soul. That is the Redemption. Through it God redeems a bet, as one would say about something that was lost, “I’m going to redeem it.” God bought Man’s soul by giving the Devil Christ instead, but the Devil could not hold Christ because Christ is incorruptible and so the Devil was cheated” (Thou Art That 76).

Since God offered Christ to the Devil in exchange for humanity, knowing the Devil could not hold Christ, as pointed out by Campbell, then God knowingly setting up the Devil for a fall, also invites the Devil to plague humanity thereafter. He continues: “Thus, the first Redemption theory: Christ as the bait, the cross as the hook, and the Devil cheated” (76). Such a simplification of the biblical and Christian tradition is sure to offend, but, it also serves the purpose of deconstructing Christianity so that Christians can then reconstruct it if so desired. Jung’s notion of reconstructing Christianity, as outlaid in Stein’s Jung on Christianity and in Psychology and Western Religion, by transforming the Trinity into a Quaternity and reintroducing the feminine into the godhood is the best I have seen yet.

Campbell goes on to synthesize the entire Christian Mythology; one of his strongpoints in mythographical work was synthesis. He writes:

“There is a great mythology associated with this particular crucifixion, namely, that of the redemption of mankind from the mortal effects of a calamitous event that occurred, according to report, long ago in a very distant period, when a serpent talked. The first man—the first example of the species Homo sapiens—had been forbidden by his creator to eat the fruit of a certain tree. Satan in the form of a snake tempted him—or rather his wife, who had been lately fashioned from one of his ribs—to eat of this forbidden tree. The couple ate, and thereupon both they and their progeny, the whole of the human race, were taken by the Devil in pawn. They could gain redemption only by the miracle of God himself in the person of his Eternal Son, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, becoming incarnate in the person of that earthly Jesus who was crucified, not really for blasphemy but in order to redeem mankind from the Devil. According to this reading, the purpose was to palliate the Creator’s wrath by atoning through death for the heinous offense of that primal human act of disobedience” (Thou Art That 77).

Although one could say that this interpretation is ‘tongue-in-cheek’ in many spots, it is also fairly true to the biblical story. Over and over, Campbell writes about biblical tradition, and one could say scathingly at certain points, but, this resistance he has to the biblical tradition is more than validated by historical evidence on a nearly global scale.

Arguments about Campbell’s shadow being evidenced by his alleged anti-Semitism stem from knowledge of his Catholic upbringing and his early enthusiasm for the mythologically-loaded Nazi party. However, I do not think that the shadow was operating on Campbell when he made anti-monotheistic claims, for I see him as intentionally deconstructing Christianity, and the fact that he detested the Nazi party after he discovered their horrors is not a secret. Campbell was a literature scholar and was fluent in many languages, one of which happened to be German. The fact that some of the greatest philosophers have come out of Germany (or written in German) was not lost on Campbell either; so that what I am saying here is that of course he was attracted to a mythologically-laden political movement, but, additionally, that all political parties have shadows. The American government bombed over 52 foreign countries from WWII through 1996 (China twice) and that number has since increased dramatically. From some global perspectives, to align oneself with the American government now is akin to Campbell being attracted to the Nazi party in its beginnings.

Campbell found a way, as a comparativist will, to demonstrate similarities in many global myths to that of the biblical tradition. Whether one predates the other or not is not part of his discussion, although the idea of temporality is hinted at, it does not receive undue consideration. He writes:

“Those familiar with Germanic myth and folklore will recall that in the Icelandic Edda (specifically, in Havamal, verses 139-140 and 142) it is told that All-Father Othin, to acquire the Wisdom of the Runes, hung himself for nine days on the world tree, Yggdrasil.
I ween that I hung of the windy tree,
Hung there for nights full nine;
With the spear I was wounded, and offered I was,
To Othin, myself to myself,
On the tree that none may ever know
what root beneath it runs.
None made me happy with loaf or horn,
And there below I looked;
I took up the runes, shrieking I took them,
And forthwith back I fell.
Then began I to thrive, and wisdom to get,
I grew and well I was;
Each word led me to another word,
Each deed to another deed.
No one can miss the parallels here to the Gospel themes of Jesus’ three hours on the Cross (3 x 3 = 9), the spear in his side, his death and resurrection, and the boon of redemption thereby obtained. The phrase “and offered I was/To Othin, myself to myself” is interesting in the light of the Christian dogma of Christ and the Father as One” (Thou Art That 79).
What Campbell offers in such explorations is the opportunity for others to examine connections more deeply, to uncover historical proof of them or to refute his parallels if so desired. He is not condemning the mythologies he presents, and certainly drawing comparisons is not debasing unless one has too much emotionality tied up in their reading.

In a few instances, though, Campbell does provide some of the underlying mythological strata of the Bible. He writes:

“[serpent Madonna from Babylon] But there’s a very different spirit here. This is the cosmic tree, the axial tree. Here is the goddess of the tree, and here is the serpent who sheds its skin to be born again. The association of goddess, serpent, and tree recalls the Garden of Eden, Eve, and the serpent. And here comes the male moon figure for refreshment. He comes here to receive the fruit of eternal life for refreshment. This is not a fall. There’s no idea of a fall in these traditions” (Transformations of Myth through Time 63-4).

In this way, readers can see that the biblical interpretation of the Mesopotamian myths the Hebrews borrowed becomes negativized, and as biblical scholars have discussed, may have been due to patriarchal desires. Campbell merely points to this idea, and does not state that the biblical tradition was wrong for their interpretation.

Campbell also dares to compare and contrast biblical tradition with the Mayan and Aztec myth of the “Feathered Serpent,” in Thou Art That, which is sure to raise eyebrows amongst Church leaders. He writes:

“Clearly, the historical reading of the emblem has here become anomalous, not to say even bizarre, what with a talking serpent, a devil, and an incarnate god entering into the action. Such are not the characters of a readily credible history. The question becomes further complicated once we notice, and take into account, the fact that in the jungles of Guatemala there stands at Palenque a Mayan temple known as the “Temple of the Cross,” where there is a shrine exhibiting for worship a cross that is mythologically associated with a savior figure, named by the Mayans Kukulcan, and by the Aztecs Quetzalcoatl. That name is translated “Feathered Serpent,” suggesting the mystery of a personage uniting in himself the opposed principles represented in the earthbound serpent and the released flight of a bird” (77).

The concept of how these two crosses came to be in such separate cultures is not addressed in any detail by Campbell, because he was more interested in whats and whys than hows. He continues:

“Moreover, as the scriptures related to this figure tell us, he was born of a virgin, died and was resurrected, and is revered as some sort of savior who will return as in a Second Coming. All this mythos adds another, very troublesome, dimension to our problem of interpreting the symbolic form of the cross, since it must now be recognized, not simply or singly as a reference within one tradition to one historical event, but as a sign symbolically recognized in other traditions as well, and in significant association, moreover, with a number of related symbolic themes” (77-8).

Furthermore, Campbell explores the symbolism in these myths. He writes:

“The figure of the Feathered Serpent linked with the Cross, for example, immediately suggests our own biblical Eden/Calvary continuity. Furthermore, on top of the Mayan cross there is a bird sitting, the quetzal bird, and at the base there is a curious mask, a kind of death mask. A number of paintings of the Crucifixion from late medieval times and the early Renaissance period show the Holy Spirit above, in the form of a dove, and beneath the foot of the cross, a skull. The name of the hill of the Crucifixion, as we all know, was, in Aramic, Golgotha, and in Latin, Calvary, both of which words mean “skull.” We do not know what interpretation the Mayans gave to their death mask; but in the medieval Christian legend, the skull out of which the cross appeared to have grown, as a tree from its seed, was said to be Adam’s. When the blood of the crucified Savior fell upon it from His pierced hands and feet, the First Man was, so to say, retroactively baptized, and with him the whole human race. Had there been no Tree of the Fall, there would have been no Tree of Redemption, no Holy Rood, as the Cross was called in the Middle Ages” (78).

Campbell explains the biblical tradition’s problem in insisting on the factuality and historicity of its myths, especially crucifixion. He states:

“The answer, therefore, to our question as to why the crucifixion of Jesus holds such importance for Christians implies a complex of essential associations that are not historical at all, but are rather mythological. For, in fact, there never was any Garden of Eden or serpent who could talk, nor solitary pre-pithecanthropoid “First Man” or dream like “Mother Eve” conjured from his rib. Mythology is not history, although myths like that of Eden have been frequently misread as such and although mythological interpretations have been joined to events that may well have been factual, such as the crucifixion of Jesus” (Campbell 78).

Thus the idea of history as not being mythology is raised, and although there are some who would debate that, stating that historical events lead to myths, that myths are not exactly historically accurate is not debated any longer. Only stubborn fundamentalists persist in their views that the bible is accurate and completely historically true, in complete contradiction of the latest archeological evidence, particularly in Finkelstein and Silberman’s The Bible Unearthed, and the biblical scholars’ finds relating to the continual editing as shown by the distinct styles of writing in different chapters and verses of the same books. Yet, in the following treatment of the symbolic cross, Campbell illuminates the mystical nature of Judaism and Christianity.

“Another aspect of Orpheus is that he was torn apart, as Jesus was torn apart in the scourging and crucifixion. What does this represent in the older, let’s say, Corpus hermeticum way of reading it? First, that eternity is in love with the forms of time, but to come into those forms it has to be dismembered, and then, that you, as a separate entity in the forms of time, in order to lose your commitment to this little instance, you must be dismembered and opened to the transcendent. So the cross, in this tradition, represents the threshold from eternity to time and from time back to eternity. And that’s also the symbology of the two trees in the Garden of Eden. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is the tree of going from unity into multiplicity, and the tree of eternal life is that of going from multiplicity to unity. It’s the same tree in two directions” (Transformations of Myth through Time 206-7).

There is no hint of anti-biblical tradition in the above quote because he is engaged in the ideas the metaphors of that tradition point toward. Whether or not one agrees with his interpretation matters little, what it provides is a starting point for others to see what an engagement with the mysteries contained in the mythologies embedded in biblical tradition looks like—a valuable boon indeed! As Campbell states: “The characteristic of medieval storytelling is that you don’t invent the story, you develop it. You take a traditional story and interpret it—give it new depth and meaning in terms of the conditions of your particular day” (Transformations of Myth through Time 237). This interpretation tradition borrows from the wonderful example the Israelites offered with the Torah and Midrash, and is something Campbell himself engages in in his reinterpretation of biblical myth.

Campbell also studied the Middle Ages through the lens of much of its literature, and in doing so, made many observations of the problems inherent in Christianity. The following two quotes from Creative Mythology demonstrate this particularly well.

“The life-desolating effects of this separation of the reigns of nature (the Earthly Paradise) and the spirit (the Castle of the Grail) in such a way that neither touches the other but destructively, remains to this day an essential psychological problem of the Christianized Western world; and since it is at the root a consequence of the basic biblical doctrine of an ontological distinction between God and his universe, creator and creature, spirit and matter, it is a problem that has hardly altered since it first became intolerably evident at the climax of the Middle Ages. In briefest restatement: The Christian is taught that divinity is transcendent: not within himself and his world, but “out there.” I call this mythic dissociation” (393).

“[…] what is now known, […] of the universe and evolution of species, a suspicion has been confirmed that was already dawning in the Middle Ages; namely that the biblical myth of Creation, Fall, and Redemption is historically untrue. Hence, there has now spread throughout the Christian world a desolating sense not only of no divinity within (mythic dissociation), but also of no participation in divinity without (social identification dissolved): and that, in short, is the mythological base of the Waste Land of the modern soul, or, as it is being called these days, our “alienation” (394).

If Christians take offense to this and react, perhaps they would be better off thinking about how such statements are true, and what parts of them demand further exploration.

Although Campbell continually discusses the negative aspects of Judaism, Christianity and biblical tradition in general: “And we’re in trouble on it because we have a sacred text that was composed somewhere else by another people a long time ago and has nothing to do with the experience of our lives. And so there’s a fundamental disengagement” (Transformations of Myth through Time 46), and: “One of our main problems—and these are the two great sources, now, of the problem here in Western interpretation of these matters—is the Aristotelian accent on rational thinking and the biblical focus on the ethnic reference of the mythic symbol” (Transformations of Myth through Time 96), he also provides affirmations of them. He writes: “First, we must move socially into a new system of symbols, because the old ones do not work. Second, the symbols, as they exist, when they are interpreted spiritually rather than concretely, yield the revelation” (Thou Art That 107). He also shows a keen understanding of the politics behind the symbolism of the crucifixion; “If you want to resurrect, you must have crucifixion. Too many interpretations of the Crucifixion have failed to emphasize that. They emphasize the calamity of the event. And if you emphasize the calamity, then you look for someone to blame” (Thou Art That 112). Mel Gibson’s movie on the Passion was especially telling in its emphasis on blame, however, since Gibson consulted with various Jewish biblical authorities, I think any claims of his anti-Semitism are as ridiculous as those levied against Campbell.

Campbell found a personal creative myth and in so doing, a voice to communicate it with that many benefited from and within his oeuvre continue to find boons. He writes: “However, it has nothing to do with creative life and less than nothing with what I am here calling creative myth, which springs from the unpredictable, unprecedented experience-in-illumination of an object by a subject, and the labor, then, of achieving communication of the effect”(Creative Mythology 40). Campbell, may as well be referred to as Campwell, as he, through his opus, sought to make others well, but in truth, did so himself become well, more importantly, finding the effect within the illuminations seen in his experiences, speaking them to those who would listen.

His obvious disdain for dogma and doctrine over and against metaphor and mystery, as clearly represented by the biblical tradition, is something I share, and hope more would. That disdain does not translate into the dictionary definition of anti-Semitism, and is best re-termed as anti-monotheism, which trait I share as well. If others have more than anecdotal evidence of Campbell’s alleged anti-Semitism that involves quotes or papers that are of more substance than the ‘revelation’ that he supported Nazism in its infancy (which mythologist would not have?), as did a host of thinkers until they realized the myth was a monster, and ridiculous charges based on heresy, I welcome them and will read them with great interest. However, Campbell’s post at Sarah Lawrence College and his continuance there even after gaining some degree of notoriety, his marriage to Jean Erdman (a Jewish artist), and what I have read of him, do not point me in the direction that seems to be the latest fad.

Works Cited

Campbell, Joseph. Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension; Selected Essays 1944-1968. 1969. Novato, California: New World Library, 2002.

--. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. 1949. Bollingen Series 17. 3rd Printing. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1973.

--. The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion. 1986. Novato, California: New World Library, 2002.

--. The Masks of God: Creative Mythology. 1968. New York: Arkana, 1991.

--. Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor. Novato, California: New World Library, 2001.

--. Transformations of Myth through Time. New York: Harper and Row, 1990.

Mythic-Moving

2005-01-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

Three spirits moved toward the unconscious—
salty oceanic reserves
Movement formed waves of gradual projection
a range deserving some thought
One moves in shadows
of prosecutorial vengeance so serves
Leave me something of what felt itself
prior to that that was what

In chases forming traces of your visage
worlds jumped out of their triumphal
charring of the Ugaritic transferal
of colors ill-defined that will chase the sage

Images and words entwined seeking find
folded time and mended space conferring grace
Later, some savor one over other
Tomes chorus illusory cacophony
Three in unity multiply to one which some
do not see is four within and without
for they move in shadow sails billowing
to obscure aesthesis and inert poesis

Artemis as Embodied in the Ents

2004-12-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

Scott M. Potter

Written for Dr. Ginette Paris’ Archetypal Image in Cinema, Summer 2004

“[…] great nature’s key belongs to no divinity but thee” (Orphic Hymn 2 to Prothyraia).

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, released in 2002 and directed by Peter Jackson, is the second movie of a trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel, The Lord of the Rings, copyrighted from 1954-5. Throughout the movie, Tolkien’s dislike for the leveling of Nature in the interest of Industrial progress rings loudly. Scene 5, The Burning of the Westfold, provides the clearest example, when the evil wizard Saruman [1] says: “The old world will burn in the fires of industry. The forests will fall. A new order will rise. We will drive the machine of war with the sword and the spear and the iron fist of the orc” (The Two Towers). With this declaration and the images in the film, Jackson captures Tolkien’s mood well, for Isengard is bleak—looking gray and metallic, as in a huge mandala or disk of metal from which at the center thrusts upward a beacon of darkness, the Tower of Saruman. Surrounding the vicinity, orcs [2] chop down the remaining trees in a frenzy of flurried axe swings and with tentacled ropes they drag fallen trees down into the fires of Isengard. I contend that Tolkien tapped into the archetypal energy, field and constellation of Artemis, while engrossed in an attempt to justify the problems of world war and humanity’s striving for advancement through dominating Nature. In this paper, I will discuss aspects of Artemis, especially those connected with Nature, and then tie these into the portrayal of the Ents [3] and their role in the movie.

Note 1: See the Appendix for a list of characters and corresponding actors, along with writers and directors of the movie.
Note 2: Orcs were black elves, according to some, and soldiers and villains in the movie, slaves of Sauran, the dark lord, and Saruman, his co-conspirator.
Note 3: Ents were tree-herders who resembled trees and some of the original beings on Earth, after the supernatural.

That Tolkien, as pointed out in The Tolkien Reader, was concerned about the “sense of separation of ourselves from beasts” (84), or Artemis as Nature, is not commonly debated. Yet, what is often lost, but shows clearly in the movie, is that Tolkien was also concerned about the “absence of the sense of separation” (98), meaning that he saw humanity fast losing sight of its separation from the wild. Scene 8, Nightcamp at Fangorn, demonstrates this aptly, as orcs chop down trees for fire, instead of searching for dead wood littering the forest floor, and the forest reacts with angry groans and low mutterings that give some orcs pause. Treebeard [4], in scene 28, Isengard Unleashed, states: “Always smoke rising from Isengard these days… There was a time when Saruman would walk in my woods, but now he has a mind of metal and wheels. He no longer cares for growing things” (The Two Towers). Thus, the stage is set for the building anger of the Ents and their flocks of trees. Such wanton destruction of their kin and obvious withdrawal from communing with them occurs frequently at the hands of orcs controlled by Saruman and Sauran, which will lead to resounding retaliation. What remains obscure in the film, only mentioned briefly, is that the Ents have experienced prior tragedy due to the influence of humans, orcs and the dastardly powers of those in league with machines (Industrial Age), as the Entwives were destroyed during the destruction of a particular woods with which the Entwives were trying to protect and foster community. Therefore, the Ents have even more reason to despise humans and orcs than simply deforestation that is the spoiling of Nature or Artemis.

Note 4: Treebeard was the eldest Ent, or shepherd of the trees, and is sometimes called the oldest being on Earth. When Cronus castrates Uranus, “from the bloody drops Earth conceived the Furies, Giants and Nymphs of the Ash-Trees” (Grant 87). Therefore, the Nymphs of the Ash-Trees predate Aphrodite and the rest of the Olympians, which gives credence to Tolkien’s identification with Treebeard being one of the first beings on Earth.

Artemis represents nature, untamed and wild, or, nature unspoiled by humanity, among other things. Christine Downing, in The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine, states: “[Artemis] is the transition” (182). The transition Downing refers to is that of pre-pubescent girl into woman through the act of childbirth. I think that Artemis represents other elements of transition as well, namely that of transformation in general, especially the transformation that overtakes one while in the forest or on the mountain. In Scene 30, Arwen’s Fate, Arwen, daughter of Elrond the Elven king of Rivendell [5], struggles with a decision to relinquish her immortality for her love of a human: Aragorn. Elrond tells her she will be “Bound to your grief under the fading trees” (The Two Towers). Elrond thereby conjures a linkage between the dying trees and the death of her mortal lover.

Note 5: Rivendell is a kingdom of the Elves, those beings who taught the Ents to speak.

Perhaps the nature of transformation that overtakes one while in the woods is best described by Jackson from Scenes 42, The Entmoot Decides, to 44, Master Peregrin’s Plan. This transformation involves the hobbits [6] Merry and Pippin who, normally happy-go-lucky and conniving, transform their connivance into one that leads the Ents to go to war. Treebeard, in Scene 42, says: “The Ents cannot hold back this storm. We must weather such things as we always have done. This is not our war.” Merry responds with: “But you’re part of this world, aren’t you?” Treebeard then tells Merry to return home. Merry and Pippin have a forlorn discussion. Pippin suggests that maybe they should go home. Merry responds by saying the forests of the Shire will be burnt as well, stating: “All that was once green and good in this world will be gone” (The Two Towers). The transformation these two hobbits undergo while in the woods and under Treebeard’s protection is one of getting in touch with their anima. Downing writes:

Artemis is what Jungians call an anima figure […]. [Anima] is, as Hillman puts it, what gives events (or persons or ‘things’) the dimension of soul. Soul making is not confined to the making of our own soul but to the recreation (or rediscovery) of the world within which we live as a realm of souls, of living, meaning-full-in-themselves, beings (167).

Thus, the transforming hobbits, Mary and Pippin in the presence of Treebeard; and, Sam and Frodo [7] in the woods, find that deeper connection to Nature and thereby their own souls and the world at large, to be able to see significance beyond the Shire. Pippin’s transformation is exemplified in Scene 44; having experienced a change of heart, he convinces Treebeard to take them south, even though this brings them close to Isengard, because, as Pippin muses, the closer they are to danger the less harm will come to them. Treebeard consents, thus orchestrating an opportunity for Treebeard to witness the obliteration of trees surrounding Isengard.

Note 6: Hobbits are approximately four-foot tall beings who live a sheltered life in the Shire, one of whom carries the ring.
Note 7: Frodo Baggins is the hobbit ring-bearer in the movie and Samwise Gamgee is his companion-protector.

Moreover, the transformational aspect of Artemis illuminates in the deaths of others she kills or destroys. According to Pierre Grimal, in The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, she often kills via arrows of sudden death, including the six daughters whose mother offended Leto, Python the dragon (with Apollo), the titan Tityus, Gigantes Gration, the monster Bouphagus (son of a titan), Orion (the giant huntsman), the nymph or she-bear Callisto (which has also been identified as an aspect of Artemis herself), and the Aloadai giants. Her actions also lead to the deaths of the hunters Actaeon [8] and Meleager (61-2). Since the Ents are the personification of nature, they represent Artemis, and exhibit fierce Artemisian qualities in their war against Saruman and the assault on Isengard. The death-dealing aspect of Artemis embodied in the Ents, begins in Scene 46, The Last March of the Ents. Treebeard, Merry and Pippin arrive closer to Isengard, heading south as Pippin demanded, and Treebeard is telling them stories. The last involves field mice that tickle him awfully—he stops abruptly when he sees the annihilation of the woods. Treebeard poignantly says: “Many of these trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut and acorn. They had voices of their own.” Just as “[Artemis] knows each tree by its bark or leaf or fruit” (Downing 167), Treebeard knew many of the destroyed trees since they were nut or acorn. Treebeard then roars a thunderous primal scream that throbs through the woods, calling the Ents to Isengard. He says: “A wizard should know better! There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of men for this treachery. My business is with Isengard tonight…with a rock and a stone.” Shortly thereafter, the Ents begin to lumber out of the woods, to march on Isengard. Treebeard then gathers the Ents; “Come my friends, the Ents are going to war. It is likely that we go to our doom. The last march of the Ents” (The Two Towers). The battle plays in Scene 49, The Flooding of Isengard, as Ents throw huge boulders, kick and swat the orcs. After some intense fighting, the dam is broken down and the river washes away the orcs, flooding Isengard. Downing credits Otto with observing that the Greeks identified Artemis as “‘She Who Slays’” (160). Treebeard and the Ents at Isengard, in this sense, fully embody “She Who Slays,’ even as masculine beings. The incredible brutality of Artemis, once enraged or provoked, as in the case of the Ents, knows no limits until those deserving retaliation receive their comeuppance. Saruman and the orcs received theirs, through the unleashing of the river [9] that was dammed, and by the pummeling of the Ents. In The White Goddess: a historical grammar of poetic myth, Graves writes: “Artemis probably means ‘The Disposer of Water’ from ard- and themis” (390). Thus, ‘the Ents as Artemis’ notion increases in credibility since the Ents subdue Isengard by breaking down the dam and disposing the water of the dam.

Note 8: See Appendix for a brief look at the psychological significance of the Artemis-Actaeon story.
Note 9: The connection between water and Artemis has been made previously and so will only be mentioned here, as Dr. Ginette Paris’ website mentions, Artemis is also “purity of sources, and fountains and streams, […] ecology”.

In Myths and Legends of the British Isles, Richard Barber writes that the idea for the Ents, a forest that marches to war, originated, according to Tolkien’s letters, from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and the following line: “[…] nor vanquished till the wood of Birnam came to the castle of Dunsinane” (561). Indeed, as Tolkien puts it himself, the Ents are inspired by Shakespeare, albeit disapprovingly. “Their part in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of ‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill’: I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war” (The Letters 212n). Therefore, the Ents marching on Isengard in the movie comes to fruition, and the imaginative and very fearsome power of trees marching is portrayed vividly, a glimpse into the fury of Artemis covered in bark and leaves with roots as trampling feet. The very image of retribution as thunder evokes through the grumbling, groaning and grunting of the Ents as they march [10]. This is not the garden variety of you did me wrong so you pay kind of retribution; oh no, rather, this is of the ultimate punishment from the deep wild woods kind of retribution, one from which escape proves difficult to unattainable. The orcs are annihilated at Isengard. Saruman cowers in his dark tower, made to gaze upon the destruction of Artemis that has wreaked her retribution upon his agenda in full force through the vehicle of the Ents.

Note 10: “Artemis embodies a profound denial of the world of patriarchy, the world where some persons have power over others, the world of dominance and submission, where one can be hunter or hunted” (Downing 176). This explains or girds the psychological underpinning for the retribution at Isengard.

Consequently, Artemis, in her wild and untamed aspect, looks suspiciously like Ares or Athena, especially in the war and assault scenes. However, even though Artemis may take on what appears to be the mantle of Ares or Athena, upon closer inspection, the use of roots to crush the stones of the castle walls and weaken the dam, result in the unleashed fury of a fearsome flood upon the castle and its defenders. The fury of the flood and the use of hurled boulders at enemies combines the war-like qualities of Ares with the fury of Artemis at those who profane her abode. The decision to march on Isengard combines the strategic quality of Athena with the natural progression of Artemis to address the wrongs of particular perpetrators. I assert here that archetypes, as energies and processes, often combine with others, or in Jung’s thought, are contaminated, and that to try to separate out the Ares or Athena qualities of the Ents from the Artemisian proves arduous to impossible. Other archetypal energies make their appearances in the Ents as well, especially during their initial conference, in which Mnemosyne plays center stage under the guise of an Athena-like debate in slow motion, cloaked in the bark, roots and leaves of Artemis [11]. The Ents killed the orcs with a rage that was reminiscent of Artemis’ slaying of the six daughters, without remorse or mercy.

Note 11: See Appendix for a list of these active to inactive sub-archetypes in the Ents in the movie.

However, transformative elements in the film are shown in less final ways as well, like coming into a sense of otherness, understanding wildness, accepting nature’s right to exist, and a host of other attitudinal changes [12]. For example, Sam and Frodo have a heart-to-heart in the woods, whereas they experience most of their difficulties and fighting amongst the bleak caves and rocky mountainsides where not much grows at all. Yet not all is positive transformation, Jackson reminds us, as Gollum plans their deaths while in the same woods—representing the shadow side of the forest!

Note 12: Additionally, one can point to the transformative aspects that occur during hunting, outside the focus of this paper.

Furthermore, and perhaps overly obvious, transformation occurs to Nature itself as well as to those who interact with Nature. The kind of transformation addressed here, though, is more than Nature being destroyed or dominated (or in the case of Artemis, seen, as in Actaeon); it is of Nature changing its mind. This idea is manifested in Scene 35, Entmoot, when the Ents have an Entmoot, a meeting or council, to decide whether they will go to war, or not, against Saruman and Isengard. During the scene, Treebeard says: “The Ents have not troubled about the wars of men and wizards for a very long time. But now something is about to happen that has not happened for an Age. Entmoot…it is a gathering…” As the Ents arrive, he begins to name them; “Beech, Oak, Chestnut [13], Ash…good, good, good, many have come. Now we must decide if the Ents will go to war” (The Two Towers). In his very decision to call for an Entmoot, Treebeard demonstrates a willingness to change his mind, to consider other possibilities, which is akin to Artemis changing her mind, and analogous to Nature raining for forty days and then stopping. Treebeard and the Ents initially arrive at the decision to ignore the problems in Middle Earth. Treebeard, however, changes his mind again, upon seeing the destruction around Isengard, and decides to march to war after all, with the rest of the Ents, appearing when he calls them, who also change their minds, ready for war.

Note 13: In the second chapter, “The Battle of the Trees,” Graves explores the notion of trees battling or going to war based on the Red Book of Hergest, which contains The Book of Taliesin and the Mabinogion, and dates back to the thirteenth century (The White Goddess: […] 27). Graves suggests the chestnut was conjured by a wizard out of buds and blossoms, and did not take part in the battle of the trees. “The bashful chestnut does not belong to the same category of letter trees as those that took part in the battle […]” (41). The inclusion of the Chestnut by Jackson takes on greater significance when seen in this light.

Above all aspects of Artemis, though, loom the untamed and wild, and the bringer of death to those who have offended her (unspoiled Nature), in countless narratives and stories about her. In The Greek Myths: Complete Edition, Graves writes: “She tried her silver bow four times: her first two targets were trees; her third, a wild beast; her fourth, a city of unjust men” (84). In the movie, the Ents are the embodiment of the abovementioned unspoiled nature, from deep within forgotten woods, and as such, in their role as destroyers of Isengard and Saruman, offer nature’s revenge against the archetypal despoilers of nature. Not only does Artemis destroy, but she also protects. Downing writes: “As Aeschylus reminds us, she is not only the hunter but the protector of all that is wild and vulnerable [….]” (164). Treebeard shows his protecting nature when he laments the destruction of the woods in a rage. Moreover, the Ents, as tree creatures, definitely speak to being hunters, as well as the hunted, as the orcs mercilessly chop the trees down and later, in retaliation, the Ents annihilate the orcs at Isengard. Downing sees Artemis “as the goddess who comes from afar, whose realm is the ever-distant wilderness” (163). Treebeard says his home is in the hoops of the mountains, in other words, from afar. The Ents, as depicted in the movie, are tree-herders, shepherds of the trees, ancient creatures whose time predates humankind’s, and who have come to take the shapes or forms of trees through close and constant interaction with the trees. Artemis, in her transitional aspect, provides links from one state of being into another state. The Ents, hobbits and elves, being close to nature—not having experienced the suffering of the separation from nature that humanity, orcs, Saruman and Sauran have—form the link between the Ents and humanity and the rest of Middle Earth. Downing states: “The feelings evoked in [Artemis’] realm are of many hues—vulnerability, solicitude, rage, instability. They include the painful sense of implacable otherness, and even the ache of not having access to one’s deepest feelings” (172). Treebeard echoes some of these hues of feelings in the movie: “Nobody cares for the trees anymore…he no longer cares for growing things”…the roar of rage that no words can express. I would add that not having access to one’s deepest feelings is not necessarily a problem of access, as much as it is one of languaging. For, certainly, the access to one’s deepest feelings is more prevalent, if one is open to it, in the wildness of Nature than elsewhere. The problem comes when one tries to vocalize or verbalize the intensity with which one experiences Nature, not that intensity is impossible within Artemis’ wild realm. Artemis [14] is the dominant archetype of the Ents, as the embodiments of nature working against the machines and industry (represented by Isengard and Mordor, personified in Saruman and Sauran) that tears down forests and trees; and Treebeard, as the representative of the Ents, aptly embodies Artemis’ myriad characteristics, in numerous ways, as the personification of Nature, enactor of transformation, protector of the hobbits and Earth, slayer of the orcs, caretaker of Saruman, and most importantly, healer of the terrible psychic wound of the separation from nature. We would do well to heed the underlying message of the Ents and reach an accord with the trees.

Note 14: Artemis, like all Greek deities, is multivalent, and Kerényi interprets her as maiden, strong, wild, virgin-huntress, she-bear and lioness (145).

Appendix

1: Treebeard & Ent-related quotes and notes from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

5 The Burning of the Westfold
Isengard is bleak—looking gray and metallic, as in a huge mandala or disk of metal from which at the center thrusts upward a beacon of darkness, the Tower of Saruman. Surrounding the vicinity, orcs chop down the remaining trees in a frenzy of flurried axe swings and with tentacled ropes they drag fallen trees down into the fires of Isengard.

Saruman
The old world will burn in the fires of industry. The forests will fall. A new order will rise.

We will drive the machine of war with the sword and the spear and the iron fist of the orc!

We have only to remove those who oppose us.

8 Nightcamp at Fangorn
Orcs chop trees down in Fangorn to make a fire, not even bothering to look or scour the woods for fallen wood… The forest reacts with angry groans and low mutterings that give some orcs pause and elicits the following from Merry.

Merry
Folks used to say there was something in the water that made the tree grow tall and come alive. Trees that could whisper, talk to each other, even move.

11 Treebeard
Pippin and Merry escape the orc encampment to Fangorn Forest, as the riders of Rohan attack the orcs in the night.

Pippin
The trees; climb a tree!
Pippin and Merry climb Treebeard, who wakes up… Treebeard saves Merry who fell and was under attack from an orc who followed them into the forest, stomping the orc into dirt with one mighty trunk-leg-foot thump. Merry calls Treebeard a tree.

Treebeard
Tree, I am no tree! I am an Ent!

Merry
A tree-herder, a shepherd of the forest…

Treebeard
Treebeard, some call me…

Pippin
Who’s side are you on?

Treebeard
Side, I am on nobody’s side, because nobody’s on my side, little orc. Nobody cares for the woods anymore. […] Sounds like orc mischief to me. They come with fire. They come with axes. Gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning. Destroyers and usurpers, curse them!

12 The Passage of the Marshes
On their way to Mordor through the Dead Marshes, Frodo, Sam and Gollum hide underneath one of the few trees in the marshes to escape a sighting by the Nazgul flying overhead.

13 The White Rider
Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli come upon the slaughter of the orcs to see if they can find the bodies of the hobbits, Merry and Pippin, whom they have been tracking to rescue for days. Aragorn notices the tracks the hobbits made as they struggled to Fangorn Forest. They enter the forest to find the hobbits.

Legolas
This forest is old, very old. Full of memory and anger.

The trees are speaking to each other.

14 Fangorn Forest
Treebeard has been charged with protecting the hobbits by Gandalf, and so he is taking them to a safe place.

Treebeard
My home lies deep in the forest near the hoops of the mountain.

The trees have grown wild and dangerous. Anger festers in their hearts. They will harm you if they can. There are too few of us left now, too few of us Ents left to manage them now.

28 Isengard Unleashed

Treebeard
Always smoke rising from Isengard these days…
There was a time when Saruman would walk in my woods, but now he has a mind of metal and wheels. He no longer cares for growing things.

30 Arwen’s Fate
Elrond
Bound to your grief under the fading trees.

35 Entmoot
The Ents have an Entmoot, a meeting or council, to decide whether they will go to war, or not, against Saruman and Isengard.

Treebeard
The Ents have not troubled about the wars of men and wizards for a very long time. But now something is about to happen that has not happened for an Age. Entmoot…it is a gathering…

Beech, Oak, Chestnut, Ash…good, good, good, many have come. Now we must decide if the Ents will go to war.

{Out of the trees named by Tolkien in The Two Towers on pages 83-4: beech-trees, oaks, chestnut, ash, fir, birch, rowan and linden, they are all what the hobbits were reminded of, recalled or thought of when they looked at the Ents, not that specific type of tree.}

40 Old Entish
The Ents pause during the Entmoot

Treebeard
We have just agreed. I have told your names to the Entfolk and we have agreed you are not orcs.
Merry and Pippin express their disbelief that this is all they decided upon, when war is threatening their friends at Helms Deep.

Treebeard
War, yes it affects us all. You must understand, it takes a long time to say anything in old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.

42 The Entmoot Decides

Treebeard
The Ents cannot hold back this storm. We must weather such things as we always have done. This is not our war.

Merry
But you’re part of this world, aren’t you?
Treebeard tells Merry to go back home. Merry and Pippin have a forlorn discussion. Pippin suggests that maybe they should go home. Merry responds by saying the forests of the Shire will be burnt as well.

Merry
All that was once green and good in this world will be gone.

44 Master Peregrin’s Plan
Pippin convinces Treebeard to take them south, even though this brings them close to Isengard, because the closer they are to danger the less harm will come to them. Treebeard consents.

Treebeard
I always liked going south… Somehow it feels like going downhill.
The plan was to get Treebeard to see the destruction around Isengard and then to take action.

46 The Last March of the Ents
Treebeard, Merry and Pippin arrive closer to Isengard and Treebeard is telling them stories. Field mice tickle him awfully—he stops when he sees the annihilation of the woods.

Treebeard
Many of these trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut and acorn. They had voices of their own.

Treebeard roars a thunderous primal scream that throbs through the woods, calling the Ents.
A wizard should know better! There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of men for this treachery. My business is with Isengard tonight…with a rock and a stone.
The Ents begin to lumber out of the woods, to march on Isengard.

Treebeard
Come my friends, the Ents are going to war. It is likely that we go to our doom. The last march of the Ents.

49 The Flooding of Isengard
Ents throw huge boulders, kick and swat the orcs. After some intense fighting, the dam is broken down and the river washes away the orcs, flooding Isengard.

51 The Battle for Middle Earth is about to begin
Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli crest a hill on horseback.

Gandalf
The battle for Helms Deep is over, but the battle for Middle Earth begins.

Sam and Frodo have a heart to heart in the woods, whereas they experience most of their difficulties and fighting amongst the bleak caves, and rocky mountainsides where not much grows at all. Gollum plans their deaths while in the same woods—representing the shadow side of the forest!

Cast in paper

Viggo Mortensen—Aragorn
Liv Tyler—Arwen
Hugo Weaving—Elrond
Elijah Wood—Frodo Baggins
Sean Astin—Samwise 'Sam' Gamgee
Ian McKellen—Gandalf the Grey/Gandalf the White
John Rhys-Davies—Gimli
Andy Serkis—Gollum/Sméagol
Orlando Bloom—Legolas Greenleaf
Dominic Monaghan—Meriadoc 'Merry' Brandybuck
Billy Boyd—Peregrin 'Pippin' Took
Christopher Lee—Saruman the White
John Rhys-Davies—Voice of Treebeard

Movie Credits

Directed by
Peter Jackson

Writing credits (WGA)
J.R.R. Tolkien (novel)
Frances Walsh (screenplay) (as Fran Walsh)
Philippa Boyens (screenplay)
Stephen Sinclair (screenplay)
Peter Jackson (screenplay)

Produced by
Peter Jackson—producer
Michael Lynne—executive producer
Mark Ordesky—executive producer
Barrie M. Osborne—producer
Rick Porras—co-producer
Jamie Selkirk—co-producer
Robert Shaye—executive producer
Frances Walsh—producer
Bob Weinstein—executive producer
Harvey Weinstein—executive producer
8: Artemis & Actaeon Note

“(After a day’s hunting, Actaeon left his fellow huntsmen to find a quiet place to rest. Accidentally, he comes upon Artemis bathing with her nymphs. Outraged at being seen naked, she flings water at his face and thus transforms him into a stag […])” (Downing 177). My read of the Artemis-Actaeon myth has changed, for now. I think that Actaeon, as that part of the psyche in search of its essence or soul, found its Nature-soul, Artemis (which I see as being not solely anima and not gender-specific). And, furthermore, that this soul is the part of the soul that represents the separation of human from Nature, or the divinity within. Accordingly, Actaeon, or the human psyche seeking its divinity, was not ready to be reunited with Nature (the divinity within), and so was torn to pieces by his hounds (instincts) that seek Artemis (the stag and huntress of the stag). This lack of unification with Nature evidences throughout the movie, in nearly all characters, except for the Elves and Ents.

11: Archetypes & Sub-Archetypes of the Ents

The Ents exhibit the following archetypes and sub-archetypes that dominate at different times:
Aphrodite in the beauty of their leaves and language in its slow and sonorous booming
Apollo in the ability and process of reasoning
Ares in the assault on Isengard
Artemis in protecting hobbits and trees, slayer of orcs, healing separation from Nature wound, enacting transformation, water disposers, personification of Nature, in wreaking retribution for trespasses, connection with mountains, connection with cities, connection with the wild and untamed, connection with virginity (loss of Entwives) and passion (for the Entwives)
Athena in planning the assault on Isengard, and Entmoot council
Kairos in arriving at a decision to go to war, as the right moment for action, after
considering history and present and future ramifications of ignoring Isengard any longer
Mnemosyne in remembering times during the council, and stories with the hobbits
Praxis in actually doing the work of destroying Isengard, and then guarding the
defeated Saruman

Bibliography

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--. The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine, 1966.

Ode to Sappho, You & I

2004-11-20T09:01:00.000-08:00

I will go on and
Continue
When you move on

In the moon painting oceans white
memories of you filter in

Daffodils, anemone, irises
Rhododendron, crocus, coleus,

When the plankton carry the red tide
On their green backs
And spread glowing turquoise embers
Across the black and silent ocean
Colors of memories of labors brush the heavy sky

Petunia, phlox, lantana
Toad lilies, beards tongue, fuscia

Tables with three empty seats
One setting and accoutrements
Lonely and alone I eat
The sun blinds glasses open
Yet memories kindle agreements
With splashes of more of shared digging

Peruvian lilies, heliopsis, campanula
Helianthus, hibiscus, Echinacea

The moon rides the tail of the sun
Here comes the salt of the work
It drips into my vision
Muses play harps in Lydian
Thoughts the chest does jerk
And here you follow the moon
Lyre constellation
In my dark night sky of unfolding

Monarda, marguerite, Montana
Chrysanthemum, pin cushion, lobelia

And as I turn, there is no image
There is no you
And what we were flowers again

A garden

Without a copse
Without a song
Without movement

No stag
No hunter
No forest

Liminality

2004-11-20T08:58:00.000-08:00

Leftovers in the refrigerator or on dinner tables
Ingrates seeking passive agreement over confounding fables
Mythologies seen through a past tense lens
Incorporating lessons within condensing contends
Numinous encounters goosebumping skin
Analogies, metaphors, Pacifica and tending the within
Linguistics and the soulness of words spoken
Interest, suggestion, comprehension and tension
Traveling paths that (un)wind helixically
Yearning for deep, wide, above, beyond and fractally