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| Tiger Lilies in a High Meadow |
"Consider
the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell
you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of
these. But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive
today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He
clothe you? You men of little faith!” (Luke
12:27-28)
“It
is no great measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick
society.” (Krishna Murti)
Sometimes when
I am hiking in the mountains, I find a tree or a flower that makes me
want to question everything. Encountering a tiger lily
in a high mountain meadow, for instance, I have felt the energies of
the sun and the Sun behind the sun within the petals and leaves and
in the surrounding plants and trees. I had once, long ago, believed
that God was in some far away heaven. Then for many years I believed
that God does not exist. Over the years, however, I have kept finding
myself before a majestic tree or a flower such as a tiger lily,
feeling divinity in all things. Inevitably among the trees and
wildflowers, in fresh air and sunshine, I sense light radiating
through my solar plexus and feel, as I breathe, the magnificence,
harmony, and abundance of spirit. After numerous encounters with
ravishing flowers and awesome trees, after visions of spiritual
symbols during meditation, I ended up finding a belief
system that reveals the magnificence, harmony, and abundance of the
spiritual and natural worlds.
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| Larkspur and Arrow Leaf Tansy |
Not enough is
made these days of the benefits of fresh air and sunshine. Recently,
at seven thousand feet in elevation, after escaping the pollution and
the negative mental atmosphere of human society, I felt a surge of
well-being so powerful that I couldn't help but entertain a horrible
thought: Humans have created societies so polluted and so cut off
from the energies of the life-force that many people think that the
Source does not permeate the Earth, the plants and animals,
ourselves.
I had another
uneasy feeling: I have formed false beliefs that for most of my life
have made me feel less magnificent than the tiger lily, less full of
the love, harmony, and abundance that, in the fresh air and sunshine
at seven thousand feet, I suddenly knew all humans are meant to
experience.
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| Tree of Life |
I did not know
that the natural world is full of splendor until I explored every
trail through the forest that I could find. My wife told me at the
beginning of our relationship almost thirty years ago that you must
have flowers and trees and birds in your heart to truly see them. I
have come to realize the truth in that statement: You have to open
your heart in order to truly see anyone or anything. I did not know
about the paths through spiritual dimensions until I opened my heart
and mind during meditation and experienced visions of magnificent
symbols: a golden, equal-armed cross with angels at each end; a
golden plate and chalice on a white tablecloth; a gray lemniscate
over my head; a brilliant thousand-petaled lotus with a diamond in
the center; a golden crown; a golden Celtic
Cross. Then I found these symbols on the glyph known as the mystical
Tree of Life.
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| Columbine |
Fresh air and
sunshine, I have discovered, give me a much clearer perspective. I
realized that to be well-adjusted to a sick society I have had to be
sick. And, because the Valley is so full of pollution and negativity,
I must struggle continuously with my chronic illness on all levels:
physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Unfortunately, in my
current condition I cannot continue that way and hope to survive to a
ripe old age.
Recently
I spent a few days enjoying fresh air and sunshine at the beach and
realized that I have a perspective on the central coast that few people have. Forty-five years ago, when
I was eleven, my family visited the beach at San Simeon. Starfish,
crabs, sea anemones, barnacles, mussels, and kelp tapestried the
rocks. A few sea anemones seemed larger than my head, and I was
tempted to stick my fingers in their mouths, but I was afraid that
they would bite off my hand. I returned years later, only to discover
barren rocks: Instead of starfish and anemones and barnacles I found
patches of black tar stuck to denuded sandstone. At first I had the
nagging feeling that something was missing. After awhile, I realized
that the marine life along the shore had been wiped out, most
probably, given the prevalence of tar, by oil spills. No one else
with me that day had experienced the abundance of life that had once
flourished there. To them, the sea shore appeared to be as it had
always been. They had no notion of how the life-force had once
manifested within countless creatures along the shore.
It took a short
time to wipe out the marine life along the central coast, yet only
now, decades later, is the ecosystem showing a few signs of
recovery—a few small anemones in the tide pools, for instance.
After reading that half of the world's wildlife has disappeared in the past forty years, I'm beginning to think that as a species we are
amazingly good at ignoring our impact on the planet. Or perhaps it's
even more basic than that: Out of sight out of mind. If we can't
perceive something, we have great difficulty believing that it exists
or once existed, just as I didn't believe in the significance of spiritual symbols until
I experienced them in vision, just as I did not believe that nature
is full of splendor until I experienced amazing wildflowers and
trees.
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| Tiger Lilies and Arrow Leaf Tansy |
The losses, of
course, are due mainly to cultivation and urbanization and pollution
and the need for food in an increasingly overpopulated world, but how
easily we forget the threads in the divine tapestry when they are
gone. And those threads, I've discovered, are just as important as any spiritual symbol in helping me know the Source. Over the past half
century, I have noticed a correlation: The more I experience the
divinity of the life-force within other creatures, the more I
experience the divinity of the life-force within me. Conversely, the
more I forget how the life-force manifests in other creatures, the
more I forget the divinity of the life-force as it manifests within
me.
The more we
forget, the more we are likely to see the world only in human terms.
The San Joaquin Valley, where I have lived for forty-five years, over
the past hundred years has changed dramatically from an ecosystem
with an abundance of wildlife to a patchwork of farms and ranches and
cities. John Muir, upon entering the San Joaquin Valley in 1868,
noted in a letter, “The valley of the San Joaquin is the floweriest
piece of world I ever walked, one vast...sheet of flowers.”
I was startled to read Muir's letter because I had traveled numerous
times across the Valley before I encountered any wildflowers at all—a
few baby blues and poppies on a stretch of ranch land. We forget that
before the Valley was cultivated and the dams were built, the San
Joaquin River
would flood periodically, refreshing the wetlands and
aquifers, creating a flyway where birds would blot out the sun, where
herds of deer and tule elk and prong-horned antelope would roam.
Since the 1940s, the San Joaquin River, due to water diversions, has
died at a sinkhole most years instead of flowing out through the San
Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. Wetlands now are down to four
percent of their historic levels, and the wildlife population, found
primarily now on a few small refuges, has dwindled to almost nothing.
The loss of what little is left is continuously couched in human
terms: jobs and homes and people versus species of wildlife. Industry
and business continue to win. Because fewer and fewer people have
experienced the magnificence, harmony and abundance of nature, the
political will to protect what's left in places like the San Joaquin
Valley has nearly evaporated. The splendor of the life-force
continues to vanish.
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| Snow Flower Plant |
Forgetting
creates a disconnect, a moral chasm. During droughts farmers keep
demanding more dams in the foothills, ignoring the fact that farming
and ranching and a few cities have already destroyed a vast,
once-thriving ecosystem in the Central Valley. They ignore the fact
that dams in the mountains would destroy more ecosystems so that the
public would have even less access to the life-force in all of its
stunning manifestations. I would not have known the sacredness of
rivers and forests had I not dedicated myself to experiencing
wildness on a regular basis, often in places where farmers want to
build dams. So many nowadays do not experience wildness at all. So
many people, rarely experiencing the interrelationship of life in
wild places, have not come to know and revere the life-force in
plants and animals and the ecosystems where they live—or in other
people. Ecocide, another example of the sickness of our society,
threatens the very fabric of nature, yet once again the hydraulic
brotherhood is planning to commit ecocide for its own benefit,
angling for public funds to dam public lands in the foothills near
Fresno.
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| Tiger Lilies by Rivulet |
Please don't
think that I am romanticizing nature. Humans are struggling like
every species to survive in a predatory universe. After many
excursions into the wild, however, I no longer consider horrible
either predation for survival or death. All creatures end up
sacrificing themselves for other beings, even if only for worms and ants and
flies, which are essential for the health of the world. The
transition from the physical to other dimensions occurs as regularly
as birth into the physical realm. Since I have experienced divinity
within life, I know that divinity exists within death. Since I am
open to death, I am open also to the magnificence, harmony, and
abundance of life.
Ecocide, which
occurred in the Central Valley not long before I was born and along
the central coast during my lifetime, has made it ever so much harder
to know the magnificence, harmony, and abundance of spirit because in
those places the magnificence, harmony, and abundance of the natural
world has vanished. Dion Fortune states in The Mystical Qabalah,
“matter is crystallized spirit, and spirit is volatilized matter”
(214). Through a uniquely human activity, spiritual ritual, one can
get in touch with subtle natural forces, but one can also experience
the subtle forces manifested in nature. The remaining ecosystems in
the mountains could very well save this society if enough people open
their hearts and recognize the Source in all things and get in touch
with the divinity in nature and themselves and other people.
The inability
to perceive divinity within nature stems in large part from fear: the
fear of otherness, the fear of shattering the ego, the fear that if
we stop controlling nature we will never have enough—for survival
or to impress other people. During my recent trips to the mountains
and the ocean, I realized that my entire life I have been fed a lie:
I will be special and respected if I fulfill certain conditions, such
as making a lot of money, buying a big house and/or a hot car, or
achieving exemplary status in some career. Due to my worsening
chronic illness I touched the hem of eternity over a year ago, and I
have realized since then that, like the vast majority of other
people, I have just kept doing pretty much the same things over and
over in the same places for most of my life and that I will never, no
matter my circumstances, be more or less significant than any other
creature or person on this earth. I realized that every living thing
is magnificent, not for what it does, but as a divine, transitory
expression of the life-force within the web of life.
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| Tiger Lilies in Sunshine |
After hiking
through the mountains regularly, I have also come to believe that a
typical city street is far more dangerous than a trail through a
forest. I have encountered bears and mountain lions and coyotes and
bobcats and rattlesnakes and tarantulas and scorpions but have never
once been threatened by any of them. I cannot say the same about
people, especially people in cars.
Ritual, I have
realized, is especially important as a way to keep in touch with the
life-forces because we are losing nature more and more every day.
After my recent trips to the mountains and to the coast, I understood
that I needed to perform a ritual as potent as fresh air and sunshine
to help me overcome my chronic illness and keep me in touch with the
glory of the life-forces, so I chose to invoke the energies of the
Sephira on the Tree of Life associated with Jupiter and the
magnificence, harmony and abundance of the spirit: the Fourth Sephira
known as Chesed, referenced as “The Glory” at the end of the
Lord's Prayer.
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| Path 21 |
RITUAL OF THE GLORY
On the Tree of
Life, the Tarot card The Wheel of Fortune is associated with Jupiter.
At one point the Greeks associated the Egyptian God Amun with Zeus
(Zeus Ammon); the God Jupiter is the Roman analogue of Zeus. As a
self-created, transcendental God of creation, Amun over time became
fused with other Egyptian Gods such as the Sun God Ra and the
fertility God Min. Coalesced with Ra, the source of all life on the
physical plane, Amun is the “hidden” Sun behind the sun. Amun,
combined with Min, represents the potent life-forces of the Source
manifesting on the physical plane.
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| Four of Pentacles Sun in Capricorn Jupiter in Chesed |
The Tarot Pentagram Spread works through association chains of spiritual
principle. For instance, the decan correspondence of The Four of
Pentacles is The Sun in Capricorn. All the Fours on the Tree of Life
correspond to Jupiter in Chesed, the fourth Sephira. The Pentacles
are associated with the Earth element. Invoking the Wheel of Fortune
using the Egyptian pantheon, with Amun as Jupiter, the meaning of the
Four of Pentacles is powerfully clear: The Source, Amun, combines
with the sun, Ra, and with the potent life-forces symbolized by Min
to permeate the element of Earth, in other words, physical
manifestation.
The association
of Amun with other Egyptian Gods represented by the Fours creates
powerful association chains.
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| Four of Cups Moon in Cancer Jupiter in Chesed |
- In the Four of Cups, The Moon in Cancer, Amun combines with Nephthys, associated with The Moon, and with Khepera, associated with the morning sun and Cancer, creating a state for clear psychic vision, for seeing deep into the soul and connecting with the divine spark and the Source.
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| Four of Swords Jupiter in Libra Jupiter in Chesed |
- In the Four of Swords, Jupiter in Libra, Amun joins with Ma'at, maintaining inner balance through connection with the Source even though conflict and false beliefs might threaten to disrupt the mind.
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| Four of Wands Venus in Aries Jupiter in Chesed |
- In the Four of Wands, Venus in Aries, Amun joins with Hathor, Goddess of love and the harmony of proportion, and Horus, God of power, courage, strength and discipline, to perfect the inner work of understanding the harmony, magnificence, and abundance of the spirit and the physical world.
Fourth Sephira, Chesed (Mercy)
Jupiter
Central Card of Pentagram Spread: The
Wheel of Fortune
Modifiers: The Fours
Decan Associations:
Four of Pentacles, Lord of Earthly
Power: Sun in Capricorn
Associated Major Arcana Cards: The Sun
(The Sun), The Devil (Capricorn)
Egyptian Gods: Ra (The Sun), Min
(Capricorn)
Four of Cups, Lord of Blended
Pleasure: Moon in Cancer
Associated Major Arcana Cards: The High
Priestess (The Moon), The Chariot (Cancer)
Egyptian Gods: Nepthys (The Moon),
Khepera (Cancer)
Four of Swords, Lord of Rest from
Strife: Jupiter in Libra
Associated Major Arcana Cards: The
Wheel of Fortune (Jupiter), Justice (Libra)
Egyptian Gods: Amun (Jupiter), Ma'at
(Libra)
Four of Wands, Lord of Perfected
Work: Venus in Aries
Associated Major Arcana Cards: The
Empress (Venus), The Emperor (Aries)
Egyptian Gods:
Hathor (Venus), Horus or Montu (Aries)
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