Haunting between the Worlds… that’s a big mystery… these big departures…
I was talking to my good friend, Robinette Kennedy, who forwarded the wonderful photo of the ‘psychopomp pose’ – Robinette is somebody whose cover is a psychologist but she really teaches trance postures half the year in Rural Georgia, and half the year in Crete.
Trance postures – we know them – it’s like the kingdom of heaven is at hand… it’s like another massage friend of mine said that when we put our face in our hands, with our little fingers above our eyebrows, that is a natural gesture but it is a mudra for alleviating grief. And then Robinette sent several photos of the psychopomp pose, the guide to the underworld, because part of grieving is guiding.
And she sent this wonderful thing, as I drove Stella to the happy heavenly creatures crematorium or whatever it is, a long through traffic kind of a thing, and she was guiding me… and there were a number of auspicious and beautiful things. One was when I opened the door, to the happy heavenly creatures crematorium, there were these two really great cats, seated right before the door, in a kind of Egyptian pose, tortoise tortie cats you know and I go ‘hi – how wonderful to have you there!’ and the woman said ‘yes they’re the greeters’ but she said ‘they always know when somebody is coming and they stand next to each other like Egyptian cats at the door’ and I go that’s great, that’s really wonderful and on the way there, up the driveway I saw a deer and that’s when Robinette said, you know something I posted on our Facebook, the picture of the women in the in the Psychopomp pose with the body of the deceased and then underneath a deer for gentleness. And I saw a deer, and then later when I went swimming afterwards, I saw a deer… and we want these things.
Navigating the bardo – navigating the Bardo – and Robinette said ‘Before you leave her’ because I’m going to go back tomorrow and actually put her in the crematorium myself, there we go it’s worth the extra fee to do that… and she said, ‘Today before you leave her, just whisper in her left ear and say – look for the light, look for the path, there you go..” And we do yearn for these things but we’re also pretty sure that they’re true… when I went to go whisper in her left ear, because she was lying on her left side, so it’s a little hard to kind of get to… her left ear was up it was up, it was up! And it’s like, ‘Okay, All right, look for the light, look for the jolly -look for the jaunty trail, there’s no fences you can’t jump, off you go, off you go…’
And Robinette was saying, part of our working is for four days and for forty days you know and she said that animals really know how to navigate the bardo more than we do – and she did also say that when you get back to the house, it’s the you know the house without the presence, and one of her trusted animal ally friends had said ‘yes animal aura is ten times larger than human’ like I think that’s true because in the early days when she was an escape artist I could get back into the yard, pretty large yard, and I could always feel when she wasn’t there going – She’s escaped! And then we go off on the mad rambles which sometimes included me you know jumping into a rushing river to get her – we’ve had many adventures, but I could feel it, and it’s true, the animating presence.. it’s gone.
But I do love the teachings of Stella that we want to honor and tease into pertinence for each one of us…
One of her major things – the imprisoning con versus the liberating trick – and the con can look like the authentic… the toxic mimic fuels the receptor of the authentic.
So Stella has been very good for a long time at teaching me the difference between grief and sentimentality. When her best friend Captain MoonDog Woofy, and may they be cavorting together, died, she grieved, but she was not sentimental… let’s see if we can feel the texture there… because even when he was dying she was like I love you more than anything in the world, and you’re getting feeble, and even though I love you more than anything in the world – I’m going to eat your food!
And after he died, she was deep, she was in a deep place, but it increased her appetite for life – she’s like I’m going to live, I’m going to live! So I take that from her, again part of the grief versus sentimentality – It’s not like ‘ohhhh’ it’s like no, deep deep deep – and there’s probably other ways, other things to discern from that.
But Psychopomp posture I think is very useful, she said ‘You just put your you’re your hands on your head,’ right as in the picture that I post on Facebook of the statue from mainland Greece, and then she said, ‘and you also keen – awoooo…’
And she said, ‘Set up altars not for her, not for her, but for you – things that she would need to give to the Spirits to guide her.’ And I go, OK – so it was good to speak with somebody who was so confident about the afterlife and the etiquette and complexities of journeying there. And she sent me a pretty great thing I’m going to read part of it anyway.
“The Psychopomp soul guide pose” – Now in trance postures how this was occasioned, there was a mad anthropology Professor interesting woman, Felicity Goodman, who noticed that there were statues all over the world, now kind of shamanic statues of people and in various postures some changing into animals some animals changing back into humans but in varying postures – so Felicity Goodman thought, ‘I will put graduate students in a mild trance and have them hold these postures and see what happens.’
And I’ve been to several workshops one that Robinette ran and a couple in this area and there’s something absolutely objective, it’s challenging to hold the posture, there is a physical endurance thing because you’re holding it for quite a long time in this trance. But in one of the workshops that I was that we were invited to hold the posture, but not told what we were supposed to think or feel… and someone would say oh I felt like I was flying or I did too I did too and then and then the teacher would say that’s eagle pose and then there’s descend the underworld pose and then shape shift into different animal poses… but so Robinette provided me with the Psychopomp – the soul guide pose.
And she says, “…among the sacred funerary art of ancient Crete” her home base “and mainland Greece twelve hundred to three hundred B.C. are figurines and images of women one male with arms raised to the head. Most of these figurines and images were found in cemeteries, two famous sarcophagi” large clay vessel that held the corpse while it was decomposing “show images of men on the outside of the vessel with hands in the Psychopomp pose. Standing figures of people in this pose represent people who are alive and whose mourning functions during funerary rituals, include helping to send the soul of the dead person” or Coyote-person “on its journey from earthly realms into the afterlife; a ceremony that is preferably done within four days, before the person’s remains are buried or cremated.”
Well, we’re close enough, close enough, I dropped Stella off at the crematorium I will go tomorrow morning to put her into the oven myself, and then I will go back the next day to pick up her ashes… and and that seemed right too. And again you know grief versus sentimentality – for the longest time, I had feared her death, and and I would sometimes think like ‘oh her body is so beautiful, what will I do with it, will I bury or cremate..’ And Stella would always bite me when I did that, or nip me. Or ‘What will I do when the house is empty without you?’ and she would bite me you know just in her way in a nippy way. I like living with a creature that bites a little bit, I’ve enjoyed these nineteen years of (not for everybody you know) but for our experiment in which she’s been Ambassador from the Coyote Realm.
And sure enough, even though she was eating a gigantic amount, her body did dwindle, so that it wasn’t a hard decision to go ‘no we will cremate and put her ashes next to MoonDog – that’s good.’
And I think it’s for all of us in a sense, when we have anticipatory grief or anticipatory dread – there’s a coyote that nips us going ‘No no when you’re there, you’ll know!’
It’s again Wendell Berry’s wonderful poem, ‘When fear for the world is too much with me’ – sorry for misquoting, Wendell – ’I go and lie down with the wood drake… With the animals that do not burden themselves with forethought of grief’ and I think that’s true…
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
I think that’s true… I began to feel sad of late going, maybe the animals do burden themselves with forethought of grief – because they do kind of know how out of whack we all are… we humans as a rogue species. And that’s part of the beauty of Stella Coyote’s departure chart – because she she went right at one P.M. one P.M. zero zero. And departure charts are very interesting, we have birth charts, departure charts – it’s kind of like a last message or something to ruminate on… whether it’s a friend, a human friend, or an animal friend, it tells us a lot that we can explore…
But straight down – what do we do with the teachings of Stella Coyote – straight down 19+ Sagittarius, it’s the global crisis degree – it’s image is:
‘men cutting ice in winter for summer use – cyclical foresight – stewarding the earth – long term planning’
All right, we will do that, we will dedicate – we will dedicate to being kinder to coyotes and what Coyotes represent – Nature’s Evolutionary Ingenuity.
I love that for our chart as we convene, and also for Stella’s departure, Uranus – the trickster, so her – it’s image is: ‘a larger audience for somebody who shatters their expectations’ and we go and it’s very her and that’s very us! Maybe we want to change the words – Who dissolves or expands beyond or who surprises them into sanity – we’re allowed to depart from the Orthodoxy because again we like our teachings curvy. So there’s that.
So the psychopomp – the four days and the forty days – I like that. There been times in my life when I lived in a spooky place, and in California just out the window was Point Concepcion – which the Chumash thought was the entrance and exit portal for all of Creation, and from the moment I moved in, where they were carrying the neighbor out on a stretcher, til when I left six months later, there was not a moment I wasn’t reading the Tibetan Book of the dead – for someone right for someone.
Chumash: http://www.santaynezchumash.org/history.html
All kinds of strange things in Santa Barbara, north of Santa Barbara… So this model – I’m not so much into the spooky Bardo, Tibetan Book of the dead, ‘and there will be terrible demons and chasms and things’ and even the Egyptian Book of the Dead is full of ‘bahrah!’ – although I do like the soul being weighed on a scale against a feather, and on the other side Anubis is presiding and on the other side Ammut crocodile – if our heart is heavier than a feather then Ammut eats it.
And of course we liberate all mythology, and all symbolism, and all fairytales and go ‘Well Judgment Day is not some day with something – it’s every day, every hour…’ – these useful things but again how do we kind of shape shift… but I like the idea of guiding… I think the idea of guiding and tending and I like Robinette saying that animals auras are ten times larger than humans… I think that’s true. I know that Captain Moondog revealed his incredible aura on occasion, a very strong field, very strong field, and part of our healing with respect to our animal kin.
Moondog was a part Wolf, handsome handsome guy, very strong field, and of note… My friend Nora who’s just retiring (who had the first organically certified restaurant in America – Nora’s – pretty impressive) but they they were adopting a little five year old girl from a Russian orphanage, and they took their six year old daughter with them, and when they met the little five year old girl – because she’d been an orphanage for her whole life, at first they were like ‘oh no no no this is too much this is too much’ and their six year old daughter said ‘no you guys relax chill this will be fine’ but the little adopted girl was very low affect, not showing anything, not touching or hugging, but we were going on a trip and Moondog and I and the little girl in the back seat and she hugged Moondog it was the first creature she’d ever hugged and she just melted into his warm field.
And then once when my wonderful neighbor fainted, there was a party at my house and there were some good people and some slightly sketchy people had somehow gotten there we don’t know you know but my neighbor fainted but it looked spooky because she went unconscious but her eyes were open like oh my God and I went to get her her neighbor husband and MoonDog stood over her and let some people approach and kept some people away and then when the husband came and said oh no she’s fainted, she’s okay, not a problem… with that they lifted my friend’s unconscious body you know on to the bed on her side and Moondog strode to the bed and did this unusual thing, which he’d never done before, he backed his spine against her spine just backed up into it, and she immediately came to and said ‘Oh Moondog that feels so wonderful’ and I go Oh Moondog, you secret healer, you powerful large field.
And then every now and then I would call on Him, not often I don’t I don’t get headaches or things often, but sometimes the middle of the night I got a headache and go ‘Oh Moondog – I need you!’ and he’s like ‘oh all right, there we go’ and just holding him, a very strong field… So it’s a mystery – where does the field go when the spirit expands beyond the body?
And again there’s a lot I want to honor about Stella – but back to the Psychopomp Soul Guide Pose which I think is useful for all of us, we’re all going to have grief at some point, we’re all going to be mourning – whether it’s for particular beings that we really love and or live with or the world or that which we care about… so these postures are very interesting to adopt – and again believe nothing, entertain possibilities – just to adopt the posture of you know the grief posture of the Psychopomp Posture – in this case which is it facilitates mourning, but also part of mourning is to serve as an honorable guide for that which we love.
I love that, it’s like give us some work to do! It’s also like, do you want to do this this convening tonight Caroline and maybe… Yes yes what a good thing to do what a good thing to organize Stella’s chart and her departure chart and our trickster training and to begin… To begin to honor how much I love her and also that she contributed to the world as an ambassador…
Her father was a very large coyote, really big, and her mom was a teeny miniature Eskimo Spitz – so they presumably got it on with yoga and ladders – down the street, father was being kept in the basement – rehabilitated, supposedly – actually met him first… because a friend was house sitting and I go ‘Oh no, this woman is a psychologist and she’s keeping this coyote prisoner in basement and she’s called the coyote Shaman – Oh that’s just the worst!’ Anyway so I met Stella’s father first.
And then they got it on, and they had these little beings… I think four… but the wild – so predominate, so predominates – that they looked just like coyote’s… all they got from Mom was size, so that they looked like foxes and Human kept one, I couldn’t resist… even though it was dodgy and dangerous and complex and I knew it would be a long big huge adventure full of all kinds of daunting things but lots of learning… you know it’s also a part of us that says ‘No matter what I’m bound to learn something – so here we go!’ So it was irresistible, she was irresistible, but when I went to pick her up at seven weeks of age she killed a rabbit in front of me and I was like wooooo.
And then the other two were released, other people tried to adopt them and thought it would be cool to have a coyote right… but they weren’t they didn’t quite understand the enormity of what was involved, right – the spookiness, the long patience of building trust, the capacity that dogs and wolves are very different from coyotes and many times… Well Moondog the Wolf would say, ‘I see by the symbolism of the fence here that you would like me to stay inside – I just want to know what the pack rules are.’ Coyote? No. Stella would say a door would be useful for me here… and she would bite her way through the wall, and make a door.
For years I didn’t have anything that wasn’t half eaten or destroyed… or just a moment of inattention, she’d be waiting for me to put the leather appointment book that she really wanted down unattended for a moment – then it was gone! Now and then you have to wheel and deal going, “If I give you this, then will you have this? How about this?’ It’s all telepathic negotiation because coyotes do not know shame nor can they be taught shame – we’ve taught dogs shame, and wolves can be like ‘uhhh ohh’…
Once when Moondog came to with me to an outdoor wedding, he loved to sing, so when they were singing, he sang along ‘RaaaaRooWrooRaaaRoo’ and other people were like ‘No – shush’ and I go ‘shh’ and he’s like ‘No? No singing?’ And it was very sweet because then he just hummed along like sort of under his breath, woofy dog, ‘woorooroowoorooraroo’ And then the ring bearer missed his queue – a little boy – and he dashed out of the woods, and Moondog was like ‘Something dashing out of the woods – my job is to protect the wedding party – AHraharaRAH!’
And apparently the little boy was terrified of dogs, but he was never terrified after that – it was like some cathartic moment. But everybody was like ‘ahhh rahrahrah’ – Moondog was like, ‘Bad? Did something bad?’ …Anyways so wolf can know shame – even if they’re confused by it. But the coyote is No no no no – and so we are we are all beings, all the beings that we have an affinity with, and the different medicines to draw from.
But Coyotes do not know shame – they’re like just ‘how can I get away with that thing or let’s wheel and deal – let’s go for that thing.’
So – Back to the Psychopomp – which I encourage us to do for anybody you love you know or ancestor or or the World state or what we feel you know or for Stella herself – but somebody that with whom one feels the connection.
So Robinette says, “Artifacts of seated figures in this pose represent the ancestor spirits who are now in the land of the dead and who are also mourning the dead person’s soul and preparing to receive their spirit at the end of the journey to the afterlife. Ideally the loved ones of the deceased in both realms are mourning – supporting the soul’s journey from one realm to the other.’ Yeah – Reciprocal Blessings – supporting the journey.
As we convene again tonight Jupiter – journeys and blessings – forward motion, forward motion, all of the journeys that we want to contribute to…
Again “…the loved ones of the deceased in both realms of mourning support the soul’s journey from one realm to the other” – to go Yeah all these things are suggestive, and meant for people to wonder about.
So Robinette continues and says, “In the National Archaeological Museum in Athens Greece there’s a huge funeral krater – a clay vessel seven fifty B.C. – found in an ancient Athens cemetery. Images painted on the outside of the krater of the body of a deceased person on a stretcher surrounded by women in the Psychopomp pose both seated and standing…” it’s one of the ones I sent you, everybody “in the background of the scene between the seated women and sister mourners are images of the sun with rays. The rays represent the sun’s regenerative aspect that will transform and revive the soul of the deceased in the land of the dead.”
Now things also back from Egypt right – and you know here we are fellow agents of compassionate trickster, meaning we study things and then we get to change them… and keep like a coyote, creatively suspicious.
Because to be an Egyptian royal person – pretty good, although they suffered from many many different illnesses plagues and brain parasites and all kinds of stuff too – but it was better than being a peasant. Because in Egypt in mythology, if you were a peasant or a servant you were always a servant, for ever, in perpetuity.
You’d serve the pharaoh forever – and I go I don’t know, I think we can change that thing – that’s not the mythology we choose… But remember with Jupiter – syncretism is a sacrament – we extend our range of affinity and curiosity widely, we haul it back in, we sift through it – always with the coyote trickster, going ‘is this desirable?’ Again we are not into any orthodoxy – going ‘no, let’s unlock, so that nobody has to be a servant forever – or for goodness sake at all.’ Let’s change these things, we are creatively disruptive.
So I like that model – That judgment is not one event, it’s an ongoing spiritual psychological dynamic – in which we do weigh our heart against the feather…
And I did ask people, ‘Well there’s all these pharaohs’ and again Egypt such a complex place, incredible knowledge, incredible knowledge, I’m going to keep studying forever about the geometry and the knowledge and alignment with the Stars and the astronomy incredible – – and incredible brutality…there’s always been Diesh or ISIS, there’s always been a force that comes in going ‘I don’t like the previous administration I’m going to destroy their name and their statues and put my own name on everything – Trump Trump Trump Pharaoh Pharaoh Pharaoh.’
It’s always been there but never with the modern technological technology of destructions so available – but these forces have always been there – and we want to be guiders of forces, and and make experimental links with the beloved in the Land of the Ancestors and the Dead…
And you know a Stella has been an ambassador from her people, because she looked just like a coyote, maybe she will be an ambassador for back and forth without imposing, without believing, just leaving that open... In the early days I would take Stella to the beach and she loved the beach and she loves swimming in the ocean she just really didn’t like people right and she always attracted attention and people go ‘what you got there?’ and at first I would sort of go, ‘Oh nothing much Something Wild must have gotten over the fence yehehe!’ and would get out of… but it kept going, and I just said ‘Stella you know if you’re clearly an ambassador from your people, you’re on a goodwill tour, we just got to tell people the truth… Although you never want to run into the authorities.’
And during her escapes I would go you never you do not want to meet the authorities really and so for nineteen years I’ve been keeping her safe from the authorities successfully, successfully… but then people would come up to us and go ‘we used to hunt those things’ – I mean there’s still a fifty dollar bounty in Virginia. I use to let her run on someone’s estate but then hunters came back going ‘you know we get fifty bucks for shooting that critter’ – Oh no no no – Humans!
But then you have people that would come up and go ‘we used to we used to hunt those things – but she sure is a pretty little thing.’ And I go ‘Okay Stella, it’s your ministry, it’s your work, to soften hearts, increase respect – all the way back to the indigenous.’
You know it was so long ago that Native American Lakota Elder, when I had Stella in the early days I mean nineteen years of me talking about her to and fro… And so we were talking about things like ‘Smartest things ever, smartest things ever” – and they are. I mean I’ve had a back seat, incredible destruction, incredible arts and creativity and architecture and curious rituals and wit! And ingenuity and troublemaking and stories that I will write down and honor, I’ve told them for the years…
But the Lakota Elder said, ‘Yeah smartest things ever – and to be revered’ because remember in Mezo-America they’re not just the Trickster, but they’re also the Patron Hue Hue Coyotzin – ancient, ancient revered coyote. (As I would come to refer to Stella, because she was old but very beautiful…) Hue Hue Coyotzin – ancient ancient revered coyote.
They’re also the Gods of Art – which I know why that makes sense, right, because I’ve seen incredible art Stella created in the early years – she went through different chapters.
But anyway the Lakota Elder said, ‘Smartest things in the world’ and that’s when he said (the things that I always carry in my magic backpack) he said,
“We Lakota didn’t hunt alone. Those gifted at Trance” {Here we go trance postures, numanumanuma} “would go into a trance and would broker a treaty with the wolves and coyotes and we would all hunt together for a season – and if you want to destroy a culture, destroy its capacity to cooperate for mutual benefit across species borders. If you can destroy that part of humans, you can walk all over them…”
Right, so, it is that model and this is a very Trance time right now – experiment experiment experiment – and I think Stella would encourage us to do this… So it’s not just wolves and coyotes, but the model that kind of came to me, and again with Stella Coyote I would also put my little forehead to her forehead, and she really liked that telepathic exchange. It seemed quite clear that people would go into trance – which was a common part of culture, I mean some people were more gifted, but it was a training thing, you know and something that we can play with training… and I may well have Robinette you know as a guest teacher and then, how should we do it well we’ll ponder how to communicate the trance postures… all kinds of things may come forth but – clearly those those gifted, or would have the particular affinity would go into a trance… and then emerge and go ‘All right it took a while, the coyote’s want the front left leg and half the liver of every other deer, the wolves are cool with that and the deers are cool with that – everybody back on stage!’ The on-stage / back-stage dynamic which has always been so much a part of human culture, and human culture cahooting with the rest of creation – so important to bring back, and it’s very much wants back.
We have Neptune squaring Mercury right now which is the wedding of Mercury – communication and intellect and mind – with {Neptune} trance and mythology and imagination.
And also as the Dog Whisperer says to us, and as the trance people say, ‘Animals see what is in our mind’ – it’s a seeing thing. Which is why the Dog Whisperer is so great and I’ve learned a lot I know some people get grumpy at him, but I love him, I think he is a dog. When I had Moondog Wolfy and Stella they were quite aggressive on leash – and really actually off leash too – with other dogs and humans. So when I’d see another human with a dog, I would pull them to one side, right, and they would go ‘ARAHrahRArahRAHGRAh!’ And the dog whisperer said ‘Avoid Nothing – Avoid Nothing – When you pull a dog to the side, you are seeing the dog lunging, and they think that’s what you want them to do.’
This is all about Politician Whispers – everything, it applies to everything – the Animals Teach Us About Everything – Animal Fables in all cultures… It’s not limited to animals at all, but avoid nothing – and so I would do that.
And what he would say is just ‘See the energetic path straight through – straight past those obstacles, straight past those people with dogs, straight past those flying saucers landing flown by cats – just go right by, just straight through.’ And it worked. It worked, it was amazing. I would go, ‘We’re going straight through, just going straight through, there we go…’ Again – it’s Where are our Minds and What We See.
The wolves and coyotes dynamic – the making of treaties and collaborative hunting and the backstage agreement so that Everything’s in Harmony, and that even the deer and the predator and prey meet backstage and kind of negotiate manners.
Manners! Jupiter in Libra right now says, ‘the Blessing of Manners’ – not Miss-Manners-imposed but intrinsic to nature. That even predator and prey have manners.
And I think I’ve probably told everybody a lot of Stella Coyote stories but here they are, a fountain, anyway. Stella not noted for manners, or necessarily compassion. But I did see respect. Not shame, right.
The only creature I ever saw defeat Stella Coyote was a praying mantis. Defeat meaning – didn’t die. And the praying mantis did the little kung fu praying mantis form – because martial arts are from animals, they are from animals, and it’s a little being, right, but it goes ‘waszawaszawaszawa’ and Stella kept – because coyote’s come from behind, and that’s why dogs when they met Stella they knew she wasn’t a dog because she would run around behind them and nip their little ankles, and they were like ‘This is outrageous, this is not in the dog handbook! What are you doing? We don’t do that!’ – but Coyotes come from behind, so with the praying mantis she couldn’t, right, she she kept trying to get behind it and it was like ‘nuszanuszawuszanah’ And it went on for like a half hour, and then Stella bowed. She bowed to the to the praying mantis and trotted off to do something else. But she was like, ‘All right – superior skill, very impressive’ and she admired that.
So something, just for the fun of it, about the coyote in the world, and how we might, even vegans, might want to be a little more Predator-ish. Coyotes have very little respect for fear – now we might have compassion for fear. But if somebody went ‘OhOuhouhh!’ she’s like, ‘ArRRhh! ArRH!’ And there is a certain ‘kill the weak’ aspect to predators…But if you go ‘hey – how ya doin?’ They’re like, ‘oh – okay.’
What you don’t want to do with a pack of wild dogs – I’ve been with them too – and or a coyote, or wolves – you don’t want to make squeally sounds, ‘OO! Aah! O no!’ – that’s like, ‘Oh – you want me to attack you.’ Right, so just however we want to put this in our pipe and smoke it… To ponder these things.
But the Re-wedding of Communication across species borders – in reverie, in dreams, in trance postures, also help in an intriguing way… but this re-wedding. Because that’s the thing, as Stella’s departure chart says, that’s the thing that you know isn’t talked about by muggles. And God love Bill McKibben and everything but it is all fight fight fight doom gloom fight fight… And God love him because he’s indefatigable and wonderful and I’ve given up trying to get him to change his vocabulary, there we go whatever you want to do… But for us you know again, the language and the attitude, but the mythological magic is completely practical. We do want to reach deep down into our indigenous selves, wherever we’re from, wherever our ancestors from – they knew how to talk to animals.
Another great thing from me, I think it was Farley Mowat, who lived with wolves and he ran into an Alaskan holy person, who said that when he was four I think for his mother took him to a wolf den and left him there for the day, and then picked him up at the end of the day, and from that moment on… the idea that we have these different openings, these different language openings, and maybe we can expand them and experiment with them of necessity… from that day on he understood Wolf language. So that was his job in his community, he would hear the wolves howling, and he could translate you know ‘four two-legged coming down the road this way’ ‘Herd of elk two hills over’ – but pretty specific language.
And so that was Joe Chilton Pearce, quoting Farley Mowat, and saying ‘There are certain parts of our brain that open like linguistically, or animaly, or when we can learn’ – like if you’re a wolf, you can learn to swim in your first eight months and if you don’t do that, then, no, that’s not going to happen. Or you can learn the language of wolves, when you’re four, you’re incredibly open your brain is incredibly open to the animal languages…
And the powerful powerful moment in Mary Poppins, not the horrible movie, but in the books where Mary Poppins (an actual shamanist) is entrusted with the children including the baby twins and they – and here we are in the twin realm: Sun and Ceres Demeter, or goddess of the earth, and Mercury and Gemini, all the twins, the twins – and so the twins understand the language of the wind, and the birds, and the animals… and Mary says ‘you’re going to forget, they’ll be a moment where you forget.’ And the twins are like ‘No no no no no – teach us how to not forget!’ and she goes ‘No it’s part of being human, you’re going to forget, but there are ways you can begin then on purpose to learn to remember.’ And there’s this very powerful poignant moment in the books, in the Mary Poppins books, where they forget.
So this is very Us Now – the remembering what we’ve forgotten – the wondering what have we forgotten. Again, wondering opens up things, ‘I wonder what I’ve forgotten’ – ‘oh right, mythological experimental discourse across species borders’ – yes even possibly between the living and the dead – we don’t know, we’re just all the Collaborative Dynamic. That is the thing, that humans want to, in order to rejoin the Choreography of Creation, in order to enter the Garden of Conscious Kinship, which all the critters and the animals and the bees and the insects and the ocean people and everybody are so eager for humans to rejoin.
A little word also about Animals and Entheogens and psychoactive plants – plant medicines. One of the things that was also a great delight, but I’ve seen this in – I’ve seen this with goats… I had a magic mushroom trip with a goat once and it was quite amazing, because they can really tell and they want to be with you. But with Stella Coyote, on occasion, I would leave the human gathering with sacred plant medicine, and come back late at night, maybe 2 am, and Stella would be there at the door going, ‘Right – now you’re in my world, let’s go for a walk!’ Even after she stopped wanting to go for a walk, as she got older, if I came back with plant medicines and in a kind of expanded kinship state, she’s like ‘Now we’re talkin – let’s go! Let’s go to the river now. Let’s go to the river at 2 AM because now we can talk.’ It was so great, and we go ‘oh these wonderful things’ – so that’s very before us in our in our own chart as well.
So Robinette says, ‘In the background of the scene between the seated women and sister mourners are images of the sun with rays. The rays represent the sun’s regenerated aspect that will transform and revive the soul of the deceased in the land of the dead.’
So it does seem a strong time. And I mean I have my particular poignancy, and poignancy is kinship… but remember we have Pluto in Capricorn retrograde, squaring Jupiter – Jupiter is coming forward, Pluto is going backwards, they are on a rendezvous course. And it is these stories betwixt the underworld, and how do we navigate the underworld, and what are manners and respect – and then again we bring in our trickster experiment experiment experiment.
Robinette continues, ‘At the appropriate time, the sun’s rays will also help fuel the souls return to its new life, just as the sun rises out of darkness each morning. The Psychopomp pose has many ritual dimensions and may be performed in a variety of contexts for mourning and/or grieving. Briefly, to mourn someone who has died recently, many traditions say that the properly mourned soul should depart the earth within four days after death. To mark significant occasions or passages of time relating to the date of someone’s death, for example in Greece it’s still customary to formally mourn the deceased forty days after they’ve died and forty days later, and at other significant points throughout the first year, and then sometimes through three years after death, and then on every anniversary of the person’s death.’ So these are deep traditions, and probably elephants do it too, we are remembering, remembering things, remembering kinship, remembering honoring mystery, remembering these freely chosen ceremonies that are intrinsic… So I like that.
She said ‘This ceremony that is performed, for those who are far away is called, Mnemosyno’ that makes sense, remembering, ‘named after Mnemosyne, the spirit who dwells at the bottom of the lake of deep memory.’
‘To locate release and guide stuck energies and lost souls for their resting place – especially the soul of anyone of any species who was not properly mourned.’ There’s a tradition in many cultures also to do kind of morning social work – going, I adopt the morning posture – not just for somebody I know, but for anyone who needs to be mourned, anyone who needs to be grieved.
It’s why the New Orleans kind of mourning-beverage ritual is so powerful because there’s –
you take your cup of beverage out, you make a little circle in the air, and little cross within that, you gently toss the cup through it, just a little bit, just enough, and then you go ‘For the beloved dead’ and you see who comes to mind, you pour a little libation, ‘For those whose names are lost in the mists of time’ pour a little libation, and then ‘For all those whose bones lie beneath and upon the earth’ pour libation – And then you hold up your cup, you go, ‘We the living, salute you’ and you drink your first sip of the day of whatever it is coffee, tea, chocolate, juice, whatever, water – but are things that we must to and fro, that do not require belief, they are practice, they are positive Saturn.
And remember Saturn right now in our chart, for a long time and still, and in Stella Coyote’s departure chart which will hum forever – Saturn and Jupiter are quintiled – the dedicated rituals that weave the story back together, that weave back the fabric of our kinship. So we’re invited by affinity to adopt these things.
To be continued
