Despoiling Mother Earth
~
Governments, Big Business, Small Businesses, You, Me, Them, Everybody…
Everywhere I look there seems to be a casual disregard for the sanctity of this planet and everything that lives upon it. And yet, for the forseeable future this is the only planet we have to live upon. Why is it that so many seem to care nothing for the Earth, and so few try to preserve and repair this place we call home?
Forget the big stuff for a while, and take one small piece of casual waste, one tiny instance of wilful vandalism ~ the damned abandoned shopping trolley, or as the Americans would have it shopping cart / shopping buggy.
All over this one-donkey town there exist randomly littered and abandoned shopping carts.
Why do people take them out of the store car parks in the first place, and why don’t they return them?
Do these morons think that shopping carts can find their own way home?
Are there jerks on this planet who actually believe that shopping trolleys can swim? If not, why do some wassocks chuck shopping carts into the sea?
This is just a metaphor for the total disregard some / many / most people have for the environment. I could ask if these people would treat their homes like this, but what’s the point? The answer is that some jerks do treat their homes like dumps / tips / dumpsters / skips…
Then there’s my role in this. I take lost trollies back to the store they came from. Not as a crusade, and I don’t go looking for abandoned shopping carts, but when I find one on my daily stroll, I do take them back.
Does that make me public-spirited, or a damn fool, or both?
~
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
someone to watch over me
~
solitude is not the only choice
in the night I hear her voice
though she is not near
I can always see her
inwardly I rejoice
she has chosen
~
always to watch over me
~
words and pictures by jack collier jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Goddesses and Myths
Just as I seem drawn to the sea and the moon, I am fated to have a deep bond with the feminine elements of the cosmos. Sometimes this connection directly manifests itself when one of the Goddesses answers a question I have needed to ask. The question has to be simple and has to couched in such a way that I am obviously asking for help. Usually I will ask a specific Goddess for her grace.
Most of the time I will receive an immediate and clear answer to my plea.
This is where things start to become difficult and complicated. To begin with, there is only one Goddess.
In Celtic Mythology, (I am Celt, or a Briton, or an Englishman), the Gods were powerful, but the Goddesses even more so. In Celtic mythology the Goddesses are associated with the land, nature, the forest, trees, water, and the moon. The Goddess exists in a triple manifestation;
- The Maiden
- The Mother
- The Crone
and she is linked to the seasons, to birth, fertility, and growth. She is the giver of life and love, and she is the one who bestows sex and death.
I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters: To you they have show’d some truth.
This single Goddess in three separate identities is common across all the mythologies I know of.
In fact, the single Goddess who exists in three manifestations appears in all cultures and through the ages ~ at least as far back as 24,000 B.C.. She is sometimes called the Earth Mother, and she is responsible for all creation. In Egypt she was Isis, the Aztecs knew her as Toci, the Sumarians called her Ninmah, for the Greeks she was Cybele, Hera and Aphrodite. To Christians and others she is Mary. At the tomb of Jesus she was Magdalene, Mary Salome and Mary of Jacob.
One of the Celtic Goddess was known as Mairiae.
I have no fixed belief in God, Gods, Goddesses and spirits. As it goes I am an agnostic atheist. I believe that the true nature of the cosmos is unknowable.
However, I know that I have what practitioners of 12 step programmes term a ‘higher power’. For my own peace of mind I anthropomorphise my higer power as the Goddess Aphrodite, or sometimes Isis.
It may be that my higher power is Aphrodite, or it may be that it’s my own subconcious, which I am accessing using a technique borrowed from Neuro Linguistic Programming. If that’s the case I’mas close to sorcery as it gets, or maybe magic. Or, it may be that the Goddess exists, and finds time to look in on me every once in a while.
I don’t know, and I don’t care. What I do know is the it would be a bad move to anger Aphrodite.
I go down to the sea to pray. Isis and Aphrodite answer my prayers, and the answer is seldom no.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Englisj Gentleman, moine guerrier
A Power Greater Than Ourselves
SOMETIMES, SELF-WILL AND EFFORT ARE JUST NOT ENOUGH
In 12 step recovery programmes this is step 2. In Alcoholics Anonymous the full text reads;
We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. ~ The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
For many people trying to recover from an addiction to alcohol, street drugs, prescription drugs, gambling, shoplifting…, this is where it all falls apart. One may have been dry and clean for a while, (although cigarettes and candy will have taken the place of the primary addiction), but here we begin to flirt with the idea of God.
Addicts and people under great stress have poor memories, they will have forgotten that when they were at their nadir they will have said something like; ‘Please God, get me out of this one…’ In any event, in the quotation given above where does it say God? It doesn’t, it says; a Power greater than ourselves. Addiction is self-will writ large; egotism, egomania, narcissism, conceit, and vanity are all part of the psychology of an addict. Addicts and the otherwise mentally ill believe they are the most important person in the Cosmos ~ that belief has to be smashed.
Addiction, stress, anxiety, depression, bi-polar disorder, anorexia, binge eating disorder, psychotic disorders, exhibitionism…, (the list could go on and on), all produce a state of desperation. A state where the sufferer is willing to do almost anything to escape from the see-saw of euphoria and misery that they endure. Anything, except believe that there is more in this Cosmos than themselves ~ addiction and self-absorption go together like ham and eggs.
Trust me on this, one does not have to believe in the God of our childhood, or the God of our parents, or the God of whatever church or religion we theoretically belong to. Lapsed Christians, lapsed Jews, Agnostics, atheists, sun worshipers, druids, can all come to believe that there is a power in the universe that is greater than they are. In 12 step recovery programmes this sometimes known as ‘finding your higher power.’
I believe in a higher power and I believe in good and bad, right and wrong. You sleep in the bed you make. ~ Leif Garrett.
Lief Garrett, singer, actor, television personality, one time drug addict, member of the Church of Scientology, often in legal difficulties.
the nothingness of infinity
So we’re in physical and mental torment of one sort or another. In order to recover we need to give up some of our egomaniacal self-will, narcissistic denial, and the conceit that we can stop doing whatever destructive behaviour we suffer from, whenever we want to. Whether one believes in a Deity, or not, recovery from addiction and a range of other destructive behaviours depends on faith and spirituality. The human mind finds it much easier to believe in something, rather than believing in nothing, (although one could believe in nothingness and infinity.)
There is something about modern man and woman, particularly men and women who are suffering extreme distress, which makes it difficult for them to accept that there is anything beyond what they can see, hear, taste, touch, smell, or otherwise detect with one of our many other senses. Very well, what if I quote from one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th Century? A man so smart that 99% of the people in the world don’t even understand what he was getting at.
The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms ~ this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of all true spirituality, (geistigkeit). ~ Albert Einstein, The Merging of Spirit and Science.
Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist and philosopher of science.
Quantum physics and probability theory are both pretty wedded to the fact that nothing is impossible. People being what they are, if one gives a lot of them three choices;
- There is definitely no God, Goddess, Higher Power, or a Power greater than me.
- There may or may not be a Higher Power, Earth Goddess, Power of the Cosmos, et alii.
- There is a Higher Power, Mother Goddess, Power of the Universe, Isis and Aphrodite. I know because I have faith.
There is no possibility whatsoever that they would be able to come to a consensus of opinion. The proof of this is in Arrow’s impossibility theorem. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter what one believes in, as long as one believes in something that is greater than a single human being ~ that is, greater than you. We cannot go on just existing, we need faith and spirituality in order to live ~ after all, we are broken human beings.
if you can’t believe in anything else, believe in the Power of the Cosmos
Personally, I walked the road of recovery from my disease by believing in the power of the Cosmos. It didn’t matter what I believed in, as long as I believed that there was a Power greater than myself. If you can’t even manage that, then believe in the fact that you want to believe in something, because that will put you on the road to spirituality and recovery from whatever syndromes you suffer from.
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. ~ Carl Sagan, in Cosmos.
Carl Edward Sagan, astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science populariser, researcher into extraterrestrial life.
All of human life requires faith. Faith in gravity, in the laws of physics, in birth, love, life and death. To recover from serious addiction, mental illness, extreme stress, also requires faith and spirituality.
Given that I am currently not only on planet weird, I am deep in the jungle on planet weird, after experiencing reincarnation into my own life, I need a hell of a lot more faith and spirituality than most. Currently it suits me to believe in my vision of the Goddesses Isis and Aphrodite. They are my higher powers, not yours. You need to find your own higher power for yourself to achieve true spirituality.
for some reason my vision of Isis is confused with The Lady of the Lake
The Mystic Spiral
SPIRALS ARE SOME OF THE OLDEST KNOWN GEOMETRIC SYMBOLS
An interesting philosophical point is; do spirals curve outward from a central point, getting progressively farther away as the line revolves around the point? Or, do spirals curve inwards around a central point, getting progressively nearer until the curving line ends at the centre? Or does a spiral begin and end in infinity? More complex still, is a spiral all of those things at the same time, beginning and ending in the centre? Add a vertical dimension and you have a conical helix. What are the different properties of left-handed, and right-handed spirals? What happens if you have two opposite-handed conical helix wound together? As a matter of fact all of the above forms happen in nature. As a matter of fact, all spirals embody a profound paradox, which may be why the form transcends mathematics and engineering into The Mystic Spiral.
The most common spiral seen in nature is a logarithmic spiral, (sometimes called the miraculous spiral), and although it’s simple enough to be made by a mollusc, the mathematics are beyond ordinarily complicated;
x(t)=r(t)cos(t)=ae bt cos(t)
y(t)=r(t)sin(t) =ae bt sin(t)
The thing about the miraculous spiral form is the gaps between the lines get bigger as the line rotates outward. Good old Archimedes has a different spiral named after him. In the Archimedean spiral, the gaps between the lines stay the same from the centre to the edge. In 225 BC Archimedes even wrote a whole book about the spiral, wittingly entitled On Spirals, in which he proves that circles are square.
More or less at the same time as Archimedes, the Celts were going spiral crazy. Not much of Celtic history is left after the ubiquitous Roman Legions had finished destroying their culture. But, the Celts were adept stonemasons and metalworkers, so there are examples of their symbology scattered across the countryside and in museums. Also, a hell of a lot of Celtic myths and legends have been passed down in the various languages and folk cultures of Britain. There are still those who seek the meaning of spirals.
Three spiral patterns seem to have been especially important to these Ancient Britons.
- Single spiral. This is one of Man’s oldest spiritual symbols. It represents both solar and lunar, masculine and feminine energy. Depending on how you look at it this either means the journey from outer consciousness to the inner soul, or spiritual growth outward from the centre to development and awareness. Depending on how you look at it the spiral is either clockwise or counter-clockwise, going within and going outward. The Golden Mean Spiral represents the shape of love in it’s simplest form, and this is no abstract form, in geometric terms this logarithmic spiral grows according to the Golden Ratio ~ Fibonacci numbers that are the natural numbering system of the cosmos.
Double spiral. A potent symbol of the Earth Goddess, the double spiral allegedly represents complete balance in all things, the equinoxes when day and night are the same length, man and woman together. The double spiral is also the symbol for eternal life, of life, death, and rebirth. The yin-yang symbol is a double spiral showing the balance of man and woman, sun and moon, finite and infinite, life and death, death and rebirth, Heaven and Earth, the relationship between the Mother-Goddess and her spouse, the interconnected nature of the physical world and the spiritual realm. The double spiral teaches us of the dual purpose of Life, the journey inward towards your own essential soul, and the Grail Quest outwards into the world.
Triple spiral. The triskele. This is about the whole Maiden, Mother, Crone, power of the woman to create growth and change. This is the triple Moon-Goddess, the Queen of Heaven, one of the primary dieties of neopaganism, as the maiden, mother, and crone are the three phases of the moon and also the realms of The Earth, The Underworld, and The Heavens. It also represents Land, Sea, and Sky, which is pretty much the entire physical realm as understood by our ancestors. The triple spiral also counts the 3 phases of a woman’s 9 month pregnancy, (don’t ask me, I’m not a woman). The female aspect of the triple goddess spiral is the balance to the male essence of The Beast. The enchantment of the maiden is the waxing phase of the lunar cycle and it is the maiden who brings the rebirth of the horned beast The mother represents knowledge and wisdom and is the full moon, her time is spring and early summer. A woman does not need to have biological children to be the mother. The crone is darkness, winter, death.
Some say that the Ancient Britons used the spiral as a mind-altering tool to free their creativity from earthly bounds. I’d like to bet good money that alcohol was also involved. If you stare at a spiral when you are drunk you can easily believe that you are no longer of this world. I’d like to bet there was a lot of male ~ female interaction involved in the rituals of the Ancient Britons.
Not all spirals are of this world, be it physical or spiritual. The reality we occupy is part of a spiral galaxy, but we cannot ourselves see the spiral form of the Milky Way because we’re inside the spiral looking at the nearest edges. The thick band of bright starlight in the night sky is part of an edge of a line of an arm of the spiral. Today it’s just about impossible to see the pinwheel of a distant spiral galaxy with the naked eye, and there’s no reason to believe the Celts could see things in the heavens we cannot, (without a telescope or binoculars). The idea of a spiral probably didn’t come from things seen in the heavens. However, given that the Earth is moving through space in a series of spiral ellipses at 1,339,200 miles per hour, there is no reason we shouldn’t believe that everything on the Earth is predisposed to think and feel in spirals. Look up Speed of the Earth if you don’t believe it.
The weird thing is; Spirals are the bedrock of both the physical and spiritual realms. Everything from electrons to galaxies moves in spirals. The symbolism of spirals can teach the manly man a lot about some of the most important aspects of his relationship to the female / feminine aspects of his life. Spirals are a possible link into spirituality and growth from a man into a Renaissance Man. All men with an ambition to understand, mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, and engineering need to know about spirals and the helix.
JackCollier7 
You must be logged in to post a comment.