Page 87 - ECOlogic Book

The Spiracle
(Winter, 1994)

There is a darkness of the mind that knows not its own time. This darkness
too can be better known by entering into it. So I invite you now to feel with
me the blessings of the darkness in our own time.

We – earthlings – in our own spatial mode of consciousness have walked
these circles since time immemorial. At first, we marked the circles of the
moon. These circles could be understood only by entering fully into the
darkness. As we did so we understood that the comings and goings of our
earth-moon were linked mysteriously with the coming and going of human
fertility. This seemed important, so we celebrated this lunar cycle –
probably the first cycle humans ever noticed. Archeological evidence
supports this, and it’s possible the moon cycles were marked for thousands
of years as the most important ones in the human experience.

Because it takes longer for the earth to complete its ellipse around the sun
than it does for the moon to orbit the earth, it took a while before we
noticed a larger cycle within which the lunar cycles were embedded – the
comings and goings of the seasons, the cycle of death and rebirth. These,
we noticed, were linked with the comings and goings of our sun. Though
earthlings continued to mark the moon cycles, new celebrations emerged
from our awareness of the solstices and equinoxes.

For many thousands of years, these celebrations were the most important
ones in most cultures, recognizing and affirming our dependence on these
natural cycles. So strong were they in the human psyche that newer
religious traditions were compelled to co-opt them, hoping competitively to
bury them in a profusion of new symbols and signs.

Today we are recovering these ancient rites, and that is as it should be. But
as we do, let us not fail to see and celebrate the newer larger cycle in which
even the solstices and equinoxes are embedded. This larger cycle is not a
time-circle as the lunar and solar cycles are, yet it has an arc; it curls back
on itself as a circle does, but it never goes back to where it started from. It
goes back toward the beginning, but then passes it by in an ever-widening
spiral, not unlike the spiral of the galaxy in which our sun is embedded.
Each turn takes Creation to a fuller level of development through an
irreversible sequence of transformations.

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