THE BADGER The Badger is a fierce animal, very much respected and honored both in Northern American Native traditions and in European Celtic ones. A badger will not let go and will continue tenaciously to look for another way to tackle his/her goal, just like a good healer will not let go his/her search until the best solution is found for the person in need. Badgers have their homes underground, so that they can go to the roots of things, the good healer does the same and keeps looking until she/he can find the most profound reason for a dis-ease or a psychological issue. We use the term healer in the very broad sense of somebody who takes care of a another person, be it a MD, a nurse, a psychotherapist, a physiotherapist, a masseuse, a spiritual healer. Whenever there is a person in need and somebody who takes care of her/him, that is a healer. Sometimes the need is subtler and more profound than a simple medical intervention, the human touch is needed and it really is the Panacea that cures all diseases. We believe all artistic expressions in their beauty, science for everyday life, spirituality, philosophy, food and the healing arts are beneficial to restoring that balance, health and sense of worth that each and every human being deserves. We offer you THE BADGER, the persistent healer, all the articles come from experts in different fields, each person has his/her own idea of what a balanced life is, they are here to pass on information, give inspiration, receive your comments, suggestions, contributions. Each human being holds in his/her hands at least one of the keys, let's continue our quest!
THE BADGER
Year 6 Volume 2
September 2020
ARS AND PHYSIS Ars and Physis, Art and/or Nature, the eternal question. What is Natural, what is Artificial, ie. Artistic? Let’s start from the words that define these aspects: Ars comes from Latin, it is an honest translation of Techne which, in the Greek Language, meant what is constructed, as opposed to what is natural. The etymology of Ars is from artificium facere, again something constructed as opposed to natural. What makes Art better, more interesting, more intriguing than Nature? Why have artists over the centuries tried to be either extremely close to nature or totally the opposite? But somehow there is no art without its counterpart, nature. In this year that will be remembered in history as the end of the old human civilization and, hopefully, the beginning of a new universal civilization, we are forced to look inside, to dive into the depths of our beings and find new ways to cope with a changed reality. Art and Nature can both help us in navigating these extremely difficult times. They are difficult because they are new, there have been wars, famine, natural disasters, the plague in the past millennia of human life on earth, but never before there has been an attempt to self-destruction of such scope and magnitude. In our lockdown countries, in our homes, in the small circles of our lives, we are forced again to look at our human nature and re define it. It is time to find a new understanding of our human nature, art in all its forms can help us to find symbols and clues in our search.
If I listen to Mozart’s Zauberflote (Magic Flute), I will forget my depression, if I admire the wonders of Raffaello’s paintings, even in an online exhibition, I may forget my concerns and let myself be captured by beauty. When I look at the Riace bronzes, I am reminded that human bodies can be captured in bronze, as an eternal reminder of action and physical prowess. The list is endless, the artwork is infinite form north to south, east and west. The singers sharing their new songs on balconies, the violinist on the roof of the hospital serenading the patients and the staff, the poems read daily by famous actors, the funny stories shared by our comic writers, they all belong to the Human World Heritage. In this isolation we have re discovered the importance of nature, how much we miss it when we cannot reach and be in it on a daily basis. We take it for granted, but it isn’t at all a given that we can enjoy it fully. Hopefully, when all this will be behind us, we will live in a more natural way, appreciating what surrounds us, the people as well as the trees, the animals, the waves of the ocean, the peaks of the mountains around us. Our ancestors gave us a world with far less technology (see? Artificial stuff!) and a lot more untouched nature, even 60-70 years ago (the time of one generation or two) people had technology, but still lived in a way that was independent from it. I am not saying that we should do without technical progress, but we could learn how to live without depending entirely on it. This is a good time to wander into arts, painting, singing, dancing, sculpting or whatever applied or performing art touches you, it is a time to express our deepest feelings in a natural way and art is our natural way. Even cooking a good meal, with love for the people we are cooking for is a form of art, feeding others instead of our fears or depression was a wellknown method about indigenous people who offered banquets to feed the community. Love for humanity will save our human race, love of our children for us, lost adults in this ocean of confusion, will lead us all on the right path again. Let’s use art and nature as our guides through the wilderness of insecurity.
This volume opens and ends with art, artists, performers who can brighten our lives and give us new creative perspectives, good reading and new discoveries to us all!
Antonella Vicini Director THE BADGER Quarterly LTD
Cover photo by Luis Vasconcelos Graphic lay out Antonella Vicini You can find all our past volumes, videos and our blog in our website: http://www.thebadgerquartelyltd.com/ and links on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/THEBADGERQuarterlyMagazine/
CONTENTS Equinox in Harmony Dance for Joy Photo – Graphy
F. Rico A.Vicini L.Vasconcelos
As If...
F. Lehrman
Poetry
Casazza
Voices from the Stars Being Medicine Quilting Away Seedlings On the Shamanic Path
L.Bottagisio D.Kopacz - J.Rael L.Perry C. Murgan H. Wesselman
CONTENTS Honoring a Master Druidry Apothecary The Music speaks Kathak
The Authors
Various Authors P.Carr Gomm Jo Dunbar A. Brizzi and G. Reis R. Fanelli
short bios and photos
Thanks
and links to previous volumes
Adverts
products and services we believe in
EQUINOX IN HARMONY Listening Francis Rico Nature gives plenty of notice about exactly what is coming. Flower buds in early Spring hold the promise of a new year. Summer squash, corn, and bean blossoms reassure us that we will soon harvest what we sow. The hot days but cold nights of Indian Summer presage Winter. And every morning, the sky lights up well before dawn. There is a profoundly deep gift of exactly this sort arriving for us within this Equinox - Tuesday morning, September 22, at 6:30am PDT. It's a gift of illumination – lighting up the new world that is emerging in response to the emergencies we are experiencing - showing us that there is a way for us to live in love, without fear. Global mystic “Grandfather” Joseph Rael, Tslew-teh-koyeh - Beautiful Painted Arrow - spoke recently of this emergence:
"We're at the end of calendar time. We’re at the end of artificial created structures imposed on our lives. What can emerge now is a new world that we create with our hearts. Our intentions for a compassionate and caring world are now supported by all of creation." He's talking about the new world we all know is possible – of our world changing because we have changed. But here we are, dealing with realities that are anything but compassionate and caring.
This is what Joseph is talking about: we’re emerging from the centrifugal force field of our world’s three-ring circus of distraction, damage, and despair. And what is growing within us all is an inner connection with a deep flow of love and sparkling intelligence - that is now free flowing directly from Source. In the old wisdom traditions, what we call balance, and see as something precarious and very easily upset, was understood to be harmony. Knowing this brings a new light to what this Equinox offers us and makes possible: Equal day and equal night becoming a love affair between light and dark. At the moment of the Equinox, an energetic opening of deep harmony will occur - an opening you can experience within yourself. How? By listening. Joseph offers this insight: “Listening is the place of inspiration – by deeply listening at this level of vibration, one receives direct knowing. Decisions that are made are the right decisions for that moment because the energy being tapped is the voice of the inner silent vibration. You will know what direction to go because your inner voice will guide you.” This “inner voice” that is singing within us is the deep harmony of life sharing life with itself. This is the voice of the Vast Self that is the truth of you. We’re now being offered an opportunity to create (and co-create) “reality” from our hearts, including everything we've learned and everything we've yearned for: peace, well-being for all, abundance, a compassionate and caring world. In a cosmic sense, a new world is as easy to create as a new day!
So to start this new day: Find a place of wild beauty - outside under open sky. Wherever you are, become quiet. Listen. Let a living ceremony move through you - a recognition of the great harmony of being that is finding us now. Let yourself feel embraced with luminosity - listen! Then, celebrate! Enjoy the day!
Francis Rico The Dreaming House Teotihuacan, Mexico
DANCE FOR JOY Pneuma Antonella Vicini A whirlwind of dancers around the hall, an epic waltz accompanies the couples dancing around the centre, what a deeply emotional celebration of life this is! The NON Company directed by Alessandro Pintus has created the perfect performance for these intense and diverse times. A group of experienced dancers has undergone a workshop using Butoh Dance and its disciplined approach to life as a path, the results are amazing, as always! From the initial idea of dancing the Decameron* novels, each dancer found a story to tell, a story of retreat and survival, so similar to what we have all gone through this year. From the molds created by our lives, society, education, etc each dancer shows us his/her repetitive movements that, after a while, become meaningless to them, this realization happens after a fall, a near death experience, a plague or the pandemic of 2020. “Only when we fall, can we really receive the teachings we need�. My teacher used to repeat this motto to me: in the dance I witnessed I could see it in action. After each fall the movements became more authentic, even if they were almost unexpected and took the dancers in new, uncharted directions. Once the dancers completed the form of their feelings, thus freeing their stories, they met their counterparts in spirit form, their breath/ atman/ pneuma**, as the title of the performance.
So dancing, once more, has become a path to transcendence, a way to a deeper and clearer experience of life. In traditional societies, east and west, the world as we know it can be shattered by the sacred time of ritual dancing, when “normal� time is suspended and a new movement, awareness and level of consciousness can find its open expression. Dancers can then become visionaries, seeing beyond their eyes and walking on paths never trodden by human beings, yet present and alive in everyday life, if only we suspended the judgment that keeps us trapped in this limited slice of reality. The dancers of NON Company have this immense courage and light the way for us all. If we needed a proof that the world needs artists in these difficult times, they gave us plenty of proof and warm, shy smiles at the end, when they thanked us for our enthusiastic clapping. In the second part of the performance dancers and spirits dance together. The music chosen for this experiment in healing our recent wounds produced by Covid 19 is soothing and reminds us of happier times, of feast days, of country balls on the green summer grass. The highest moment is reached when the Waltz from the Gattopardo (a famous movie by Luchino Visconti), the magnificent music by Dmitri Shostakovich - The Second Waltz *** is played and all the dancers participate in couples, keeping the distance, and later dance on their own. Survival and then creation, going beyond the mere day to day, this is what NON Company is teaching us today, this is what all artists and arts are about, supporting the arts simply means supporting our human survival as a species.
Dance gives us shelter, dance is a prayer, dance is an offering of beauty in the midst of chaos and darkness, dance is a beacon of light for each one of us, everybody leaves uplifted after this performance.
Antonella Vicini
NOTES *The Decameron ((from δέκα = 10 and ἡμερῶν = of 10 days) is a series of 100 tales, narrated by 10 young people (7 women and 3 men) who escaped from Florence during the plague in order to save their lives. It was written between 1349 and 1351 by Giovanni Boccaccio, scholar and writer. The tone of the novels is light, erotic, sometimes, tragic. The setting of the Decameron is the villa in the countryside near Florence where the stories are told. ** Pneuma (πνεῦμα) is an ancient Greek word for "breath", and in a religious context for "spirit" or "soul”. In classical philosophy, it is distinguishable from psyche (ψυχή), which originally meant "breath of life", but is regularly translated as "spirit" or most often "soul". So life is breath and breath is spirit, as in the Sanskrit concept of Atman which meant both breath and individual soul which is one with Brahman the cosmic breath. *** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOK8Jb76ibc Here you can listen to the entire waltz with a mix of images from different films, including the Gattopardo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_fprzrHvIM
PHOTO – GRAPHY Reflections Luis Vasconcelos “I am presenting you my new Art Project entitled Reflections. I invite you to join me on a journey deep inside a Magical Lake, where we will find beautifully strange creatures and gates to an alternative reality.” Luis Vasconcelos An enchanted landscape awaits us in this volume. Luis Vasconcelos leads us inside it, in the beauty and wonder of nature. It is said that transformation happens when we change and open our eyes, Luis has certainly managed to change the way we look at nature. Working in his studio, Luis has explored the beauty in the natural shapes of plants. He has certainly enriched his own and our experience of life with expert manipulation of the photos, the final effect is utterly stunning. In these difficult times for our human race, we can really take a tour of his lake and find a portal to, perhaps, a more natural way of life.
Antonella Vicini Here is the link to the video created for this volume: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udf2BvRF69k NOTE: you will find his photos scattered in different articles, such beauty cannot be restrained!
AS IF… Fredric Lehrman In this sudden societal storm of Covid-19, imposing a “necessary” QUARANTINE which risks crumbling the world economy, causing social interruption of global proportion, forcing suspension of our normal educational and career agendas, leading confused parents to wonder what effects this will have on the children… I do not attempt to make sense of it. That would be like predicting the outcome of an experiment that involves everything we have ever known, now subject to interactions that have no specific values to use as reference points, as if the process itself had started on its own in the night in a locked building, discovered only hours later by the first arriving employee, who calls in the emergency, not anticipating that research scientists will arrive as first responders to that alarm signal. There are so many headlines and numbers and revelations blowing by each day, requiring adjustments of plans that are not parts of any known integrating theory. We must simply examine our own ideas and do what we can to make them fit somewhere; or, lacking that intuition, take a seat on the boat for an hour, or a month, or until some encompassing explanation seems to fit. We are not there yet. But many have sensed that it could come to this. In an earlier article in this magazine I wrote about a necessary disruption that must come, forcing us as a planetary family to begin collectively to listen to the whole of the planet. We have watched since 1970 as short-sighted interests have painted us into corners, and we must either undo those dangerous dead ends, or somehow learn to “levitate” out over each slowly drying mistake. The problem is that, in a wired world, we are unable to pretend to expect that people who have not even heard of us before will do everything “our way.”
Over the last 150 years, science and industry have “upgraded” us from living locally to living globally. There are more cellphones in so-called Third World countries than we can keep track of. “The World” has been, for the young generations, available in their hands right in front of their faces. Everything they need to know can be found on their phones, which is how we are able to know that this Covid moment is global. Instead of learning what’s happening far away only when the stagecoach or train arrives, the news is now already waiting for us every morning before we open our eyes. So this Pandemic/economic collapse is a growth opportunity that has surprised us, much like puberty or menopause, exciting parts of life but not always comfortable. And we each have to go through it personally, even though talking it over with the right person can certainly help. Look at it this way… the Earth is a big island floating in an ocean of Space. Soon, if we get things right, we will be able to cross that ocean and visit some other very interesting islands. There are billionaires somewhat like us who are working towards that goal very impressively, so success is closer than ever before (unless, of course, we remember ancestors who sent us here a very long time ago with instructions on what to do). If that last paragraph moved something in your nervous system, that’s good. A friend of mine once told me, when I was at my wit’s end: “The secret is to not take your own life personally… just take it. But don’t take it personally.” Life in a human body is like that. Remember to breathe, and you will come back into balance. Then the problems look a little more interesting, and your intelligence will get up and start walking. In that essay mentioned six paragraphs earlier, I defined “confusion” as a place where several streams flow into a larger river. The little brooks now become an even bigger river. “Con-fusion” literally means “With Fusion,” which is like the practice in many original cultures of changing personal names with each celebration of personal growth.
Water does this by yielding to gravity without hesitation, and as a result it eventually reaches the ocean and wins the grand prize, which is to explore new shores, meet new fish, all while continuing to evaporate into the sky to start a whole new round again as a cloud or a drop of rain. In my past studies, I’ve learned and proven for myself that we can relax our minds and know things that are in the future or the past. We can intend to discover something just through relaxed mental focus, as I was able to do after some classes with a former Army colonel who was head of training solders to do “Remote Viewing.” I know that this is a universal ability for certain preliterate cultures, but we usually haven’t learned how to practice it until we hear about it. I trust that we will get beyond this, but I sense that not everyone will arrive at the same new reality. I’ve read too many spiritual books and seen too many miracles to expect that. More likely, we will each find ourselves in a /our own new social reality, somewhat different from what we know, perhaps similar but better, possibly even so much better that we will need new words to express what we see and feel. I’m excited about that movie, and I don’t want to know how it ends when it’s barely started. Kids love new stories because they don’t know how it will turn out, but they trust that they will. Even if you don’t speak Chinese, you may have heard that the written Chinese character for our word “crisis” literally shows a pictogram that means “Opportunity for Change.” That is where we are now. That is where we always are. You’ve made it to here. Relax….smile…intend the best…. “The future’s coming… don’t be early.”
Fredric Lehrman Photos by Luis Vasconcelos
POETRY FOR MARTA Marta saw the potential of all things and people, that was one of her great passions. To cultivate the seeds of dormant talents and nurture them ’til they bear fruits of wholeness. She saw both sides of every person’s story. Make no mistake, she wasn’t blind to flaws, her own, and others’, yet she looked at them as shadows yearning for the light, sore spots begging for some acknowledgement and love. We laughed a lot, we laughed like kids, like rascals she had a way with words that was enchanting. A storyteller of the finest league and puns were her Olympic specialty. I could listen for hours, and I have, to her adventures in the whole wide world. Living with Marta was like being transported into a Marion Zimmer Bradley novel. It was like living with a mix of Gandalf, Indiana Jones, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Lucille Ball, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. All wrapped up in a bright, exquisite package!
I guess she had a pinch of Mary Poppins in her as well: she would show up to stay at someone’s home, and in a jiffy the place was clean, and neat and then, some day, the owners would come home to find the furniture had been… rearranged. and the walls of her room were painted lilac? And then, just as she came, the wind would take her to her next destination, somewhere else. She used to say “Wisdom is not a thing you have or do. You don’t go around being wise. Wisdom is something that just bubbles up whenever it is called upon.” The lives she touched were… revolutionized, including mine. Three nights after she passed, I had a dream in which I woke up from another dream, There was a friend with me, a fellow Master, to whom I said: “I just don’t want to wake up in a world where there’s no Marta in it.” Then I woke up for real. And I still don’t. To wake up every morning knowing that I will not see her again, to laugh and talk, and fight, and make amends, it sucks.
I know that she’s alive in me. I guess it’s safe to say in us. Her light, her stories, her wisdom, her capacity for love are not just gone with her. I trust they’ll bubble up, whenever they are called upon. That is the mark of a true master, that is the mark of a true friend. She saw both sides of every person’s story. So I would like to end quoting a book she loved, which grew to be a musical - because it showed potential The untold story of an Infamous villain: the “Wicked” Witch of the West. That’s how it goes: You’ll be with me, like a handprint on my heart. I am a lucky man. Thank you Marta for being in my life, forever.
Marco Casazza
June 2020
This volume is dedicated to our dear Friend and Teacher Marta Getty who gently passed away last spring.
VOICES FROM THE STARS The Middle World Laura Bottagisio In that moment that contains the eternal continuous present, I was catapulted in the middle world. It is a beautiful land, in the centre of ourselves. There life appears in all its aspects, there happens the struggle between Light and Darkness, between power of form (ego) and the power of essence (Self), between the Mask and the Truth. This is the place where struggle becomes interaction, where nothing is as it appears, where the Self becomes I AM. There you can have the experience of the iridescent fluidity that impregnates every nook and cranny of the thinking mind. Physical and Metaphysical find a contact. From their encounter, the double Seal is activated, thus opening the Golden Door of the Heart. The Double Seal is made up of two symbols, silent and waiting to awaken in a chord that leads them to vibrate in unison, a single sound that expands and amplifies from the center of ourselves all the way to the celestial / cosmic space. The first symbol is universal, the second one is individual, unique and unrepeatable, it is chosen by the soul among the infinite geometries, just for this specific incarnation. The two symbols can only join and interpenetrate in the Middle World! It is not a place or a point but a state of being: THE STATE OF INCARNATED BEING.
Hoping and wishing to see the integration of the two symbols that activate our Seal is a great thing, but even more it is acting to make this happen! Acting in duality in order to embody the unity of the ONE and THREE. In the arithmetic sequence, number 2 is the only one that does not form a geometric figure since it can only draw a line that has no radiating center. Therefore, number 2 is a passage, nobody can stay too long in it, since that is the place where the conflict of opposition is experienced. This is how in the dual world we live the linear time past-present-future, the space/time continuum which makes us drown in the emotion of fear. The line formed by number 2 cannot proceed straight forever, because it needs to bend, thus forming a circle, a spiral, that will transport us in the multidimension of time/space. There we reach the Middle World, there we open the Heart Seal. Each one of us has a different path to walk on in order to reach the Middle World, with our own speed and Guide. The astral chart, drawn when we inhale our first breath, can be read and studied as the itinerary chosen by our soul to be walked on during our incarnation. There we can see the different stages, the speed, the direction and the inevitable obstacles on the way to our goal. Each Planet, each Star, each Constellation and each sign of the Zodiac represent a facet of the One Energy, the Light Principle that splits up in the 7 visible colors, as well as the countless invisible ones that can be perceived with our subtle senses. The Celestial Archetypes, what an enchanted and magical world this is! However, we have believed that Matter, and only Matter, is the dimension in which we must and can live in order to achieve certainties and achievements. So, we spend our existence in the narrow confines of 2, without giving it the opportunity to experience the path that leads to the center. We are so anchored in the past, afraid of the future, blocked in a present that is crushing us with its weight.
"2 is the line, the opinion that changes and therefore leads to choice and sometimes to insecurity. It is the number of mediators, collaborators who work for peace and to make others stand out. Number 2 nurtures like a loving, tender and sensitive mother, it suffers from anxiety before facing exams, visits, travel. It is suitable for those activities that take care of details: assistant, secretary, psychologist, poet, tailor, dancer, musician. The 2 as uniting for peace, can divide people with criticism and cynicism. This is why the Pythagoreans also understood 2 as "assault", in its negative side.�*. Therefore, the power of 2 is to combine two facets through meeting the third element, number 3, in order to form the creative triad.
When we are born, when we first inhale, the celestial configuration of that precise moment 'leans' on our etheric body still soft as warm wax. As the minutes and hours pass, the etheric body solidifies, thus fixing those celestial geometries that become the guiding lines of our specific earthly experience. We become immersed in physical density, so we forget our celestial origin which is forever registered in us. Living and interpreting the celestial Archetypes in the enclosed space of duality leads us to experiences that are often limited and painful. Opening the gate and daring to take steps into the new, towards the Middle World, gives us the great opportunity to follow our true beauty and work for the Divine Plan on Earth. Thanks to the Law of Free Will we can decide on which vibrational wave to live and understand our Planetary Archetypes. They interface with us through those celestial geometries that are formed between them at the moment of our birth. In that instant their frequency passes from the cosmic one to the denser one of incarnation. By lowering the frequency, they produce the events that will have to unfold and evolve on the physical plane. Their original luminous nature is, so to speak, subjugated by matter and it is up to us, to bring them back to their right vibration and make them live through us in their noblest form, the one linked to the Principle of Light. The Planets closest to the Sun (Mercury, Venus, Mars) interpret the personality more closely; the medium-distance planets (Jupiter, Saturn) act as a link between the etheric world and the material world; the more distant planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) act in the psychic depths to open the way to 'invisible' dimensions. It is therefore easier to listen to fast planets since it is through their projection that we experience the reality.
MARS Mars represents the inexhaustible fire that expresses itself unconditionally, the spark that initiates the life process. It does not identify itself in a specific form but determines its starting point. The point of arrival is then proclaimed by Saturn, a planet that embodies the process of identification and realization, acquired through an act of will.
As the main ruling planet of Aries, the first sign of the Zodiac, Mars faces life without any awareness of the ardor and intemperance that are its own. These are necessary characteristics to start the long process of materialization of the projects that are born in the world of ideas. Mars activates the desire to act, but not the desire to accomplish. Therefore, it does not operate in the long term but in the immediate term since its task is, above all, to 'light the fuse'. As an instrument of the ego, it ignites competition, overload, anger, outbursts of rage. As an instrument in the hands of the Self, it renounces its prevaricating part to indulge the passion to operate and defend the common good.**
Until the end of 2020 Mars will transit in the sign of Aries, its favorite field of action. Perhaps it will take away our acquired certainties and will not facilitate the planning of long-term projects.
It will certainly make us more ready to welcome the new without repeating old patterns or constraints that block the awareness of our true Identity. With an open face and removing the mask, we will be able to give voice to our intuition and to the inspiration that comes to us from the soul.
MERCURY Mercury is the exchange of information, at any level, from the media to the most sophisticated level of consciousness. We can choose whether to give and receive superficial and chaotic information or become powerful antennas of exchange between Heaven and Earth, between everyday life and what remains fathomless. Mercury, the winged messenger, can forward our innermost aspirations for beauty and harmonization into the etheric space of consciousness and then make them 'precipitate' into material density through our solar imprint. Every year Mercury performs three retrogradations in the three signs of the same element. In 2020 this happens in the three signs of Water: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces. The last retrogradation in the signs of water occurs in Scorpio from 14 October. This is the sign where Mercury is exalted, it transforms itself from a simple bearer of news to a central focus of transmutation. By crossing our emotional waters and purifying them, we can re-interpret our life thanks to a mind cleared of old patterns ready for new ideas, new thoughts and new perspectives. In 2021 the three stages of retrogradation will take place in the three signs of Air: Gemini, Lybra, Aquarius, thus confirming the opportunity we have to start over with new paradigms that show and decree our consent to work for the Divine Plan.*** Each of us is a healthy carrier of the Principle of Light, the Divine Spark, which operates hidden within us even without the consent of our ego. The Divine Principle makes us immune from the forced deterioration of our physical form. The only 'clause' that it requires is to be recognized by us! HE IS, HE IS the I AM.
Note: V.I.R.U.S. in Italian can be: Verso l’Intero Riconoscimento dell’Unione con il Sovrasensibile You can indulge yourself and also look for other words for it… maybe you won't believe it but it can change the nature of your thoughts! Try it! In English: V.I.R.U.S. Very Important Reconnection Under Soul Supervision
Laura Bottagisio Translated and Edited by Antonella Vicini NOTES: * https://www.scienzaeconoscenza.it/blog/consapevolezza-spiritualita/numerologia-guida-esistenza . ** https://www.laurabottagisio.com/it/articoli/gli-archetipi-stanno-cambiando-marte/ ***https://www.laurabottagisio.com/it/articoli/gli-archetipi-stanno-cambiando-mercurio/
BEING MEDICINE David Kopacz and Joseph Rael Introduction During this time where so much in the world seems to be going badly, Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) and I offer you Chapter 14: Return to the Place of Held-back Goodness from our book,Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD (2016 Pointer Oak/Millichap Books). We thank Paulette Millichap for giving permission to reprint this chapter. While we wrote this book for Veterans, we feel that it is useful for anyone going through stresses and suffering – as so many are during this time of pandemic and political turmoil. Joseph tells us that no matter what you have done, no matter what has happened to you, there is a held-back place of goodness in your heart. The job is to search for it and to reconnect to it. The world could use some more goodness, when you find yours, please share it openly and widely‌ Blessings & Goodness Joseph and David
RETURN TO THE HELD-BACK PLACE OF GOODNESS David R. Kopacz MD & Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) Chapter 14 from Walking The Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD Separation, Initiation, Return—these are the three classic stages of initiation in the hero’s journey. When veterans return to their former lives, they often do not fit back in easily. Their nervous systems are trained to be on alert and to respond with deadly force to solve conflict. Their nervous systems reflect the culture into which they have adapted. Then they leave military culture and return to their original culture, but their nervous systems are still trained for a different set of parameters. Civilian culture is based on peace, not war. Problems are solved diplomatically rather than through combat. In order to fully return, veterans need to retrain their nervous systems for peace. This inner work is difficult, but it leads to identity change and acculturation. Any time there is a crossing of a liminal threshold, a person’s identity must change in order to live in the new world, the new culture they have entered. In Joseph Campbell’s studies of the hero’s journey, the hero crosses the threshold from the known (civilian) world into the unknown world (military). He or she has mentors and challengers and ultimately passes through some abyss of internal and external darkness. What the hero learns there can eventually heal and transform his or her identity.
However, this often happens through events that are traumatic to the former identity. In this “abyss” of darkness, the hero also finds the “boon,” the gift of wisdom. The challenge, then, is to cross the threshold back into the known world, carrying this gift. How can it be that something traumatic can also be a gift or have a gift in it? Each individual must go through this work to find what their gift is that they bring back. The story of “The Wizard of Oz” follows this hero’s journey. Dorothy crosses a threshold and is “not in Kansas anymore.” She has her loyal dog Toto, meets friends and helpers along the way, and has challengers. Each of her new friends, the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man, feel they lack something, and yet through their trials they find that they had these things all along. The Wizard of Oz gives them a gift that symbolizes their own inner gifts—a medal for courage, a ticking heart, and a diploma. Dorothy gets to go home, a power she had all along. All she had to do was wish and click her heels. For the returning veteran, however, he or she faces society’s suspicion of anyone who has gone where they should not go and seen and done things that normal humans should not do (to paraphrase the Navajo tale of Where the Two Came to Their Father). The returning hero has to go through purification work to leave the world of death behind. This path takes the hero through the inner work of bringing the masculine and feminine energies back into balance. Through atonement, the veteran moves into at-one-ment with society. Both Joseph Campbell and Joseph Rael, use this variation, at-one- ment, to signify a process of moving from a state of separation back to a state of oneness. Returning veterans are also suspicious of civilians. They come back with trained and traumatized nervous systems that need care, love, and rehabilitation. Rehabilitation means re-learning the skills they once had. Veterans also bring skills that society needs as well. That is the arc of the story of the hero’s journey. Veterans bring back a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, and are ready to die for anyone in their tight in-group. The civilian world is not lived on the edge of life and death the way combat is, but we could desperately use more brotherhood in the world.
The civilian world, as viewed by the returning veteran, appears selfish, with no one caring about another person. Civilians seem focused on materiality and status and they want to get ahead, whether in line at a store, on the roads, or in the work world. Veterans often miss the sense of brotherhood and camaraderie that comes from being part of a team doing something for a larger purpose. The risk is that instead of bringing the gift of brotherhood and sisterhood back from the service, the veteran becomes separated or marginalized from civilian society and he or she only finds brotherhood and sisterhood within the smaller tribe of veterans. Sebastian Junger worked as a war correspondent and spent time embedded with the Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. After his experiences, he wrote the book, War, and made the documentaries “Restrepo,” and “Korengal.” Most recently, he wrote Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. Junger writes that what the soldiers miss about the war “wasn’t so much combat as brotherhood” (Junger, 2010, 275). As defined by soldiers, brotherhood is the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for the group. That’s a very different thing from friendship, which is entirely a function of how you feel about another person. Brotherhood has nothing to do with feelings; it has to do with how you define your relationship to others. It has to do with the rather profound decision to put the welfare of the group above your personal welfare. In such a system, feelings are meaningless. In such a system, who you are entirely depends on your willingness to surrender who you are. (275-276) Here, Junger writes that “brotherhood . . . has to do with how you define your relationship with others.” This means that brotherhood is a function of identity and culture, as these mediate our relationships with others. The attributes of brotherhood that Junger illustrates also sound like the very same factors that would make someone a good citizen in a democracy— putting others and the group before your personal needs, regardless of your personal feelings toward the person. This would help create a civil society in which everyone is respected and accepted, regardless of whether or not you “like” someone. It is a high level of morality in which the common good is placed before the individual good, and unfortunately, this is often missing in today’s society.
Junger’s description of brotherhood calls to mind the path of the spiritual hero—the person on a mystical quest to transcend his or her own ego and “surrender” to something even larger than society. The quest of the spiritual hero is to surrender into spirit, into Wah Mah Chi, Breath Matter Movement. Joseph sometimes says, as a Planetary Citizen, “I am my brother’s keeper.” This is a statement of brotherhood toward all people of the earth. After Cain killed his brother, Abel, in the first murder in the Bible, God asked Cain where his brother was, Cain replied, “am I my brother’s keeper?”1(1 The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition, Genesis 4:8, 3.) In killing his brother, Cain fractured the sense of brotherhood. This is why Joseph will often say, “I am my brother’s keeper.” He is honoring the sacred relationship between all beings and reversing Cain’s denial of affiliation. Many veterans return to the civilian world having intensely bonded with their unit during the service, particularly if they were in combat. The sense of brotherhood that veterans return with would be quite a gift if, instead of marginalizing them, we could learn from them how to live in brotherhood and sisterhood and how to extend this beyond the narrow tribe of fellow veterans to all people of the earth. From a Native American perspective, this would extend even beyond all human beings and to all living creatures, including even the earth itself. “Aho Mitakuye Oyasin,” say the Lakota Sioux, which translates to “all of my relatives” and extends into the non-human and non-organic realms. This is what veteran Marty Martinez would shout each time he brought new hot stones into the American Lake VA sweat lodge. We would greet our brothers and sisters, the heated stones who brought their healing and purifying energy into the circle of the lodge, into the center of the heart of medicine wheel that the sweat lodge is. The medicine wheel is a way of life, a way of walking in the world. We offer this framework to all veterans who are seeking a path of healing from their service. Service is a noble sacrifice and a noble work. Work is worship, so service is a sacred duty.
American society is largely oriented to the Black Road of mental ideas and materialism. Walking the Red Road of the medicine wheel adds spiritual and emotional depths and dimension to intellectual and physical material life. The Red Road orients us to why we are here and what is really important. Ultimately, walking the medicine wheel is about finding the one direction in the four directions. This is the direction of Wah Mah Chi, Breath Matter Movement unfolding in our lives. We can view the pain and suffering of war and PTSD as a rite of passage in an initiation process. By doing spiritual work/worship, pain can be transformed into wisdom.
Returning Home: Reconnecting to Held-back Goodness One night Joseph called me as I was walking out of work to head home for the day. I had woken up that morning thinking that we needed to add a chapter on Home, because this is such a big focus for deployed veterans, and yet upon their return they are frustrated at being physically home and still not feeling home in important ways. In the Hero’s Journey class, we have generated a list of different things that home can mean to veterans, including a physical place, a point in time, a physical building, family, connection to self, a job, a sense of purpose, or a spiritual connection. What Joseph called to tell me about was a vision he had. He said that in it he saw that God holds back a place in our heart, a place of Goodness. For veterans who have to learn how to kill and who experience trauma, there is still a held-back place of Goodness, but they lose touch with this place and they need to find a way to reconnect to it. Maybe this is why veterans struggle upon their return to their physical home; they are still not home in their heart, where Joseph says this “held-back” place is located. Maybe it is true that you cannot be home until you find that place within you that remains innocent and good, that you lost touch with while doing your job in order to protect your country. I madly scribbled down his words in a notebook. In talking about this heldback place of Goodness, Joseph spoke about how the sweat lodge can help veterans reconnect with this hidden place.
He says that this goodness is hidden within the “cloak of Divine Energy,” and that, through the symbolic rebirthing of the sweat lodge processes, it can be brought back into a person’s life. Joseph describes how, in the sweat lodge, you sit on the ground in the darkness. At the end of the ceremony, you move from sitting to crawling on your hands and knees out through the flap of the sweat lodge door, moving from darkness and re-emerging into light. We do not remember our original birth, but this recreates our birth, crawling on hands and knees, struggling to our feet, and then staggering in our steps. I can attest to this sense of “learning to walk again” from my own sweat lodge experiences. There is always someone just outside the door, lending a hand to help those emerging from the sweat. Joseph used to perform the sweat lodge ceremony for at the hospital and clinics with the Indian Health Service. He worked a lot with addictions. In the sweat lodge, there is first “placement,” in sitting, then crawling out into the light, the re-birthing process. He says that this is a “going back to Goodness, to the Source of Renewal.” This is the pathway to our inner home, which has been waiting for us and for veterans as they have journeyed forth into the world of war and trauma. We have to “repeat what we did as a baby” and this helps us reconnect to our inner home, to that place of held-back Goodness. Joseph reminds me again to put in the book that he uses lava rocks for the sweat lodge and that these are “from the core of the Earth, the Mother of all of us. We reach through the center of her to her heart to heal.” The Earth’s heart, Mother Nature’s heart, our heart, are all the same. In connecting to Mother Nature’s heart, we can reconnect back to our own heart and heal. Joseph then said of veterans that the “Divine Mother loves them, and can wipe away their pain . . . all that is needed is a second or one or two seconds, or even no seconds, and just instantly we are forgiven.” Joseph reminisces that when he was growing up, he would meet people from many different tribes, but the Native American people were always the “most nature-oriented people.” He says that we must “Understand that we all belong to Mother Nature. We look like a beautiful man, or a beautiful woman, or a beautiful child, but still we are all Mother Nature’s children.”
Held-back Goodness in the House of God I immediately had a lot of resonance with Joseph’s vision as it applied to my own life and work. When I was going through my medical and psychiatric training and education, I was very concerned with preserving my humanity. I felt that the training program and the process of building a professional identity, along with the exposure to death and illness and the frailty of the human mind and body, encouraged a deadening or numbing of emotions and threatened to eclipse an important aspect of myself. Another way to say this is that I felt I was becoming dehumanized and losing my soul. Another way of saying this is that I lost connection with my place of Goodness. This was the start of my counter-curriculum and compassion revolution—trying to reconnect to this held-back place of Goodness. I presented a paper called, “Learning to Save the Self: Samuel Shem’s Portrayal of Trauma and Medical Education,” at the annual meeting of the Institute for Traumatic Stress Studies in 1998. Shem wrote the book The House of God (which was the name of a teaching hospital) about a kind of hero’s journey of young Roy, a medical intern who learns to be a proficient technician, but loses touch with important aspects of himself in the process. In my paper, I focus on how Roy loses his humanity (self) as he gains a professional identity. Roy notices a tension within him in which, “one side of me was filled with the horror of human misery and helplessness; the other was exhilarated, king in . . . [a] . . . diseased kingdom, competent to run machines” (Shem, 341). Roy becomes a technician, a well-functioning machine, but he loses his humanity. He learns to love and be fully human again, not through his official teachers who can only teach medical techniques, but through other people who have not lost their connection to love and connection.
One doctor who is a kind of liminal being is “Fats,” an older medical resident who at first seems to be a “bad” doctor because he does not buy into the official rhetoric, but in the end is a mentor and champion for human kindness. In the story of Roy in The House of God, we have a classic hero’s journey story. He goes through separation, initiation, and return. He leaves the world of the lay public for the world of medicine. He is initiated into the world of medicine—yet realizes that he has become over-initiated, this would be the acculturation strategy of assimilation, he has been assimilated into medical culture, but he lost touch with his previous human, non-medical culture. He, thus, embarks on an initiation within an initiation. He does not want to return to the world outside of medicine deadened and emotionally disconnected, and so he goes through what I call a counter-curriculum of re-humanizing himself. He does this through apprenticing himself to his girlfriend, Fats, the kindness of nurses, and a couple of wise guy security guards. He recovers his humanity while maintaining a medical identity (strategy of acculturation of integration) and he goes on to become a psychiatrist. Roy’s journey in the The House of God is similar, in some ways, to the structure of the veteran’s journey home. Sometimes to be effective in a new culture, you need to fully immerse yourself in it and learn it through living and breathing it. However, there comes a time where you find that the new culture you have assimilated to interferes with your cultural adaptation to the larger culture of humanity. What Roy loses is his connection to his inherent goodness. However, it is not forever lost because there is a place of held-back goodness in his heart and he is able to reconnect to this through inner work and through relationship and community.
What I write about in my book, Re-humanizing Medicine, draws on this basic story of dehumanization and re-humanization. Perhaps through the story of Roy it is more apparent why I feel that we need a counter-curriculum of self-care and a compassion revolution in health care. The need for these is just as necessary, if not more so, for returning veterans. We can think of the counter-curriculum and the compassion revolution as a kind of CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) to get the heart of goodness pumping again. My view is that our hope and humanity are precious and vital resources that we need to actively work to preserve and grow in the face of institutional pressures and exposure to death and illness on a daily basis.
Held-back Goodness in Trauma Work After talking with Joseph on the phone about his vision of the heldback place of Goodness, I went home and grabbed a pile of books that speak about this concept. What follows is a brief survey of other authors’ search for something like held-back Goodness. Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman has written about people’s inherent, natural resistance to killing. In his book, On Killing, he documents the high rates of troops not firing in battle, dating from the Civil War to the present time. He writes about ways that the military has tried to over-ride this innate goodness within themselves. Karl Marlantes, in his book, What it is Like to Go to War, also writes of the spiritual cost of learning to kill and comes up with ways that we could support veterans after deployment in a kind of spiritual and moral initiation.
Peter Levine writes about recovering goodness and a sense of felt aliveness in his book In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. His view is that trauma disconnects people from their bodies and emotions—they become disembodied—and the healing of trauma involves getting back in body, becoming re-embodied. He also has found that people have an “innate self-regulating and self-healing processes” (348). Similar to what Joseph’s vision shows, goodness is not lost, it is just buried. Levine writes, at the end of this book, that he plans a future book on Trauma and Spirituality. He describes his planned book as follows: In the course of working with trauma for over forty years, it has become clear to me that there exists a welded, parallel and interwoven relationship between the transformation of trauma and various aspects of spiritual experiences. In this book we will show how both effective trauma healing and authentic spirituality are part of an embodied developmental process and discipline that draw humans toward greater presence and put us in touch with the numinous experiences that are often attributed to a god, soul or spirit. (358)
Jungian analyst Donald Kalsched has written two books on trauma and the soul, The Inner World of Trauma and Trauma and the Soul. In Trauma and the Soul, he writes that we can develop a “dual allegiance” or dual citizenship between the “ordinary” and “nonordinary reality,” (1-3). These are the same terms that Joseph uses in describing the everyday and sacred worlds. Kalsched writes of a defensive “self-care system,” which fragments consciousness in an attempt to separate traumatic experiences from the innocence of the pre- trauma self.
He sees that there are also forces within the self that promote wholeness and healing. For instance, he quotes Jung on the healing function of circling back around to an inner place of wholeness. Hence the regression . . . goes back beyond . . . to the prenatal realm of the “Eternal Feminine,” to the immemorial world of archetypal possibilities where, “thronged round with images of all creation,” slumbers the “divine child,” patiently awaiting his conscious realization. This son is the germ of wholeness . . . In the darkness of the unconscious a treasure lies hidden, the same “treasure hard to attain” which . . . is described as the shining pearl . . . the “mystery.” (Jung, quoted Kalsched, 15) Kalsched reviews a number of therapists’ views on a similar concept of what Joseph is calling a “held-back Goodness.” Winnicott writes of a “sacred incommunicado center,” which he often calls the “true self.” Guntrip writes of the “lost heart of the self.” Neville Symington writes of the “lifegiver” and Grotstein writes about a core of innocence that is the “crucial element of a person’s spiritual nature” (14). A focus of Kalsched’s book is how we can learn to live in two worlds and he uses the terms “ordinary” and “non-ordinary” reality —which are the exact terms that Joseph uses. Kalsched writes of Jung’s personal and professional work to bridge these two realms. In this struggle we witness Jung trying desperately and successfully to preserve a sacred “secret”—an innocent true self, at the very core of his life—and to protect it from further violation by the “spirit of the times” (Jung, 2009). He came to understand that this eternal child was his very soul, and Jung realized that his soul could be lost for a while, then found again. (16)
Richard Miller has developed iRest, Integrative Restoration, a Western adaptation of an ancient Hindu practice of yoga nidra. He has been working with veterans and has a number of research studies listed on his website, Integrative Restoration Institute. He writes of this non-duality and non- separation between the individual and others and the source. “Separation doesn’t exist, except as a projection of the mind, whose job it is to pretend that the One is actually many” (Miller, 2010, 71). Richard defines the concept of the “inner resource.” I had the privilege of talking with Richard one morning when he was in Seattle for a conference. (Richard also gave me a reading list and it is through him that I came across the concept of the spanda, the Divine Creative Pulsation, in the book by Jaideva Singh, Spanda-Ka¯rika¯s: The Divine Creative Pulsation. This concept has significant similarity with Joseph Rael’s views on reality and we will discuss it more in our next book, which will focus on developing mystical and visionary abilities.)
I asked him specifically about the “inner resource,” because I think it is such a wonderful concept for healing PTSD. In fact, he has written a book called The iRest Program for Healing PTSD. In PTSD, people often feel cut off from their inner goodness and from a sense of innocence or purity. The idea of an inner resource upon which we can all draw is a healing gift. I asked Richard if the inner resource was part of the Hindu yoga traditions he studied. He said that it was not part of the yoga tradition; it was something that he had added to the iRest program. He leaves it open for the individual to come to a relationship with this inner resource.
I imagine for some people it may take on a religious element while for others it could be a spiritual element and for others it may be a connection inner vitality. I think the inner resource is similar to what Joseph is talking about when he says that everyone has an internal held-back place of Goodness, no matter what happens in his or her life. You possess within yourself an inner resource that’s designed to empower you to feel in control of and at ease with every experience you have during your life. Your inner resource is a place of refuge within you. It provides you with inner support on every step of your healing journey . . . Your inner resource is already hardwired into your central nervous system. It’s a positive force that enables you to counteract any negative experience you’re falling prey to. (Miller, 2015, 53-55) I love the idea of this “inner resource” and I think this is what Joseph is speaking of as the held-back Goodness. The thing I like about the term “inner resource” is that it can be adapted for people of any spiritual or religious belief system. It could be thought of in religious terms as God, or as a guardian angel. It could also be a more secular place of innocence and purity in our hearts, a place of love and compassion that is inherent to the heart, much like Mencius’ view of human nature. From a psychological or spiritual perspective, the inner resource could be seen as a Jungian archetype or Symington’s “lifesaver.”
Native American traditions also have this sense of an inner healer, a place of spiritual connection within the self that is also a connection to all of creation.
The foundation for healing among indigenous cultures is the recognition that you are the healer. At age one hundred, Navajo (Dineh) healer Thomas Largewhiskers told physicians at a medical conference that he didn’t know what they had learned in their textbooks, but he knew that a mysterious part of us lives deep within ourselves, and that this part is necessary for healing. I call this mysterious part the inner healer. (Mehl-Madrona, 2003, 65) We find the idea of the “inner healer” in many spiritual and therapeutic traditions. This is consistent with spiritual teachings that we have a divine aspect within us. The inner healer can also be a connection back to the Divine Source, or a connection to the All. For instance, there in the Hindu tradition of the “cave of the heart.” The rishi seers, the mystic founders of Hinduism, also experienced continuity between the divine presence encompassing the entire cosmos and the inner depths of their own hearts, the guha or cave of the heart, the deepest point of human subjectivity and freedom, a ‘place’ uncorrupted by time and external actions. In India, the guha is a metaphor for that hidden, transcendent place within us that is totally transparent to the divine . . . the deepest center of ourselves is one with the deepest center of the universe. All beings and reality are united with the (Brahman Brahman. (Teasdale, 53)
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In connecting at the deepest level to ourselves, we connect to the cosmos. This is also a source of healing. To go back to the point of creation unleashes new healing energies.
In Joseph’s ceremony that we discussed at the beginning of this book, the warrior, prior to leaving for war, takes a cup of Earth which the sun has been shining on and pounds the cup on the Earth, saying the Earth’s name, nah meh neh. Then he or she pounds on his or her own chest, hearing the similarity of the thumping sound with that on the Earth, nah, nah, nah. This is also the name of the Infinite Self, so in saying nah meh neh, we are saying Infinite Self “in goodness and forward movement” (Being & Vibration, 82). This is like saying Wah Mah Chi, or God, the Vast Self in Breath Matter Movement. In pointing out the identity between the substance of the human being and the substance of the Earth, we enter into a state of healing. Pain and illness come through separation from our connection with our hearts, which is the same as connection from our brothers and sisters and our Mother Earth and Father Sky. This inner resource or inner healer is a place, a movement, a force inside of us that has healing properties. Using Joseph’s terms, when we connect at a deep level to ourselves as Wah Mah Chi, Breath Matter Movement, and we are attuned to the vital force of life within the universe and ourselves. There is wisdom within our bodies, the same wisdom that is within the Earth and the cosmos. It is what Joseph says about becoming a True Human being. To be a True Human Be-ing, we must become good listeners to the vibrations that are continually manifesting us in this life. Inner listeners . . . are true humans because they are picking up vibrational messages. In that process of inner silence [of listening],the voice of guidance is found. A true human is a person who knows who he is because he listens to that inner listening-working voice of effort.
Once he knows that, he knows the direction that he is to go because the inner voice will tell him exactly what he needs to do. (Being & Vibration, 12) Listening to our inner healer, our inner resource, what we must do as we walk the healing path of becoming True Human Beings. I hope that this review of many different authors’ concepts concerning the held-back place of Goodness validates that we have a source of healing within each of us, no matter how dark things have become in our lives. Many sense it and many are reaching for it, even as they call it by different names. In the end, Joseph says that many people dismiss him as being crazy or making things up. He says, “I experienced these visions, you don’t have to believe them, but I know they are true. Just remember, though, I come from a people of the verb language and from a noun-pronoun language things might look different.” He continues, “In my childhood, I was taught to be a visionary. Remember how I told you about my Grandfather going through the wall in winter and he came back with a plant and he made a tea, ‘So you can have visions,’ he said. A medicine man once told me, ‘You are going to have visions, but some people will not like you.’” Joseph continued, “Just look at Jesus and what he taught, and they crucified him. Not everyone is going to believe what you and I are doing in this book and don’t take it personally when people don’t believe you. We are here for a reason and that reason is why we are here. That is why I keep telling you that we are both crazy. Just tell people, ‘I think we have a gift here that is being given to us.’”
We can look at things from the Black Road perspective, which is the flatland world of mental ideas and physical materialism. We can also look at things from the Red Road perspective, which includes emotions, heart, and spirit. When we add the Red Road to the Black Road, it adds depth, spirit, love, and humanity to life. The Red Road is the road of respiritualizing, re-humanizing—it is on the Red Road that we will inevitably find that held- back place of Goodness, our inner home, without which we will always feel incomplete and partial.
Homecoming & Coming Home Martia Nelson, in her book, Coming Home: The Return to True Self, writes about this process of coming home to our true, inner natures. She sees the split as being between our personality (ego) and spirit. She writes that, “true self is the material intelligence of all creation, including us, it connects us with all creation and offers us everything we want most, including unconditional love and unlimited well-being” (18). Finding our way back, coming home to true self, and rediscovering our held-back Goodness is the spiritual journey of all mystics throughout time and across religions. Those who have made this mystical and spiritual “secret journey” describe a sense of universal love, light, bliss, and joy as our true spiritual heart, which at its innermost depths is connected to (and identical with) the heart of Vast Self/God. Joseph and I will write more about this process of becoming a visionary in our next book, Becoming Your Own Medicine. To close this book, let us look at what home means for returning veterans.
Laurie Sloan and Matthew Friedman have a chapter on “Homecoming” in their book, After the War Zone: A Practical Guide for Returning Troops and Their Families. They describe the many myths around homecoming and write that, “it is safe to say that your life will not be the same as it was before you left for deployment” (43). They give the good advice that the “reality is that coming home from war can require as much readjustment as going to war” (48). This is something I say to veterans all the time, that they need to think about how much time and energy they put into becoming “combat- ready,” and then compare it to how much time and energy they have actively put into becoming “civilian-ready.” Sloane and Friedman write that, “The best way to overcome feelings of detachment and confusion is to recognize that it will take time to reconnect. Remind yourself that you need to relearn how to feel safe, comfortable, and trusting again” (53). In addition to the nervous system retraining and reconditioning, as well as the social and cultural readjustment time, Joseph and I are saying a spiritual journey is also required. It involves walking the Red Road, walking the medicine wheel, to reconnect to the held-back place of Goodness. This is the place of our inner home and we are not truly home until we can connect back to this place. Let us start with the word, “home.” Using Joseph’s understanding of sound being and vibration, we have the following sound meanings. H—lifting, unchanging, arms O (Ohh)—Innocence—Direction of the North, Spiritual Body M—manifestation E (Ehh)—Placement—Relationship, Direction of the South, Emotional Body
Home is found/manifested when we pick up, with our arms, and draw to our hearts the spiritual innocence of our held-back place of Goodness and manifest that in the placement of our relationships and emotions. There is also the concept of “unchanging,” which tells us that, although we may feel separated from home, there is an eternal and unchanging place within us in which home is to be found. We also see immediately that we come through walking the Red Road, since O is the Direction of the Spiritual North and E is the Direction of the Emotional South, which maps out the Red Road traveling vertically back and forth between North and South, through the heart of emotion and spirit. Within the sound of the word “home,” we have a journey. H is about “picking up, lifting” and E is about “placement.” This tells us that home has qualities of picking up and setting down. We know this is true as people often pull up roots, move somewhere, and then set down roots. Particularly in the military, troops and families are continually moving “home” from place to place. In the end, the physical setting of home is not as important as that placement in the heart. The old saying says it best: “Home is where the heart is.”
Seeking the Heart Ceremony If “home is where the heart is” and the veteran is trying to return home then the journey must seek not just the physical home, but also the emotional and spiritual heart in order to heal the wounds of war and to move from being war-ready to being peace-ready. 1
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This requires inner work, what Rilke called “heart-work on all the 5 images imprisoned within you.” ( Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, “Turning-Point,” 135.) We started the book with Joseph’s Nah Meh Neh ceremony, in which reminds the veteran that they are one with the earth before going to war and upon returning from war. This grounds and anchors the veteran into a particular place. By smoothing out the peaks and troughs of the disturbances we have created on the earth, we return back to our innocent nature. The peak experiences of trauma are leveled out and returned to the earth. This brings the body back home. Another part of coming fully home is to reconnect to that held-back place of Goodness in the heart. This means that in addition to physically coming home there must be a seeking heart journey, which is an inner journey. As we have discussed many places in this book, being able to kill another requires a deadening within one’s self. Parts of the heart appear to die off, to blacken, and to lose function. What we need is a kind of emotional and spiritual CPR to get the heart of goodness beating again. But how can veterans re-find the goodness in their hearts when they have disconnected from those places? If we turn to Joseph’s visionary approach of working with sounds and words, we find that seeking heart can be broken down into hear + t see + k. Hear + t = Heart See + k = Seek This gives us a hint—we find the held-back goodness of the heart by seeing and hearing. Joseph writes that the sound, “t” has the energy of “time,” and “k” has the energy of “soul, planting” (Being & Vibration, 89).
This means that when we take what we hear and we put it in time, we have the heart in the motion of giving and receiving. Joseph writes that a “true human being,” is a listener, and so this is the way we create our heart and bring it into the world, by hearing with sensitivity. To see something, like a vision, we must first seek it before we can see it. We do this by planting our soul in what we see so that we can see. This also reminds us that the vision that we see is like a seed and it is our responsibility to plant this in our soul, which is the same thing as our Mother Earth. First, we listen. We spend time patiently listening, which is investment in healing. Next, we see the seed and we place it in the soil of the soul (which is the same as the soul of Mother Earth) and then we attend to it and care for it and it sprouts and grows into that which we are seeking—the heart.
Coming Home Ceremony Close or relax your eyes. Begin by taking three deep breaths. Already you are coming home to your breath and your breath is in harmony with your heart. Our lungs are very thin tissues, filled with dense patterns and networks of blood vessels, dropping off carbon dioxide and picking up oxygen from the lungs and our hearts are the organs that accept the depleted blood high in carbon dioxide and then receive the blood that is rich in oxygen. Remember how the heart is about acceptance—it neither rejects the “bad” nor clings to the “good;” it accepts everything with love and transforms the “bad” into “good.”
Begin to chant the sounds of “H-O-M-E.” H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. O. O. O. O. O. O. O. O. O. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. H-O-M-E H-O-M-E H-O-M-E Trust, believe, and imagine your held-back place of Goodness, a place that is your “inner home.” See. Hear. Seek Heart. Speak these sounds aloud into your heart: H-O-M-E S-E-E H-E-A-R S-E-E-K H-E-A-R-T H-O-M-E H-O-M-E S-E-E H-E-A-R S-E-E-K H-E-A-R-T H-O-M-E H-O-M-E S-E-E H-E-A-R S-E-E-K H-E-A-R-T H-O-M-E
As you pick up and place down the seed of the sound of home, allow the unconditional love of home to resonate out through your being. This is the truth of your essence, it is your “lifesaver,” it is your “inner resource,” it is true self. You may feel disconnected from this source because of the trauma and pain of your life, but this source is always there, sending out pulses of light and love. You have your own lighthouse within you, sending out continual pulses of love and compassion, sending out the being & vibration of home. This Divine Energy is continually coming into being, being born as the Divine Child of every moment. Joseph teaches that the name of Vast Self, of God, is Wah Mah Chi. This means Breath Matter Movement. Breath. Let yourself Matter, become embodied in Matter. Move— this means connect to your held-back Goodness, your inner home and bring yourself into the world. If you feel lost, come back to Breath Matter Movement, come back to Wah Mah Chi. That is where you will find again your held-back place of Goodness that is your home.
David Kopiecz and Joseph Rael
THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL: COVID- 19 Lida Perry "As evening fell, thick darkness gathered on our streets and squares and took over our roads filling them with a deafening silence and a desolate emptiness that froze everything as it passed. You can sense it in the air, and you can feel it in the gestures, you can see it in the eyes, we found ourselves frightened and lost."... (Pope Francis -Rome Holy Friday 2020) Pope Francis touching and poignant words offer a symbolic and vivid representation of the experience we are currently living through. We are in the midst of a global pandemic, a mysterious virus that has infected thousand of people, has emptied our cities, and as we witness daily in the news reports, it has affected millions of people throughout the world. The corona virus does not discriminate and it has impacted, every culture, genders, race, and religion… The silence of our empty streets and our uncertain future have caused many of us to take pause, search within ourselves and to ponder in silence on the absurdity of this situation. "We were caught off guard by a furious storm, we realized we were all in the same boat, all fragile and disoriented… "It has unmasked our vulnerability, our plans... by abandoning what sustains and comforts our lives… the storm discovers our attempts to anesthetize and forget our souls and has made us rediscover the common belonging from which we cannot escape.. (Pope Francis) Everything we have established during the last century is being affected by the pandemic. Nothing is safe and no one has been untouched by it. It is a “Cosmic jolt” to the world.
During this time I know that many of my colleagues and students have asked themselves what was the meaning of this world tragedy, what kind of metaphor, hidden message is Nature or the Universe is sending us and why is this virus with its tiny tentacles is shaking and unhinging every system in our society? During the solitude of my quarantine I pondered on these questions, with the need and desire to explore the possibilities and the potential outcomes of this event. My personal philosophy brings me to believe firmly that every events and situation that unfolds in our personal lives and also in the world, brings with it the potential to deepen our understanding of ourselves and to find an important significance in our experience and ultimately, our purpose in the world. As I watched Pope Francis walking all alone toward the cross, in the dark wet Roman evening, ( the most recent Good Friday ), I felt his despair and loneliness, and I knew that he embodied, at that moment, what Thomas Moore calls; “The Dark Night of the Soul” ( Dark night of the soul. Thomas More 2004). Thomas Moore defines “The Dark Night of the Soul” as “those times in our lives when we went through periods of sadness, despair, trial, frustration… and if we are looking for meaning and personal substance we may discover that a dark night holds many important gifts for us.” This actual situation can be a spiritual trial that calls us to respond, not only pragmatically and emotionally, but also spiritually. “We have forgotten our souls” After Oscar Wilde spent time in prison, he wrote: “Materialism in life “coarsen the soul” (The complete letters of Oscar Wilde: NY Henry Holt Co. 2000) which means to be unconsciously absorbed into the value of a materialistic culture. The suffering during our dark night refines our sensitivities, awakening our souls. In the midst of a tempest of our own, we may discover how to keep our vision clear and allow our night journey to teach us to stay in the moment, to concentrate on what is happening now.
We also need to care for and nurture our souls in order to discover what we need to give ourselves at the deepest levels, finally, to do those things that comfort us and not to fight this process. During the quarantine lockdown, I became aware of how true, relevant and important was this process when a group of my students, in Italy, organized a weekly Skype meeting to create a forum for sharing experiences, for some reflections, and comforting each other during these trying times... For many, of the students after overcoming the initial feelings of vulnerability, and loss, those weekly meetings became a retreat, and a journey into their souls, Their involuntary separation from family and friends ultimately lead to their own Rite of Passage. Most of my friends and students, were aware that they were living in a new and unfamiliar reality, a new kind of existence, a “Twilight Zone”. They spoke of feeling as if they were stuck living two realities, the known and the unknown. As the days and the weeks unfolded they began to describe how any regular daily activity morphed into a ritual. For some it was baking bread, and discovering the pleasure of cooking, while for others the uncluttering of closets and drawers became an exercise in being in the moment, savoring the experience of being present and also of letting go… Symbolically they were all responding to the situation in tune with their feelings and deeper needs. Towards the end of the Italian lockdown all spoke of experiencing a clearer resolve and a stronger sense of purpose. They became aware that the virus and subsequent quarantine had given them the opportunity to change and renew their lives, therefore they had to step out of the old patterns. They also spoke about the unexpected gifts the situations had offered: an appreciation for the connection with close family relationships, the chance to slowdown the frenetic pace of their lives, the precious opportunity to be in solitude and in silence, taking a fresh look at one’s own values and priorities. For many of the women in the group it was a chance to express some of their feminine traits: caring, nurturing, and consoling, steadfast in their trust that all would come to a good end. Most importantly, they all realized that “we cannot go ahead of our own, but only together…
In the process of going through a rite of passage, the dark journey into our souls brings a sharper awareness: an opening of the heart beyond selfinterest, and toward the needs of the people around us. This is where there is potential for a deep transformation to reach a new level of maturity. ” The Rite of Passage marks a change in the way we perceive ourselves and our reality. If we find meaning in this time of turmoil and change, we have to think differently about our lives, be less materialistic, psychological in our approach, and more philosophical and spiritual.”(idem: Thomas Moore 2004) When the quarantine ended in Italy, everyone in the group held the awareness that each story described each person’s Rite of Passage. As we go towards a “new normal” will we be able to stay steadfast, to hold the vision and the resolve, and continue this journey towards transformation. “Be the change you want to see in the world” (Gandhi)
Lida Perry Edited by Antonella Vicini Photo by Luis Vasconcelos (like a green ray of healing)
SEEDLINGS FOR A NEAR FUTURE A Short Story Claudiu Murgan The digital remote attached to his reclining chair burped a monotone sound, and the metallic voice of the AI monitoring the retirement facility talked to him. “Incoming call for Macek Nowak. Do you accept it?� He was staring at a six-by-nine-foot window, framing an excessively blue sky, a canvas for passing clouds handled by high winds. When Macek squeezed his eyes to focus on the celestial imagery, he often had the impression that what he was seeing was nothing but an illusion projected onto on a dome surrounding the entire neighborhood of twenty buildings hosting cranky, out of shape, slow-minded retirees. His weak eyesight, which could have been improved with ocular surgery for which his pension funds fell short, perceived the way the sky seemed to vibrate as an undulation of sorts, waves of energy mimicking the breath of the ocean. When taken outside to the garden by the nurse-robot for his daily stroll, Macek would squeeze his eyes even tighter into a thin line, a fuzzy, outdated telescope unable to identify the pixels on what he believed was the artificial sky. The sizzling breeze was always the same, whether in direct sunlight or the shade of his favorite palm tree by the tiny pond, edged with polished black stones. He sniffed the air many times like his dear Pockey, the beagle that had been his trusted companion as Macek weathered the winding forest trails. There was no scent of freshly cut grass, nor was there as much as a whiff of the milkweed and tickseed flowers that had been planted in convoluted patterns by the AI-gardeners.
In point of fact, the weather didn’t change much throughout the year. The color-gradient of the flocks of clouds varied in their passing along with the quantity of mist that descended every now and then from the same, unchanging sky. Macek switched the focus of his gaze to his own reflection in the window. He could only make out the bleached goatee and the sides of his straight cheeks, while the rest of his oval face extended into a hairless, wrinkled top, melded with the glitter from the sun.
Even before checking himself into the Jacksonville Retirement Facility five years ago, Macek—a former forester—had spent most of his adult life outdoors in the St. Lawrence Forest Region, caressing large gatherings of blue ash, walnut, and black gum, scattered with white pine like uninvited guests at a private party. As a child, Macek cherished the stories his grandfather—a rough Polish man with a body like an oak that pulled out his roots, ready to settle somewhere else—used to tell about the secular forests of the motherland. During his life, Macek couldn’t completely shake the feeling that his roots belong to a different soil that he never had the chance to visit. And now, in Florida, the perception of being a stranger in a strange land hung heavy on him. Back in Ontario thirty years ago, Macek’s experience with the dynamic of the woodland—the humidity in the air, the direction of the wind, and the health of the mature trees—would have given him a prediction for the daily weather, but not there, in ever-sunny Florida, where the Canadian government shipped all retirees over eighty-years-old. It was the only place close to home able to provide decent, AI-assisted living on an affordable budget. “Macek Nowak, will you accept the call?” the voice chimed again in the quietness of his room. “Yes.” He had no close family that might call him or friends with enough clarity of mind to remember his exact coordinates. The wall-mounted glass screen powered on, and a tiny, strikingly white face, surrounded by an aura of unruly blonde hair, came into focus. “Hello, Mr. Nowak. I’m Susan Deerwalk, president of the Toronto District School Board.” Macek straightened his back in the chair and tried to mumble a hello, but before he could clear his throat and vocalize intelligible words, she continued, “The Board is assessing the opportunity to introduce several environmental programs into the curriculum in elementary schools across the province, if you know what I mean.”
The woman’s upper lip twitched, and she looked down as if searching for something she needed to carry out the discussion. No, Macek did not know what she meant, but he kept his eyes on her, waiting for the details. “It’s called ‘Seedlings for the Near Future,’” Susan Deerwalk said, smiling at him with her mouth only—the color of her eyes stayed hidden behind barely open slits. It wasn’t his near future or that of the kids, for that matter. Near or extended, the future was bleak for the generations to come in an environmentally-depleted, emotionless-marketed society. “How can I help?” he said. He hoped he came off as warmth and open to the possibility. In truth, his energy had been ignited by the thought of his dear trees.
“You were the last superintendent forester of the St. Lawrence Forest Region before its decimation by fire, twig beetles, and irresponsible logging, if you know what I mean.” Her lip twitched again, and Macek couldn’t say if it was the subject of trees that had made her uncomfortable enough to generate the muscle spasms or a suppressed fear or anxiety she was unable to hide. His face froze, and he couldn’t control the welling of his eyes. Deerwalk’s face stayed the course for the duration of her prepared speech, seemingly insensitive to Macek’s reaction. “We’d like to think we have learned from the mistakes of previous generations, if you know what I mean,” she continued. “Along with the reforestation initiative, effectively doubling the two-million hectares that are left of the initial area of twenty million, it is the educational component that requires your assistance.” She paused, but he kept silent, fearing he might bawl like a hungry baby, destined to remain unconsoled, having nothing more than a pacifier. “This is a two-month-long, once a week virtual program. We’ll schedule the trips on the weekday that works best for you, if you know what I mean,” Deerwalk continued. “For once, we don’t want to record this material. You’ll connect remotely via satellite while the children will be on the ground, following your instructions. It’s up to you to select the trails, preferably easy terrain. “ He nodded and waited for more. “The pristine environment in which these children grew up failed to instil strong immune systems in them, but we would like to introduce them back to nature slowly. Organizing field trips to the wilderness is risky, but we have received consent from parents and guardians.”
She shook her head; the halo of her hair followed in slow motion. “Air trips in small numbers have worked in the past for students whose parents could afford the cost. Now, the program will fund every child wanting this experience. We realized that we need to give them a real adventure so they will understand the essence of what’s going on below the overstory, if you know what I mean. That is what you call it, isn’t it?” Before he could say anything, she continued, “The virtual technology has passed its infancy in terms of replicating the smells and sounds of the forest.” Macek stared blankly at the woman and puffed nervously. Smells and sounds? How could she encapsulate the dynamics of an entire eco-system in two words? The mature blue ash, slender and proud, oversaw and cheered for its upcoming relatives, sap of its sap, as they pushed themselves toward the scarce light filtering through the overstory that Deerwalk had mentioned was relegated to a noun without meaning on her tongue. Close to the forest floor, were blue ash seedlings, always in danger of deer feeding on their tiny, young, leaves, leaving them naked and exposed to the heavy paws of a bear or broken by the hasty passing of a pack of wolves. Trees spoke to one another, emitting sounds inaudible to the human ear. The leaves of the walnut and black gum trees, saturated with chlorophyll, screamed for joy in the form of oxygen that had filled Macek lungs when he was still doing his rounds deep in the bush where his encounters with the wildlife had brought him to a state of bliss he had yet to find since, even in his quietest moments. “But it’s the sense of touch, the feel of the rough bark and miniature cones held by the students, and the broken branches turned into walking sticks that we really want them to experience. And that can’t be replicated yet,” Deerwalk said. “Oh, and if they happen to get a small scratch, it won’t be a problem—medical personnel will accompany them, if you know what I mean.”
Without knowing it, she had used key words to trigger a vivid imagery, culled from the folders of Macek’s memory, dusting them off like a forgotten childhood toy that had been thrown into a dark corner of the attic. His fingers, gnarled by arthritis, closed painfully on the ends of the armrests. Bark! There had been so much disrespect in the way she’d pronounced the word “bark.” No, it wasn’t a fungible garment stapled to the oak, the birch, or the Douglas fir, you insensitive board president, he wanted to yell. The bark of the blue ash tree, like scales on the back of a dragon but not as smooth, came to mind, standing between his eyesight and the image of the woman who wanted his help to teach the next generation knowledge about a decimated habitat, things that, during his teenage and adult life, were common sense. Humanity tended to brand trees like cattle, not with a hot, cauterizing iron but with blood-red paint to mark the healthiest and the tallest. He was sure the trees felt a similar pain, knowing they were about to fall from their vantage points down to the moist soil they couldn’t see from their point of view, but from which the nutrients, water, and signals of their brothers and sisters had come. Macek had witnessed firsthand the whimpers and the moans of the towering Douglas firs, echoed by the birch throughout the woodland cathedral as each fatidic X had marked their bark. The trees had said their goodbyes to the world in which they had grown up before they would turn into a freshly cut stump, disfiguring the forest. He pushed his fingers deeper into the fabric of the chair until he felt the metal frame, which he used as a lightning rod to deflecting his rage. Macek could sustain his smile no more, and the lines of his mouth and eyebrows formed arches in opposite directions. “Look,” Susan Deerwalk said, “it’s not like you have a long daily To-Do list, if you know what I mean,” and she winked at him like a juvenile trying to hook up with an older man.
The crass verbal blather manifested a pain in his chest. He nodded, but he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was a subconscious gesture deflecting some of the garbled vibrations radiating off of Deerwalk through the glass screen.
Macek didn’t have to close his eyes to enter the natural cathedral to which he spoke and prayed to with reverence throughout his life as a forester. The feeling of being part of the forest, as a rare breed of a walking tree, never left him. He couldn’t grow roots; he didn’t want to. Roaming, observing, hugging, and caressing the beings that had manifested in all their wooden glory had much more meaning for him. It took him years to silence his mind and remain still, sitting on a boulder, letting his mind etch the sound of leaves ruffled by the wind, the swing and crackle of a young tree trunk pushed by a strong breeze, or the sound of the tug-of-war between the boisterous water and the silent stones. Later on, with practice, his senses were enriched by the trills of the woodpecker, the loon, and the moose. He said, “I’ll do it on three conditions,” while his subconscious shuffled his legs on the laminate floor as if rubbing against the layers of pine needles, moss, twigs, and the crimson of the black gum leaves on the forest carpet. When softened by the passing rain, the ground’s canvas, already decorated with pastels of greens, reds, and browns, held onto his footprints, adding to the exclusive work of art. Susan Deerwalk paused and gestured with her hands at him to indicate that she was listening. “I won’t live forever. You're lucky that I still draw breath. Hire a young lad so I can pass my knowledge on to him at the same time and for as long as I wake up every darn morning.” “What’s the second condition?” the woman asked. Macek expected the twitch again as she probably couldn’t foresee any opposition from a decaying oak like him, hollowed out by fungus and voracious insects, and dangerously inclined by tenacious winds while maintaining a level of dignity, sustained by its dry, bare, roots. “You don’t censor my language while I teach the kids. I’ll tell them the good, the bad, the sad, and the happy stories. I’ll tell them about how, numb from pain, I cried over the oozing wound of a three-hundred-yearold walnut. They made bookshelves and fancy kitchen tables out of him. An elder of the forest cut down with stupid irresponsibility.”
Macek let go of the armrests and stood up, blood sizzling through his thin, aged veins. “I’ll show them where the spiders, the centipedes, and the solitary worms hide, and how they panic in disarray when they students lift their protective layer of leaves with the end of a bent stick.” Susan Deerwalk’s twitch came and went fast, like the flash of anger flitting across the slits of her eyes. “You said you want to show the kids authenticity,” he said, his voice firm. “Let’s give it to them. You can’t get more authentic than me.”
The woman stayed silent as if she had exhausted her vocabulary and was waiting for another download of words to match Macek’s conditions. “Even from here, through this screen, I can lead them to the hollow trunk of pinewood with shredded edges and make sense of its decay. They will understand why it is important to keep fallen trees on the forest ground for nutrients, if you know what I mean.” Her verbal tick had escaped his lips involuntarily, and he failed to refrain the smile that had sweetened her hardened facial expression. Macek suddenly comprehended how much he missed the forest. He would have given up his third condition until moments ago if Deerwalk had pushed back. The realization served to cement his will. “And my third condition…” His voice trembled while the woman’s shoulders tensed, bracing for impact. “When I pass and join the Creator, I want this shell of a body to return to where it belongs. In the forest.” Susan Deerwalk gasped. Her eyes opened wide, showing their color: green. It was the green of a walnut shell, soft and kind. “How can I—“ He raised his hand, ceasing her unnecessary justification of her limited sway with the board.“My life insurance will cover the shipping expenses for my coffin. I’ll adjust my will so the leftover will be donated to environmental programs in Ontario. You can use it to train more people and increase the number of children involved in your outdoor trips.” Tears burst from the corners of her eyes. She made no attempt to extinguish them. “Generations have been lost to the meaning of nature. Let’s rebuild it together properly.” He could teach them so many things. About the disfigurement of the land laid bare in deforested areas, about the black walnut, shagbark hickory, and sugar maple, who bargained for resources in depleted patches, and about Ontario’s eco-system that was still complying with the signals sent by the water, air, birds, and their cousins from across the oceans that had been sent over via invisible threads of energy that humans were unable to sense or see.
“I’ll help you raise your seedlings if you help me enrich the understory for the seedlings of my dear oaks, pines, and sugar maples,” he said in a lastditch effort. Susan Deerwalk nodded, then, with a shaky voice like a leave enduring the blows of the spring wind, she whispered, “I personally promise you that you’ll rest among the fallen, mighty trunks, where you can hear the quarrel of the leaves and inhale the scents of the forest.” Macek approved the statement with a sheepish smile. He had the assurance that his body will end his immigrant status while the soul could linger in the astral until its next assignment. He also noticed an added dram of respect in Deerwalk’s tone when she’d mentioned the sounds and smells of his beloved, and he knew that the teaching had already started.
Claudiu Murgan Photos Antonella Vicini
ON THE SHAMANIC PATH Hank Wesselman The long drumming session is coming to a close. The last few beats reverberate in the air. Time to return. Some late travellers are still in faraway lands, some early voyagers are already scribbling and/or drawing the key elements in their notebooks. Then, the well- known voice, warm and reassuring, calls everybody back, reminding us that we need to return to everyday awareness, carrying the gifts of our explorations. Hank Wesselman is both a scientist and a world-famous shamanic practitioner. He has walked on both paths for over 30 years since his early experiences in the 1960s in Nigeria as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer being exposed to the local Orisha cults* among the Yoruba peoples. In his scientific endeavors, he has been doing cutting edge work in search of the fossil evidence for the first humans as a member of several research expeditions in the Great Rift Valley if Eastern Africa. From pure objective science to personal experience on the shamanic path. His groundbreaking autobiographical books ** shatter the idea of linear time and open our view to a possible future. His books on shamanism ***underline the gift that this path offers in all parts of the world when we enter in contact with our human roots. What follows is an extract of a long and warm conversation with this humble, yet extraordinary man.
I started my career as a zoologist, taught biology at a large school in Nigeria for two years, then shifted into anthropology at UC Berkeley for my doctoral work, researching the mystery of the human origins. I was working as a paleo-zoologist dealing with fossils dating between 800.000 and 3 million years recovered from important sites in the geological formations in Ethiopia . Currently I am excavating and studying specimens from 4 to 6 million years ago associated with the fossilized remains of an early proto human that science has called Ardipithecus ramidus. This proto human may in fact be the link between humans and apes that Charles Darwin predicted would be found in Africa. My research involves the reconstruction of the paleoenvironments of the sites where important discoveries have been made. In saying this, I realize that my work has to do with time, as well as mysteries‌ and that includes my shamanic practice.
My first contact with the shamanic path happened in Ethiopia along the Omo River, where I met and worked with a local shaman. One day, while doing an excavation, I felt I was being watched by something--not an easy feeling when you are far from your vehicle in the desert and there are lions and buffalo, leopards and hyenas. On that day I saw something as though the fabric of reality somehow opened and I could see through it. I saw something big, and then it disappeared. I looked at the shaman who was watching me closely and I knew he had seen it too. I asked him what it was and in Swahili he said "shaitani", their word for spirit. In those days I worshiped at the altar of science and wasn't sure I believed in spirits. Yet that experience set me off on this path.
Years went by, while living on the side of the world's largest active volcano on the island of Hawaii, I was drawn into a series of dream-like visionary experiences that are published in my Spiritwalker trilogy. One day my brain waves were tested with an EEG by a doctor who was working on the different intensity of brainwaves that happen in deep trance. The waves produced in this state are of high frequency and measurable. When the doctor checked mine, he noticed they were in line with those recorded in shamans, psychics, medicine people, and some of those people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. (All these experiences have deep trance in common, often reached by the sheer intention and will of the subject, while in traditional societies, his might have been reached through chanting, drumming, dancing, etc.) The trance state allows the real shamanic practitioner to achieve a great level of energy, power, and expansion that can then be used for healing purposes. The shaman is the gifted visionary who travels to the other worlds in trance, connects with the transpersonal forces that reside there, and through relationship with them can do various things... like healing for example.
The shaman is the one who learns how to use their body and mind to form a bridge between the personal world of form and the transpersonal worlds of the spirits. And when that bridge is formed, it allows the healing gifts of the spirits who are devoted to helping us to flow across that bridge and into our world. I discovered I was one of those who had this gift... an ability that my father also possessed. The more power we access through our spirit allies, the more we can be of service.
These are some ideas for whoever wants to approach this path: 1. First of all some questions: a. Who am I? Without self- knowledge the exploration of what lies beyond our eyes is useless and can be dangerous. And in order to experience authentic initiation, you have to know who you are. b. Where am I? Where am I in my life? What is my life path? What am I doing with it? Am I in service? 2. Walking the path of direct revelation is not done for selfaggrandizement, but in order to be in service to people. In traditional societies medicine people and shamans are doing their work for the good of the people, only when they are requested. 3. There is a difference between shamans and medicine people: While medicine people usually do their main work in the physical world where they can perform rituals and ceremonies and find remedies for people’s ailments; shamans do their main work while journeying to the spirit world, where they engage with their spirit allies and their support in order to bring healing to the people. This reveals that all shamans are medicine people, but not all medicine people are shamans. 4. Shamans are in touch with the different layers of reality both physical and spiritual. They can be aware and present simultaneously on many different levels of reality and consciousness. I was gifted by my friendship with a Hawaiian elder named Hale Makua (the recognized head of the Hawaiian Kahunas, descendant of King Kamehameha) who always consulted with his ancestors on any issues on a regular basis.
Hale Makua and Hank Wesselman
5. Another trait common to all real shamans is their humbleness. None calls themselves a shaman. At the most they call themselves practitioners, because they know that the journeys, the healings, and their allies are all gifts of spirit. (In a way a shaman is a channel for the energy to come through. The aspect this energy will take depends on the culture and background of the practitioner). 6. From my trilogy of books about Nainoa (SpiritWalker) which gave me an experience of the future of the Earth, it became obvious that our choices today as the human species will change the future of our planet. In spite of the scientific projections, we still have an opportunity to transform ourselves and our destinies by listening to and communing with nature, where the real power is. We can learn from it and be enchanted by the dreams of the land, of the trees, the stones, the animals, all the elements of nature. When we are immersed in a personal relationship with nature, we can learn how to appreciate, respect and honor it, and this may modify our attitudes and behaviors.
7. This aspect reveals that spending time in nature will change us for the better, The development of a conscious meditation practice will bring us closer to our essence as well as nature, since at the meditative level (and shamanic journeywork is a form of meditation) there is no separation.
In my book The Bowl of Light I wrote about my relationship with the Kahuna elder Makua over the last eight years of his life. For him, the bowl of light is a symbol for the spark of spiritual light that our immortal oversoul or higher self sends in to inhabit the new body when we draw our first breath. This spiritual soul supports us throughout life and connects us to our higher oversoul in the spirit world until it is released with our last breath and returns to its oversoul source at the end of life. During life we go through different phases usually marked by initiations. These experiences, sometimes infused with ceremony, are about change: from one stage of life to the next, about the shift within ourselves, and they encourage us to embrace the positive polarity in a world filled with negativity. Makua used to say that the negative polarity is not necessarily bad, although it can be... yet this is the place where we learn our lessons. In the same book I share a story about Makua’s perception that humanity originally came to planet earth as souls from the stars with high guardians who brought us here. Those high beings knew our purpose and our destiny. According to him, we took up residence in physical beings prepared to receive us (Dryopithecines--primitive Miocene apes 18 million years ago) one branch of which evolved into the human lineages 6-7 million years ago. Some of the guardians embodied as well and became the modern whales, in Polynesia known as the record-keepers. It is interesting to remember that we share 98 % of our DNA with chimpanzees.
As our immortal oversoul travels across time in sequential lifetimes, it grows, increases and becomes more in response to what its embodiments do and become during life on the physical plane. This means that there is a co-creative relationship between our heavenly spirit self and our physical earthly self. One of the major goals is the development and enhancement of our character that we create during life which is archived into our oversoul when we return to the 'upper worlds' of spirit and resume connection at the end of each life. This physical world, a realm of action, is where our personal immortal spirit evolves. Eventually, we will come to the end of our human lifetimes and we will “be bumped up� (Makua's words) into the spiritual hierarchy of the higher organizing intelligences, including the angelic forces devoted to humanity, where we exist purely as spirit and take on various lines of work. Some of us become teachers and guides. Others become harmonizers. In this sense each one of us comes into life as a holy being in becoming. And despite the wounds and corruption we endure here, our goal is to rediscover our holiness before the end of our current life. As a parting thought I would like to observe that spirituality is all about love, about aloha. Makua used to say that your aloha is the most powerful force in the universe, so my job as a "shamanist" in my training workshops is to help people connect with their spirit allies, their ancestors, including their oversoul. This can only happen through the positive polarity ... through love. Blessings and warm thoughts...
Hank Wesselman Photos by H. Wesselman Conversation collected by Antonella Vicini
NOTES * In the native religion of the Yoruba people (Southwestern Nigeria), Orisha (spelled òrìṣà in the Yoruba language, orichá in Cuban practice and orixá in Brazilian practice of Latin America) are spirits sent for the guidance of all creation and of humanity in particular. Through their influence, we learn how to live and be successful on Ayé (Earth). Many Òrìṣà have found their way to most of the New World as a result of the Atlantic slave trade and are now expressed in practices as varied as Santería, Candomblé, Trinidad Orisha, Umbanda, Obea in Jamaica, and Oyotunji, among others. ** Spiritwalker 1995, Medicinemaker 1998, Visionseeker 2001. *** The Journey to the Sacred Garden 2003, Spirit Medicine (with Jill Kuykendall) 2004, Awakening to the Spirit World (with Sandra Ingerman) 2010, The Bowl of Light 2011, The Re-Enchantment 2016. If you are interested in Hank Wesselman’s work you can check his website: www.sharedwisdom.com
HONORING A MASTER Remembering Marta Getty This year has seen the departure from this plane of existence of a very special woman, my beloved Reiki Master Marta Getty. She has crossed oceans and continents in order to fill the world with the light and beauty of Reiki, the gentle hands on healing technique that is now well known everywhere, also thanks to her passion and lifelong commitment. I met Marta in 1986, I had never heard about Reiki or any of the alternative/complementary techniques streaming out of California since the 70’s. I was in a workshop in London, she stood up to introduce herself as an assistant in the group: there was a sparkle around her, she radiated light, intelligence, patience and understanding. I was intrigued by that unknown woman, so different from everyone else in that room. As soon as I had a chance, we talked and my first impression was confirmed, so much so that I actually changed my return flight because of her suggestions. I think she became my teacher then, about 6 months before teaching me Reiki first degree, followed two years later by the second degree and, in 1981, the Master level. When you meet a real teacher: somebody willing to welcome you and act as a bridge between what they already know and your desire to learn, there is a sacred moment of recognition, when a silent promise is made. She certainly was a wonderful teacher, an amazing Reiki Master, friend and fun partner in many adventures. Above all she knew how to be always present, however long a time had gone by, if I called her, she was there for me. I am grateful to life for the wonderful opportunity to be her student, friend and apprentice.
Antonella Vicini
In the next few pages, as in our poetry section, you will be able to read the feelings of some of her oldest Italian students and masters.
MARTA Woman of many facets Marta has had so many roles in my life: Master, Guide, Friend, Partner in games, Sister, Story teller…. Marta has had an immense influence in my life, especially in my vision of life. She was a guardian of the Usui Shiki Ryoho Tradition of Reiki, she was an unrivalled Master since she had infused her teachings with those received from Mrs. Takata and Phyllis Furumoto and she transmitted them to her students and masters. I was surprised when she asked me to organize for her, usually I don’t jump into new things, but I didn’t have any doubts then. From that moment onwards our relationship deepened and grew. We had many points of contact: both with an American connection, similar professional choices, some situations in our personal lives, all these elements made our relationship very warm and intimate, like sisters. However, the most significant role Marta has had all my life has been that of Master. She opened me to unknown territories, gently pushing me to go beyond my limits. Oftentimes, she gave a voice to what I was not yet able to express and she always rejoiced in my achievements. Marta always taught with great integrity in the theory and practice of Usui Shiki Ryoho: the way she behaved in class, how she answered the questions, the way she was telling the story of reiki.
I remember once, in Sicily, during a Reiki Master meeting, she was asked to tell the story of Reiki in a circle in front of a fire. The night was warm, the sky was clear, while Marta was talking the silence became more intense, as if it wanted to set off her sound and energy contained in her engaging words. The stars seem to shine brighter, the perfumes of the countryside seem to become more intense. We are all in an area where time and space do not exist, but there is only the energy of her words that opens the doors of our hearts and areas deep within us. What a magical and unforgettable moment that was! She was an amazing storyteller, she knew how to create magic with her words. In the Japanese tradition Honor your teacher means embody and practice his/her teachings in order to become the best person possible. My commitment is honoring Marta in this way.
Lida Perry
TRICK OR TREAT? “Quell’americana
mi ha tirato un pacco”
“That American woman has tricked me”, I thought after my first degree Reiki with Marta in London in 1986. We had met at a Rebirthing training , both in the (unpaid) staff team. She complimented me on my hands while I was giving her a massage, and mentioned that they would be even better if I had Reiki. I was sold and promptly enrolled in the next available first degree class. I had no sensations whatsoever in my hands and body both during the class and for the two following years, I ended up forgetting about Reiki altogether. Fast forward a few years: I was back in Italy, my home country, and Antonella Vicini, longtime friend and accomplice in many adventures, managed to convince Marta to come and teach in Rome where Antonella lived at the time, and managed to convince me to organize a class in Genova. No small feat in either case: Marta wasn’t inclined to come to Italy and I hated organizing. Little did I know in 1990 that I would have organized classes for Marta for the next twenty years. Thousands of people received Reiki from Marta in Italy, so Antonella had the right vision. Initially Marta only spoke English, and I translated for her as well as organizing. To this day when people ask me questions about Reiki it’s her words that answer. It was an enormous privilege to be present at so many classes, to be so concentrated all the time because of the translation, an extra training really. I witnessed the evolution of the way Reiki was taught and classes were run in the Usui Shiki Ryoho Tradition through translating class after class, as Marta started implementing new guidelines with passion and devotion. Passion for teaching in the best possible way, devotion to the precious simplicity of this system of healing.
I remember Marta explaining how powerful Reiki really is, and while it would of course enhance any other style of healing she stressed how important it was to learn it on its own, experiencing the effects on all levels, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. I could see our personal paths mirrored and validated by such a wider view of what being human is about. What a blessing! How lucky have I been to be involved in all this, and how lucky to have met that Americana on that fateful training! It wasn’t a trick, it was one very long and still active treat. I have received so much in this relationship that honoring Marta as a Teacher and Elder makes it real easy to tick at least one of the Reiki principles for today. She was precise businesslike and professional at work, and yet managed to create a loving and friendly atmosphere where there was a lot of space for fun. She created family all around her, and to this day there is a special Reiki connection with the various masters that studied with her. As mentioned earlier, Marta was a gifted storyteller, a pleasure to listen to. I especially remember one story she used to tell of her first experiences with Reiki, when she first met Mrs. Takata and spent time with her. She had a vision: she saw her life like a straight line, and that was Reiki, even if she was really young in her experience of Reiki at the time, she realized it would have been her life, and so it has.
Silvia Scagliotti
WITNESS OF A MIRACLE Saturday, October 12th 2019, Astoria, Oregon, Colombia River Estuary, Eagle Sanctuary. It is morning, there is a perfect light for eagles to hunt, a perfect light to see every single blade of grass. The contrast between vegetation and water is fiercely beautiful. The observatory is empty, Marta lets me explore the place for a while. There is an abandoned track along the river and I follow it, but I cannot see any eagles, I return to the car filled with so much beauty that even without having seen the eagles, I am satisfied. Our tourist day goes on, the weather is uncertain and since the evening is getting beautiful again, Marta decides to take another tour of the Eagles sanctuary to see if the evening is more favorable for sighting. This time, a couple embraces in the lookout. Marta, parks a little distance away for discretion and says "Let's wait a bit to see what happens, maybe they'll go away" When the two people break free from the embrace, he turns and heads decisively towards us, she crosses the street and leans on their car parked on the other side of the road, while he approaches the car and Marta lowers the window. I would have raised it up and would have fled at full speed. Marta smiles and the guy who looks dazed, wearing battered clothes and lacquered nails, leans against the car and says "I think I need help, I don't feel well, I feel like I'm falling apart, I don't know what to do ..." I would have called the police, the fire brigade, the ambulance‌ Marta, on the other hand, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, says: "My friend and I know how to do something called Reiki that maybe it could be useful. If you want we can do it remotely. Now go and lie down on the bench of the sanctuary, just relax and we will send you the treatment �.
Instead of being surprised or asking for explanations, he says he realizes that he is very much in need, that he is so confused that whatever can do him good, he will receive it. So, under the loving and determined gaze of Marta and my astonished one, the man obeys, retraces his steps, lies down on the bench and closes his eyes. Marta looks at me and tells me to do a remote treatment, she will also do a mental one, and so we send Reiki for a long time. It is suspended time that can last ten minutes or ten hours. We remain absorbed in our treatments. All the while, the woman is resting, with her chin on her arms, on the door of her car, on the other side of the road. At a certain point above the head of the man lying on the bench, a small flock of blue woodpeckers appears, it begins to swirl in a particular round dance. And after a few moments the man gets up, smiles and returns towards us. Marta gets out of the car and I follow her, as if I were hypnotized. The man is transformed, relaxed, smiling in his crumpled clothes but he certainly looks different; he throws himself into the arms of Marta who welcomes him and sweetly asks his name. Sean. His partner Candy looks as if she had awakened from a spell as well. He says he was on the verge of going crazy, perhaps even committing suicide, but now everything seems different, everything is clearer to him, now his life could continue. Marta comforts him, encourages him, tells him that he is not alone, that he is loved, she will keep him in her heart and that, if he agrees, she will send him further treatments for a few days. Sean agrees by saying that anything that can help make him feel good is welcome, he now has had an experience of what it is. For a very long time, he continues to hug Marta as if she were his life raft. Marta shows no signs of tiredness or amazement, she radiates something extraordinary, luminous, a real moment of grace.
Eventually, Candy finds enough courage to cross the street, she joins us smiling, I suppose she too, like me, could not believe her eyes‌ The couple embraces, thanks us and leaves. We get back in the car, excited by the miracle we have witnessed, we laugh loudly at the paradoxical aspects of the situation and Marta amazes me again by saying: "Oh, such luck you were there, because in my life there have been dozens of such encounters, but I was always alone and it was difficult for others to believe me, now at least you have been a witness. " Witness to a miracle indeed.
Chiara Corte Translated and Edited by Antonella Vicini Photos by Antonella Vicini and Chiara Corte
DRUIDRY Philip Carr-Gomm Have you noticed how your health can take a dip at certain times of the year? We find ourselves getting autumn or spring colds for example. Every autumn I used to develop a cough that wouldn’t go away, and Julian Barker, our herbalist, started to tell me about ‘mid-points’ – days during the year at roughly the mid-point between the solstices and equinoxes. During these days our health could suffer as the season changed. I realised that these mid-points correlated roughly with the cross-quarter festival times – the Celtic fire festivals of Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. How interesting! They occurred around 6th Feb, May, August and November. So here is a phenomenon that links our physiology with these ancient festival times. I asked Julian if he would write a Mount Haemus paper for the Order about this, which you can find here below. Recently Julian has sent me his depiction of the calendar, illustrating the midpoints, together with a brief explanation which I think you will find fascinating…
THE PHOTIC CALENDAR by Julian Barker Meteorologists determine the start of each season by the average local weather rather than other climatic considerations. So in a conventional calendar, the first day of March is heralded, at least in Britain, as the first day of spring even though the vernal equinox is only three weeks away; likewise, June the 1st is taken to be the beginning of summer even though it too is only three weeks before the solstice that marks the actual middle of summer. In making August part of summer rather than autumn, meteorologists are more in tune with our usual weather and culture, but they make no sense from an astronomical, solar, point of view. By contrast, here you will find a calendar built upon day-lengths: the solar structure of the year. These photic cues (rather than temperature alone) trigger the seasonal hormonal shifts that affect all living creatures and on which human health depends. Critical changes in day-length go some way to explaining why February and August have always shown peaks in hospital admissions for certain conditions. The ganglion cells in our retinae are photovoltaic cells and reset thermostats in our metabolism on a seasonal basis.
The solstices and the equinoxes represent the sun’s apparent movement: being overhead at each of the two tropics at 23.5 degrees of latitude in June and December, then turning back, crossing the zero degree of the equator in March and September when days and nights are equal. These four—solar limits and crossing points—identify the true middle of each of the four seasons. We should calculate their starting point midway between them. True: the weather will always lag behind, because it takes time for the atmosphere and oceans to heat up and cool down. If we take the four seasons to be roughly equivalent in length, it follows that the start of each season is not that of the weather–forecaster but is to be found at the midpoint intervals that lie equidistant between these four solar events. These four transitional midpoints—in February, May, August, November —show the true start of each of the four seasons and are highlighted in my calendar on the 6th of each of those months. These days might be hot or cold and more like the season that immediately preceded it, but plants and migrating birds have to look ahead and plan for breeding and feeding. They use increasing or decreasing day-length to do so. We share their hormonal systems so, even if we reach for overcoats, scarves & gloves or sun-hats, swimsuits & sunscreen before we venture out into the local season, our metabolism is not so persuaded by today’s weather alone. I have elaborated these physiological ideas in a paper written for the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids and delivered as their 12th Mount Haemus Lecture in 2012. Throughout the year, the actual lengths of complete day/night cycles are not equal because of the eccentricity of earth’s orbit. Calendars try to squeeze these unequal day-lengths into equal–sized boxes.
We create these human devices for our own purposes: to accommodate the fact that measurements of the tropical and sidereal year do not match exactly and neither one constitutes a whole number of days. They are our best approximations and why we have leap years to prevent our numbered years drifting apart from astronomical reality, as happened historically between the Old Roman, the Julian and the Gregorian calendars, forcing the British Parliament to shave off eleven calendar days in 1752. With all necessary caution in any search for temporal exactitude, I present my calendar as an approximate guide to our physiological seasons. The dates read upwards in columns from the winter solstice as the days lengthen, and downwards from the summer solstice as they shorten. Most of the columns are a week tall. The four transition points of each season are shown in bold, as are solstices and equinoxes. Just as the days lengthen and shorten so our metabolism builds and repairs our structure (anabolism) and breaks down foodstuffs (catabolism). Of course we metabolise all the time but night, winter and summer favour increased anabolic activity while day, spring and autumn favour increased catabolic activity. This photic calendar is easy to read: the summer solstice at the top and winter solstice at the bottom divide the year into two halves along the vertical central axis (column zero), with the weeks and days between them ranged in 19 columns of days to the left (ascending daylight–lengths) and 19 columns of days (descending daylight–lengths) to the right side. As with any calendar, each square holds a day of a month. For ease of reading off any date from a column, each row is numbered, from one to 33. It allows you to spot today’s place (as well to read off your birthday and other significant days) on the rising or falling wings of the year and their closeness to the potentially triggering midpoints. At the same time, it allows you to locate the day of equivalent day-length in the opposite wing of the year. The day in each square is equal in day-length to the day in the same row in the equivalent numbered column on the opposite wing of the year.
For example, looking along Row 17 you will find March 6th in column 15 in the ascending limb of the year. You will see that it matches October 6th also in column 15 (as you might expect) in the same row but in the descending limb of the year. You have matched up two dates with the same day-length. You can do the same for every day of the year, knowing that these paired days are matched but opposite so far as your endocrine and metabolic state is concerned, all other things being equal. The calendar best fits people in latitudes of between 34 and 60 degrees. The seasons of course are reversed in the southern hemisphere. Š Julian
Barker 2020
APOTHECARY Nettle seeds for lusty health Jo Dunbar This is the time of year to be collecting nettle seeds. The seeds are full of healthy omega 3’s, and particularly useful for helping the brain to function optimally. Nettle seeds are adaptogenics. This class of herbal medicine can be found all over the world, and better known adaptogenics are ginseng, Ashwagandha or Siberean ginseng. But these come from afar and are expensive. In Europe, we have an abundance of nettle seeds. The seeds are a great tonic for those who are exhausted after being stressed out over a long period of time. They are particularly good for those who are suffering from brain fog, and eating a tablespoon sprinkled over porridge oats is said to make one “lusty� again. The seeds do have histamine, which may account for the lustiness, because histamine makes us feel more alert, and is also needed for orgasm, so I think you can take that word quite literally. The leaves are rich in minerals such as iron and silica, and the seeds rich in omega 3, making for a really welcome winter tonic. When you harvest your nettle seeds, simply snips off the stalks of nettle which have the green seeds hanging in droops, then dry these. Once dry, wear a face mask (we all have those now), and gloves, then strip the seeds off the stems. You may choose to rub the seeds through a sieve to separate the leaves from the seeds or crush all together and use as a tea. If you are just going to use the seeds, make sure that you really sieve well, and rub the seeds in an old cloth to break up and remove the histamine needles so that you are not inadvertently stung. Alternatively, you can lightly toast the seeds before using.
These seeds would be great in some healthy home-made power balls, made with dates, spirulina and cacao. Or use 1 tablespoon daily on your porridge. Enjoy your lusty health.
Jo Dunbar
LET THE MUSIC SPEAK A Conversation with Aldo Brizzi and Graรงa Reis A cascade of crystalline sounds fills the stage, then a beautiful duet starts. A voice from the Earth and one from the Sky reach amazing depths and heights. One is a woman looking at herself in the mirror and finding her beauty. The other is a goddess from far away, she can only be fleetingly glimpsed at in the mirror. The voices intertwine magically in the space, they are supported by a crescendo of sound and intensity, until one is finally happy with her image, having seen the deity in herself, so that the goddess can leave her to deal with life. I have had the great pleasure and honor of crossing paths with Aldo Brizzi and Graรงa Reis more than once, what follows is the result of our latest meeting. I will add just a few introductory notes and then I will let Aldo and Reis speak with their own words. Aldo Brizzi is a well known composer and conductor from Italy with an international experience and vocation, his frequent travels have led him to many countries, always with a deep knowledge and understanding of the local culture. Graรงa Reis is a renown singer of amazing qualities, her voice transports the audience where the composer is going with his music.
On Defining Art: BRIZZI:
La vera arte e’ quella che quando ti tocca, dopo non sei piu’ lo stesso. Il resto é artigianato, anche se di ottima fattura. Giacinto Scelsi (Real art changes us, when it touches us, the rest is good craftmanship.)
This is a quote from one of my teachers and source of inspiration. I strive to always produce art: the experience that changes and transforms us, both when I compose it and when people listen to it. My research is not just in search of beauty, but a quality that increases through depth, because depth and beauty enhance each other, so they become stronger together.
REIS: The real artist is the one who wants to transform the world in him/herself. It is a difficult path, there is a lot of preparation, years of study, much uncertainty about the practical future. Making a choice is complex. But once the choice has been made, then the only way is to perform transformative art, I am not interested in anything else. If I could not sing in this way, I’d rather do a completely different job. Singing transforms me,before and during the act of singing. This work is sacred, for this reason my musical and spiritual path walk side by side. Consequently, when I prepare for a performance, I isolate myself, I don’t speak to anybody. I need to tune in with the place where I will sing. If I don’t like the place, I make sure I prepare even more, until I am at one with it. BRIZZI: This is highly specialized craft, but it cannot be done with a financial goal in mind, sometimes there is an economic reward, sometimes there isn’t. What really matters is to put the world before the work of art, it will be up to the world to arrange things with the passing of time, however long or short it may take. (Aldo’s position reminds me of the selflessness needed in Kyudo, the Japanese art or archery, when the archer aims his/her arrow and then looks elsewhere when the arrow leaves the bow. Preparation is essential, work ethic is essential, aiming correctly is essential, letting go of everything – even our goal – is essential in order to be one with it) On The music he composes ALDO: I write the music I would like to listen to, the music no one else writes. I place myself in the position of the listener. I push myself as deeply as possible, in order to create new possibilities, to see new perspectives. I sort of split myself in order to create what is not there yet. In this way the people in the audience can be enriched by their own personal research, spurred on by the suggestions present in the music.
REIS: Aldo has travelled far and wide, but always in depth. This is especially true in Brazil. For example, when he is in Bahia he speaks an archaic local dialect so well that people understand him better than they understand me! He has gone deeply into the study of the rituals, rhythms and spirituality of CandomblÊ * . All these elements can be found in his music in a deep yet palpable form. I want to tell you about our last work, the Opera dos Terreiros by Aldo Brizzi and Jorge Portugal. It was performed in an open arena, just before the pandemic hit Brazil, in front of about 5000 people. Most of them had never seen an opera before, yet many after the performance were in tears. People were deeply, personally touched, even if the music was not easy, there was much study behind the opera, nevertheless people could recognize themselves in the story. This profound emotional movement has happened many times, regardless of age, gender, language or culture. For example, we did once a residence with songs in German and the children were fascinated by them. It’s important to listen without pre-judgments, completely open, like children. Children are spontaneous in their liking and dis-liking, they can even learn a piece of very complex music if it touches them.
Music can change people, it can touch them somehow, everybody is touched by his music. (The inherent truth of Aldo’s research touches the soul, nourishes it and makes it grow. I had listened to the duet of the mirror in the same opera, which left me with the feeling of a cuddle for the soul. I was reminded once more of the Greek concept of Kalos kai Agathos, what is beautiful has inherent goodness/virtue in it)
ALDO: Actually, there is a connection with the Greek Mythology since Oxun the goddess of the Opera Dos Terreiros corresponds to Aphrodite, Venus. That’s why the woman can see herself mirrored in the goddess of beauty. This is a hymn to beauty in all its aspects. Oxum represents also sweet water, rain, fertility, her presence is so felt in this work that the rhythm used in the duet is the same that is normally used to evoke her in rituals. The different elements of the music, rhythm and harmony, mirror each other, so that this hymn to beauty is multiplied. Music is needed in order to express what is ineffable. There are many things that can be shown without letting anybody see them.
(This piece leaves me with a big smile on my face. The musician here is able to connect to a world of things unseen, thus he has achieved his goal. Aldo’s music opens the doors and Reis’ singing is a fast road to enter this world of things unseen)
On Future Programs ALDO: The next work is called Amor Azul (Blue Love), it has been written by me (music and text) and Gilberto Gil (music). Its structure is loosely based on the Gitagovinda** by Jayadeva and the Song of Songs from the Bible. India is a mythical entity where the Avatars live (Indian dancers) while the singers will be Brazilians, they live as if these emotions were repeated endlessly. All of this happens with contemporary Brazil in the background, as a reflection of an ancient story that every time is unique. This work is the culmination of 4 years of work with Gilberto Gil in conjugating popular Brazilian music with the depth of the symphonic orchestra that amplifies and supports what is being acted on stage. This show, in form of concert, should debut in November in Paris (covid permitting), it will be represented on stage at the end of next year.
The cast is huge with over 150 people involved, both Gilberto Gil and Ragunath Manet will be on stage. This premiere will be the culmination of 2 years of production work. (Next year they will also present the Opera dos Terreiros again in Brazil, where it was shown only one day, followed by the Magic Flute with Aldo’s direction. ) Thank you Reis and Aldo for this brief journey into your world of music and light, I look forward to your next creations.
Aldo Brizzi and Graça Reis Interview collected and edited by Antonella Vicini Photos from Ópera dos Terreiros NOTES: * Candomblé is literally the "dance in honour of the gods". It is an AfroBrazilian religion that developed in Brazil during the early 19th century. It arose through a process of syncretism between the traditional Yoruba religion of West Africa and the Roman Catholic form of Christianity. ** Gitagovinda by Jayadeva is a devotional poem written in the XII century, it is one of the most important text of the Bhakti Marga (the path of devotion) for the god Krsna. LINKS to BRIZZI and REIS WORKS: Aria do espelho (aria dello specchio) da Ópera dos terreiros https://youtu.be/2tFDsrs41-E
òpera dos terreiros completa - live a Bahia 2020 - https://youtu.be/rjbSm85NGx4 Wieder - https://youtu.be/pcUyVN4eO2U For Racheli - https://youtu.be/8bWBaf3Enns
KATHAK Rosella Fanelli The clear counting accompanies the fast rhythmic movements. This is ancient dancing, straight out of the oldest manual on the performing arts: The Nāṭya Śāstra, Sanskrit: ननाट शनास, revered and respected by all traditional Indian performers. The dancer enters the sacred space of her art (heart as well) and, first of all, pays homage to the deity. Then she starts her performance that will benefit both us in the audience and the performer as well. Alone, she starts to slowly unravel her dance, telling us stories, then hinting at amazingly deep philosophical concepts that are resumed in her precise, delicate, yet powerful movements. Benignly, Lord Siva Nataraja* presides over this meeting of East, Kathak, and West, the medieval cloister where the dance is performed. What could be more rewarding than dancing the elements, the substance of which we are made?, adding ether, the carrier of sound, to the wellknown four: air, fire, water, earth. A conversation happens between the feet, with their ankles wrapped in heavy bells, and the percussions: who is leading? Who is following? When the conversation flows there is no need to know. On and on the dancer taps on the ground, creating intricate patterns while the tablas echo them so that the ether is filled with their reverberations. Kathak is an art performed both in temples to honor the gods, especially Krsna, and the aniconic Allah in the Mughal palaces. The hands recall gods, animals, warriors and maidens, the leg and feet can be heroic, graceful, powerful, dizzying with their fast spins.
Tradition needs innovation, and ancient art finds new apprentices: the young smiling dancer testifies her commitment and bewilderment in spite of years of training. Still on she goes in the wild field open to improvisation. This is mastery of the highest kind, when a performer feels confident enough to surprise both her musicians and her students.
What follows is, in Rosella’s words, her love story with Kathak and her journey through dance: I was born from a Lucanian family who migrated to Viterbo (a medieval city north of Rome). In my family we kept many traditions from our hometown. When I was about 20, I went to India, I was interested in finding my spiritual path, I had been impressed by Hinduism and its approach to life. I travelled extensively in India following my intuition. I went to see the great saints of the time, including Sai Baba in Bangalore, then to Puna, eventually to Vrndavan, one of the main places for the Krsna cult. During my travels I saw many classical dances, but when I saw Kathak, I decided I wanted to learn it, for 2 years I was in Vrndavan as a student of Daksha Sheth, a well known dancer. Then I was introduced to Pandit Arjun Mishra, a famous teacher in Lucknow, where I studied for 15 years consecutively, achieving the highest diploma with golden medal. I started my career in India, dancing in many venues, I even starred in a video and show supported by the Indian government. I also had the pleasure of dancing with my Guru in Italy and I was organizing some courses for him, but unfortunately he died in 2015. In spite of the many awards, shows and festival in India, after 16 years, I chose to return to Italy for personal reasons. Here I was "captured" by the Conservatorio in Vicenza where I have been teaching for 12 years now, falling in love with the work of the teacher and the care of my students. The relationship between guru (teacher) and apprentice is a sacred one in the traditional way of teaching any art in India. Here it is different, yet the experience of receiving the supreme teachings from my Guru stays with me and I am open to do the same for my students, when they really become apprentices. My teacher was very strict with me, at the same time he was pushing me to always be my best, to strive for perfection.
I still believe that discipline and strictness are helping our students, because – at the same time – I make sure I raise their self-esteem giving them tasks at an ever-increasing level of difficulty.
Kathak is the most complete performing art I have encountered: it has a huge repertoire, from the devotional parts dedicated mostly to Krsna, to the more worldly dances at the Mughal courts, where the rhythm and intricate steps were the main elements of attraction, to the dances following the Urdu poems supported by central Asian music, thus giving it an international color.
I like dancing them all, although I love improvising as well on the wellknown tunes and gaits*** of the tradition. “The future of Kathak Dance, defined by Ananda Coomarswamy in his book Mirror of Gesture as one of the most extraordinary performing arts, will depend on how much the various dancers want to appear in shows based on pure technical virtuosity or how much they try to reach the ecstasy of the ancient Hindu festivals, recalling the Katha element, in which one danced to become "divine".�**** At the moment, after some shows where I explored the connections between Kathak and other dances (like Flamenco and the Sufi rotations), I am preparing a performance on Kathak and the Lucanian traditions. I want to work on my roots, my cultural traditions. I believe that to immerse oneself in one's own primordial nature, means to connect to very powerful energies (archetypes) from which to receive and from which to learn. The archetypes go beyond space and time and belong to all the dimensions of humanity. The archetype is a healer, a dance performance is healing as well.
Rosella Fanelli Translated and edited by Antonella Vicini
I leave the show with the feeling that integration between rational and imagination is possible, that opposites can work together, that we are neither black nor white, but a kaleidoscope of colors. Accepting the differences, the contradictions, the various rhythms in our lives, just like the beautiful Kathak dance I had witnessed, makes us more complete human beings. We can let go of our need to categorize, analyze, separate and judge. We can, instead, welcome what is new to us, yet ancient for others, what is unusual for us, yet is a honored tradition elsewhere. A renewed humanity is possible if we open to the chances offered by the traditions of the world. Learning from each other will helps us all to become and live our highest potential, thus fulfilling our goal as human beings.
Antonella Vicini NOTES * Siva Nataraja, Shiva lord of the dance, is a beautiful and widespread image of the god dancing the beginning and end of creation. For a more in depth examination of this aspect of the god see The Badger Year 3 Volume 3, https://issuu.com/antonellavicini/docs/the_badger_june_2017 ** Guru- Shishya Parampara is a way of transmitting knowledge between teacher ad student. Such knowledge, whether it be Vedic, architectural, musical or spiritual, is imparted through the developing relationship between the guru and the disciple. It is considered that this relationship, based on the genuineness of the guru, respect, commitment, devotion and obedience of the student, is the best way for subtle or advanced knowledge to be conveyed. The student eventually masters the knowledge that the guru embodies. *** There are many different gaits, I saw an amazing one called the Peacok Gait: Rosella danced the reaction a peacock has when the rain falls on its feathers, it was a magical moment! **** From the Article: The Kathak Dance, Rosella Fanelli, published in "Colpo di Scena", Teatro dell'Aleph edition, Bellusco (MI) 1998
AUTHORS
Antonella Vicini http://badgermedicinespirit.wix.com/tirthayatra Writer and editor of THE BADGER, author of Talking with Gods, Sages, Fairies.... (a novel published in 2014). Steeped in classical and indological studies, I have spent all my life learning from people as well as from the ancient texts that keep revealing their immortal, thus contemporary teachings. I am happy when I can share new visions and face new challenges. I am a professional rebirther and trainer (since 1987), Reiki master since 1991, stress management and leadership trainer, writer and visionary. I also lead workshops on shamanic journeying and soul healing. I am deeply grateful to all my teachers and elders. Badger Medicine Spirit
David R. Kopacz, MD The focus of my work is bringing creativity, spirituality, and healing to my work with clients as well as to the larger challenges that face health care and society. I work at Puget Sound Veterans Affairs Health Care System in Seattle in Primary Care Mental Health Integration and have an appointment as an Acting Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. I am board certified through the American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology, the American Board of Integrative & Holistic Medicine and the American Board of Integrative Medicine. I have worked in a number of practice settings over the years. Prior to moving to Seattle I spent three and a half years in New Zealand where I worked in Assertive Community Outreach at Manaaki House Community Health Center and also served as Clinical Director at Buchanan Rehabilitation Centre.
Fredric Lehrman http://www.nomaduniversity.com/ is one of the original “Wealth Psychologists” who looked deeply into the subconscious habit patterns that may either support or thwart personal financial success. He began teaching these insights in the early 1970’s, and his seminars, articles, and coaching have been the launch point for many of today’s best known experts and authors ever since. Fredric’s personal career has included intensive study with master teachers in many disciplines, and professional success in music, psychology, martial arts, photography, and global entrepreneurship, networking and innovation. He founded Nomad University in 1974 as a way to expand the concept of education as a life-long individual path of self-directed learning. The ideas he articulated then are now starting to appear in new schools all around the internet-connected world of the 21st century.
Laura Bottagisio www.laurabottagisio.com is an astrologer and seeker. She started studying astrology at the beginnings of the 80's with Lisa Morpurgo, she later worked with the Cosmos Institute of Milan, where she learnt about the theory and practice of Vibrational Waters. She has attended seminars with gerard Athias and Jp Brebion on new medicine and bio analogy. She shares her discoveries in her blog. She also creates tableaux with recycled materials, in this way she creates images out of emotions and inner worlds.
Philip Carr Gomm http://www.philipcarr-gomm.com/ Philip lives in the wide open landscape of the South Downs in Sussex, England, with his wife Stephanie. In his teens, he began studying Druidry as a spiritual path with Ross Nichols, the founder of The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids. Later he took a degree in psychology from University College London, and trained in psychotherapy for adults at The Institute of Psychosynthesis, and in play therapy for children with Dr Rachel Pinney. He also trained in Montessori education with the London Montessori Centre, and founded the Lewes Montessori School. From 1998 to 2020 Philip has been the chosen leader of The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids.
Jo Dunbar www.botanicamedica.co.uk Medical Herbalist for over 18 years , hypnotherapist for over 10 years. She founded Botanica Medica herbal apothecary. She has reached Druid level (member of OBOD). Author of Spirit of the Hedgerow, winner of the 2016 Local Legend spiritual writing competition, finalist in the Wishing Shelf book awards, author of Stress, Burnout and Fatigue (Self-published), and How to Cope Successfully with Candida (Wellhouse Publishing). Leader of many workshops in herbal medicine over the years. Currently running Magical Forest retreats with Adrian Rooke .
Lida Lodi Perry https://www.facebook.com/lidaperry?ref=profile Lida was born in the North East of Italy (Vicenza) after graduating from a teacher Institute she came to the USA, where she continued her education at the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Psychology and later a Master in Social Work. She worked for many years at a drug clinic in the local hospital. In 1984 she went back to Italy to work with abused children as a director of a residential facility. She moved on to work as a supervisor and Psychologist at Milan Cancer Institute where she is still consulting, while having a successful private practice as psychotherapist. She was also cofounder of the Rebirthing Institute with Antonella Vicini, she became a Reiki Master in 1992, she is still active with the local and international Reiki community.
Francis Rico www.shaman.zone Musician, feral shaman, and author Francis Rico combines ancient and modern wisdom assisting clients, students and fellow adventurers in awakening to the gift of their lives. His book, A Shaman's Guide To Deep Beauty, shares stories and lessons from a lifetime of dedication to the shamanic pathways and teachers of indigenous wisdom traditions. As a guide to the world's sacred sites, Francis brings insight, humor, and music along on every journey. His home lies in Northern California, where he shares the beauty of the wild coastal mesas, cliffs, and ocean.
Marco Casazza is a Theatre actor, director, translator of plays, and drama teacher. In 1994, he was initiated as a Reiki Master. He sees these two disciplines as siblings, one path nourishing the other in turns. They share many aspects: practice, communication, mentorship, form conveying essence, a potential for impacting the lives of each person, touch without forcing an outcome. It was during his training as a Reiki Master that he learned English with/from his teacher and dearest friend Marta L. Getty, to whose memory his poem is dedicated.
Claudiu Murgan started writing Science Fiction when he was 11-years old. Since then he met remarkable writers that helped him improved his own trade. Claudiu's experience in various industries such as IT, renewable energy, real estate and finance, helped him create complex but real characters that brought forward meaningful messages. Claudiu is one of the co-founders of the Immigrant Writers Association in Toronto, and the Vice President of Authorpedia.org, the world's only encyclopedia for authors. You can hear the radio and TV interview Claudiu gave in the last 12 months on his website www.claudiumurgan.com
Hank Wesselman www.sharedwisdom.com Scientist and “Shamanist�, internationally known for his trilogy about our future: SpiritWalker. Hank has devoted his entire life to teaching and gently pushing people to be and do their best while respecting others and nature.
Aldo Brizzi is both composer and conductor. He has worked extensively in Brazil. He has also conducted the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Kammermusik Collegium Philharmonishes Berlin, etc. and recorded albums with Bamberger Symphoniker, Filarmonica di Torino, Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa. He wrote operas such as “Mambo Mistico” produced by Theatre National de Chaillot – Paris, “Gabriel et Gabriel”, “Alter”, “Opera dos Terreiros” premiered in Salvador Bahia 2020 and a new orchestration of “Treemonisha” by Scott Joplin. In 2016 première of “Wieder”, for soprano and electronics.
Graça Reis was born and graduated in Bahia. She then moved to Berlin to complete her studies. She started her career singing Mozart, Puccini, Humperdinck. She also sung symphonic works by Mahaler and Villa-Lobos. Graça also shared the stage with Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Arnaldo Atunes. She recorded 3 albums and acted in Mambo Mistico by Aldo Brizzi. She has sung in Paris, and toured Europe, America and North Africa. She sings also in Opera dos Terreiros
Rosella Fanelli is trained in Yoga and in Kathak, her great passion is the dance she has studied for over 15 years in India, and now performs and teaches in Italy as well. She received the highest distinction in her chosen dance ever conferred to a non Indian performer. She was invited to perform in major festivals of music and dance in India. She also received a grant from the Indian government to realize a dance drama, it was performed in front of the Taj Mahal with very positive reviews.
Luis.M.Vasconcelos https://500px.com/lmvasconcelos I was born for Life in 1952, and in 1974 I was born for Photography, when my country, Portugal, was born for Democracy. I began my career as a professional photographer and photojournalist, in April 25, 1974, when our democratic revolution took place after 40 years of a dark fascist regim. Freedom was born for us, and my photographic dream was born for me. Since then I have been working as a professional photographer and photojournalist. In 2004, I also followed the call for a deepest journey into my personal discovery and growth, learning meditation and Reiki. I got the degree of Reiki Master in 2006, in the traditional Reiki Usui System. Now, after 40 years of work, I have began to enjoy my (active) retirement. I dedicate my time to the ones I love, and to what I always loved to do: Photography and traveling. I am in love with Life !
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