Blog o’ Gnosis

Do you remember Ronald Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt? The guy was a real piece of work, a fundamentalist Christian (oh, how we have become inured to religious extremists in public office since then!) who shocked the nation by his crass attitude toward the environment, and also to other people.

My favorite quote by him (and he is eminently quotable) comes from a source I can’t remember, but it was an interview somewhere, I believe after he left office. Someone asked him what his biggest fear was about environmentalists, and he said he feared that all of them were secretly Pagan.

This seems like an auspicious time to take up the thread of my previous post, On Fire. I was walking the dog Tuesday as the sun set, gradually lowering itself into a brilliant orange field which bathed the horizon. Going up a slight hill with the sun’s long rays warming my back, I noticed a pale eye of moon just rising over the eastern hills, climbing as I climbed.

At the top of the hill I had walked into that perfect configuration: directly between sun and moon, both hovering just over the horizon. It is a form of human eclipse, I think. Extending one arm to the source of fire, and the other to the cool mirror of the moon, I felt as though I were strung on a necklace between amber and pearl. It was a rarefied moment, and not a drawing-down of anything. Rather it was a drawing across, the human body as mediator between two of the great alchemical forces.

Another early morning walk, this time along a trail in the Laguna de Santa Rosa. The trail meanders through the remnants of one of California’s major freshwater wetlands, with wide paths strewn with fallen grasses and dust. In the morning it is all tamped down with a light coating of dew, so the dust stays low and the air fresh.

One long stretch follows a series of ponds and waterways, the edge of the water choked with willow and briar, poison oak and Himalayan blackberry. The berries have been ripening steadily for the last few weeks, and these bushes so close to the trail have all been picked clean by a constant stream of visitors. I love a luscious, ripe blackberry as much as anybody, but I don’t even try to find one in this stand.

My eye is drawn instead to the opposite side of the trail, where out of the jumbled grasses rises a tangle of wild rose canes. The blooms are long gone, pink as I recall, small and lightly fragrant. Even the leaves are turning and falling, and what remains are thin clusters of tiny red rose hips scattered among the briars.

One morning last week I drove out to Bodega Head for a hike. The day had dawned clear and still, another instance where sweltering heat inland gives rise to a spectacular day on this wild coast. Though it was not particularly early, the parking lot was empty save for two elderly beachcombers. I had the headlands to myself, and took the south trail toward the very tip of the land.

To walk along the head is to traverse a slice of Los Angeles that has migrated north over a long stretch of time, thanks to the San Andreas Fault. The cliffs are ribbon striped in long diagonals of rock that heave skyward as though the promontory itself were craning its neck to see what lies farther north.

Anyone involved in the creative arts, or with an active spiritual practice, probably has some strong positive associations with the symbol of fire. It is passion, inspiration, faith, hope, transformation, courage, resurrection, rebirth, purification, healing, creativity, the heart’s desire, the soul’s purpose. Being “on fire” is the highest compliment: we are tapped into the life force, joining our personal creativity to a greater force and doing some of our best work.

Finding one’s fire is an epic journey, and central to the human condition. From Prometheus to Maui, the creation stories which feature heroes, gods, and animals assisting humans in their quest for fire are legion. In mystery traditions, these tales are often read as initiatory journeys, and the mastery of various skill levels is spoken of as the ability to carry fire, or walk through the fire.