Departure
Life is stagnant. "Midway upon the journey of life I found that I was in a dusky wood, for the right path whence I strayed, was lost.." Dante. It could be cancer. Something inside your torso is mutating and changing you from within. From that day on you are not the same physical body. It could be a fortunate break up. Looking at jewelry in a window will never be the same. In time you stop seeing things that would be just perfect for them. It could be staring up at the ceiling in your office as a co worker walks in unnoticed and stares at you after he rambled off four sentences you just missed. Leaving home for college or leaving college to find home, these are our departures and our callings.
Some refuse the call. They stay in that job or marriage. Every day they die a little. Life is only the prolonged wait for death. It is the Dragon quilted in the armor of Thou Shalt! No matter what we use to kill the thoughts in our head; other people's voices, the alcohol, the endless sleep, or the eighty hour work week; in the still quiet times in our head we hear our heart aching. It cares too much to allow us to ignore ourselves. Those voices of those who love us ring in our heads until we own the voices for our own. For these people only great trauma sets them in motion. The lethal bite of the serpent, our shadow sets us into the center of the maelstrom. Either Mephistopheles, Virgil, Coyote, or Loki takes us down the garden path. Mercury in his various forms. Mephistopheles allows us to partake in our destruction without ever crossing into it. He is the Ghost of Christmas Future. Virgil shows the ventures that all sank at sea through the faults of their own vices. Virgil is the vicarious compassion for those people who you have a chance to become like. The Scared Straight tactic. Coyote just makes an ass out of you to bring you a wake up call. He directly deals with our voracious appetites. But for those hard eggs to crack, God forbid if you venture upon him, is Loki. He is the gratuitous prankster that gets free realm of your mind, body, and soul until you wizen up and listen too your higher spirit. Your misery is his pleasure no matter how many trapdoors you find in your bottom. Depth is his home, you will not loose him in your depression.
"If Vacillation dwell with the heart the soul will rue it. Shame and honor clash where courage of a steadfast man is motley like the magpie. But such a man may yet make merry, for Heaven or Hell have equal part in him. Infidelity's friend is black all over and takes on a murky hue, while the man of loyal temper holds to the White."
Eschenbach
For those who are brave and denial is only a river in Egypt (yes bad but effective pun, which is not too funny if you find yourself on its shores; for you should be in your own river.), We come across Ben Kenobi, David carradine with his seven foot flute cane, Jimmeny Cricket, or the Witch of the North. But most of us only receive Gurnemanz who only teach us a trade, even if it is not our own, and to ignore our own compassion for ourselves and others. He is the guardian of the Dragon of Thou Shalt. But his time is not for long, once we answer the call. The closet is opened and their is no hiding the key to change our lives with. For Gurnemanz and the doting mother who dresses us up in hair shirts and tin pans instead of suits of armor have led Parzival off the fool's cliff. Into the rabbit hole. Like the rabbit we are late for a very important life. The rabbit symbolizes our own rebirth from the ties of our subconscious that fight our ego for recognition. The physical equivalent are the mutating cells in our Pancreas. Until you felt sick, I bet you did not even know where your Pancreas was or what it does. Once it is sick and you are fighting for your life, you learn quick everything there is to know about it five ways from Sunday. When you answer your call and depart onto your own Neverending Story, you become close personal friends with the Wicked witch of the East(Your mother's ugly side), West (Your wife's ugly side that reflects your mother), North (Ascending Spirit), and South (apathetic Chaos, Chloe the sister of the three that pulls the skein of your life from source of the universe). The beginning, the end, the infinite higher formation, and the unchanging source. Also we find our companions, shadows, inner royal youths, and heros. But do we keep pinching ourselves wishing we were home, or do we journey onward. We enter the Shamanic Schizophrenic break up.
Upon crossing the threshold, Shamans within their trance tend to feel like a host of animals have come and ripped them apart limb by limb. They were willing to give up everything to enter the kingdom of the father. They venture in to teach or conquer the outdated father figure of our ego. Those who can not conquer the fear and desire remain on the threshold not willing to enter the temple or fall back into the old world. These Shamans never return to their bodies that just get scattered into the wind or is buried in the same depths that the spirit remains lost in. When we go through cancer, divorce, or losing a home it feels like we have been ripped apart from the inside out. Nothing remains whole, everything is in shambles. This is the Tower card, the serpent shedding its skin, the little deaths, the ego death. Inanna's sheds her seven heavenly robes to enter her sisters presence in the depths of Tiamat,Ereshkigal's nether world. We prepare ourselves full of presupposed thoughts and actions to bring with us onto our adventures to only be shed of them all...From the great above she set her mind toward the great below,"The goddess, from the great above" she set her mind toward the great below, Inanna, from the great above she set her mind toward the great below. My lady abandoned earth, to the nether world she descended, Inanna abandoned heaven, abandoned earth, to the nether world she descended, abandoned lordship, abandoned ladyship, to the nether world she descended.... So far we see the goddess too conscious and logical right brain thinking she brings seven divine decrees fastened at her belt, jewels, and queenly robes with assurance that some one will save her as she enters the same point of no return...why, pray hast thou come to the land of no return? On the road whose traveler returns not, how has thy heart led thee?...this is the same point Dante entered "Abandon all hope ye who enter.." or Christ who Harrowed Hell after the Shamanic trance he had entered on the cross which he returned from as Lazurus had done before him arising from his cave. Inanna is shed seven times of all she bore for ...Extraordinarily, O Inanna, have the decrees of the nether world been perfected, O Inanna, do not question the rites of the nether world... Here the seven judges of death, the Anunnaki, fasten the eyes upon the naked sun Goddess. Here Kali strips the skulls of your false personality, your Marley Chains, your false Personas, you arrive to the naked truth of your life and existance. This is the moment that Luke and Lancelot realize it is their own face staring back at them in the visor of their enemies. For we are our worst enemies, our worse judges, the hardest one to render forgiveness until we bring redemption and change into our lives. Inanna and Ereshkigal are two half's of the same coin. They make up the one goddess in two aspects. Peachy and Davit in The Man Who Would Be King, Katherine and her younger sister in The Taming of the Shrew, Artreyu and Bastion in The Neverending Story are of the many examples of this motif. YHVH and the demiurge with Lucifer as the scapegoat that tries to bear light upon the problem and is punished for it to be repressed in the depth of the subconscious. For Good and Evil only exist within the ego. The ego makes all the manifest. Demons and Angels only can influence, they lack the material qualities to exist here. For the fool is the twin brother of the king. Did Christ rise from his shamanic break up whole or was he lost? Did his spirit return to him once he was saved from the cross? Did we begin to do for ourselves, or wait for him to fix everything? Does he bring our redemption, salvation, or forgiveness; or do we do it for ourselves? This answers the question if Christ came back whole or lost. For teachers do not hold your hand forever but expect you to do for yourself upon graduation. Christ follows the regicide of old so we may eat of his flesh and drink of his blood so we will have new life. No longer we worship the ways of YHVH represented by King Minos who refuse to sacrifice the Bull that holds the bounty of the universe; which we hold onto as if we were our own god for our own economic advantage denying our own serious of death's and births to one fixed certain reality of only decay as we sacrifice others to the labyrinth of the MINOTAUR WE HAVE BECOME.
It is Prince Five Weapons, Sidartha Guatama's early incarnation, encounter with the orge Sticky-Hair. Five times was he stuck to the sticky hair, the world of the five senses left him hanging. But the sixth invisible weapon of knowledge freed him. This is the original version of Tarbaby and Briar Rabbit of Uncle Remus, it was the clever thought that made the bear and fox release him into the briar patch. Life is more than what we can measure, sense, or feel. It is in intuition, hope, truth, and faith as well. Upon crossing that threshold we are overcome by an uncertain anxiety that has no base or grounding... Lion, tigers, bear oh my; lion tigers,and bears, oh my!Lion, tigers, and bears, Oh My!; Lion, tiger,bears, oh my......This in Arcadian (ancient town above Greece that gave rise to the present culture of the Cajuns in New Orleans) mythology is represented by Pan. He is the dangerous presence beyond the protective zone of the village, the mother's arms, the bike without your hands on the bars, or the dark woods. He shares the Shepherd's pipe of Hermes. He is Legba who meets you at the crossroads to tune your guitar for your new success, the guardian of the threshold, the one who stands between things known and unknown, he is the door all must enter. He is the way for those who hold unto the old ways. For those who appear naked like Inanna before her sister and the Annukia, she comes to Christ as a bridegroom there is no fear. But Christ calls for you to bear your own cross with the joyful participation of sorrow until your new birth. Your Resurrection and return to society, friends, family, and self.
Christ comes in many guises. He is the Ben Kenobi, the mother who gave you amulets and teachings to prepare you to face the father, the teacher who prepares you to find your own path of the big Ferry boat. Buddha said he could only show the way to enlightenment, for enlightenment is a personal affair. It is the mother who warns of the rocks that crush. In our world the Spider Mother must prepare us to face the opposites that conflict our minds in this world. We come to Christ to hear the sound of one hand clapping. To put all opposites equal to one another. To see Ereshkigal and Inanna as one. It is Frodo passing in between the two Buzzards, Artreyu passing in between the sphinxes, or Pacinno going on ...look but don't touch, taste but don't swallow!...But with the Christs ..even Thou I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I will fear no evil......
Here we follow the night voyage. Three hours of Darkness that followed the crucifixion and the three days in the tomb. The time in between the old moon and the new. The ego death. The resurection of the living that the church stole. Change in this life time. From West to east we transverse the ocean between the world of our soul and our body is delivered out of the belly of the whale. This is also reminiscent of the divide between our hard shell reality of our thick skulls and the water barrier between it and the brain. This is the same ocean that Lucifer transverses to earth in Milton's classic Paradise Lost. This is where Pinochio finally answers his call to become a real boy with hopes of becoming a man one day. His refusal of the call left him wooden to only become an ass. The whale returned him to his healthy guide, his father, to raise him to enter his Neverending Story one day to meet a more cheerful colored Fairy. One day on his greatest adventure. Our own....
