DAVE ALBER GUEST POST #blog 6 of 6 The Myths Of The Crow (Apsaalooke) People #NorthAmerica #native #mythology

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THE MYTHS OF THE CROW (APSAALOOKE) PEOPLE

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. We took a look at some of the characteristics of the mythology of Native North America.

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.) Beginning with North America, lets take a look at one specific community of people in North America and their myth of world creation.

[What follows is from The Heart of Myth.] 

Chapter 1—Crow (Apsaalooke): The Earth Diver

The Crow people call themselves the Apsaalooke, meaning “people of the large beaked bird,” after a mythological trickster in their oral tradition.[1] Many modern Apsaalooke tell their history in mythological terms. “We know where we came from, we know where we’ve been, and we know whom we are,” states the Crow Nation website:

We came through three transitions to become who we are. We were (Awaakiiwilaxpaake) People of the Earth, we were all one mankind, we became (Biiluke) on Our Side, we became (Awashe) Earthen Lodges, and we became Apsaalooke some 2000 years ago.[2]

The ancestors of the Crow had varied life ways including hunting, gathering, and farming, stories of which survive today in cultural memory. In the 1400s, under the leadership of the legendary ancestor, No-vitals, the Crow people migrated to the Great Plains culture area.[3] The Native Americans of the Great Plains lived primarily through large game hunting, particularly the buffalo, which people trapped in box canyons or stampeded off cliffs. Small family tribes lived in portable tepees covered with buffalo skins, each tepee being a symbol of the people’s relationship with the land. “The tepee is a spiritual habitat that symbolically embraces her occupants as a mother.”[4] With the decline of the buffalo in the nineteenth century, the Crow people worked with the United States to integrate into the European American culture.[5] Loss of traditional lands has been a major threat to the Crow community. Today most Crow people live on their reservation in south central Montana.[6] Many see their children’s education as key to their cultural survival. For example, the Crow or Apsaalooke language is vigorously maintained and taught in Crow schools. This Siouan language is one of the most widely spoken Native American languages.[7] Another vital concern is the preservation of sacred lands. Oil drilling in Montana’s Valley of the Chiefs, for example, endangers a religious site containing the largest Native American collection of rock art.[8]

Myth: The Earth Diver

In the beginning, there was just That Old Man Who Did Everything wandering around. And it seemed to him that there was only his awareness . . . his attention . . . his presence. He noticed the water below him, stretching out for as far as he could see. But soon there were voices and circular ripples on the surface of the water. He listened.

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[1] Grim, John A. and Magdalene Mocassin Top. “The Crow/ Apsaalooke in Montana.” Endangered Peoples of North America. Ed. Tom Greaves. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002. p. 23.

[2] From the Official Site of the Crow Tribe: Apsaalooke Nation. http://www.crowtribe.com/history.htm. Retrieved 12-30-08.

[3] Medicine Crow, Joseph. The Crow Indians’ Own Stories. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska P., 2000. p. 23.

[4] Grim, p. 23-4, 29. George Bird Grinnell relates a Blackfoot myth of the buffalo maiden in his Blackfoot Lodge Tales. Joseph Campbell retells the myth in his Historical Atlas of World Mythology, Vol. 1, Part 2, and again in “The Message of the Myth” segment of The Power of Myth series.

[5] Grim. p. 24.

[6] Ibid. p. 23.

[7] 4,280 speakers in 1990 U.S. census. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=cro. Retrieved 12-30-08.

[8] Endangered Peoples of the World. Sierra Club: Montana Chapter website. http://montana.sierraclub.org/weatherman.html. Retrieved 12-30-08.

In the beginning, there was just That Old Man Who Did Everything wandering around. And it seemed to him that there was only his awareness . . . his attention . . . his presence. He noticed the water below him, stretching out for as far as he could see. But soon there were voices and circular ripples on the surface of the water. He listened.

“I suppose it’s just us.”

“Yeah, there is no one else here.”

That Old Man Who Did Everything followed the voices and the ripples in the water to their center, where he saw four ducks. Two were blue-eyed ducks and two were smaller red-eyed ducks. The small red-eyed ducks had just finished talking. On seeing someone other than themselves they appeared shocked and even a bit embarrassed for just having said that there was no one else about.

“Ha,” laughed That Old Man Who Did Everything. “Did you really believe that you were alone? I am here, too.”

The big blue-eyed ducks said, “Our hearts told us that there were others and we believed.”

“Yes,” smiled That Old Man Who Did Everything. “Tell me what your hearts say to you.”

“Our hearts say that there is something below the water.”

“Yes,” said That Old Man Who Did Everything. “You can dive and swim through the water. Why don’t you dive down, down, down and see what is there?”

So, the first blue-eyed duck dove down, down, down into the water. The others waited on the surface. Their friend had been gone a long time. “Maybe he is drowning,” said the second big duck.

“No,” said one of the two smaller ducks. “He’s a good swimmer. He’ll be fine.”

At last, with a gasp, the big duck broke the surface of the water. The other ducks waited for him to catch his breath.

“Well?” asked That Old Man Who Did Everything. “What did you find?”

“Just water, liquid currents pushing me to and fro, water above, water below.”

“Hmmm,” said That Old Man Who Did Everything. He pondered the duck’s words.

The second big duck flapped his wings on the water’s surface. “I’m sure I can make it. I’m going to find out what’s below all this water.” And so, he dove down, down, down into the deep water and was gone a long, long, long time. That Old Man Who Did Everything waited with the ducks and they waited together for a long, long time.

“I don’t know if he is still alive,” said the first big blue-eyed duck.

“What does your heart tell you?” asked That Old Man Who Did Everything.

“He’s alive,” said the first small duck. “Look!”

He pointed where the surface of the water broke with feathers, a winged body, frantic splashing, and panting. The others waited for their friend to catch his breath.

After a time, he spoke,

“I don’t know what there is down there. It seems to be all water.”
The first of the smaller red-eyed duck said,

“These ducks are too big to reach the bottom. I’ll dive down this time. I know I’ll make it!”
That Old Man Who Did Everything contemplated those words.

“You are small,” he said. “So be careful not to go beyond the capacities of your body. Bring awareness with you as you dive, maintain that awareness in the depths, lest you should black out and drown. Remember to be aware in the depths. I should be very happy to see you safely return to the surface.”

The small red-eyed duck took a deep breath and dove down, down, down into the depths of the water. Down, down, down he dove. On the surface, his friends waited. They looked around at each other and waited, waited, waited.

Finally, the small duck broke the surface of the water. He panted, but was quick to catch his breath.

“Aha,” cried That Old Man Who Did Everything. “Tell me what did you find?”

The small red-eyed duck said, “I swam down, down, down into the depths. Down, down, and down. And then my head struck something. And so, I placed that thing in my bill and carried it up to the surface.

He handed That Old Man Who Did Everything a small plant.

That Old Man Who Did Everything turned the plant over in his hands as he eyed it intently.

“Well, what your heart directly knew you have found through experience to be true,” he said, then turned to the second small red-eyed bird. “Now, you dive down, little brother, your friends are too tired. Beneath the water you will find something hard . . . and maybe beneath that there will be something soft. Take that soft something and place it in your bill. Bring it up to the surface.”

The fourth duck dove down, down, down into the water. He dove deeper, deeper, and deeper. Eventually, he struck something hard. He pressed his feet into it and broke that surface below. Deeper and deeper he went. His feet were now in something sticky and soft. He filled his beak with this soft something. Blowing air out of the nose holes in his beak, he rose to the surface. Up, up, up he rose and splashed on the surface.

“Aha,” That Old Man Who Did Everything said, “Our friend.”

The fourth duck was exhausted. He took the soft earth out of his beak and placed it in That Old Man Who Did Everything’s hands.

That Old Man Who Did Everything felt the earth in his hands. He looked at it, tasted it, and smelled it. 

“This is earth,” he said. “Creation can now begin.”

So, That Old Man Who Did Everything, with the aid of the ducks, divided the earth into four quarters . . . and directed the course of water on the land . . . and placed trees and living plants about . . . and arranged the sky above it all . . . and above the above they placed the sun, moon, and stars. That Old Man Who Did Everything addressed the ducks, “You have wings to fly in the air, feet to walk on land, and sleek bodies capable of swimming in the water. You embody this story of creation and transmit its knowledge in your flying, diving, and even in your most easygoing gestures. In the beginning, I brought my awareness to you. When men bring their awareness to you they will remember your story and progressively (or maybe all at once) attain knowledge of creation.

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

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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.

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[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

SARASVATI: The Flowing One Deanna McKinstry-Edwards #guestpost #July #MondayMotivation #Sarasvati #Saraswati #Saraswathi

SARASVATI: The Flowing One
by Deanna McKinstry-Edwards

In the bright world, where the light of the world opens, In the bright world, at the furthest border of The Word, Sarasvati poured out her rivering voices. Down, down, deeply down, the syllables flowed from the something that shines at the center of the world.            

            She came to me when the waters of my life were frozen.  I think I’d heard Her name many years ago, but nothing took hold, and perhaps I even heard Her call mine.  Some voices sound like the wind. Some like rain.  They rustle, they loosen, but its not yet their time to linger, so they pass through you, time and again, rustling, loosening your mind until you can hear and heed them in the language they speak. 

I had some exposure in my early days to stories of Goddesses, but I had not heard there was a Goddess who moved the world by a word, a syllable, a voice.  Fortunately, weather bristles in one’s psyche when the time is right for all manner of voices and words to be heard, to upend, to reconnect, to sing songs and retell stories long forgotten.  These stories work like magnets tugging at the personal story of each person’s life, wresting it from impoverished moorings too isolated from the epic and collective human story, and too fixed with nailed down notions to support the beneficent chaos which initiates birth and creativity.

            We were destined to meet, Sarasvati and I, since I have been, an actress, a singer, a writer, a devotee of breath churned into expression through melody and words.  For this is Her realm, the domain of sound, singing, eloquent speech, and intuitive wisdom. Originally a river goddess in the ancient Vedic texts, Sarasvati is the archetypal figure who embodies wisdom through the flowing motion of sound and running water.  Hers is the archetypal energy that compels us to break loose from inhibiting forces and stuck places, especially those rutted in our minds.  She compels each of us to loosen our notions and animate dialogues with ourselves, others, and all life, continually moving our minds like leaves riding a river.  It is not closure Sarasvati seeks, but open-ended conversation. 

            To meet Sarasvati, The Hindu Goddess of Speech, Sound, Music and Wisdom, is to meet the holy rivers veined through the inner and outer landscapes of our lives. “Sarasvati is the Word, and the Word is the way of The Gods.” (Calasso 239) writes Roberto Calasso in his lush and erotic book, Ka;  Stories of the Mind and Gods of India.  “The Word, and these waters, are the one help we have.  We shall follow the Word, so as to be able to leave it behind.” (Calasso 239)  Beyond the Word, it was written in the Vedas, was the center of the world.  A place  known as “Only something that shines.” (Calasso 239)

It was not the fate of all Hindu goddesses to remain important in later Hinduism.  But Sarasvati exemplified her own attributes of change and transcendence, by representing a  wisdom which permeates all life, that being to remain open to and flowing with life’s ever-changing nature.  Something primordial defines Sarasvati which extends beyond cultural associations to cosmic tendencies and attributes, and this feature of her archetypal zest is no doubt key to her continued survival and importance in Hindu culture even today.

David R. Kinsley,  author of Hindu Goddesses, describes Sarasvati’s earliest appearance as a river.  She is

“no ordinary river.  Early Vedic references make it clear that the Sarasvati River originates in heaven and flows down to earth.  Physical contact with her earthly manifestation, however, connects one with the awesome, heavenly, transcendent dimension of the goddess and of reality in general.” (Kinsley 57)

Even before Sarasvati The River and The Goddess flowed down from the celestial heavens, another Goddess, her ancestral progenitor, quickened and fertilized the visible and invisible aspects of the world through sound.  Her name was Vac.   The Goddess of voice.  Of word.  “Queen of a thousand syllables…” (Calasso 238), “Vac was a power at the world’s beginning.” (Calasso 238)  Wherever life grew parched,  and living things lost their luster, it was Vac who moistened and brighten them at their source.  With sound. Sarasvati emerged from the mythical husks of Vac, and though initially and consistently identified with her, over time Sarasvati came to represent characteristics other than those originally ascribed to Vac.

Although the distinction of sound and speech as primordial factors in the creation of the universe is a post-Rg-vedic concept, nevertheless sound, and speech especially when ritualized, are regarded in the Rg-veda as an integral aspect of cosmic creation and order.  Vac’s attributes exemplified the theory prevalent in many mythologies that the origin of the created universe occurred through sound.  In Hinduism, Vac besides being a primordial creative force, is also honored as

 “the presence that inspires the rsis.  She is truth, and she inspires truth by sustaining Soma, the personification of the exhilarating drink of vision and immortality.  She is the mysterious presence that enables one to hear, see, grasp, and then express in words the true nature of things.” (Kinsley 12)

Bear in mind, Vac was more than an abstract concept.  Her essential nature was that of an omnipresent, nourishing goddess, forceful as a lioness, decked in golden raiment, capable of fostering both fiercely and tenderly, organic growth as a result of providing the blessings of language and vision.  She is equated no less with the creation of Hinduism’s three Vedas, the earth (Rg-veda), the air, (Yajur-veda), and the sky (Sama-veda).  She is a Goddess at the very source of life, and Hinduism’s holy writ.  Gradually Vac’s vivid personification was assumed by and metamorphosed into Sarasvati.  Centuries later, additional qualities became attributed to Sarasvati which took on a primacy in the shaping of Hindu culture.

To understand Sarasvati’s transitions from earlier associations with Vac into her own Goddessdom, and from her earliest identification with the cleansing purity and fertility of the Sarasvati River, and rivers in general, one needs to consider the historical and cultural transitions occurring when nomadic life in India metamorphosed into agricultural, village societies.  Rivers were the life blood to these societies.  Understanding the nature of rivers was mandatory to survival.  Sarasvati’s river heritage affirmed a tendency in classical Hinduism to perceive the landscape itself as something sacred.  Rivers were considered symbolic places for planting, for healing, where one could cleanse one’s body and spirit.  Furthermore, not only were rivers places into which one could immerse one’s bodily self, metaphorically they assumed imagery indigenous to all three Indian religions, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism—that being the fording of a body of water, be it river or stream for spiritual attainments.  By crossing over to the other side of a river, one drowned the deadening beliefs of the old self to be born afresh, to be liberated from the past, towards a new, more enlightened way of being in the world.

It is not known exactly, how The Goddess Sarasvati became less connected with her original river goddess status, and more associated with another Goddess, Vagdevi, the Goddess of Speech.  Kinsley speculates that,

“Perhaps the centrality of sacred speech in Vedic cult and the importance of Vedic rituals being performed on the banks of the Sarasvati River led to the identification of the two goddesses.  In any case, Sarasvati increasingly becomes a goddess associated with speech, learning, culture, and wisdom; most post-Vedic references to her do not even hint that at one time she was identified with a river.” (Kinsley 57)

I would suggest also that the transition Sarasvati traveled from ancient river status into the goddess of speech expresses an archetypal connection between a river’s ability to carry earthly sediments, and the voice’s ability to carry emotive sentiments. Intrinsically linked, voices and rivers move and shape inner and outer topographies.  Soul as soil, soil as soul.

Insofar as Sarasvati would eventually become a goddess equated with the refinements Hinduism attaches to culture and transcendence of the natural world, Sarasvati  could be said to have come full circle.  That is, as a Goddess of  learning and wisdom, such as it is attained through language, She has, in a sense,  returned to her celestial fount in the heavens, a domain above human travail.  But even though Sarasvati in present times is often represented as transcendent, purified knowledge and wisdom, riding a heavenly swan above the toil and turbulence of the natural world, she can also be Sarasvati seated on a lotus, rooted in the muck of earthly bogs.

Although rooted in the mud (like man rooted in the physical world), the lotus perfects itself in a blossom that has transcended the mud.  Sarasvati inspires people to live in such a way that they may transcend their physical limitations through the ongoing creation of culture. (Kinsley 62)

Sarasvati upholds a theme in Hinduism that affirms that human destiny is inextricably tied to notions of the refinement of nature.  Nature without these cultural refinements is not considered suitable for the fullest unfolding of a human being in Hindu thought.  These sentiments regarding the refinement of nature as essential to a human’s fullest potential possess a Western bias as well, and in so doing tend to emphasis and esteem certain human attributes at the expense of others.  With the more recent emphasis on purity and transcendence of the physical world, India’s present day Sarasvati appears more disembodied than her earlier incarnations.  But for all Her purified, sattvic nature, Sarasvati remains a Goddess of music as well as speech.  Music is untethered speech.  At her core, Sarasvati contains the fertile, rushing sap of Her beginnings; a juice squeezed from the Vedic philosophy of the primacy of syllables.  Jonathan Levi, in his review of Literature and The Gods, by Roberto Calasso,  in The Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2001, quoting from Calasso, writes, “One squeezes juice, from anything, but not from the syllable:  Because the syllable is itself the juice of everything…And from the syllable all else flows.”

Sarasvati is a particularly juicy goddess for modern times, especially perhaps, for modern day women.  She is not a goddess of motherhood, or the fertility of the fields, except metaphorically.  What She gives birth to are creations other than human progeny.  Hers is not a domestic presence in the traditional sense of keeping house, but of housekeeping by creating eloquence, art, wisdom through artistic discovery, poetry and music. With words She tills the fields of  human longing and  imagination.  She is the running dialogue at the center of  human affairs, spinning the stories within which we nourish our lives.  “The world is made up of stories, not atoms”, wrote poet Muriel Rukeyser.  The sounding harp of the Universe is plucked by Sarasvati, and key to understanding her wisdom, is hearing and releasing the sounds She makes, allowing them their ever flowing, ever-changing-ness.

In my own life, Sarasvati’s presence has been especially potent and integral these past few years.  A story about Her swayed my decision as to where and how I should continue my education following a return to school to complete a bachelor’s degree begun over thirty years ago.  Drawn to Pacifica Graduate Institute, torn between a degree in Psychology, which I perceived as possessing definite financial largesse somewhere up ahead, and The Mythological Program which seemed possessed with as sure-footed a financial future as the acting profession, I cast my net for a sign, an omen.  I got a story.

Once upon a time in a faraway land, a man went into the forest to see his spiritual master.  “I want to have unlimited wealth, and with that wealth, I want to help and heal the world.  Will you tell me how to create this affluence?

The spiritual master replied.  “There are two goddesses which reside in the heart of every human being.  Everybody loves these two goddesses, but there’s a secret you need to know, and I will tell you what it is.”

Although you love both of these goddesses, you must pay more attention to one of them.  She is the Goddess of Knowledge, of speech, music and sound, and her name is Sarasvati.  Pursue her, love her and give her your attention.  For when you pay more attention to Sarasvati, the other goddess, Lahksmi, the Goddess of Wealth, will become extremely jealous and pay more attention to you.  The more you seek Sarasvati, the more the Goddess of Wealth will seek you.  And she will follow you wherever you go, and never leave you.

In that mysterious way our Psyche senses even seizes what it really wants…and, in the gap between that psychic sensing and fearful admonitions of the ego, responses glimmer.  Of course, I already knew which program it was I wanted.  The Myth Program.  The one with the knowledge that really called to me.  It was just a question of how much faith and derring-do I still retained. It was just a question of letting a story reconnect me back to the source of something shining.

Certainly a most shining manifestation of Sarasvati in Buddhism was a woman who became the first Tibetan to attain complete enlightenment.  Her name was Yeshe Tsogyal, and her life story is written about in a book, Lady of the Lotus Born.  She is often referred to as The Great Bliss Queen.

For Padmasambhava, the guru who brought Buddha’s teaching from India to Tibet, to propagate his teaching of the Secret Mantra, he felt the time had come for an incarnation of Sarasvati to appear.  Yeshe, whose birth reverberated a Sanskrit mantra through the air so powerfully that a nearby lake increased to almost twice its size, was the wife of Emperor King, Tri-song-dat-tsen of Tibet.  It was Tri-song who invited Padmashambhava to Tibet to spread the new tradition of Buddhism.  With his consent, Yeshe became Padmasambhava’s consort and foremost disciple. She was the embodiment of the Sarasvati he was looking for.

Yeshe and Padmasambhava through sexual union, mantras and chanting dissolved artificial boundaries between the mind and the body.  Rather than forsaking and attempting to transcend the body, the Tantric wisdom that Padmasambhava advocated engaged both body and mind for enlightenment.  Creating a bridge of sound between mind and body composed of sounds and sacred syllables facilitates an enlightening, informing dialogue between them.  Keeping this river of sound flowing and being aware of its ever-changing, interdependent behavior is the heart of Buddhist wisdom. Buddhism’s most reknown Sarasvati, Yeshe Tsogyal, learned how to make her body sing, and became both the singer of her life’s song, and the song itself. 

 Sarasvati, such as She manifested in the bodhisattva archetype of Yeshe Tsogyal, presents an embodied Goddess who has married within herself the heavier, darker emotional sounds of soul as they move through the human body, and the flute-like soaring sounds of spirit, such as they leap from the human mind. This Sarasvati appeals to me immensely, for no parts of Her appear to be in exile.

Today, with so much talk about creating a sense of community in our lives and world, saturated as they are with feelings of alienation, I feel Sarasvati’s presence holds a promise. As the Goddess of speech and music, She carries the virtues of connection and communication. Robert Sardello writes in his book, Facing the World With Soul,. “When community does show forth among people it shows in the word, the living, creative, unexpected, heartfelt, spontaneous, thoughtful, reflective speaking through which the soul of the world finds voice.” (Sardello 181).  This is Sarasvati’s Queendom, the shining place where words wait to be born in the mouths of living things. Voice is how the soul speaks

In speaking the breath connects us to each other.  When we bank and shape this breath with the consonants and vowels of whatever language we speak, we become like the earth, banking the forces of a river so it can meander with some depth through the landscape moistening and moving it with life’s running waters.  It is a sacred thing we do with breath and speech that Sarasvati oversees.  It came to me so vividly just a few nights ago, as a small tree rat lay dying in the street by my driveway.  I knew not what had happened to it.  Poison, I assumed.  But suddenly I was profoundly overcome.  I could not leave him (her). Her tiny eyes seemed to take me in, as I took her into me.  We were inhaling one another.  We were a community of two, two souls speaking of the deepest things between us.  I asked Sarasvati to hold her in Her breath as I lay her small furry body on soft ground under some vines, to expire. I knew She would say the right words.  And that the little tree rat would hear her name in Her merciful voice, and be released into Her flowing music as she headed home to the bright world from whence She and she, and all of us came…together.

MEDUSA

In Spanish "Medusa" means jellyfish

Under The Sea

Medusa, spirit of depths where three
Deimos, Phobos, Eros linger
eternally



©2013 mythopoetry.com  monsters and bugs poetry series
stephanie pope, "Under The Sea"
#ohj "lingers' and "jellyfish" July 30, 2013


 
notes

Medusa /myth of

see Metamorphoses Book V, Ovid,  Book IV , line 898.

 see also video: part 1
                      part 2
                      part 3


mythopoetics/ the image in art/

see "Medusa", Arnold Bocklin/ see http://www.arnoldbocklin.org/Medusa.html
also see  The Weeping Gorgon by momothecat/DeviantArt 

jellyfish
video: David Sherr, Aquarium of the Bay
video: DeepBlueYT

photo credits
©2013 David Sherr “Jellyfish” Aquarium of the Bay



Medusa /Greek meaning
-guardian, protectress


                  / Spanish meaning
-jellyfish

AN INTERSTICE: NEW YEARS & "END" TIMES Mirthology 101

http://www.lillyarts.com/html/happynewyear.html

Happy 2013! Did you make your New Year's resolution yet? This year I promised myself I would continue my explorations into women and humor. As a poet-mythologer that means a mythopoetic exploration where psyche-making seems to open space between mirth and myth.

The idea came to me last evening during participation in a microblogging event, "Toast Pacifica" held for alumni of Pacifica Graduate Institute (see Pacifica Alumni) home to the collected works of Joseph Campbell, Marija Gimbutas, James Hillman, Christine Downing, and others. You can visit a full listing of names and collected works by visiting OPUS Archives on line.


 2013: Why Mirth
What is it about mythic imagination and the need for mirth? Could it be somehow that myth's birth and mirth's birth coincide in the same monadic space in imaginal mind? I've already started looking at this early mental matrix.

Mirth's name accorded western psyche in mythic imagination is Euphrosyne. She is one of three Graces or Charites. According to Timothy Ganz she forms, along with her sisters, Aglaia and Thalia, the diaphanous robe surrounding the goddess Aphrodite. (Early Greek Myth, vol. 1 p. 54)

Sure sounds like something archetypally in-formed to me. Perhaps 2013 has all the makings of a "nude" year after all!  If so, the imaginal term coined last night by @Pacifica Alumni, "arsechetypal" has left a just-right imprint to further explore―traces of the old "end-times" along with specular, simulated "spectacular" simulacra, images like the simultaneously unfolding, eleventh hour "fiscal cliff" negotiations. These are left "behind" as the new year begins. These seemings seam traces in poetic psyche's myth-making, fun-loving, festival animal as the old year vanishes into late night, New Year, Toast Pacifica tweets. 

In a salute to 2013 now, here's to naked Beauty and the gracefully mythopoetic, circle dancer, Mirth who traced the dancing imprint last night in PJ's EROS and the knowing and loving underneath the blue boy's timely trinitarian invocation. Here's to the winged "makers", mythoplokon, weavers of soul-making everywhere!

Furthermore, here's to beginnings in endings; here's to simulacra, simulation and fictionalizing arsechetypes.

Out with the old, in with the nude!

Happy Nude Year, Everybody!

©2013 stephanie pope, mythopoetry.com   

RITING MYTH, MYTHIC WRITING

Every couple years I go after a writer's workshop or gathering around explorations into poetics, depth perspectives or something related to my discipline as a cultural mythologer. This year's event brings together my interest in all three. This year's event is a writing retreat with Professor (and poet) Dennis Slattery held this August in Santa Barbara and sponsored by PacificA Graduate Institute. There are two sessions in August. I'm attending the second session held August 19-22, 2010.

There are a number of blogs on line you can access to read more about this year's retreat for poetic kinds at heart. Here are a couple and the link to the PGI website.


If you are up for some writing (not to mention riting!) this August, JOIN ME!

Cultural Mythology: American Notions of Self & Country

Greening Predicates

Pacifica Graduate Institute Public Programs