Last time, Moyra told the story of Kivanga. Now she provides the commentary….

Many African mythologies assume that the first beings were deformed versions of the human race, and had to undergo transformation with the help of some hero or heroine. In the case of Kivanga, it is significant that the human race comes into existence as a result of a being who was sundered and made whole again. Kivanga and his twin cannot be happy, cannot be whole, without each other. Nor can we exist without the union of the ‘yin’ and ‘yang’ (to borrow terms from the Chinese), the masculine and feminine, the positive and negative, the spiritual and the material parts of ourselves. The loneliness we feel when we are sundered, and the efforts we have to make in order to bring ourselves back into a state of wholeness, are prodigious. Kivanga has to use physical prowess, mental agility, magic, courage and persistence. He must not give in to his own doubts and the persuasion of others. He must not despair. He must remember the religious teaching of his people. The image made from the white river clay of his home village combines the power of the natural forces from the earth with the power of the supernatural forces symbolically protection from a world we are not yet ready to confront, as to keep us out of a world that is not yet prepared to accept us.

Note the continuous ritual chant of his companions, the song that is also a magical incantation. According to Yves Bonnefoy many African people (for example, in the Mande region) believe that the universe came out of a word from the creator God. ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ said St John in the Bible. ‘In the beginning was the Big Bang’, say the modern astronomers. Both stories tell us that vibrations like that of sound have played, and still do play, an important transformatory role in the universe. The songs of Kivanga and his companions are crucial.

Before the Europeanization of Africa, carved and painted objects were not seen as art, but as vital functioning parts of a living ritual. Masks were used in traditional rituals to recall the mythic events of the early stages of existence, in order to understand and control better the events of the present. The priest or shaman takes on the persona of the ancient mythic being by covering himself with the symbols of the story he is re-creating. Note that this is re-creating, not enacting. This is not drama, but magic. The masks now hung in museums and galleries were not made to be so displayed, but to be used in magical ceremonies and, in many instances, they have become so impregnated with the feelings engendered at these ceremonies that they are not comfortable ornaments to have about the home.

Masks are used for the transformation of one form into another. Paradoxically, by putting on the mask of an ancient mythic being, the shaman was actually taking off the mask of his everyday persona and so becoming free to act, once more, in the supernatural realm of the ‘first days’. A man who is seen around the village as an ordinary family man becomes a frightening supernatural being when he dons the mask of his calling as witch doctor or medium. Conversely, Kivanga’s people in the story become like ordinary people of today by donning Mbenza’s masks. The implication is that what we consider to be our normal faces these days are actually masks behind which our true selves are hidden. No wonder we find it so difficult to recognise each other for what we are and to read each other’s minds! Serial killers still get away with their terrible murders for so long because, sitting beside them on the train or standing beside them in the street, we are fooled by their innocent looking ‘masks’. Increasingly, as the power of the television image grows, we may vote into power those politicians with the most attractive masks rather than those with the most worthy policies.

May we learn from the ancient stories enough wisdom to preserve us from such mistakes.

On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 1
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 2
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 3
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 4
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 5
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 6

Moyra has been exploring the universal meaning of mythical stories, the connection between the ancient stories and our present lives. She continues…

I will tell you a story now that is so rich in meaning and fascinated me so much I put it in my own book: Mythical Journeys, Legendary Quests.

Before people as we know them today existed, very different beings walked the earth. One of these, Kivanga, felt lost and lonely, for his twin sister had been given in marriage to one of the cannibalistic Nzondo who lived in the Underworld. He chose eight companions he could trust, and set off on the long and difficult journey to the Underworld. They climbed mountains and crossed rivers but always kept moving westwards – for it is in the west that the sun sinks and enters the Underworld.

All the time they ran, the companions sang.

At last they came to the great shimmering sheet of water that divides the one world from the other. There they paused – for to cross this water took more courage than any of them knew they possessed.

Kivanga stood upon the shore and raised his arms. This was not the ocean in which he and his sister had bathed as children. This was the water that was before the First Things. To step into this was to risk everything.

‘Let us call to your twin,’ one of his companions urged. ‘She may hear you and come to you.’ ‘If we step in, we may never step out,’ another said. ‘I can fight any warrior on dry land,’ a third spoke up, ‘but I cannot swim.’

‘There will be no swimming,’ Kivanga said, ‘for this is not the ocean we played in as children.’ He looked each one of his companions in the eye, and each one then knew that he would not give up the journey until he had been reunited with his twin. He stepped forward.

One by one they followed him, gripping their weapons, singing the song of warriors going into battle.

Kivanga felt nothing as his foot touched the water between the worlds. It was as though there was nothing there. He looked around himself and thought at first that nothing had changed. His companions were behind him, singing boldly but gazing around themselves in nervous bewilderment. They were among fields and forests and mountains as they had been before. It was all so familiar and yet – and yet there seemed to be a subtle difference, a strange, haunting ‘otherness’ about the place he could not have explained or described.

He straightened his shoulders and clutched his assegai more tightly. He beckoned to his companions to move forward. As they did so, they found themselves confronting a huge door set in walls so thick and high not even a gazelle could leap over them. It was made of the mighty trunks of hardwood trees, studded and hinged with bronze, and its surface was carved with a myriad leering faces. The faces were staring at Kivanga and his companions.

The warriors sang louder to cover their fear, as Kivanga examined the door to see how it could be opened. There was no handle. No catch. No lock. It was a door meant not to be opened. Several of the companions suggested they should retreat while the others looked fearfully over their shoulders, wondering how they could go back when the water they had stepped through was no longer there.

‘If we are to open this,’ Kivanga thought, ‘we will have to make magic.’ And out of a pouch at his side he took a small cult figure made from the white river clay of his home village. He held it up to the door. ‘Mbenza,’ he declared. ‘Master of the earth! Great being beyond all beings! Give me the strength to open this door – for my twin sister is unhappy and I feel her unhappiness.’

The image in his hand trembled, for the great god understood unhappiness. Had he not been lonely before he created the world? The companions, seeing the image shaking, took heart and sang louder than ever. It was no longer a battle song – but a song of power for the earth.

The earth moved, and the door swung open. Singing in triumph, the little band of warriors passed through.

Before them they saw a landscape that was dark, yet its features were somehow visible. It was frozen, yet it did not freeze them. They ran in step with the rhythm of their song and passed deep into the Land of Mystery until they came to the village of the Nzondo. They paused and looked down on it from a hill. They saw the creatures moving about; the women grinding corn; the men sharpening their assegai tips. The companions no longer sang, but at Kivanga’s command stayed silent, scarcely daring to breathe. He stared into the village, watching every movement. At last he saw his twin sitting by the ashes of a cooking fire, her shoulders bent, her eyes on the ground. He longed to rush in and sweep her up in his arms, but he knew the Nzondo were strong and vicious and might soon overpower his small band.

He thought deeply, his great head in his hands. Then he whispered to his companions. Very slowly, very quietly they began to sing again. At first they sang so softly that not even they could catch the sound, then gradually, gradually they increased the volume. The ground began to vibrate as though there were drums being beaten in caverns deep under the ground. One or two of the Nzondo paused what they were doing and looked up, but the sound was such that it made them feel sleepy. One by one they yawned and stretched and fell down where they were, fast asleep. Only Kivanga’s twin did not sleep. She recognised the song of her people and she lifted her head to listen. She wept with joy when she saw her brother coming towards her – his huge, ungainly figure was the most beautiful sight she had seen in a long, long time.

The companions stayed on the outskirts of the village, still singing while Kivanga and his sister were reunited.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘We must go. The song cannot hold them forever.’ He took her hand. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘There are things we must take with us.’ And she led them to the chief’s hut. Inside the dim exterior he could see that the walls were hung with masks.

‘See,’ she said. ‘My husband’s people stole these from Mbenza, the Master of the Earth. We must take them back. With these masks the people will become who they were meant to be.’ Kivanga helped her load the masks into a cloth, which she hung on her back.

They heard a sound outside the hut. The Nzondos were beginning to wake. ‘Hurry!’ he whispered. And they ran. Seeing that their enemies were waking, the companions gripped their assegais and changed their song to one of battle, but as soon as Kivanga and his twin were with them they turned and ran back the way they had come. The Nzondo pursued, yelling imprecations and throwing their spears.

The door was still open and they rushed through, Kivanga helping his sister who was staggering under the weight of the masks. Then he turned and put his great weight against the door. At last, with a groan, it moved and creaked shut, closing them off safely from their angry pursuers.

Kivanga lifted the burden from his sister now that he no longer had to be prepared to fight and, hand in hand, they stepped into the water that was between the worlds and emerged in their own land. There, Mbenza rewarded them for the return of the masks and founded the first village of humans as we know them today.

But humans are never safe from the revenge of the Nzondo and the masks must be used in sacred rites continually, to hold the dark forces at bay. Underworld spirits lurk under pebbles, seeking to blind and paralyse their enemies, to break bones and deform limbs. The priests of Mbenza with their allies, the water spirits, have to work hard to counteract their malice and keep the human form intact.

Next time – Commentary and conclusion…

On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 1
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 2
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 3
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 4
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 5
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 6

The White Bird

At a still pool in the Kalahari
A hunter stoops to drink.
The mirror surface
Flashes with white light
As wings spread to rise.
He looks up
But already the bird
Has flown.
Nothing in sight
But a measureless sky.
The red dust of the earth,
Thorn bushes
And the stark skeletons of rock.

From that day on
He travelled across the parched land
Seeking the bird.
“Wings so wide,” he would say,
Stretching his arms.
“White as the full moon.”
“Ah yes,” was the reply.
“We saw it.  It went that way.”

He travelled
And searched
His whole life long.
Never caught a glimpse again,
But always heard tales told.

At last in old age,
Having left the flat plains of his youth
He saw a mountain,
White on its summit.
His bones ached with age
But he climbed,
Rested,
And climbed again.

At the top he looked up
And there he saw the bird
In magnificent splendour
Hovering in an infinity of blue.
He reached up, and,
With his dying breath,
Caught one shining feather in his hand.

Across the world,
At another time,
My son, also on a quest,
Caught such a feather.

He was standing in the Pantheon of Rome
Gazing up at the sky
Seen through a hole
At the apex of the great stone dome.
A small white feather
Spiralled slowly down a shaft of sunlight.

In this numinous place,
Once a temple to all the gods,
Now dedicated to the One,
He accepted it as a gift
From the Holy Spirit…
A shining symbol
Of a glory that seems out of reach,
But given freely, by grace,
Feather by feather,
When we are ready.

More from this series soon…

On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 1
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 2
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 3
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 4
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 5
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 6

In “On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 1″ and “On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 2″ Moyra has been talking about the universal meaning of some traditional African legends. This time she explores the meaning of the story of The Young Man, The Lion, and the Yellow-flowered Zwart-Storm Tree…

In this story a lion finds a young man sleeping by a water hole. He takes hold of him and lifts him up onto the branches of a yellow-flowered zwart-storm tree. There he wedges him in between the branches while he goes back to the waterhole to drink. The young man wakes and tries to move but finds that he is held fast. The lion returns and pushes his head more firmly between the braches. Noticing that there are tears running down the cheeks of his prey, the lion licks them away and then returns to the water hole for a drink, for he is very thirsty.

While he is drinking the young man manages to escape and ran away. He makes sure not to run directly to his home but disguises his spoor by running this way, then that. When he reaches his home he tells everyone what has happened to him, and the whole village works to disguise his scent by wrapping him around with hartebeest skins, for they know it is in the nature of the lion not to let its prey go.

The lion appears near the village. The people shoot at him again and again, but he will not die. They throw children at him, but he ignores them and will not eat. They throw women at him, but again he ignores them. Arrows and spears leave him unhurt. He keeps sniffing for the young man. The lion wants the young man, for it had licked his tears. It wants no one else but that young man.

The lion attacks the houses and knocks them down. The people plead with the young man’s mother to give him her son. At last she agrees, if the lion will die too. “Let the lion die and lie upon my son,” she says. So the people gave the young man to the lion, and the lion kills him. Now when the people shot at the lion, the lion says, “Now I am ready to die. For I have the young man that I put in the yellow-flowered zwart-storm tree, the young man whose tears I licked, the young man that I have all this time been seeking. Now I have hold of him; for I am his.” And so the lion dies and the people laid his body on the body of the young man.

What are we to make of this story? The young man is sleeping by the water hole. That is, he is in a state of non-awareness right beside a life-giving source of spiritual nourishment. The lion (his spiritual guide, his god, his destiny) sees him and puts him in the tree (the cosmic tree of life). He is off the ground (the mundane world) and is waiting for his entrance into the higher world – the world of the higher consciousness.

The lion delays, knowing that the young man cannot be rushed but must go through certain phases. The lion sees the first stirrings of awareness in the man. The young man’s first reaction to his awakening in the tree is despair, sorrow, fear. He weeps. The lion licks away his tears. He tries to comfort him and goes away again, giving him more time to come to terms with his situation. The man does not want the fearful agony of awakening to the higher self. He runs back to his old ways, cunning enough to do everything in his power to avoid pursuit. But he cannot escape his destiny. The lion will not take a substitute. It is that particular young man who is marked, and only he will the lion take.

In the lion’s final words we find the key to the whole story. The lion and the young man are one. The flight and the chase are within the one soul. Have we not all feared the awakening in the yellow-flowered zwart-storm tree, knowing that our lives will never be the same again, and there is no way out except complete death to the world?

Some years ago I wrote a poem about the fearsomeness of the spiritual call that has helped me to understand this story.

The Christ

He will not come
As you expect,
Swinging incense
And a Bible…
He will come
Like a tiger from a field of daisies…
Suddenly leaping
From the familiar
To the divine.

Incidentally, I’m not at all sure what a yellow-flowered zwart-storm tree looks like, or even whether it exists in Africa, but the name works very well symbolically in this story. The yellow flowers suggest the golden brilliance of light – the fertile flowering of spiritual experience. “Zwart” is the Dutch word for “black”, and “zwart-storm” conjures for me images of those fearsome black storms that terrified me when I was a child in Africa. Those storms cleared the air after days and weeks, sometimes months, of sultry brooding weather that made it hard to breathe and dried the veld so thoroughly that it appeared parched and dead, only to spring alive again as soon as the storm broke.

This tree is a combination of light and dark – of gentle flowers and fierce and driving storm. The tree is life.

More soon…

On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 1
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 2
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 3
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 4
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 5
On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 6

In the first of this series, “On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 1” Moyra concluded that all cultures have myths that speak to other cultures, because they address a universal need: to make sense of life and death. Now she continues…

Take Africa, for example. The African continent is huge and contains many different cultures. (There are 2000 languages and dialects in West Africa alone.) Similarities between them are more apparent when viewed from outside, since inside Africa the cultures appear very different to the inhabitants of each country or tribe. And these traditional cultures are largely oral. Africans, like the ancient Celts, did not have writing, so their stories were passed down by word of mouth for generations and only written down recently by outsiders – mostly Europeans. (Similarly the pagan Celtic stories were written down by medieval monks.) No doubt there is some distortion in this process of translating and recording the stories, but by and large those who did the recording were at least trying to be accurate.

We understand stories from cultures other than our own because we are not so very different. The Africans believe in invisible powers – but so do we. Of course, we give them different names. We talk of guardian angels and dead saints. They talk of spirits and ancestors. They talk of locusts destroying crops. We talk about genetic engineering and poisonous insecticides and weed killers. They talk of the cunning Hare or Spider twisting the truth. We talk of spin doctors, advertisers and politicians.

Whatever the terms of reference may be, myths and legends play a vital role and can stir strong emotions. We ignore or abuse them at our peril.

A long time ago a great medicine man of the Ashanti in Ghana gave the King a wooden stool covered in gold. He said he had brought it down from the sky in a black cloud amid thunder and dust. The King made four bells to hang on each side. He was told that the stool contained the soul of the Ashanti people and must never be sat upon. The Kings, the Queens and the chiefs donated hair and nails to be ground into a paste to be placed on the stool. Three times a year the King would pretend to sit on it. Golden chains and golden masks were added to it when the enemies were overthrown. It became a very sacred object and was carried in processions, protected by an umbrella.

In 1896 the British conquered the Ashanti and tried to sit on the golden stool believing that by doing so, they would stamp their authority on the people. Fighting broke out in protest and many lives were lost. The stool was hidden, and many years later, when the British had realised their mistake, it was found and returned to the palace at Kumasi. In 1922 the Queen Mothers of the Ashanti sent a silver stool to Princess Mary as a wedding present saying: “their love was bound to the stool with silver fetters, just as we are accustomed to bind our own spirits into the base of our stools”.

The simplest and homeliest of African stories are usually about animals representing some human characteristic. These I call fables or folktales. Most common are the Hare stories, illustrating the cunning by which the ordinary man defeats his much stronger rival or enemy. These stories were carried to America by the slaves and appear with the Hare transposed into Brer Rabbit. The part of the American fox is usually played by the hyena in Africa.

Here’s an example. The Hare and the Hyena went hunting. The Hare noticed the hyena kept all the best meat for himself. Eventually he disguised himself as a monster with red clay and feathers and exacted meat from the Hyena as payment for passing him safely and continuing on the road.

Another time the Hare owed a lot to the Elephant and Hippopotamus. He couldn’t pay and they were getting very angry. He told each of them that he had buried a vast treasure and gave each of them one end of a long rope. He told them if they just pulled on the rope the treasure would be drawn up to the surface, and went away laughing as the great heavy animals engaged in a tug of war.

And of course there are many stories from all over the continent about how Death came to the world. In one Zulu story God sent a message to mankind via the Chameleon that they would live for ever. The Chameleon set off slowly, stopping to eat on the way. Meanwhile God sent a Lizard with another message for mankind, that they would all eventually die. Lizard got there first, and when Chameleon arrived his message was invalid – the Word of God once received could not be challenged. The Mende of Sierra Leone tell a similar story involving a Dog and a Toad. Another tribe speak of the gift of being able to replace one’s skin, and thus live forever – a gift intercepted by a Snake on the road between God and Man. In Zambia there is a story that God gave mankind the choice of two bags. They chose the one that shone, but it contained death. God gave them a second chance, if they could refrain from eating for three days, but they failed.

We don’t like to think of Death as inexorable, inevitable. We want it to be contingent and avoidable. If Eve hadn’t eaten the apple, if Chameleon had hurried, if the right bag had been chosen, there might be no death. We were given a chance but someone blew it. Free will means that decisions have consequences.

Other stories are similar. Not only death, but all the various ills of the world come upon us because of our own fault. I think of these as the Pandora’s Box stories. So, for example, according to the Komo people of Sierra Leone, at first all was light. God gave the bat a basket full of darkness to carry to the moon. But the bat put down the basket and went to look for food. Some animals found it, opened it, and darkness escaped. So now the bat flies at night looking for the dark to put it back into the basket. But once we have done something bad it cannot be undone.

In another African story, a king falls in love with a star. A star princess comes to him and they are happily married, but she wants to go home to deliver her first child. The king sends her to the top of a mountain with warriors to guard her. The mist forms into the shape of a great lake and a boat comes across it to fetch them to the stars. They arrive at the palace of her father and there is no one to greet them. She leaves them in a chamber with three sealed jars. As time goes by their curiosity and hunger get the better of them. One by one they open the jars: out come mosquitoes, locusts, and flies. When they return to earth these pests go with them.

Perhaps the meaning we take from the story is that the king was reaching for his highest self. By grace he is given it, but his lower self lets him down – curiosity opens the jars and releases all manner of ills.

A Nigerian story described how a forest spirit called Musa once spoke to a man, a hunter looking for food for his family. In the great forest full of trees, the spirit singled out twelve types of tree and told the man that if he crushed some of the bark of these trees into powder and then mixed the powder with water, he would have a paste to spread on himself that would make him invisible to the animals of the forest. (People have always longed to be invisible – the hunter more than most, and the journalist with a camera no less than the killer with arrow or gun.)

The occurrence of the number twelve in this story comes as little surprise. Twelve has symbolic power in every culture. There are twelve signs of the zodiac and twelve months of the year, twelve hours of the day and night, twelve fruits of the cosmic tree, twelve members of the council of the Dalai Lama, twelve disciples of Christ, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve labours of Heracles, twelve knights of the round table, twelve gates and foundations of the holy city of the New Jerusalem, twelve in a modern jury – the list goes on and on. One tree alone would not confer invisibility; twelve types are needed. By the time the hunter has sought out the twelve types of tree he must know a lot about the forest. By the time he has gathered the bark and ground it and made the paste he has become so knowledgeable about nature and so in tune with its ways that he no longer stands out as an alien in the forest. In a sense he has become the forest.

More soon…

On Myths and Legends of Africa: Part 1

Moyra wrote this article a while ago…

We stand in a garden at dawn and are moved by a feeling we cannot put into words. If we cared to unravel the feeling we would find that we were being influenced by a great many things beside the actual physical nature of what we are experiencing. In the beginning… we hear somewhere deep inside us as we react to the beginning of a new day… and the story of the miracle of the Creation is ours to draw upon… the only true Miracle, the bringing out of Nothing of all that Is. We take a deep breath and we remember subliminally the breath of God giving Adam life. We are reborn… renewed. And then a tree rustles in the breeze and subconsciously we remember the Tree of Life… the Tree of Knowledge… and the freedom we have to obey or disobey. Some small creature rustles in the grass and we shiver, remembering the serpent in Eden… the suffering inseparable from the knowledge of good and evil. A bird wings past… it is black and we remember Noah’s raven; another… and we hear in the beating of its wings the messenger dove. Someone calls and we are expected to join other people, have breakfast, cope with rush-hour, work, city, life. Our name is “called” and we are expected. We will need the strength that we have unconsciously received from the myth.

In Vao, in the New Hebrides, even today, it is believed that the spirit of a dying man arrives before the entrance to a sea-cave where the fearful “Guardian Ghost” has traced an elaborate pattern in the sand, a path for him to follow. “At his approach she obliterates half the design, which the dead man must complete or be devoured.”[1] If he has danced with the tribe as an initiate of the higher mysteries and has now remembered the steps, he has no problem. If he has not, he is lost. We read in this many things relevant to ourselves… the spiral dance… the maze dance… the losing of self… the finding of self…. I am the way, the truth and the life, said Christ; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. The dance we dance during our life is the one that will make the difference to our future or death. Life is learning the steps of a dance whose pattern is half drawn on the sands of time, half in our eternal souls.

Shiva’s dance. From everywhere and everywhen we draw our inspiration. “The Eastern mystics see the universe as an inseparable web, whose interconnections are dynamic and not static,” writes Dr Fritjof Capra in his book The Tao of Physics:

“The cosmic web is alive; it moves, grows and changes continually. Modern physics, too, has come to conceive of the universe as such a web of relations and, like Eastern mysticism, has recognized that this web is intrinsically dynamic. The dynamic aspect of matter arises in quantum theory as a consequence of the wave-nature of subatomic particles, and is even more essential in relativity theory… where the unification of space and time implies that the being of matter cannot be separated from its activity. The properties of subatomic particles can therefore only be understood in a dynamic context; in terms of movement, interaction and transformation.” [2]

Because we have discovered that everything has vibrations and responds to vibration, the tale of Orpheus and his music charming the beasts, the plants and the rocks does not seem so strange any more. Does it point “backwards” to a time when man had this knowledge, as well as “forward” to our own time when we have rediscovered this knowledge? Is it trying to tell us something about the nature of the universe that we need to know in order to survive?

Because we live in an age when nuclear energy has become at once the servant of man and his master, the legend of Prometheus stealing fire from the sun takes on new meaning. Was the fire Prometheus stole not just fire in the ordinary sense, as we used to believe, but prophetic of the fire of nuclear holocaust, the violent energy of fission? Does the punishment Prometheus have to endure, being chained to a rock forever while vultures gnaw at his liver, not sound like man’s present condition, bound in agony to the terrible secret he has learned?

Is the young man with the green striped hair and painted face, who dances so frantically among the strobe lights in a modern disco, remembering subliminally the painted shaman dancing round the primeval fire? Is he seeking blindly through the same activity to leave his body, his mundane identity, and become one with the Unknown?

In the story of Chronos banished into sleep, but still commanding his assistants, a hint about the power of the subconscious – that even in sleep we are still alive, still remembering?

Is the handprint that works electronically to admit a privileged and elaborately screened individual to the inner rooms of a highly secret government or scientific establishment today not an echo of the handprint of an initiate carved above sacred caves in ancient times?[3]

And the mutilation of fingers which was customary in many primitive societies to indicate mourning, dedication and sacrifice,[4] has it not its macabre echo in the modern Japanese gangster who, when he has offended, cuts off his own finger to indicate the sincerity of his apology?

When we take a photograph or paint a representational picture are we not in fact, as “primitive” people believed, trying to capture, to hold, the spirit of that moment, that person, that place, against the dissolution of time?

When an Icon painter makes an image that is later associated with miracles, is he so very far from the Paleolithic artist who painted the figure of a gazelle on the wall of his cave for magical purposes?

The past is present, and is working on us every moment of the day. It is woven inextricably into our lives in a way that the Celtic artist, with his elaborate interlacing patterns, has reached nearer to depicting than anyone. It is present in Neolithic, Megalithic and Bronze Age tribes still living in the ancient way in isolated parts of the earth. It is present subliminally in us, working through symbol, myth and ritual. Like the light of the stars that we greet today though it started its journey millions of years ago, we discover with surprise “new” truths that are older than the oldest hills.

The spiral dance continues. Those who enter it now, those who have reached the centre, and those who pass us on the way back to the entrance are all part of the one dance, the Dance of Shiva, the dance of Delos, the dance before the cave in Vao.

NOTES
[1] [3] [4] G.R. Levy, The Gate of Horn (Faber & Faber).
[2] Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (Wildwood House and Fontana)