The Lunar Eclipse, a Little Touch of Full Moon Wyrdness
Camped beneath a full moon by a remote coastline, I am alone again with the wind, the sound of the ocean, and a celestial mystery that reminds me that we are all children beneath the stars. I pitched my swag not long after dark, excited to be so alone out here, dive gear ready so that I can immerse myself as soon as possible after dawn in the roiling waters of our ancient birthplace, the ocean. I fell asleep early, exhausted by recent movements, as the full moon rose above the scrubby coastal trees of this place.
Then I awoke, a few hours later, dazed and confused by the moon, which was now only half visible. It took ages to refocus my mind around this mystery – the line down the middle of our lunar orb was distinct. This was no demarcation of heavy cloud cover, and neither was it a tree branch in the way. I kept watching, maybe only half awake, maybe having slipped into a sweet, harmless madness, or a liminal psychic cave of timeless mystery, or a crack in some sorcery set by the universe to capture those foolhardy enough to give themselves over to soul. My mind raced – what is happening? How can I fall asleep under a full moon and wake up mere hours later under a half a disc? Has time slipped, am I lost in its deep pools?
Then I noticed it slowly grow, towards three quarters full, waxing again now as if it were pregnant, bloating as it rolled around the sky, becoming full again before my very eyes.
A blood moon lunar eclipse. How could I not have known this was coming? How is this not front-page news? (I know, if I took more notice of media, I would have known this was coming yesterday too!) But if I lived in a traditional society, where we watched the natural world for its clues and signals every day, I would have known this was coming in a different way. It would have had more meaning. We might have been afraid of the lunar eclipse, as many cultures were, when the moon gets eaten by the night.
The ancient Mesopotamians, with whom I have an affinity since studying them in my full-time research days, would install a fake king for the night, in case the deadly juju of the eclipse infected the real regent with disease or death. For the Sumerians, the moon was a God, a masculine power in the night sky, as opposed to the Lady Luna we imagine drawing us into romance, mystery and the cycles of life. Nanna the Moon God was the bull of the night sky, the stars a herd of cows, all observed closely as they revolved around our planetary home. The Mesopotamians became renowned for the mathematical precision of their star gazing, another reason I loved them. Such patience, record keeping and meaning making under the celestial constellations. We don’t share this love or take this time anymore; we have created our own light in the night, artificial, reliable and easy (even though it is costing us the earth; but that’s another story).
Nowadays, it is up to us to wake up, to notice the world around us, to become aware of the cycles of life and death in ten thousand animate, intimate, real ways. I’m glad I didn’t know the eclipse was coming to swallow the full moon at night. The surprise was such a jolt, it gave me the opportunity to awaken anew to this mystery, to be confused by the cosmos all over again. In my scrambling for reality and understanding, I rediscovered a primal need, as the world as I knew it fell away beneath me, or rather above. Wherever we look for certainty, we’d better be ready for anything, it reminded me.
My Salute to the Moon, a brief version of the full yoga asana. This is included in my Nature Calling Online Course for those wanting to deepen their connection to nature. It’s freely available here.
Reassured, I got up and performed my salute to the moon, a regular ritual I like to do when I am under her pearly light. Tonight, I notice how her silver glows upon my hands and arms as I reach for the sky, as if I am imbued and glow with the power of deep connection to the cosmos. Safely full and unobscured again now, I can write my story in her light, unafflicted by the wyrdness of my lunar fascination, rebalanced by my salute to the sacred mysteries, by the circle of ancestors who deign to allow me to speak as a guest at their table.
She is behaving herself again, crossing the night sky towards the horizon, and I feel I have been given back my sanity, my faith in the rightness of things. Having lost it for a while there, I am brought back to life in the exact moment of the everpresent here and now, as ritual always does for me.
Perhaps, like me, you will join the rounds, hopefully waking up to the great mystery of consciousness coursing through our veins, hopefully breathing in and out with gratitude for this one wild opportunity at self-aware primate life in a body on earth, hopefully waking up …
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Alchemy 2021
Your breath is the bellows
Breathe down and in and set fire to the body (in the nicest possible way).
Your bodymind is the raw material.
Bring it to light.
The earth is the forge and the crucible.
Don’t let it get too hot.
The Gold is within you, just as it is within all things. Let yourself glow with the knowledge that you are alive, right now, regardless of all other things.
Gnosis – Know Thyself; practice Deep Listening to all
Let that flow through you and find a way to be loyal to the body of the earth as well as to the endless mystery, your other home, beyond.
Do we refine Lead, in an attempt to purify the physical world? Is that how we make Gold?
Do we pass through the other states, growing with power with each encounter?
Or do we awaken to what is already real, just beneath awareness, but within easy reach?
We work though the classic metallic states, to integrate each of them into the Golden Mean.
Lead, ruled by Saturn: cold, heavy, dense, dull; the ruler of the dark, prime matter.
Tin, ruled by Jupiter: the breath of life and stronger combined with another.
Iron, ruled by Mars: physical strength, the need to temper primal urges while embracing the fire within.
Copper, ruled by Venus: associated with the goddess Aphrodite/Venus and its lustrous beauty; love, balance, feminine beauty and artistic creativity.
Mercury, ruled by Mercury: receptivity, open-mindedness, new ideas and intelligence.
Silver, ruled by the Moon: intuition, inner wisdom, artistic expression and contemplation.
And we get … Gold, ruled by the Sun: incorruptible higher self, perfection in all matter and in mind and spirit; the highest value.
While we’re at it, we expand beyond the metals to the other elements, making all the aspects, qualities, animals and plants of the earth part of the Golden vision. We see the Gold in everything; clouds, waters, land, life. We appreciate that Gold is made of many elements, that it arises interdependently with other elements. We embrace every aspect of ourselves.
The dark matter, out of which your body is made, is breathed into life. The fire within helps us see the beauty and love. With open-mindedness and intelligence we enjoy reflection, intuition and contemplation. We become the higher self, as well as the deepest.
This is Alchemy, 2021.
ONLINE COURSE
- Join Dr Geoff Berry in a new online course, bringing together over 30 years of groundbreaking research and practice to present Alchemy: Tapping the Gold Within
- To apply, please send an email outlining your interest and aims to: naturecallinggeoff@gmail.com
- The course covers the seven classical levels of Alchemy, from the primal material/Lead (Saturn) to the ultimate vision/Gold (The Sun)
- Gods and Goddesses of the planets, spirits of the earth and other mythical creatures, guides, guardians & teachers will be in attendance
- The course includes all classes, practical exercises, guided meditations, input from your personal reflections, and feedback from Geoff at every level.
- Costs cover all materials and feedback from Geoff at each stage.
We are all Enmeshed – Choose Your Freedom
I have solar on my roof, just bought an electric car, and do much of my shopping at the local farmer’s market.
But my home is a new development, which was forest less than a decade ago. Amongst those who lost their homes for mine would have been sugar gliders and powerful owls.
I rely on transnational shipping for lots of other stuff. I could live without it, but i don’t have to. Yet.
No matter what we do, short of going completely off grid and supplying everything we need within a small bioregion, we are enmeshed in the system that is destroying the earth. Meanwhile, shamefully, it is doing so at an increasing rate.
All hope is lost, in terms of climate action that could have come in time to avert disaster. We act as if we are free of limit, while living on a planet of limited ‘resources’ – the fresh air and water, the trees and soil and animals that we used to treat as kin, before ruthless extractive cultures built systems based on what we could get out of them instead.
Photo courtesy NASA
We’ve lost the war to stop them. But we can’t let this stop us; from continuing to activate against ecocide, applying pressure to fossil fool companies, to big pharma and the pincers of the military industrial complex, no matter where we live … but the time has come to admit that we cannot win the victory for the earth that may have been possible in years and decades past.
That still leaves us with time, though. Time to deepen connections with the community of souls that is preparing itself for the darkness to come, by kindling the light of compassion in the heart , and by extending care beyond human kin, to the natural world that is suffering a death by a thousand cuts at our collective hand. We’re out of time to beat anthropogenic climate disaster, but right on time for a spiritual awakening.
One way to wake up to this possibility is to realise that we are not responsible, no matter how enmeshed we are, for being born into this oppressive regime. Again, this counts whether you live west or east, north or south of anywhere. We are all living at the behest of some form of oppression right now.
You can believe you chose your parents, if that helps you to live with a strong sense of being responsible for your life, its circumstances and outcomes. I don’t necessarily make that choice, loving rather the great mystery at the fount of all incarnation. Regardless, again; we are not responsible for the infamy we were born into, any more than a slave in ancient Egypt was responsible for being born into their misfortune.
What we are responsible for is the decisions we make, as consciously as we make them, to the best abilities we have to exercise free will or reflective conscious awareness of our lives and what they are worth.
Beyond this, there is another place we live, at the same time.
We are born out of the earth, as a body – no matter who your parents are, or where their people came from – we are all born of the earth and share its body.
Like the amoeba who began to float in the shallow waters, due to some magical combination of saline solution and solar radiance, the multicellular creatures who evolved out of these floating lifeforms, and the animals that began to crawl on land and make a life on soil and in terrestrial air, through our ancestors in Africa and beyond, we were born of earth matter. This planet is your womb, your nest and your life support system.
Celebrate life in the primate body. Especially, give thanks to the ancestors who got you here, from your recent human ones, all the way through the world of other animals, our kin, as well as the plants we co-evolved with. Give thanks to the elements of the earth, out of which your body arose. Send your blessings to the earth, send them upon the heavens, send them in every direction around you and to the skies and to the myriad creatures and facets of manifest life.
Find the deepest satisfaction you can, while you can, because you can.
You are enmeshed in earth systems anyway. Might as well choose the best you can, to serve and honour. And make your peace with your maker – or rather, the material universe your body emerged out of and the consciousness you are blessed with, no matter what you have done (or not done) to earn it.
Time is running short. Because of this, it is best to sink into presence as often and deeply as possible. In this way, both your life and your death will be more deeply steeped in conscious awareness. How can this be bad? It can only lead to good. Contemplate what you have been given, this unrepeatable opportunity to be you as only you can be.
While you feel gratitude for this life, ask more of those who represent our race. They’re doing a very poor job. It’s OK to admit this. We deserve to be disappointed.
Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash
But we cannot let that stop us from feeling free, either. Free to celebrate life, to seek community, to work together, to resist the oppressive ecocide we are witnessing; to evolve. That freedom we have, each and every day we choose it. Choose it every day, every time you think of it, with everyone you meet. And bless the earth, your home, the stars, your consciousness, this mystery and the opportunity for awakening, right here, right now.
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Alchemy – Finding Your Gold Within
Depth psychologist Carl Jung was fascinated by the medieval Alchemists, who apparently tried to turn lead to gold. It probably comes as no surprise that this was always a metaphor. It is as if they knew that by refining metals they were exposing themselves to the powers of the gods, seeking a higher truth from earthly existence. Lead revealed Saturn, the ruler of dark matter, the cold, dark ground of being; Tin expressed Jupiter’s breath of life; Iron the military will of Mars; Copper the irresistible beauty of Venus; Mercury the fluid messenger; Silver the intuitive Moon and Gold the Sun, the incorruptible soul and aim of Alchemy. We work through the aspects of the earthly life, just as we learn each personality trait of the Zodiac, or try to balance out the extrovert and introvert sides of ourselves, or undergo any other training towards a more centred, self-aware self.
The Alchemist was clearly a pagan, or nature lover. They found inspiration everywhere, with English alchemist Sir George Ripley (c. 1415–90) writing that “birds and fishes” bring us the gold, “it is in every place, in you, in me, in everything, in time and space.” In fact, I believe that the language of Alchemy was notoriously obscure because they knew they were dabbling in heresy and wanted to avoid persecution by the Christian church. While the Alchemists were careful to praise God in ‘His’ heavens, they sought an enlightened state from within the body of the earth, searching among the elements for the mysterious powers placed there by the planets, who of course to this point in history have been closely associated with the pagan gods and goddesses of early astrology. As such, I see Alchemy as another valid attempt by European natural philosophers to rebalance Christianity’s dissociative state when it comes to our human relationship with nature and the divine.
So, what might be the enlightened existence we could imagine as the goal of an alchemical process today? Jung was no New Age idealist; he knew that we have to work on our own Shadow, or dark side, if we are to attain a true light within. If we are to radiate with self-awareness, we can recall the ancient dictum to Know Thyself. But we know nowadays that this can’t be an unbalanced consciousness of merely mental power; it also includes emotional intelligence, a connection with gut instinct, and generally a more embodied notion of an enlightened or awakened person whose glow emanates from the whole body.
And, it must be more than merely a personal quest; we must aim for the awakening of all beings and the vitality of the entire ecosystem. This is another return to tradition, in order to become more fully awake in the current moment (one of my favourite themes). When someone from an indigenous tribe went on a vision quest, it wasn’t for personal power or selfish aims; it was for the people, the land, the collective, including human and more-than-human beings.
That means, nowadays, that we have to integrate our own shadow, as well as dealing with the archetypal poisons of greed, hatred and ignorance in humanity as a whole. We can’t do this for anyone else, but again, we can look to powerful stories that have stood the test of time to find out what they might suggest to us today.
Light is born from darkness, and ends up back there, just as we are born out of the matter of the universe and return to it upon death. When we get more comfortable with this, we can come to a place where we honour the ‘darkness’ of the earth and express our love for it, giving thanks for being the ancient, timeless birthplace out of which consciousness emerges. What we don’t know is not the enemy, it just needs a midwife. We must be gentle, loving, compassionate and generous towards what we think is the darkness, because it is also the ancient mystery, home of the Goddess, who has all too often been suppressed by a patriarchal power complex.
Jung pointed towards the Sacred Marriage, an ancient rite whereby we unite the polarities of the genders, the male and female within. To get beyond the personal and really stretch ourselves as ecological citizens, kin with the other animals and plants and places, not just arrogant users and abusers of the earth, we need to integrate the light and dark energies of life. This means getting comfortable with cycles of life and death, predator and prey, agricultural seasons of emergence, harvest and withdrawal. The call comes from deep within nature, either from within our inner souls or from within nature itself, outside of our bodies, from the rocks and trees, animals and elements.
Calling upon nature – within and without, earthly and celestial – for its mystical powers is closely related to animist practices, which we can embrace as our birthright and cultural history too. We can consort with animal spirits as totems and familiars, call up the spellbinding powers of the plants and planets, make compacts with the ancient gods and goddesses of the heavens and the local spirits of place, or genius loci, and become more complete in any time and place. With practice and guidance, we can realise our completely unique manifestation as a person, every moment and experience of which has never happened before and can never be repeated, utterly complete and impermanent at the same time, another flowering of the endless manifestation of humanity out of the soil of the earth. This is Alchemy today, the Heroic Journey, Grail Quest or Sacred Marriage of the 2020s. These are the rites of transformative initiation that shift us into another phase of life.
Join Dr Geoff Berry in your practice of transformation now.
Contact via the Nature Calling website or FB page for your personal rites, which will deepen your connection to the sacred powers of nature within and without, earthly and celestial.
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Retreat as Initiation
At a recent retreat i co-presented, yoga teacher Clare Lovelace from Soul Tribe mused that the word ‘retreat’ can give the wrong idea about what we do. She pointed out that some people think of it as a running away, a retreat into a weekend (or longer) that is disconnected from all the messy realities of everyday life (the cooking and cleaning, the kids to school, the traffic and the managers etc). For Clare, a retreat may well be time away from all of those things, but it is not running away from reality; it is facing it full on, just in a different way. To explain the difference as she sees it, Clare said she prefers the word ‘expansion’, as participants delve into themselves and their relationship with divine energy, expanding their vision of what is possible and then returning to their ongoing lives with a broader perspective, with more love and generosity at hand.
This reminds me of what the Navaho (or Dine, as they prefer to be known) people say about ceremony: that after we have performed our blessings for spirit, ‘beauty is returned’. That means giving thanks for the spirit of the place we live, for the plants and animals we share our beautiful planet with, and for the ultimate life force in the universe, which courses through all beings in time and space. I’ve always felt that way – that after blessings, ceremony or ritual of any kind, life looks more beautiful again, like it did when we were kids, before the business of life got so serious and we stopped seeing the glint of light off a gum leaf in a tree, the way water runs around barriers in the gutters, the simple magic of a breath or a smile.
So I went on a retreat of my own, after That Inner Glow, to spend three days fasting in the forest. Mostly alone, but also sometimes in the company of a few like minded souls, with whom I was fortunate enough to share insights, practices and reflections upon the path. Not eating is easy enough, once you are committed to it (although I did have to leave the camp area where one fellow visionary had to cook, due to his dietary requirements – there is no need for self-torture!). I was going to go the full fast and not drink any water either, but I took a doctor’s advice and sipped enough liquid to keep my kidneys functioning (500ml over three days). And rather than stay in a 3m diameter circle, as I did last time, I took the opportunity to walk mindfully around the wild forest of central Victoria, finding special trees and a sit spot, and engaging with the Country there.
We don’t get enough initiation in the modern world – times where we break out of our reality and allow a new one to break through, transforming us from one version of ourselves to another, maturing the soul and evolving consciousness. This is what a retreat is for me – initiation. Remembering myself not only as a family man, not only as a worker, or a mate to other blokes, or even as a member of modern society. But as a being, fortunate enough to be born into a primate body, capable of self-awareness, practising to perfect the art of being and becoming more human; stretching the mental body out to the stars as well as remaining connected to this physical body and loyal to the earth; keeping the emotional body open enough to embrace my loved ones and wish for them to be protected even though I know they have to make their own way too; evolving enough to open the spiritual body even while I keep playing my role in this modern society, which is too often desacralised to the point where we might even begin to believe in the materialistic world of consumerism if we’re not careful …
Retreat as Initiation. It’s a concept worthy of your time and consideration, I would offer.