Totem Series: Skunk & Opossum

I'm writing about these in the same post because they have been coming up in my reflective reality in a kind of tag team fashion. They're not power animals I've ever given a lot of thought to, but lately they've been insinuating themselves into my life in rather dramatic fashion.

It started a couple of weeks ago when I was meditating. I found myself staring into the oddest little face; pale beige with dark eyes. I didn't even know what I was looking at, until I heard very clearly "opossum."


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So, I looked it up.

The opossum is a crafty animal that shows us how to play different roles. It knows when to act, when to hide, and when to show its true colors. Opossum is a master at recognizing truth as well as falsehood. When it wants attention it gets it. When it wants to be left alone it plays dead. It is a strategic animal that knows how to mold each situation according to its needs. It has the ability to decode hidden messages and read between the lines.

. . .

Opossums are nocturnal and raise their young in a pouch on their mid section. The young are born blind and rely on their feelings to guide them to their destination. They learn to sense their way around at an early age developing strong instincts by the time they reach adulthood. These instincts are complimented by their inherent ability to disguise themselves. The opossum is a multi-faceted actor that continually changes its appearance. It does not allow its emotions to consume its actions and partakes in the game of life with strategic maneuvers. Part of what the opossum teaches to those with this totem is emotional and mental stability.

The opossum is a craftsman in the art of appearances. When it appears in your life it is telling you to wake up and pay attention. Things are not what they seem to be. By observing your actions, reactions, thoughts and feelings, deeper insights emerge. This emergence leads to self-empowerment. Congratulations and welcome home!

The very next night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I found myself watching a little skunk walking along the side of a road. I had a sort of aerial view of the little creature as it toddled along.


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So, I looked it up.

The skunk is a very powerful totem with mystical and magical associations. It teaches how to give respect, expect respect and demand respect. This totem helps you recognize your own qualities and assert them.

Skunks are fearless but very peaceful. These are two wonderful qualities which you can learn from your skunk totem.

. . .

Individuals with a skunk totem must learn to balance the ability to draw and repel people. Skunks remind us that there is a time to be with people and a time for solitude.

The skunk's stripe is the outward sign of kundalini or life force. When you receive a skunk totem, your kundalini or life force activates and amplifies. You must learn to use this force effectively.

After this, I kept noticing both of these odd little critters, that are so rarely in my thoughts, coming up in conversation around me. I thought it a curious reflection. But, they both made themselves impossible to ignore the other evening when our house was, essentially, skunk bombed.

My husband I were sitting in the living room, watching the Republican Convention, when I noticed the smell wafting into the room. As luck would have it, it was an excessively warm, humid evening, and we had the house completely closed up and the air conditioning on. I knew it had to be fairly close, if we could smell it at all. So, I cracked the window to see what was up. Big mistake! The stench was unreal. And, it was starting to seep in from every crack and crevice all over the house. There was no room any floor, where you could not smell it.

We surmised that a fight must have broken out over cat food. We have a couple of very timid stray kittens we've been feeding. We've been winning them over slowly. So, we were concerned that one, or both of them, had gotten into a scrap with a skunk. My husband peeked out the front door at the bowl and came face to face with, wait for it... an opossum.

Husband: Not happy to find he's been feeding wild creatures in his attempt to nurture our little, waifish, feline friends. Me: Not happy at having a house full of skunk smell. It took a good two days to air it out completely.

I don't think it's any accident that these two archetypes have been appearing in tandem. There are some noticeable parallels between their respective medicines. Both have to do with striking a balance between the public and the private; assertion and withdrawal. And, they're both kind of cute, in their own ways. I just prefer to view them -- and smell them -- from a distance.

Totem Series: Spider

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I have this long list of power animals I've been intending to write about. I had no intention of starting with spider, but she has other ideas. Every time I've thought about starting this series, she has been dangling before my third eye. In this vision, she is large, about six inches across, brown, and slightly furry. She has made herself impossible to ignore.

Spider has not been a primary totem in my experience for some time, but for years she was ever-present. My journey with spider began innocently enough one morning as I was awakening. As the fog was clearing from my head and my eyes regained their waking focus, I saw something large, black and furry scurry across my pastel green duvet cover. I bolted from my bed and was on my feet in a fraction of a second. It normally takes me a good while to achieve perpendicularity. I am not a morning person.

The spider in question was really only about a half of inch across. It seemed much larger and more menacing when it was barreling across my blankets. But it was a muscular looking thing; black with orange striped legs.

I was working in a new age bookstore at the time. I'd been at work for several hours, that day, when a customer I knew well came in to browse. We chatted pleasantly, as I polished some of the silver jewelry, when I noticed an identical spider crawling across the top shelf of the jewelry display case. Black, furry, with orange stripes. I shrieked. My friend laughed and offered to remove the spider for me. He reached into the case and tried to grab it, making several vain attempts before finally cupping it in his hand and placing it outside in a potted plant. "Oh yeah. She's here for you," he said, with a knowing wink.

For years, she was everywhere -- In my home, in my path, in my dreams -- compelling me to ponder the meaning of her medicine. Now, I have long known that spider is the divine creatrix, in many world traditions. I consider spiders sacred and won't intentionally kill one unless I'm genuinely concerned that it's poisonous. Spiders are helpful. They kill other pests. I generally leave them be and sweep away the old cobwebs when they're done. But, for a particular part of my journey, she was so ubiquitous that I was forced to dig deeper.

One aspect of spider is creativity. She creates from her own body by spinning, sometimes, very elaborate structures from these secretions.

Spider Woman used the clay of the earth, red, yellow,
white, and black, to create people. To each she attached
a thread of her web which came from the doorway at
the top of her head. This thread was the gift of
creative wisdom. Three times she sent a great flood to
destroy those who had forgotten the gift of her thread.
Those who remembered floated to the new world and climbed
to safety through the Sipapu Pole the womb of Mother Earth."

~Navajo Creation Story~
. . .

For the two-legged beside whom Spider crawls, there will exist a depth of creativity that may manifest in any of a myriad of ways. Perhaps the talent is in writing prose that conveys depth of feeling and spirituality, or it may be the human counterpart is particularly skilled at creating beautiful and intricate jewelry that will often have an etheric quality to them, much like glimmering strands of a spider’s web.

Whatever channel this creativity flows through, it is a quality and gift that must be expressed and allowed the freedom to flow. If creativity is not acknowledged in the Spider individual, then a very necessary and integral part of their Life’s Purpose is being denied.

Such creativity is divinely inspired and a Gift that is given by the Great Mystery. The paradox in this for the Spider individual may be that they will deny an awareness of their own creativity for many years in deference to other areas of their lives which seem to call for attention. Often, the area that distracts the Spider soul most often is that of relationships as much like Grandmother Spider was forever aware of her Children, so the two-legged with this creature being as a Totem will tend to focus much of their attention on loved ones rather than nurturing and fulfilling their own needs. Yet if the Spider Soul does not give license to this creative spark, it will feel as though their life’s blood is slowly ebbing away or they are being "drained" of energy.

That last bit is interesting, isn't it. Being drained of energy seems to be my life condition, no matter how much creative work I undertake. But then, I've long suspected that I have not yet discovered my truest work, and in resisting it, on some unconscious level, I'm wearing myself out. Hmmm... something to ponder.



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According to the same entry, the Senneca spider myth speaks directly to communication.

Another area in which Spider has been recognized as being a Creative Force, is in communication of all forms. The Senneca People believe that Spider created the first alphabet of the Two-Leggeds so that we could leave a written history of our travel, lessons learned and progress made on this walk around the Wheel of Life. Following is a recounting of the story behind the creation of that alphabet.

“Spider wove the web that brought humans
the first picture of the alphabet.
The letters were part of the angles of her web.

Deer asked Spider what she was weaving
and why all the lines looked like symbols.
Spider replied, "Why Deer, it is time for Earth’s children
to learn to make records of their progress in their Earthwalk."

Deer answered Spider, "But they already have pictures
that show through symbols the stories of their experiences."

"Yes" Spider said, "But Earth’s children are growing more complex,
and their future generations will need to know more.
The ones to come won’t remember how
to read the petroglyphs."

***When Spider is present as a Primary Totem, she will bring with her a gift of communication. Most often, this skill is conveyed via the written word, rather than orally delivered, as Spider Souls can be quite shy, though they are capable of weaving beautiful words in the form of poetry or fiction (think of a Spider spinning its web), that can leave the reader spellbound and enraptured.

If this talent is not obviously present, it has likely been repressed during early childhood. If this is the case, concentrated effort will need to be taken in resurrecting this suppressed talent, as part of what any Spider Soul is here to do, is to convey profound insight and wisdom via the written word. Again, this can be paradoxical, as often times the one beside whom Spider walks will be rather oblivious as to the true power of his/her words and ability to elicit strong emotions.

There is much that I relate to in these tellings of spider as creatrix. Writing and journaling have been a large part of my expression, lo these many years. But, as is my wont, I felt compelled to dig still deeper into the myth of spider. Spider is connected to very fabric of the world, and that is more fascinating to me than the various acts of creative expression within it.



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I had an experience some years ago that brought the deeper meaning of spider mythos home to me. I was vacationing at the Jersey shore. It was a strange trip for many reasons. There was a full moon that week; a blue moon. Laying on the beach one night, staring at the stars, images kept flickering in and out. The material world felt eminently permeable. Staring at the sky I kept seeing something that looked like lightening, but wasn't. And for moments at a time, fragments of the night sky disappeared, revealing a kind of grid pattern.

I mentioned this experience in a session with Virginia Sandlin, the Cherokee Mystic, with whom I studied for a number of years. When I described the grid pattern, she said, "Well, that's what it looks like." She explained that, as in the telling of so many native cultures, spider spun the great web, the matrix upon which all of material reality came into form. "Now picture," she said, "a giant spider web as if you were encircled by it. What would it look like? Wouldn't it look like a grid?"

I could not help but notice, in my first viewing of "The Matrix," the numerous spider images associated with the machine world. Most vividly, when Morpheus shows Neo what the matrix is and how human beings are being grown as crops, machines that look like white, translucent spiders can be seen crawling in amongst the pods.

Depending on how one feels about the physical world, spider can be a benevolent or a more ambivalent construct. When I was deep in my ponderings about why spider was such a constant reflection, one friend suggested that it might be a warning about not becoming entangled in human dramas. There could be some truth in that. But the drama in which we are all entangled is manifest creation itself; maya. Or, what Morpheus calls, "the world that has been pulled over your eyes."

When we know that maya is the power that blinds us, binds us and deludes us, we become aware of the extent of its influence and its role in our lives. Out of this awareness comes a senseof caution and discriminating, which ultimately leads to our salvation. But till we reach that stage, we remain in the grip of maya, like fish, caught helplessly in a net. Saivism recognizes maya as one of the pasas (bonds) or malas (impurities). It is responsible for our animal (pasu) existence or beingness and becomingness. It causes in us ignorance and egoism and binds us to the objects we desire and seek. It makes us believe that the objective world in which we live and experience alone is true. It draws us outwardly and binds us to the things, we love or hate or we want to possess or get rid of. It is responsible for our experience of time and space which otherwise do not exist. It conceals our true nature and makes us believe that we are mere physical and mental beings. Through its powerful pull, it draws us forcefully into the objective reality of the world in which we live and binds us to things and events through our thoughts and desires. Unlike the western religion, in Hinduism God is not separate from His creation. His creation is an extension of Him and an aspect of Him. This world comes into existence, when God expands Himself outwardly, like a web woven by a spider. In His subjective and absolute state, His creation is unreal and illusory, but in our objective and sensory experience and real and tangible. It is a projection or reflection of Him, like the objects in the mirror and the mirror itself, different from Him somewhat, but also not so different, dependent but virtually distinct. He uses the concealing power of His own maya to draw Himself into Prakriti and conceal Himself in it as a limited and diluted being.

Along those lines, I happened upon this story of an ancient Hindu temple that became the battleground for a spider and an elephant.

There was once a vast forest that surrounded the interior lands around the Kaveri river in Trichy district. It was a forest rich with Jambu trees under one of which was installed a Shiva Linga. Back in the serene world that surrounded this Linga lived an elephant that used to come and worship the Lord every day. The elephant was an ardent devotee of the Lord.

At the same time there was yet another unassuming devotee who used to worship the Lord with as much devotion. A spider used to live around the shrine and tie a web above it so that the leaves from the Jambu tree would not fall on the Lord himself. But there was a problem for every time the spider made his web to protect the Lord, the elephant would destroy it thinking it was absolute sacrilege. This resulted in a mounting fight between the spider and the elephant, a massive clash of egos.

Finally the spider decided one day that it would not take this any more. The next day when the elephant came to worship the Lord he as usual decided to destroy the web the spider had spun over the Linga. This time the spider got smarter and entered into the elephant’s trunk and bit him. The following duel killed both the elephant and the spider. This is when Lord Shiva appeared before both of them, and said that they both had pleased him well with their devotion.

The spider in his next birth was born as King Kochchengan who built the current temple at Thiruvanaikkaval, in the island city of Srirangam to worship Lord Shiva. Interestingly, he built the sanctum sanctorum in such a way that no elephant would be able to enter the Gharbha Griha. Hence this is the only temple where the Garbha Griha is built low, has a very small vestibule (Antarala) and an even smaller chamber within which the Lingam resides. The entrance is extremely small such that no elephant can even find its way in. The only way to view the Lord is through a Jali window placed in front of Nandi, through which the Lord can be seen. It is considered very auspicious to be able to view the Lord through the horns of Nandi Bull through the Jali window.

So, it would seem, that spider both expresses and conceals "god." He, or she, depending on the myth, is associated with the creation of the world, and with maintaining the illusion that keeps us feeling separate.

Indeed, in some tellings, spider is something of trickster. Anansi, a key figure in West African folklore, is such a character.

Anansi stories are known as Anansesem to the Ashanti, Anansi-Tori in Suriname and Kuent'i Nanzi in Curacao.

In some beliefs, Anansi is responsible for creating the sun, the stars and the moon, as well as teaching mankind the techniques of agriculture. Another story tells of how Anansi tried to hoard all of the world's wisdom in a calabash. In the end he realizes the futility of trying to keep all the wisdom to himself, and releases it.

Most cultures which feature Anansi in folktales also tell the story concerning Anansi becoming the King of All Stories, not just his own. In the original Ashanti version of this story, Anansi approaches Nyame, the Sky God, with the request that he be named King of All Stories. Nyame then tells Anansi that if he can catch The Jaguar With Teeth Like Daggers, The Hornets Who Sting Like Fire, and The Fairy Whom Men Never See, he will be King of Stories. Anansi agrees, despite Nyame's doubt that he can do it. Anansi then tricks the jaguar, who intends to eat him, into playing a game that allows Anansi to tie him up. He tricks the hornets by pretending that it is raining, and telling them to hide in a calabash. He tricks the fairy with the gum/tar baby trick addressed below. He then takes them to Nyame and becomes King of All Stories. Other versions, notably Caribbean variations, of this story involve Anansi getting Snake for Lion/Tiger.

So, I am left with deep ambivalence about spider. She brings both wisdom and trickery, creation and illusion. And sometimes, she bites.

Totem Series: Introduction

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I'm going to start posting profiles of different power animals, or totems, in no particular order. This will not be a complete encyclopedia, but a kind of ad hoc catalog of power animals as they come up in my reflective reality, or otherwise enter my consciousness. I've been having some rather unusual experiences with the spirit animal world, of late. This is something that happens periodically. In all honesty, it happens constantly. It's just that sometimes it compels my attention more than at other times. There are a couple of ways that this happens. One is that animals appear in my reflective reality, or what we call the physical world, in a repetitive or dramatic manner. Other times they appear in meditation or dreams. When an animal impresses upon me in this way, I do exactly what I tell my clients to do, in similar circumstances. I google the name of the animal plus totem. This brings up a range of definitions of their medicine.

What I'd like to do with this series is collate some of the definitions from around the web and other sources. These entries will be subject to edit and additional information as the need arises. And, as ever, I invite discussion and input.

Battlestar Galactica's Special Destiny

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I recently added the "Battlestar Galactica" series on DVD to the bookstore. I think this merits a little explanation. Why would I place a science fiction series about a multi-generational battle with mechanoids in my little new age book shop? Well, for starters, it's one of the best written, directed, and acted, series in television history -- easily on par with that other transcendent bit of programming "The Sopranos." More to the point, some of the themes lend themselves to a range of philosophical and metaphysical discussions.

Much has been written about the political themes in the series. Less so about the religious, spiritual, and mythical themes.

Some of the spiritual themes owe to the source material; the original series which has been fairly described as "Star Wars meets Wagon Train." There are not many similarities to the painfully campy show... well, except for the basic storyline, characters, and a curious homage to mythology; largely, but not entirely, Greek.

The name of the 12 colonies, collectively, is Kobol, "an anagram of Kolob, which, according to the Mormon Book of Abraham, is the star nearest to where God dwells." This owes to the Mormon background of the creator of the original series Glen Larson. The names of the colonies themselves are renderings of the 12 zodiac signs: Caprica, Aquaria, Scorpia, etc. The character names are like a listing from a world mythology class syllabus: Adama (Adam), Apollo, Athena, etc.

From the departure point that was the original show, the new series has moved in some surprising directions and impressed viewers and critics alike with its depth. This is as much the case with the mythological themes as other elements. The central conflict of the show is between the human survivors and their Cylon attackers. But there is also a religious conflict between these two civilizations; the polytheistic beliefs of the humans and the monotheism of the Cylons. But humans and Cylons alike are possessed of spiritual visions and intuitions regarding their shared destinies. These visions, rich in familiar archetypal resonances and shamanic devices, lend a particular gravity to the series.

In the first season, the accidental President of the Colonies Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell), who is taking an herbal compound called kamala extract as a cancer therapy, begins to have strange dreams and "hallucinations." At one point during a press conference she sees snakes writhing on the podium. She later learns that her "hallucination" of the snakes is a vision prophesied by the "Pythia." The name Pythia is, of course, that taken by the Oracles of Delphi in ancient Greece. There are many versions of the mythological underpinnings of the Oracle of Delphi. At least in latter iterations, it was the temple of the Apollo who, legend has it, slew Python (Pytho, Delphyne), the great dragon.

The Pythia was the priestess presiding over the Oracle of Delphi while it was the temple of Apollo, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Pythia was widely credited with giving prophecies inspired by Apollo, giving her a prominence unusual for a woman in male-dominated ancient Greece, but given the probability that she was first an oracle for the goddess, Gaia, who was the Great Goddess, Earth, the presence of priestesses at the oracle of the goddess would have been typical in archaic times. The name of Themis is often used to identify the Pythia. In earlier myths, Themis built the Oracle at Delphi and was herself oracular. According to another legend, Themis received the Oracle at Delphi from Gaia and later gave it to Phoebe.

Gaia was also a great dragon, akin to the Sumerian Tiamat. (For more information on the correlation between creation myths, goddesses, and reptiles, scroll down to here.)

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But the allusion to the Pythia myth is not an idle one. According to legend the Oracle of Delphi exposed herself to an hallucinogen. Seated on a tripod she breathed a vapor that was said to emanate, through a crevice in the earth, from the rotting corpse of Python. It was more likely ethylene gas. In Laura Roslin's case it is kamala extract. But the use of hallucinogens in spiritual practice is an ancient one. According to Graham Hancock's Supernatural, it may date back to the stone age, as evidenced by shamanic themes in paleolithic cave art. So called "hallucinations" are a method of "piercing the veil" and revealing the hidden, but very real, world.

But in "Battlestar Galactica," the Cylons are also capable of shamanic experiences. We discover this most poignantly when one of the Number Threes (Lucy Lawless) undertakes repeated death/rebirth experiences to learn what lies between the worlds.

In the season that just ended, we learn more about the visions of Kara Thrace, call-sign Starbuck (Katie Sackhoff). Thrace, by the way, is an ancient country, now absorbed in part by Greece, that was between the Black Sea to the Aegian. We learned a while ago that Starbuck had a "special destiny," of some kind, known to the Cylons. In more recent episodes we discover that she has been painting a symbol over and over for years that very much resembles what they refer to as the "Eye of Jupiter."




See here for some background on the geometry and symbolism of eyes and why they speak to something seminal in our consciousness. This particular image of spheres within spheres is one that has entranced me for years. I thought seriously at one time about doing a giant canvas of that image. I never got around to it, and frankly, I'm not much of a painter. But the following image looks very similar to what I saw in my head for a period of years. Stare at it for a while. It's hypnotic.

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There is much to say on this fantastic show, but not much more that I can relate that won't divulge its intricate plotting. I do not mean this to be a spoiler review. To my sorrow, the newest season just wrapped and there will be no new episodes until 2008. Can't wait.

Sick As Our Secrets

One does not become enlightened
by imagining figures of light,
but by making the darkness conscious.
The latter procedure, however is disagreeable,
and therefore not popular.
-- Carl Jung

It took me a while to get around to seeing "The Secret." Once I learned what the secret actually was, I felt no great urgency. But when I saw how it had been savaged on Salon.com, I resolved to see how bad it was for myself. Pretty bad, really.

This is not to say that it has no value. A number of the tools recommended by its co-creators are effective, at least up to a point. Far be it from me to discourage the use of creative visualization, visualization boards, affirmative thought, or any other of what I would consider rituals. When appropriate I recommend these tools to my clients. But they are not a panacea, and that caveat is decidedly missing from the slickly produced movie; and presumably the book, which I did not, in all fairness, read.

I don't think I'm revealing any state secrets when I tell you, gentle reader, that the secret revealed in "The Secret" is the "law of attraction." The problem is that this is not so much a law as it is a bromide. What many of us learned during the "new age" revolution of the 80s and 90s was that all of our affirmations and creative visualization did not, in fact, work. At least not fully or "every time," which is what "The Secret" promises... well as long we don't think "bad" thoughts and undo all the promise of our "good" thoughts. According to the brain trust that brings you "The Secret" our "negative" thoughts bring unpleasant experiences, and our "positive" thoughts bring pleasant ones. I almost wish life were that simple.

The "law of attraction" is really a very dumbed down -- one might say truncated -- version of a much deeper truth. This is probably why it has resonance and "feels" true enough to inspire a cottage industry. It has what Stephen Colbert calls "truthiness."

Underlying this attractive idea is what mystics have been teaching for millennia. It is that all things reflect all other things. That it cannot be otherwise because we are, in fact, one with everything around us. This means that the people you meet are not "like" you ("like attracts like"). They are you.

Where the "law of attraction," as presented in "The Secret," teaches us that if we are attracting unpleasant experiences, we need to shift our thoughts away from the negative and make ourselves happy, mystical thought teaches what Virginia Sandlin terms "sourceful awareness." Mystical thinkers honor that anything that comes into our reflective experience is mirroring something that exists inside of us, all be it, to a different degree. So our recognition of what we find unpleasant in our reflective environment is an opportunity to complete and heal that aspect in ourselves, thereby facilitating healing for the world that is our reflection.

So this mystical awareness comes with a greater sense of responsibility than thinking happy thoughts in order to get a new car.

I entitled this review "Sick As Our Secrets" not simply as a play on words, but because that axiom speaks to one of the deeper problems inherent in the philosophy advanced in the "The Secret." That phrase, popular in Twelve Step programs, is used to describe the dis-ease that arises because of the fraud, shame, and denial that are so much a part of the life of addicts and their families. As anyone who has undertaken a healing process on that level learns, the secrets that do the most damage are the ones we keep from ourselves. Try as a I might, I can't see the difference between the practices advocated in "The Secret" and plain, old-fashioned denial. To advocate that people simply stop feeling their "bad feelings" is not just glib. It's irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

I nearly fell out my chair when I heard "The Secret's" Bob Proctor advise that when you're feeling bad you should simply put on some music, because it would change your mood, and to "block out everything but that [happy] thought." Try that if you're clinically depressed. Just try it. Or if you are recovering from childhood sexual abuse. Or if you are one of our returning veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Even the joyous sounds of Steve Martin's banjo won't make you happy, and to suggest that it's that simple is insulting. And if you could block out all that pain, it would be anything but healthy.

In her appearance on "Oprah," Lisa Nichols explained how she addresses people who want to talk about their personal history or "story." Her response is "I don't want to know it, because you've used it to keep yourself where you are." So word to the wise, if you want someone to help you heal and come complete with your painful history, Lisa Nichols is probably not the appropriate facilitator for you.

The implicit hostility of this particular assumption is one I'm all too familiar with in my own field. That is to say, the idea that people are holding on to past trauma because they are "unwilling" to release it. I have even heard colleagues say of their clients, "Well they don't really want to get better." If they're showing up for help, they want help. It just may not be the kind of help that healer is willing or able to provide. And when a healer runs into the limits of his or her own paradigm, it is easier to blame the client than to question the belief system. When a client pushes your buttons, it's easier to dismiss the client than to determine why you have sourced them into your practice.

The glib, binary approach re-popularized in "The Secret" has real world consequences. I was recently emailed an article by Ross Bishop that addresses the impact on people suffering from mental or physical illness. He writes:

I received an email recently from a woman who had suffered through bi-lateral breast removal. She wrote:

Do you have any insight on why I developed this disease? It's been very difficult for me to handle what they teach in "The Secret" and all the Unity Church beliefs and that we create illness through negative thinking because I worked so hard to heal my life and have lived a life of joy for the past two years.

For several months I have been receiving calls and emails from people who are distraught over the guilt-producing messages contained in the video "The Secret." These people have been told that:

. . . you create in reality, in one way or another whatever you focus your attention on. Your life is going to be an outcome of where you predominantly place your attention.

This is a resurrection of the discredited "Law of Attraction" foisted by new age teachers, MLM organizers and get-rich-quick real estate infomercials. The idea is a simple one: what you place your attention on will manifest in reality.

Like Mr. Bishop I have been hearing from frustrated clients who aren't finding the tools to improve their lives in these ideas that are achieving a whole new level of popularity in the new age arena. And like Mr. Bishop, I see them beating themselves up for not being able to accomplish what they've been promised is so simple.

Experiences like these with the fall-out from "The Secret" make me tend to agree with Peter Birkenhead of Salon, who characterizes the slickly repackaged philosophy and Oprah's endorsement of it as venal.

Why "venality"? Because, with survivors of Auschwitz still alive, Oprah writes this about "The Secret" on her Web site, "the energy you put into the world -- both good and bad -- is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day." "Venality," because Oprah, in the age of AIDS, is advertising a book that says, "You cannot 'catch' anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought." "Venality," because Oprah, from a studio within walking distance of Chicago's notorious Cabrini Green Projects, pitches a book that says, "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts."

Worse than "The Secret's" blame-the-victim idiocy is its baldfaced bullshitting. The titular "secret" of the book is something the authors call the Law of Attraction. They maintain that the universe is governed by the principle that "like attracts like" and that our thoughts are like magnets: Positive thoughts attract positive events and negative thoughts attract negative events. Of course, magnets do exactly the opposite -- positively charged magnets attract negatively charged particles -- and the rest of "The Secret" has a similar relationship to the truth. Here it is on biblical history: "Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus were not only prosperity teachers, but also millionaires themselves, with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of." And worse than the idiocy and the bullshitting is its anti-intellectualism, because that's at the root of the other two. Here's "The Secret" on reading and, um, electricity: "When I discovered 'The Secret' I made a decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good," and, "How does it work? Nobody knows. Just like nobody knows how electricity works. I don't, do you?" And worst of all is the craven consumerist worldview at the heart of "The Secret," because it's why the book exists: "[The Secret] is like having the Universe as your catalogue. You flip through it and say, 'I'd like to have this experience and I'd like to have that product and I'd like to have a person like that.' It is you placing your order with the Universe. It's really that easy." That's from Dr. Joe Vitale, former Amway executive and contributor to "The Secret," on Oprah.com.

So scientific it is not -- nobody knows how electricity works, indeed -- but the notion I find most disturbing is that we should disconnect from the realities of the world because they don't feel good. I've even heard people go so far as to assert that by tuning out horrific events we can actually help to heal the world; accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative in our minds will reflect itself in a similar healing for the planet, the theory goes. What to say? You know, if reading newspapers is too upsetting for a person and causes discomfort, there's nothing wrong with putting them aside, to create an emotionally safe space for oneself. One would hope that within that context they would undertake the healing necessary to address the world around them again. But to confuse that elective denial for actual healing or some type of spiritual evolution is vanity. I'd love to wish the war in Iraq right into the cornfield by just not thinking about it, but it doesn't work like that. Now when we reach the point that we can look at the news and not get triggered, or thrown into anger or fear... that's an accomplishment. (Full disclosure: I haven't reached that point.)

There's a site I turn to periodically called Awaken in the Dream. The site author Paul Levy writes a great deal about spiritually conscious activism. In a recent piece, "Triggered by Evil" he takes a tack that stands in stark contrast to the idea of ignoring the news because it makes us uncomfortable. Writes Levy:

Due to the horrific events playing out on the world stage, I find myself unable to avoid the subject of “evil.” Some of my readers have objected to my use of the term “evil,” because it “triggers” something in them which makes them feel uncomfortable, and sometimes even makes them stop reading. Their reaction has made me wonder whether I should use a different word so as not to trigger them, or is activating people the whole point of my writing? When I contemplate this question, however, I am left with the feeling that there is no other word that more accurately describes what I am pointing at than “evil.” I find myself wondering, is there something being revealed to us when, for example, people are triggered by the mere mention of the word “evil?”

He goes on to explain how ignoring evil increases, rather than decreases, its power over us.

Evil animates itself, psychologically speaking, through humanity’s unconsciousness. Evil’s power is only operative in the absence of consciousness. Evil, through our psychological blind spots, plays with our perceptions so as to hide itself. In order to not be destroyed by evil we have to understand the nature of the beast we are dealing with. Like that great maxim of medicine says, “Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand.” We have to bring evil to the level of conscious awareness. To quote Jung, “…how can evil be integrated? There is only one possibility: to assimilate it, that is to say, raise it to the level of consciousness.”

Evil cannot stand to be seen, for when it is truly seen, it is not unconscious anymore, and its seeming power over us gets taken away. Just like a vampire can’t stand the light of consciousness, once we see evil, we take away its autonomy - it can no longer act itself out through us unconsciously. The energy locked up in evil then becomes available to serve what is best for the whole, which is to say it becomes transformed so as to feed and nourish life, instead of creating death.

I offer up these alternative perspectives, because I think they form a necessary counterpoint to the "tyranny of a positive attitude" advanced in "The Secret."

One of the subtler story arcs of the "The Secret" is that its co-creators appear to have gone through a period of struggle, trial, or some other journey through the shadow world. Rhonda Byrne describes her trauma from the death of her father and career crisis. Joe Vitale was homeless. Michael Beckwith was a drug dealer who had a classically shamanic "death/transformation" dream. What he described on "Oprah" could be defined as a "peak" or "mystical" experience. But it came after a long period of wallowing in muck.

The authors gloss over these experiences, using them more as cautionary tales -- things they went through before they knew the secret -- than exploring how crucial these periods surely were to their later accomplishments. But I guess if "The Secret" promised health, wealth, and relationships beyond your wildest dreams, by instructing, "First, go through a period of personal hell," it wouldn't sell very well. The assumption is, I guess, that people are picking up the book or movie because they are as ready as the authors were to come complete with their shadow journeys. But just because you are suffering and want relief from that suffering does not mean that you are done with suffering. It does not mean that you are remotely ready to just release everything that causes you pain. "The Secret" promises that you can come complete with that pain by thinking really hard. If only that were true.

Your "thoughts" are not the sum of your consciousness. You are so much bigger than your thoughts. The universe does not serve your thoughts. It cannot, because the universe does not exist outside of you. You are the universe. All of it. The good, the bad, the ugly. Our challenge as people of consciousness, beings of power, lightworkers (pick your term) is not to wish the "negative" away. It is to own and reintegrate our shadow, because to do so is to heal -- bring into wholeness -- ourselves and all the world.

"The Secret," both book and movie are available in the bookstore.

Also recommended: Nora Ephron's "The Secret: A Testimonial" on The Huffington Post. Hilarious!!!

Virgin Mother Gives Birth To Five

ineffable, hidden, brilliant scion,
whose motion is whirring,
you scattered the dark mist
that lay before your eyes and,
flapping your wings,
you whirled about,
and through this world
you brought pure light.

-- Hymn to Phanes-Dionysus


The hotly anticipated Komodo Quints have made their debut. Reports of the virgin mother komodo started circulating this holiday season, in coordination with the birthday of another famous virgin-born child, Jesus. They didn't quite make it in time for Christmas, but they cracked their eggs on January 15th. Babies and mother Flora are reportedly doing fine at Chester Zoo in Great Britain.

Other reptile species reproduce asexually in a process known as parthenogenesis. But Flora's virginal conception, and that of another Komodo dragon earlier this year at the London Zoo, are the first time it has been documented in a Komodo dragon.

Flora joins a proud tradition of virgin mothers, long predating the Madonna. Virgin birth is a recurring theme in goddess traditions from around the world.

Crishna was born of a chaste virgin, called Devaki, who, on account of her purity, was selected to become the "mother of God."

Doane, Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions

A recurring theme in ancient religion revolves around the manner of the sun god's birth, as well as the chastity of his mother. In a number of instances the sun god is perceived as being born of the inviolable dawn, the virgin moon or earth, or the constellation of Virgo. The virgin status of the mothers of pre-Christian gods and godmen has been asserted for centuries by numerous scholars of mythology and ancient religion.

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And, curiously, the mother goddesses of ancient mythology have long been associated with serpents.

Serpents were commonly connected to the Mother Goddess; however, the reason for this connection is still quite unclear. It can be seen around the world in such examples as a Gorgon. Notice that the common dragon slayer myths often include a woman to be saved by the valiant knight.¹⁰

The theory today states that the societies with a more patriarchal worship came down through the Mediterranean area, where many of the Mother Goddess cults remained, and changed the culture through war and conquest. This can account for the many dragon slaying myths that have been recorded.¹¹ The most common format for the story is something like this: An evil dragon scourges the land, a valiant knight takes up the charge of killing the dragon, and he slays the dragon and wins a bride or saves the virgin sacrifice. While some interpretations may vary, the knight is generally a symbol of all that is good, while the dragon is a symbol of corruption. The knight, which represents the new conquering culture, should be revered by the people while the dragon, which represents the Mother Goddess of the past, should be hated. What is left of the symbolism of women? Well, she's either give over as a prize, or she is a virgin saved by the knight.¹²

Even before Christianity, the Mother Goddess was devalued. However, she was not tossed aside entirely. There was still a need for a mother figure in religion; her complete "overthrow" did not fully take place until the Christians took their toll upon the religions.¹³ In the end, the people were left with two major role models for women: the Virgin Mary and Eve.¹⁴

Connections between women and serpents and dragons are everywhere. Tiamat was slain by Marduk, a male god. Eve was tempted by a snake; the Gorgons had hair that was writhing with snakes. Apollo slew Python, a serpent of terror. The saints commonly slew dragons to save maidens. Countless connections can be made between dragons and the view of women.¹⁵

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Serpent lore lies at the heart of creation myths in ancient civilizations all over the world from the Naga Serpents of the Hindus to the snake mounds of the Americas to the great stone circles of Europe.

Now in another twist in the tale of the serpent I uncover one of the ancient truths about dragons, remembering that in myth and in ancient history, dragons and serpents are intertwined like the coils of a pit viper....

Avebury is a huge British Temple and stone monument erected around 2,000 BC in the shape of a serpent when seen from the sky. Once known as Abury which according to Deane [2] is evidently Abiri or Ab-ir (after the Abiri people or Cabiri who were serpent worshippers). Abir incidentally means the solar snake or fire snake.

Although some have argued whether Avebury should ever have been Abury or Aubury (serpent sun) the fact remains that even as far back as the 17th century there was a Mr Aubury who said himself that it should be pronounced and spelt Aubury (found in the legier-book of Malmesbury Abbey.)

Of course even as Ave Bury, the ‘Ave’ reverts back to the root of ‘Eve’ which we know means ‘female serpent.’ The pathway of Avebury passes through a large circular Temple of the sun emerging and then winding again and ending with an oddly, not quite circular head – directly in line with ‘Snakes Head Hill’ (Hackpen.) The central circle is symbolic of the sun, which is the male principle in the creative process and is symbolized elsewhere as a bull or lion. Once the serpent has passed through or around this sun circle it is recharged for new life.

And so we come full circle.

I DO Believe in Angels!

It turns out an overwhelming majority of Americans believe in those mysterious, celestial beings. Belief in angels is most solid among Christian evangelicals at 97%, which doesn't seem terribly surprising. But belief in some type of angelic presence is also shared across a wide cultural spectrum, even among people who have no religious affiliation.

Protestants, women, Southerners, Midwesterners and Republicans were the most likely to believe in angels, although strong majorities in other groups also shared that faith. Belief in angels declined slightly with advanced education, from 87 percent of those with high school education or less to 73 percent of those with college degrees. Overall, 81 percent believed in angels.

One of the points made by Graham Hancock in his new book Supernatural is that religious belief is universal. These beliefs are not rational and not empirically provable, but they are part of every human civilization. He disputes the idea that religion is simply a means of providing comfort in a confusing world, by pointing out that religion is often counterproductive to cultural harmony. Many religious beliefs inspire fear as well as awe. And religious conflicts can escalate to open warfare. Hancock explores the human capacity for interfacing with the supernatural world that the highly reasonable dismiss as hallucinations. Hancock delves deep into shamanic practices, including the use of the notorious "vine of souls" ayahuasca. He posits the notion that the world we experience when we pierce the veil is not a disordered hallucination, but a separate reality accessible through the same brain that perceives this one.

In other words people cling to religious and spiritual beliefs because they experience them as real and tangible, even if their glimpses of this hidden reality are usually ephemeral. Such is the experience of Edward Pelz:

Edward Pelz, 80, of Grabill, Ind., said he believes that angels are guiding him, even though it's impossible to explain to anyone else.

"Have I ever seen one? Nope. We depict an angel as a person that's white, has a robe on, has wings on back. I'm not sure that's the way they look. So for me, I think sometimes there's angels that aren't that way."

Pelz recounted a story about a man who showed up to change his tire when he had a flat in Ohio five years ago.

"I look at life — I say, well maybe I had an angel with me here today. It could have been just another man doing a good deed."....

Pelz felt another spirit when he walked into his backyard on a winter's day — that of the wife he lost over two years ago. He called her Mom.

"She loved bluebirds," he said. "In the wintertime, we don't have bluebirds. I was out in the back, thinking, 'Mom I'd like to see you,' and this little bluebird comes by.

"I don't know, maybe that's an angel. It was just something I wanted to see. Maybe I imagined it. Next thing you know, it flew off. What is an angel? Is an angel something that has a heartbeat like us? Or is it ...?"

The thought trailed off.

Editor's Note: Graham Hancock's Supernatural is available in the bookstore. I will probably be writing more about the process of discovery Hancock leads the reader through in this amazing book. Really, one of the best books I've ever read.

Eye of God

This photo, dubbed the "Eye of God," has been circling the web, and recently found its way into my inbox.

The photo is from the NASA website and depicts the Helix Nebula. According to Snopes the nebula is not that colorful in real life. The photo is actually a composit of 9 different photographs of the nebula. Here's another photo of the same nebula, also from the NASA website.

This is NASA's description of what is occurring:

One day our Sun may look like this. The Helix Nebula is the closest example of a planetary nebula created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gasses of the star expelled into space appear from our vantage point as if we are looking down a helix. The remnant central stellar core, destined to become a white dwarf star, glows in light so energetic it causes the previously expelled gas to fluoresce. The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation of NGC 7293, lies 450 light-years away towards the constellation of Aquarius and spans 1.5 light-years. The above image was taken with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) located atop a dormant volcano in Hawaii, USA. A close-up of the inner edge of the Helix Nebula shows unusual gas knots of unknown origin.

So the real explanation may not be as "feel-good" as the urban legend floating around the web. Sorry, no matter what you've read, sending the photo to seven people on your email list won't bring you luck. But if you're willing to contemplate the wonder of a planetary star in entropy, it's truly magnificent.

I was struck by this image for another reason. It is an example of replicated geometries. It is not accidental that certain cardinal shapes recur throughout our reflective reality. "Sacred geometry," which pertains to the architecture of matter, ascribes significance to certain forms. This is why we see them in so many sacred symbols. The shapes themselves demonstrate the geometric requirements of manifest form.

The eye shape is sacred to many cultures. The variously attributed "Eye of Ra" or "Eye of Horus" in ancient Egypt is one example.

Legends and images of eyes permeate both mythology and superstition and with all manner of magical attributions. The evil eye is common to the folklore which has been disseminated outward from Mediterranean cultures. I've known many Greek and Italian Americans who wore a single disembodied eye in jewelry and on key chains; protection from the evil eye.

Every US dollar bears the "Eye of Providence." In the orignal sketches for the Great Seal, it was a single disembodied eye floating over a truncated pyramid, surrounded by a "glory." In its final form it was encapsulated in a triangle, reminiscent of the Egyptian benben; an icon of manifestation.

The "eye," then, captures our imagination in a way that few forms do. The geometry of the eye, with its alternations of spherical and vesica pisces shapes, tells the story of manifest creation. In sacred geometry the sphere represents the unity from which all manifestation springs. The vesica pisces, or almond shape, occurs when spheres overlap sheres. It is the shape of cell division, when one becomes two. That duality and oppostion makes possible the wave form out of which all things generate. Robert Lawlor explains in his book Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and practice.

The idea of the unknowable Unity at the beginning has been the basis of many philosphies and mythological systems. While Shakhara, with the Buddhism of a certain period, posited the void as a fundamental assumption, the main stream of Hinduism has always rested on the notion of the One, the Divine, who divided himself within himself to form his own self-created opposite, the manifested universe. Within the divine self-regard, three qualities of himself became distininguished: Sat (immobile being), Chit (consciousness-force) and Ananda (bliss). The original unity, represented by a circle, is then restated in the concept of the Real-Idea, the thought of God, which the Hindus called the bindu or seed, what we call the geometrical point. The point, according to the Shiva Sutra Vimarshini Commentaries, forms the limit between the manifest and non-manifest, between the spatial and the non-spatial. The bindu corresponds to the 'seed-sound idea' of the Tantras. The Divine transforms himself into sound vibration (nada), and proliferates the universe, which is not different from himself, by giving form or verbal expression to this self-idea. Ramakrishna summarized the scripture by saying, 'the Universe is nothing but the Divine uttering his own name to himself.'

Thus the universe springs forth from the Word. This transcendent Word is only a vibration (a materialization) of the Divine thought which gives rise to the fractioning of unity which is creation. The Word (saabda in Sanskrit, the logos of the Christians and Gnostics), whose nature is pure vibration, represents the essential nature of all that exists. Concentric vibrational waves span outward from innumerable centres and their overlappings (interference patterns) form nodules of trapped energy which become the whirling, fiery bodies of the heavens. The Real-Idea, the Purusha, the inaudible and invisible point of the sound-idea remains fixed and immutable. Its names, however, can be investigated through geometry and number. This emitted sound, the naming of God's idea, is what the Pythagoreans would call the Music of the Spheres.

Seeing the Eye of God, then, is not a once in a lifetime opportunity, seen through a telescope. We see the Eye of God everytime we look into the eyes of another, or into our own eyes in a mirror. For "God is an infinite sphere whose circumference is everywhere and whose center is nowhere."