DAVE ALBER GUEST POST The Myths Of Native North America #mythology #September #blog Heart Of Myth Kindle Edition Amazon

Heart Of Myth Kindle Edition Amazon

The Myths of Native North America

Hello Blogosphere!

I’m Dave Alber, the guest blogger for September on Stephanie Pope’s mythopoetry.com blog.

In previous blogs… I introduced the core grammar of myth, described the alchemical nature of myth, as well as the ecological vision of polytheistic myth. Now lets take a look at one geographical region and see how these attributes of myth apply.

In The Heart of Myth: Wisdom Stories from Endangered People, we explore the myths of six geographic regions (North America, Arctic, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceana.) Let’s begin with North America.

[The following is from The Heart Of Myth] 

Section 1: North America

Hear me, four quarters of the world—a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds.[1]

We start our journey in the spiritual landscape of North America, where every Native American ceremony gives evidence to the spiritual recognition of balance—for each Native American ceremony begins with a salutation to the four directions. No less than the Ancient Greeks’ centering themselves within cardinal virtues, the Native American salutation is a totalizing invocation of harmony. Hartley Burr Alexander writes of Native American mandalas, artistic representations of visualization practices that express the cosmos invoked in their salutary prayers:

As the colours, so the elements are related to the Quarters: to the North belongs the air, element of wind and breath, from it come the strong winter winds; the West is characterized by water, for in the Pueblo land rains sweep in from the Pacific; fire is of the South; while the earth and the seeds of life which fructify the earth are of the East.[2]

The polytheistic worldview of Native Americans harmoniously integrates the paradoxes of simultaneous material and spiritual realities as well as an Ultimate Reality (referred to as Wakan-Tanka, Awoawilonas, Tirawa, May Wah-Kon-Tah, Tatanga Mani, Usen, a’nehimu, the Great Spirit, Grandfather, or the Creator)[3] that expresses itself through diverse manifestations. Indeed, Native Americans are exemplary as a devotional people who accept life’s universal paradoxes by rising above all apparent conflicts of duality. Sympathetic awareness, the recognition of the heart is, for Native Americans, the guide to this devotional worldview. For example, “Zuni prayers to the directions begin and end with reverence given to the ‘Middle Place’ which is also related to the ‘heart or navel of the world.’”[4] The elaborate mandalas of the Zuni and Hopi that develop their social planning must be understood as projections through this “Middle Place” of the Eternal powers of the mythological dimension.[5] Humanities role, therefore, is seen as that of a mediator of these raw universal energies into the world. Likewise, a sacred circle of the Sioux is divided into the elemental powers of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, and an Omaha creation story similarly relates, “Suddenly from the midst of the water uprose a great rock. It burst into flames and the waters floated into the air in clouds.”[6] From a materialistic observation, the elemental myth merely describes cosmological phenomena, yet, like any elemental myth in the Native American tradition, it presents a map for alchemical transformations of consciousness.

As a mediator of universal energies, every human being is a transforming agent. The impacts on our environment tell us as much. However, the act of transformation begins with the spiritual practitioner’s own consciousness. Native American spirituality is rich with the alchemical recognition of the mutability of consciousness. As the Zuni myth The Beginning of Newness relates:

Now like all the surpassing beings the Earth-mother and the Sky-father were changeable, even as smoke in the wind; transmutable at thought, manifesting themselves in any form at will, like as dancers may by mask-making.

In the Omaha ceremonial myth of the sacred pole, during a time of community conflict, a glowing tree is discovered in the forest. “The Thunder birds come and go upon this tree, making a trail of fire that leaves four paths on the burnt grass that stretch toward the four Winds.”[7] Furthermore, in the myth, the Omaha called the tree “a human being, and fastened a scalp lock to it for hair.”[8] The alchemical potential of human beings (whether individually or culturally realized and expressed) only makes itself known when the center is recognized—when balance is achieved. In the Native American mythological worldview this is achieved through maintaining awareness of one’s physical, emotional, and mental experiences in relation to the windy drag of the four cardinal powers.

Thus, the spiritual worldview of Native Americans has its feet planted firmly on the ground. And what is the ground of existence but something that is vigorously alive? Many of North America’s indigenous peoples still call the land Turtle Island. The myth The Woman Who Fell From the Sky tells why this is so. The myth also relates the creation of the landscape and its animals from the efforts of two brothers of differing temperament. Mudjikiwis is another story of brothers, one of which encounters four spiritual guides on his journey to the home of his lost wife—a being of transformative power—a Thunder bird.

The diversity of Energy’s manifestation in Native American mythology is consistently recognized as something to be celebrated. And what opens the heart and unites all people in the recognition of our ultimate sameness—our one heart—more so than laughter? Horned Toad Meets the Giants invites us to participate in the mythological world, not from the forced habit of the solemn misperception of separateness, but rather from the joyous commonality of recognition and celebration in life’s hilarious absurdity. 

notes

---

[1] Neihardt, John G. and Nicolas Black Elk. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska P., 2000. p. 4.

[2] Alexander, Hartley Burr, Ph.D.. The Mythology of All Races: North America. New York: Cooper Square Pub., 1964. p. 186.

[3] Smith, Huston. A Seat at the Table: Huston Smith In Conversation With Native Americans on Religious Freedom. Ed. Phil Cousineau. Berkeley: U. of California P., 2006. p. xix.

[4] Alexander. p. 187.

[5] Ibid. pp. 185–7.

[6] Ibid. p. 98.

[7] Ibid. p. 100.

[8] Ibid. p. 100.

COMING THIS FRIDAY BLOG 6 of 6

In the next blog… we examine one group of polytheistic people from the Native American tradition — the Crow (Apsaalooke) people — exploring their culture and living myths.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dave Alber is the author of To the Dawn, Myth & Medium, and Alien Sex in Silicon Valley. His book The Heart of Myth is a global anthology of living myth that unpacks the grammar of world mythology. His website is DaveAlber.com and his English learning products are at EasyAmericanAccent.com. 

DAVE ALBER SEPTEMBER GUEST BLOGS

Blog1
What Is Myth For You?

Blog 2
What Is The Core Grammar of Mythology?

Blog 3
What Is The Alchemy Of Myth?

Blog 4
What Is The Ecological Vision Of Myth?

Blog 5
The Myths Of Native North America

Blog 6
The Myths Of The Crow (Apsaalooke) People

DAVE ALBER GUEST POST: What is the Ecological Vision of Myth? #September #blog #mythology #ecology #SundayMorning

Heart Of Myth Kindle Edition Amazon

What is the Ecological Vision of Myth?

Production, development, growth, and consumption are all on the rise. We hate to imagine the economy behaving otherwise. And we pretend that this stage in the economic cycle is the norm. Why do we pretend?     -Dave Alber,  "The Sustainable Vision of Endangered Societies"

Hello Blogosphere!

I’m Dave Alber, the guest blogger for September on Stephanie Pope’s mythopoetry.com blog.

In previous blogs… I introduced the core grammar of myth and described the alchemical nature of myth… now lets consider the moral and philosophical implications of participating in a unified world recognized within the awareness-heart, empathy as a synthetic process of awareness connecting us all together.

How can we treat apparent “others” within a worldview that recognizes

1.) everything as divine and
2.) everything as an expression of a unified field of being.

It’s a quandary pondered in the essay “Guest Rituals”.

In The Heart of Myth: Wisdom Stories from Endangered People, we see that across the globe, the polytheistic world has resolved the problem presented by the mystical revelation along ecological lines, because there are sustainable vision underlying the myths of indigenous people across many continents.

The 2nd day of Tihar festival is Kukur Tihar, a day when
dogs are celebrated as a manifestation of the divine.

[What follows is from The Heart of Myth.]

The Sustainable Vision
              of Endangered Societies

No economist, industrialist, or politician would ever suggest that the earth’s resources might be consumed indefinitely at their present rate. Yet, looking at the media, the compulsion to consume appears paramount, while the Classical virtue of temperance is nowhere to be seen. Production, development, growth, and consumption are all on the rise. We hate to imagine the economy behaving otherwise. And we pretend that this stage in the economic cycle is the norm. Why do we pretend? Perhaps at some deep level, Western Culture does not believe in limits. Perhaps that is its key virtue, inspiring discoverers and adventurers to push the envelope in all directions. That is the song we like to hear, is it not? It is the theme of the DVD we rent. All limits are surpassed; all conventions are broken; the young lovers escape the traditional values that confine them. Yet, limits are also what define and give context to every freedom.

Nevertheless, on realizing the dangers of the global civilization’s unsustainable economic vision, many people have looked to other models—other visions offering a more workable human future. Surprisingly, sustainable visions of human culture are in abundance. In seeking them, we find ourselves immediately upon the “red road” of plentitude. Many small societies have maintained sustainable modes of living for thousands of years. Historically, their vision has been the norm—ours the exception. As Jerry Mander states in Paradigm Wars: Indigenous People’s Resistance to Globalization:

. . . it is no small irony that the very reason that native peoples have become such prime targets for global corporations and their intrinsic drives is exactly because most indigenous peoples have been so very successful over millennia at maintaining cultures, economies, worldviews and practices that are not built upon some ideal of economic growth or short-term profit-seeking.[1]

Therefore, there is not only a moral imperative to protect the cultures threatened by economic shortsightedness, but also an imperative of ultimate practicality. “In more ways than one, indigenous issues are the frontier issues of our time.” Mander explains:

They deal with geographic frontier struggles where the larger, destructive globalization process attempts to suck up the last living domains on the planet—its life forms, its basic resources, its peoples—in the empty cause of short-term wealth accumulation. And it is also a frontier struggle in conceptual terms: What are the values that can sustain us for the future? What are the worldviews that can keep the earth alive? How are we to live on behalf of coming generations of human beings and the larger community of beings and creatures?[2]

For global civilization to “progress” on its present course, people must be exploited like “resources.” By contrast, the core mode of perception of polytheistic communities—the knowing of the heart—is a vigorous safeguard against such a systemic cultural imbalance. The knowing of the heart is congruent with the great traditions of Western Humanism and is the safest way for individuals within the system-driven civilization to sustain the fragile candle of their
fullest humanity.

---

[1] Mander, Jerry and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz. Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance to Globalization. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2006. p. 4.

[2] Ibid. p. 10.

The Organization of The Heart of Myth

Following some of the logic of Greenwood Press’s The Endangered Peoples of the World Series, the polytheistic cultures in The Heart of Myth are organized into six sections which align with a geographic region: North America, the Arctic, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The Heart of Myth describes several communities from within each region and relates their mythological narratives.

Choosing the Cultures in The Heart of Myth

In choosing the cultures of this book, diversity was of key interest. To use Africa as an example, oftentimes when discussing African mythology, the Yoruba mythology that made its way west to the American continents and Caribbean islands due to the slave trade is discussed as representing the varied mythologies of this vast continent. However, African culture and mythology is much more diverse. Speaking collectively of African mythology makes about as much sense as speaking collectively of Asian mythology: as though the mythologies of India’s Vedas, Puranas, epics, regional and folk traditions; Tibet’s Bonpo and Buddhism; Nepal’s syncretic spirituality; China’s Taoism; Japan’s Shinto; and South East Asia’s diverse mixture of indigenous traditions and most of the traditions mentioned above would so conveniently fit into a single category. The importance of highlighting this diversity is precisely because those communities that are the least recognized are those most endangered by their apparent invisibility.

In doing the research for this book, one of the delights of choosing this approach was in discovering, again and again, that the seeming invisibility of a culture in no way demonstrates a reduction of the beauty or sophistication of its mythology, life ways, or spiritual beliefs. The Karanga mythology of Zimbabwe, for example, reveals a biological sophistication comparable to Indian Ayurveda or China’s Taoist medicine. It is due precisely to its sophistication that Zimbabwe’s traditional healers are fighting against a Swiss University and a U.S. corporation, both of whom want to patent Zimbabwe’s snake bean tree.

The three types of diversity emphasized in the selection of narratives are geographic diversity, cultural diversity, and diversity of endangerment.

·         Geographic Diversity. All geographic regions in this book are represented by different geographic terrain and the cultures that have developed out of them.

·         Cultural Diversity. Africa, for example, is home to hunting and gathering, farming, fishing, and herding cultures as well as cultures whose life ways represent borrowed elements from overseas and mixtures of all of the above, often in increasingly modern urban areas. An emphasis is placed on the more unrepresented at-risk communities.

·         Diversity of endangerment. The world’s indigenous cultures are defending themselves from many corporations, universities, and political groups. The problems they face are many and varied. It is the intention of this book to present a clear picture of the diverse range of difficulties facing these traditional people.

Service To Endangered Polytheistic Peoples

Like the transformational alchemy described within so many of these myths, it is generally understood in the Orient that to know is to be transformed. According to this philosophy, to know something means to behave fundamentally different from before the acquisition of the new knowledge. Truly then, we have learned nothing at all about the often overlooked abuses of global civilization and the communities who are threatened by it, unless we, as individuals and as a greater community:

·         Alter our relationship to the corporations, nations, and institutions that are endangering or exterminating the living polytheistic communities, and

·         Extend our relationships outward—in the sympathetic recognition of the heart—to these endangered communities in action, financial support, or humanitarian service, and

·         Pressure the current administrators of the system of economic globalization to support a sustainable vision of the human future that does not depend on the exploitation or systematic extermination of others.

The Heart of Myth ends with a list of resources that offer service to endangered societies. In this collection of myths, all stories—as projections of the sympathetic heart—express a devotional worldview. Let this devotional vision of the absolute divinity of the “other” inspire us to new knowledge expressed in our individual and collective imagination, compassion, and action. May our hearts be awakened sympathetically within all our relationships, and may our behavior be consistent to the eternal values of myth.

In The Next Blog 

We explore how the grammar of the mystical function of myth and the ecological vision of myth relate to the myths of North America. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dave Alber is the author of To the Dawn, Myth & Medium, and Alien Sex in Silicon Valley. His book The Heart of Myth is a global anthology of living myth that unpacks the grammar of world mythology. His website is DaveAlber.com and his English learning products are at EasyAmericanAccent.com. 

DAVE ALBER  September Guest Blogs

Blog1
What Is Myth For You?

Blog 2
What Is The Core Grammar of Mythology?

Blog 3
What Is The Alchemy Of Myth?

Blog 4
What Is The Ecological Vision Of Myth?

Blog 5
The Myths Of Native North America

Blog 6
The Myths Of The Crow (Apsaalooke) People

DAVE ALBER GUEST POST: What Is The Core Grammar of Mythology? #mythology #TuesdayThoughts #September #blog

The Heart of Myth: Wisdom Stories from Endangered People

WHAT IS THE CORE GRAMMAR OF MYTHOLOGY?

Hello Blogosphere!

I’m Dave Alber, the guest blogger for September on Stephanie Pope’s Mythopoetics In Culture Blog.
I gave a short bio in the last blog: “What is myth?” 

In that last blog, I wrote about awareness states being primary to the grammar of myth. If myth, for example, is a sphere, then an awareness state is at the gravitational core of that sphere. This is the premise of my book The Heart of Myth: Wisdom Stories from Endangered People, which is an anthology of living myth (meaning the myths of living polytheistic communities.) Unpacked section at a time… The Heart of Myth is an attempt to share with a wider audience the grammar of myth as a system for the transmission of profound states of awareness.

If Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces was Campbell’s attempt to teach people how to read a myth, then The Heart of Myth is my attempt to unpack the grammar of the mystical function of myth.

To this end, in this blog… we will take our first steps in our discovery — inward, ever inward — toward that foundational state of awareness from which myth emerges. 

What follows is from my book pictured above, The Heart Of Myth.

Introduction

Global Civilization and the Wisdom of Polytheistic Peoples

Since I was a boy, I spent many hours with my nose in a book while my imagination flew to other continents entirely. I was often entertained, and am still daily entertained, by the most direct manifestations of wonder I know—mythological tales from around the world! To me, myths always present an enigmatic, semi-recognizable, yet palpable beauty that defies logical explanation. Like riddles, Zen koans, poems, or pieces of music that bring unexpected tears or elation, myths communicate experiences that challenge the rational processes of the mind. Whether the story is a Crow myth of world creation or an Inuit tale of shamanic flight; a Maori story of the origin of knowledge or an Ainu tale of supernatural realms, the mythologies of the world present one vast and interconnected tapestry of timeless beauty and timely wisdom. Simultaneously, these stories refresh us with their eternal human values and shock us awake to our responsibility in both our living continuity and the present historical moment.

Perhaps because my enjoyment of mythology has too often been both bookish and escapist, it occurred to me with some shock that economic and political forces now endanger most of the world’s living polytheistic communities. Despite the importance of mythology for artists, psychologists, historians, anthropologists, folklorists, and other professionals in the modern world (not to mention those people to whom the stories are still fluid emanations from spiritual realms), the contemporary inheritors of these primary stories find themselves threatened by voracious economic and social forces that know no bounds and, at present, no human restraint. As Barbara Rose Johnston states in the forward to the Endangered Peoples of the World series:

Human action and a history of social inequity leave some people more vulnerable than others. This vulnerability results in ethnocide (loss of a way of life), ecocide (destruction of the environment), and genocide (death of an entire group of people).[1]

The polytheistic communities visited in these pages are so imperiled. In popular usage, the word myth denotes an untruth—a lie. And although there is some truth to that, the truth of the lie exists in our own forgetfulness to myth as one of the foundational expressions of both human culture and spirituality. In Homeric Greece, the term mythos was understood as the mode of speech of the muses and poetic bards. However, it was also appreciated as “an unvarnished truth . . . a blunt and aggressive act of candor, uttered by powerful males in the heat of battle or agonistic assembly.”[2] In Ancient Greece, then, mythos was a mode of expression that was both radically complex and profoundly straightforward. Mythos was understood as expressing a direct form of knowledge. This direct form of knowledge is recognized in every corner of the globe as the heart’s way of knowing. “What does your heart tell you?” we still ask our friends and loved ones, when facing important decisions. We trust the heart implicitly with the understanding that it is incapable of lying. What the heart knows, it knows through a direct sympathetic relationship that defies the logic of the materialistic worldview.

The Heart’s Way of Knowing

Sympathetic knowledge is to know another’s experience directly by becoming the “other.” It is the source of empathy. It is knowledge of the heart. This knowledge of the heart is the principle way of knowing in polytheistic culture. To know an “other” is to become the other—to loose the false perception of separateness with the other—and to feel through the other’s world directly. In polytheistic cultures when people know the gods, they know them directly—sympathetically—through their hearts. It is the nature of the heart to know directly.

In The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Joseph Campbell considers our historical moment in the late 20th century—the global crisis of the world’s people being unified by a technological economy. He ponders the question, “What is the new mythology to be, the mythology of this unified earth as of one harmonious being?”
He writes:  

One cannot predict the next mythology any more than one can predict tonight’s dream; for a mythology is not an ideology. It is not something projected from the brain, but something experienced from the heart, from recognitions of identities behind or within the appearances of nature, perceiving with love a “thou” where there would have been otherwise only an “it.”[3]

GUEST POST "song of the white dove" Beth Anne Boardman #mythopoetry #author #wednesdaywisdom

song of the white dove

the white dove came again.

i love how she sits far back

in the black, tangled branches

of that wild oak tree –

she glows through the falling darkness,

a phantom of herself….

she used to frighten me,

appearing unannounced

at nightfall….

you’re not from around here, are you?

i thought at her,

that first night….

i’ve tried to make up all kinds of stories

about why she visits when she does….

a harbinger of death?

of change?

but every day changes and dies,

as do we….

her song differs from

those of the mourning doves

that have surrounded me

since birth –

(my father taught me their song)

softer than theirs,

her song floats featherlike,

unmournful….

it curls

wispy

tender

wraithlike

(holy….)

we have watched each other

for years now….

through black ash

and endless smoky grey –

we are dual-captured

by blue-white

myriad starfields --

(our secret)

and still,

her song stops me midstep

midbreath

midquestion --

like an incognito

gasp of surprise….

then i recall an elder’s words

and realize:

she sings

not as a warning of death,

but as an

encouragement

to keep dying….


©2017 song of the white dove by Beth Anne Boardman for mythopoetry.com
©2017 song of the white dove Beth Anne Boardman All Rights Retained

_____________
NOTES

The last two lines recall the wisdom of Chungliang al Huang, who appears in Finding Joe, a film by Patrick Takaya Solomon.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Beth Anne Boardman, RN, MA, PhD lives in California and New Hampshire. She travels and lectures on the Mythology of Sport; Women and Myth; and the Alchemy of Adolescence (her dissertation topic), in addition to consulting as a writer to websites.  

Recently, Beth has served on the board of the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association and as Regional Coordinator for local alumni. Her career spans work as a registered nurse, the study of world dance and music, and the profound joy of raising two children.

BLOG

For stories and essays on creative life and culture visit Dr. Beth Ann Boardman at MYTHMUSE

POETRY BLOG

POEMS FROM THE OTHERWORLD

GUEST POST "reconciling grey" by Beth Anne Boardman #amwriting #poetry #authorslife

reconciling grey

sometimes the world’s beauty

seems to vanish

in one whoosh….

death bookends life,

fate turns on its dime,

and rugs shift

under our feet….

poems, words, colors, disappear

metaphor leaves….

shall we hope for no more happiness

if gifts come

on the sharp edge

of a knife?

•

this morning

i stood on my front steps

and this foreign wind

played in my hair,

ran all around my face

and made me dizzy

birds sang confusingly

of nests and mates

and territories….

the sun shone strangely

springlike

and i brought in the laundry….


© 2017  reconciling grey by Beth Anne Boardman  on mythopoetry.com
© 2017  reconciling grey Beth Anne Boardman All Rights Retained

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Beth Anne Boardman, RN, MA, PhD lives in California and New Hampshire. She travels and lectures on the Mythology of Sport; Women and Myth; and the Alchemy of Adolescence (her dissertation topic), in addition to consulting as a writer to websites.  

Recently, Beth has served on the board of the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association and as Regional Coordinator for local alumni. Her career spans work as a registered nurse, the study of world dance and music, and the profound joy of raising two children.

BLOG

For stories and essays on creative life and culture visit Dr. Beth Ann Boardman at MYTHMUSE

POETRY BLOG

POEMS FROM THE OTHERWORLD

GUEST POST: "day and night/silent wings" by BETH ANNE BOARDMAN #wedwip #mythopoetry #poetry

day and night/silent wings

day and night

my house is surrounded

by sacred wings….

two hawks call to each other across my roof

in the still dawn….

their screes grace the silence,

point to the silence….

they dance on the lifting currents of air

caused by the difference between night and day,

cold and warm,

dark and light….

often they come back just before noon,

when drafts of air surge up off the warming hillsides….

their calls ring like temple bells:

reminding me to be still for a moment,

to stop and touch the eternal in the day,

to take a breath and offer myself to the mystery….

•

another calls

as the sun turns orange

and falls slowly down

into the billowing cotton layer

that covers the western ocean,

drawn up over the day like a soft blanket….

this one summons the night-shift:

the ones who will soar over us as we

live on in the darkness,

as we sleep,

and dream,

and sometimes dance….

when the night is well-established,

their sounds, too, pierce the trying-to-be-silence:

shrill ghostly gliding white cries

of barn owls

and great horned owls

tracking their crawling prey….

•

if you’re outside walking in

that rare warm coastal air,

oohing and ahing over the surprising sharp blue glints

(priceless diamond stars making a

one-night-only appearance….)

if you’re out there,

you can sometimes catch a glimpse

of white wings glowing high above you in the night,

coming in fast,

and soon gone –

right over your head,

without a sound….

but a sheerly distant whistle drifts somewhere behind

those silent wings,

leaving a certain trace

of untouchable presence….

            •

on the very darkest nights,

there is one who comes to the roof-corner

right outside my room….

and even though the window might be closed

against the damp night air,

he announces his landing

with an unmistakable, commanding scree….

I am here for the night.

I sleep and wake

under the jurisdiction

of sacred wings….

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Beth Anne Boardman, RN, MA, PhD lives in California and New Hampshire. She travels and lectures on the Mythology of Sport; Women and Myth; and the Alchemy of Adolescence (her dissertation topic), in addition to consulting as a writer to websites.  

Recently, Beth has served on the board of the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association and as Regional Coordinator for local alumni. Her career spans work as a registered nurse, the study of world dance and music, and the profound joy of raising two children.

BLOG

For stories and essays on creative life and culture visit Dr. Beth Ann Boardman at MYTHMUSE

POETRY BLOG

POEMS FROM THE OTHERWORLD




 

GUEST POST BETH ANNE BOARDMAN, PH.D : THE SPIRIT OF ACTION #MayTheFourthBeWithYou

THE SPIRIT OF ACTION

              If one could bottle the elixir of motivation, one might make millions.  What moves someone from stillness to action? 

 - Dr Beth Anne Boardman
    cultural mythologist

THE SPIRIT OF ACTION

If one could bottle the elixir of motivation, one might make millions.  What moves someone from stillness to action?  How does one overcome complacency or emotional paralysis and take healthy, constructive, creative action?

Motivation fades and surges according to its own inconstant logic.  How wonderful would it be, as one slumps at one’s desk, preparing to prepare one’s yearly taxes, to be able to chug down a quick shot of elixir-of-motivation, and get the job done?  How fabulous to conquer stage-fright and let one’s passion fly with an effortless sleight of hand, or get that dissertation done by just opening the laptop.  One hears the phrase liquid courage, but the spirit of action is more mercurial, more insubstantial than Jack Daniels. 

Mercurial: difficult if not impossible to pin down, grasp, define.  Uncontainable.  Not always apparent.  Unpredictable.  Written in the wind.  Words point in the direction of mercurial; images, though, evoke more complex meanings and help illustrate the enigmatic.  Ancient cultures around the world drew or painted or carved the likenesses of winged humans, angels, gods, fairies, and mythic beings who moved between the worlds—between heaven, earth, and the underworld.  Wings signify the unseen power of the air, the mysterious aspects of communication (prayer, intuition, meditation) between humans and what they perceive as invisible, divine energies outside of themselves. 

In addition to angels, gods, goddesses, and other mythic beings, people also honor and pray to saints, prophets, stars, the spirits of the Ancestors, and/or the planet’s natural elements.  Celtic tradition collectively names these unseen energies the Otherworld.  Fantastical images and stories of otherworldly beings emphasize that Divine Power(s) exist outside of the human world and thus remain unpredictable and inscrutable to humanity.  Jungian and Archetypal psychologies suggest that each individual’s mind and imagination can reflect these otherworldly energies, with the caveat that one may contain aspects of the divine but cannot possess all the power of the divine.  In other words, we recognize Love in ourselves, but we do not command the power of Venus or Aphrodite.  One may embody qualities of a Warrior or Defender, but one cannot bend the energies of Mars or Aries to one’s personal human will.

Diverse sacred traditions admonish humans not to gaze directly upon the gods.  The gods/the angels/the spirits – all shy away from explicit contact, and their reticence must be honored.  When the Biblical Moses encountered I Am that I Am on the mountainside, he saw only a burning bush, and through this interaction, understood that the human form cannot contain or withstand the actual power of God.  In the Greek myth of Semele’s contact with Zeus, her pleas to see him directly resulted in the spontaneous immolation of her human form.  These stories and others like them reinforce the reality of human frailty, our divinely ordained imperfection.

Early Greeks and Romans told of Hermes (Greek) or Mercury (Roman), gods who traversed between the worlds, passing messages between


gods and humans and accompanying beings that needed to travel to and fro between heaven, earth, and the underworld.  Represented by wings on his cap or the heels of his boots (or both), Mercury’s essential responsibility and quality, therefore, is to come and go; and since he is a god, his movements are beyond feeble humanity’s ability to predict or command.  Mercury gives a face to the unseen spirit of action, illustrates the ephemeral power of motivation. Alchemists, the philosopher-scientists of old, called this spirit Mercurius, the force they recognized as the power behind both worldly and spiritual transformation.

This is the mystery of motivation: human will-power can achieve much, but only inspiration, the visitation of the mercurial spirit of action, can lead us to accomplishments beyond our planning.  Mercurius provides us moments of its otherworldly power to transform ideas into actions, dreams into realizations. Like any of the other gods, the Spirit of Action will not be summoned, only invited.  And when invited, it may or may not coalesce.  A humble stance honors that the great energies of the universe defy human containment.  Creative, purposeful action requires a sensitive dance between power and receptivity on this spider’s web of life. 

In paying attention to the quiet whisper of our inner guidance and gathering up our human willingness, we take the first step on a new journey.  Along the way, we honor the otherworld and welcome the mercurial power of action to suffuse us with inspiration.  Honor the gods, the old stories say, and remember to give thanks for those times when we find ourselves wonderfully mid-action, not knowing quite how we got there, and amazed at finding done what we thought we couldn’t do. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Beth Anne Boardman, RN, MA, PhD lives in California and New Hampshire. She travels and lectures on the Mythology of Sport; Women and Myth; and the Alchemy of Adolescence (her dissertation topic), in addition to consulting as a writer to websites.  

Recently, Beth has served on the board of the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association and as Regional Coordinator for local alumni. Her career spans work as a registered nurse, the study of world dance and music, and the profound joy of raising two children. 

BLOG

For stories and essays on creative life and culture visit Dr. Beth Ann Boardman at MYTHMUSE

POETRY BLOG

POEMS FROM THE OTHERWORLD