Spring Equinox: Ostara and Temperance

Today is the Spring Equinox, symbolic of balance and rebirth, themes that seem even more important as we grapple with the rapid changes that COVID-19 is bringing to our world. Anyway, after my morning meditation and journal writing, I read a short essay entitled “Ostara and Temperance” published in Llewellyn’s Witches’ Datebook 2020, and figured I would share part of it in today’s post.

At Ostara, the Goddess returns from the underworld, bringing with her a celebration of miracles, spring, new life, and balance. The Temperance tarot card beautifully represents these themes. Birth is considered a kind of miracle, a mixing of life and death (for the minute anything is born, it begins to die) that creates our experience on this planet. The angel in Temperance holds two cups, their liquid blending at a scientifically impossible angle, representing an alchemical mystery. Although equinoxes represent balance, and at this time life and light are becoming stronger than death and darkness, each equinox contains the seed of its opposite. Like an eggshell—which is strong enough to protect new life but at the right moment is weak enough to be broken through—something is destroyed and the old existence of the newly born creature dies.

(Barbara Moore)

For me, it is evident that our old way of life has cracked like a fragile eggshell, and is dying to make way for something new. It is a scary time, because all birth and all things new are scary. None of us can envision what our new world will look like. But clearly, our consumer-driven capitalist society is the thing that is actually dying right now as a result of this virus. That said, we all have a role in manifesting what will rise from these ashes. It is crucial that we nurture the new growth, and not let fear and self-centeredness dictate our actions in the coming days.

Have a blessed Equinox, and may you be a conscious participant in the change to come.

“Elevation” by Charles Baudelaire

Source: Wikipedia

Since there are various translations of this poem, I am including the one by Roy Campbell, which is the version in my book.

Above the valleys and the lakes: beyond
The woods, seas, clouds and mountain-ranges: far
Above the sun, the aethers silver-swanned
With nebulae, and the remotest star,

My spirit! with agility you move
Like a strong swimmer with the seas to fight,
Through the blue vastness furrowing your groove
With an ineffable and male delight.

Far from these foetid marshes, be made pure
In the pure air of the superior sky,
And drink, like some most exquisite liqueur,
The fire that fills the lucid realms on high.

Beyond where cares or boredom hold dominion,
Which charge our fogged existence with their spleen,
Happy is he who with a stalwart pinion
Can seek those fields so shining and serene:

Whose thoughts, like larks, rise on the freshening breeze
Who fans the morning with his tameless wings,
Skims over life, and understands with ease
The speech of flowers and other voiceless things.

This is a great poem and has some amazing symbolism woven in. It basically attempts to describe the ecstatic feeling associated with shifting consciousness and then drawing artistic inspiration from that experience.

In the first stanza, the spirit (consciousness) of the poet rises above the earthly confines and floats upward into the cosmos. This represents the psyche transcending its worldly bonds and being freed to explore the vast mystery of the deep subconscious.

In the second stanza, Baudelaire associates the transcendent experience with sexual ecstasy. The spirit moves like sperm toward an egg, the union being the moment of creation. Essentially, when the spirit becomes one with the ineffable form, the result is the spark of creation, just as the sperm reaching the egg is the spark of new life.

The third stanza marks the transition from spark to flame, symbolic of the illumination that one experiences during the state of heightened awareness. It is akin to feeling intoxicated, which is why Baudelaire uses fire and liqueur as metaphors.

In the fourth stanza, Baudelaire acknowledges ennui as his motivation for striving to transcend. It is his boredom and sickness that forces him to seek beyond himself and the mundane. It is his desire to escape what he sees around him that inspires him to elevate his consciousness and explore the realms beyond our everyday experience.

The last stanza is my favorite. As the poet basks in the elevated state, he understands things that are outside the comprehension of ordinary consciousness. It is effortless and it fills him with bliss. “The speech of flowers and other voiceless things” refer to symbols, archetypes, and forms, those things that exist within our subconscious. These symbols have their own language and only one who is elevated above the mundane can comprehend them. The fact that these are described as voiceless implies that Baudelaire will never be able to express them adequately, even through his most inspired verse. At best, he can offer a glimpse of the beauty that exists just past the veil of our world.

The more I think about this poem, the more inspired I feel. I hope you feel the same way. Have a blessed and inspired day!

Symbolism in “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” by Neil Gaiman

I purchased this book almost as soon as it came out, but since I was deep into other books, it sat atop the pile on my dresser. Last week I had to travel for work, so I packed the book, and since I spent a lot of time sitting around airports, I managed to finish it. It’s a short book, right around 175 pages, so I’m going to go on the assumption that you will read it and hence I will not summarize the story. Instead, I’ll focus on some of the symbolism that struck me in the book and my interpretations.

Early in the book, the protagonist states: “I liked myths. They weren’t adult stories and they weren’t children’s stories. They were better than that. They just were.” (p. 53) I completely agree. The power the myths is that they transcend normal narrative storytelling and express truths that cannot be expressed in ordinary language. There used to be a television version of Witchblade some years back and one of the characters said: “Gods come and go, but the myth is eternal.”

One of the prevalent symbols in creation mythology is that of using words to create. I have read books that assert that there are divine languages or words which have an effect on reality and can even be used to create existence from the void. This use of language is referred to in the book:

I have dreamed of that song, of the strange words to that simple rhyme-song, and on several occasions I understood what she was saying, in my dreams. In those dreams I spoke that language too, the first language, and I had dominion over the nature of all that was real. In my dream, it was the tongue of what is, and anything spoken in it becomes real, because nothing said in that language can be a lie. It is the most basic building block of everything. In my dreams I have used that language to heal the sick and to fly; once I dreamed I kept a perfect little bed-and-breakfast by the seaside, and to everyone who came to stay with me I would say, in that tongue, “Be Whole,” and they would become whole, not be broken people, not any longer, because I had spoken the language of shaping. (p. 43)

Another common symbol in mythology is the quest. In all hero myths that I can think of, the hero must undertake a quest and face incredible challenges, but the hero takes on the quest because of a longing, a void within that cannot be fulfilled within the realm of the ordinary. Gaiman incorporates the quest symbol into the story, including the deep longing that drives the hero forward on his or her quest.

How can you be happy in this world? You have a hole in your heart. You have a gateway inside you to lands beyond the world you know. They will call you, as you grow. There can never be a time when you forget them, when you are not, in your heart, questing after something you cannot have, something you cannot even properly imagine, the lack of which will spoil your sleep and your day and your life, until you close your eyes for the final time… (p. 139)

The symbol of the ocean is the one that appears the most throughout the book. For me, the ocean symbolizes the divine source and cosmic consciousness. There is a great passage where the protagonist is submerged into the ocean, or the divine consciousness, and the symbols of the egg and the rose are incorporated, the egg symbolizing the birth of all existence and the rose the continual unfolding of reality.

The second thing I thought was that I knew everything, Lettie Hempstock’s ocean flowed inside me, and it filled the entire universe, from Egg to Rose. I knew that. I knew what Egg was–where the universe began, to the sound of uncreated voices singing in the void–and I knew where Rose was–the particular crinkling of space on space into dimensions that fold like origami and blossom like strange orchids, and which mark the last good time before the eventual end of everything and the next Big Bang, which would be, I knew now, nothing of the kind. (p. 143)

There are many more myths and symbols woven into this short book, such as the Triple Goddess (maiden, matron, crone), but I will leave the rest of those for you to discover on your own. Half the fun of reading a book such as this is discovering which symbols and myths resonate most with you. There is a lot here. Feel free to share any symbolism that struck you. Enjoy!!