1This week has seen a series of unexpected fortunate events which have kept me by the sea’s edge and nowhere near this laptop. However, that now gives me an opportunity to share this letter to two friends from May 2021. There is a profound and sterile solipsism in the death-denying culture I am surrounded by, perhaps where you live, too. In a series of emails, we discussed death, life and the initiatory process, including the traditional, oracular place of childhood dreams of dismemberment and revivification, for those who would later be called to work in liminal realms.
This is followed by a 2022 rendering of a recurring childhood dream of mine, within the context of later life. Deepest good greetings to you wherever you are, from a sunny, warm day in East Dorset.
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Life / death / life
Death is the punchline to all our jokes. All human jokes. And that is why it is inherently funny and tragic at once that people forget this. How on earth will we tell our shaggy dog story well, pace our joke for comic timing, weave our fable richly, if we have forgotten how the ending goes? The culture avoids retelling all the stories we'd accumulated for learning this, censoring and neutering every difficult, symbolic aspect of each tale, and then wonders why people are constantly full of subtle dread.
Accepting that the last line is death in all our stories, so that another life story may be picked up and told by those who follow, is a profoundly integrating knowledge. We must one day drop the thread so that it may be picked up by another. Our excuse for a culture says the opposite, that we are belittled and slighted by death, that it is a final severance rather than an ultimate joining and so people have their heads on back to front. This is how the false dismemberment occurs: amnesia. Most people have forgotten their connection in life and death with all other beings and so they cannot keep their energy, thoughts, behaviour or lives intact. They pull themselves to pieces looking here and there for 'wholeness', while assisting the machine in their own fragmentation.
Real dismemberment is part of the life-death-life continuum and is correct: for instance, the initiatory dream, the trials and losses of real lived life, the actual bodily death at the end, however late or early that arises. This promise of endings is something we can rely upon, and if we truly accept it, we are dealt into the game of life and then it is up to us and to fortune how we play our hand.
True spiritual dismemberment, though shocking at the time, is eventually the root cause of cohesion, as what we drop away in the experience of dissolution / ego death / dark night of the soul, is what we no longer need. This burning away is essential.
False dismemberment is the fragmentation of untransformed, or only partially transformed people, divorced from their rites of passage, sold the lie of immortality (which is to say - separation from the flow of life - death - life), and thereby absolutely primed for becoming nicely oiled little meat cogs in the machine itself.
So, if we know the last word of the song is 'death', and that what comes after is unknowable, then why not just sing this song really soulfully in the meantime? No one would dream of not singing a song just because the last line is already known to them. We really do have all the medicine we need, even here in the 'west', tucked away in art, music, craft, nature, gardening, cooking, pilgrimage. It really isn't a mystery, (except of course that this makes it a great mystery…)
The cost of life is death.
That's it.
Unpalatable? Ha!
Resisting this is the cause of collapse. A wave will always break or die away. It is their nature to arise and fall. And in this universe, all things are wave-like. That's just how matter is. How life is.
We used to teach children this. Every single religion or tradition worth its salt teaches this, though the methods they use vary widely.
Now, so much energy is spent avoiding the obvious. Remember the ending, and sing the song sweetly, passionately, anyway.
Spider Mother
I am four. cut into eight pieces by the arachnoid goddess of the longed-for feathered nest who ate me and saved the best parts till last in her tree of infinite safety and intimate death I am forty-four. waking daily embedded in embers of fires I don’t remember lighting hiding awaiting sacrifice not of pleasure not of certainty, youth, though these gone my good name bitter in percussionists’ mouths love is not fruit and will not keep if jarred like jam collects drowned wasps full of stings until thrown out now the broken parts speak as only lyric flesh may do dismember self and be eaten by wild nature sickle fingered thrilling terrifying mother great undoing unknowing pouncing joint legged hairy many eyed monstrosity of loving acceptance able to eat my pale unpalatable bones and lick her lips (there are no lips to lick) sliver moon cuts incomparable devastation the tree bears her up and little me in raptures and equal eighths this undoing is true care my edges rubbed out like mistakes in fractions the sum of every part death is no end life no beginning transformation in division dreams the workings out ashes cover my opening eyes twitching legs fecund frightening recursive figures demand awake attend rend
The Eagle Oak is the epitome of life / death / life, as it commemorates the killing of the last white-tailed eagle in the New Forest, in 1810. But now the tree is a haven of life, and two self-seeded yew trees weave through it, bearing witness to death. I was profoundly moved to meet this tree this week.
The drawing of this dream can be found here.
So many resonances. In the 1990s I trained as a soul midwife and also ran workshops on death related matters. As a celebrant, helping people to create unique funerals was immensely rewarding. We do death badly in our culture and it is now a professionalised business model that people fear to deviate from. Traditional cultures made space for the catharsis of full-on grief: weeping, wailing, collapse, immersion and subsequent acknowledgement and support. Our ego-centred culture creates an abnormal terror of death and there is little sense of it being a vital part of the cycle of life. I once took part in a magical ceremony that recreated Inanna's descent into the underworld: it was a profound and transforming experience that confronted the initiate with loss, terror and death. As the Buddhist saying goes, one must die before one dies. Pilgrimage: myself and two friends, all of us on the wrong side of 60, walked part of the Golden Valley Pilgrim Way last week. We stayed overnight in churches (the clock bongs all night and of course we all had to go for a wee several times) and although tired and wet for most of it, we will do it again next year; it was wonderful.
A rich and deep tapestry of words and images, a deeper joining of spirits. Those of us called to work in the liminal realms and the deep earthy reality of embodiment perceive so many subtle threads, in their endless weaving and unravelling, breaking, mending, joining and weaving. You get closer, in your words, to revealing and sharing this natural way of being than anyone I read regularly. It is such a joy to have found your writing.