Chapter 6

First, Canyon de Chelly

(Pronounced ‘de Shea’)

 

  1. Tears of mourning…

 

February, 2006.  After an unplanned drive from the Pacific Ocean to NE Arizona- (the motivations for this drive are too long a story to be included here).  As I approach Spider Rock, a huge natural stone tower in Canyon de Chelly, AZ,  I find myself to be in tears.  Tears of mourning for the deaths of my mother and brother the previous fall.  And I’d had a worrisome dream Christmas morning about my mother in the afterlife. She seemed lost and frightened there- alone!

 

I’d made little offerings at this place because ‘Grandmother Spider,’ a creator deity, is reputed to live there in Native American lore.  I’m a believing Roman Catholic priest, but I still respect old insights and symbols of deity.  Many visits in the past produced nothing unusual.  This time, Grandmother Spider took over my consciousness, and indicated I should look up the right hand canyon- (Canyon de Chelly splits just there at Spider Rock).  I did so.  And there ‘Changing Woman,’ a benevolent Navajo deity, appeared standing behind my mother.  My mother was protected (saved) and holding a box with golden light inside.  She was well.

 

Intellectually, it interests me that a believing Catholic can experience a complete transliteration of a salvific moment.  That is, my mind and heart were much comforted, but spontaneously translated a salvific intuition into another religion’s symbols and divinities.

 

It’s like St. Bernadette when she first envisioned the “Beautiful Woman.”  Only later did the then controversial teachings about the Blessed Mother’s “Immaculate Conception” become identified with that series of visions.  I believe these various names, titles, ‘masks,’ refer to the same divine source.

 

Psyche of nature: As well, there are what the Irish call “thin places.”  That is, the ‘other’ world comes closer to this world in certain places.   Spider Rock is one such place.  Jerusalem is such a place and so many others around the world…

 

 

(Once again, the author of this story is not clear.   Chris,? Steve?  Jack?  It is definitely ‘of’ the company described in earlier chapters.  That much I am sure.)

 

 

 

[149] SPIRIT OF DARK MATTER

4- SEEKER RETURNS TO THE ORACLE

(This painting references the final three years of my initiation as a mystic—with Georgia. (See Nepsis Foundation Table of Contents, Section III: “Resolution”) ‘Seeker…” also references our many trips to Egypt, the Spinx, Luxor and Karnak, etc., and on our final journey, the Oracle of Siwa. Implied here is a conjuring of dark spirits. Not evil, per se. Rather, here we engage a Spirit of Dark Matter. An important influence in my studies has been the ‘Genius Loci,’ the Spirit of Place(s), and through that the engorged idea of a World Spirit or Soul. Here is something more than a rational extrapolation that posits ‘if places and objects are animated by some kind of spiritual presence or incarnation, then Dark Matter also might share such vitality.’ Here is recounted an encounter with such or other entities from a vast universe as they might be perceived through the vales of human perception…)

 

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134 [70]

[70.] Goddess Rising 

Oil on Canvas 42” x 30” 1987.

This painting is intended to carry some of the experience of

a curious effect of the feminine on the masculine psyche. 

The image indicates a rising, certainly a passage of energies from earth to sky energy bases. I.e., from just above one’s perineum to the crown of one’s head. (See Chapter 7 under “Eagle Rock” for full story.)

From NEPSIS FOUNDATION Table of Contents, SECTION III:

 

 

 

When I first visited this place that we later named Eagle Rock, I was with my friend and partner. She is a very beautiful woman and rare for me in that she is one of the few for whom I might have preferred marriage to celibacy. We remain platonic friends. My mother accompanied me on this subsequent visit about to be described. This is an important change of characters for two reasons. One is that my mother, nearly eighty years old, is not so interested in religion or paranormal phenomena. She prefers politics and history. Therefore, she is detached from enthusiasm about religious, psychic and other paracritical phenomena. The second reason is that an archetype showed itself here. The archetype is, I believe, a catalyst for the paranormal seed of this story. The archetype is that of mother and son/goddess and hero. (It amuses me, and others, to think of myself as a hero, but even the least among us have moments of glory. Rather than this being an exercise in self-glorification, I merely point out an archetype that has been glorified in the past. Heracles=”the glory of Hera,” Hero/priest sacrificed in communication with the divine. Jesus and Mary, Theotokos, is another example. This important dynamic, largely ridiculed in modern culture, is essential to creativity, light mysticism and much traditional lore… See The White Goddess, Robert Graves, p. 124. Also see, The Cyclical Serpent, Paul Halpern, for how Dionysius saves his mother from Hell.)

 

…This “old dispensation” includes a Shamanism that reaches out from Paleolithic times into our own because there are people who still live a stone age existence to some degree and because Shamanism is a trans-temporal function of human personality. This old dispensation also includes the priesthood. This topical reference might start with the sacrificial priesthood of the Great Goddess from around the Mediterranean wherein the hero/sacred king/priest/son/consort is adulated for a time, then sacrificed to become divine. His initiates would often eat his flesh and blood in communion with their deity. This function of the mediatory priesthood, hieros or hierophant, extends to the priesthood of Jesus Christ, in the order of mythic “Melquizedek of Old.” [See, First Eucharistic Prayer for the Order of the Mass for Melquizedek reference.]

 

 

Who is this mysterious figure named Georgia and what is her relationship to the ‘company’ that populates this story?  Who’s mother is she?  What and who is she to Mother Mary?

 

And who is Chris?  Besides being an artist of note and author of the images in this story…  A projection of Jack?  Steve?  Someone else? Stephanie?  Georgia??? Something else entirely?

 

Once while camped along the sea, the great Pacific Ocean, Chris wrote this funny poem about Georgia and Nature:

 

Its hard to explain about frogs, where

it was usually dry, judge grey

gravel dry

sage green weeds, blond and grey tumble, salmon weeds

but for the seldom big Nino years[1] when

two inches of clear water would sit Zen

above the little rocks, sand and

thousands of frogs

years hidden

appeared, in the big cottonwood hole singing all night seems

from their pool

below a turn in the road- -they had to spread out

cars had to smash ‘em

one had to miss and aim for the pool

in the hole

But a cottonwood caught it, suspended, for the longest time.

***

Its hard to explain about Georgia.[2] how

that last year was

when the veil between worlds was so thin.

It was payment in full, ‘a blast of pure white light

glancing from a spread of black raven’s wing.’

it was better than any-thing, how

on the plane back from that oasis in Egypt

seeping its vast aquifer

in deep cold oracular pools, how

if the plane crashed on its way back, then it would have been ok

with me- and her

-maybe not the rest… stern to bow

*

But now John, ur right, there’s still to do

I’ll follow the streams I always have, to their source. You will too.

You can give charity if you receive it, Steve

for the love of God, Bill!

 

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[1] I was a child as well as it being a wet El Nino year.

[2] Georgia was my mother who came to live with me when I was Newman Chaplain at SSU in N. California.  After 5 year there, I got sick, retired- she at 80, and we took care of each other for another 5 years.  The ‘last year’ mentioned in the poem was 2005.  John, Steve and Bill are priest friends.