Shiva Ratri
by Avigya Karki
Nepal is the only Hindu kingdom in the world and thus the land of Lord Shiva, Lord of all Lords, for here you can feel his presence everywhere. Even in the sacred texts of the Hindus it has been stated that Mt. Kailash in the Himalayas is the abode of Lord Shiva or Mahadeva as he is also known. Shiva the Destroyer of Evil is among the most praised and worshipped of all the gods in the Hindu religion. Hindus all over the world know him through different names and forms. The country has thousands of idols and monuments, which glorify his name, the most common one being the Shiva Linga or the phallus of Shiva that represents him. For it is the Shiva linga that Hindus regard as the symbol of creation, the beginning of everything.
Shiva Ratri is the night of Lord Shiva when He himself was created by His own Divine Grace and Hindus all over the world celebrate this day with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm. Shiva Ratri literally means ' the night consecrated to Shiva'. This auspicious festival falls on the fourteenth day of the waning moon in the month of Falgun, (February - March in the Gregorian calendar ). The temple of Pashupatinath in Kathmandu which is considered as one of the holiest shrines of the Hindus, glorifying Lord Shiva, thus receives more than 100,000 worshippers during the festival of Shiva Ratri. These worshippers come from far and wide to pay their respects and homage to Mahadev on his sacred day.
Pashupatinath temple is located at the eastern part of the Kathmandu valley on the banks of the holy river Bagmati. Pashupatinath, which literally means ‘the Lord of animals’, is one of the many forms of the Lord. He is the guardian deity, protector of our Hindu Kingdom of Nepal, thus Shiva Ratri is one of the major festivals of Nepal. Pilgrims from all over Nepal as Pashupatinath Temple well as India come to Pashupatinath to worship and pray to the deity on his birthday and wash away all the sins committed by them. Only Hindus are allowed inside the temple and tourists are only permitted to observe the festival from across the Bagmati river.
Shiva Ratri is a much anticipated festival by all Hindus. Pilgrims and yogis (holy men), from all over Southeast Asia come to Kathmandu weeks before the festival. On this holy day people fast through out the day. At dawn, worshippers take a holy bath or dip in the river and go to the temple to worship.
One of the interesting aspects of Shiva Ratri is that on this day devotees and non-devotees alike freely indulge in smoking intoxicating substances such as marijuana and bhang for it is the only day in the annual calendar when marijuana is legal. Many people take these intoxicants in the belief that it pleases Lord Shiva for he too is said to be fond of it. Thus marijuana is taken as prasad, holy food blessed by the Gods and one can see eager tourists and faithful Nepalese flocking around the temple complex of the Ram Janaki Mandir across the Bagmati river opposite to the main temple complex of Pashupatinath lingering around sadhus and babas in the hope for some prasad from them.
The Puran, one of the many holy texts of the Hindus, tells us that if you worship Lord Shiva on this day all your sins will be forgiven. Giving an examle the puran talks about an event that occurred ages before about a hunter from Benares. This man worshipped Lord Shiva unknowingly on Shiva Ratri and he was forgiven for all his sins.
On Shiva Ratri the temple of Pashupatinath is filled with worshippers. Devotees are not distinguished as poor or rich but treated equally for Lord Shiva treats us all equally. Even the King of Nepal and the royal family pay homage to the Pashupatunath on this day along with the thousands that gather to celebrate the festival. Thus the festival of Shiva Ratri shows the devotion and faith Nepalese have towards the Hindu religion.
Maha Shivaratri: Great night of Lord Shiva
By Arun Ranjit
Every festival in Nepal traditionally begins with something religious and proceeds with spontaneous sprit.
Our festivals are rooted in history, mythology and religion. They honour and propitiate the multitude of gods and control malicious spirits.
A festival is a social occasion. It is an affirmation of the ancient and strong bonds of religion and culture. Festivals in Nepal are reckoned not only as occasions to indulge in eating, drinking and making merry but also as occasions when one is to devote some of one’s time to the worship of and meditation upon gods and goddesses in different forms.
Among numerous festivals of Nepal, Maha Shivaratrai is worthy to note in the cultural aspect of Nepal, which is to be celebrated on Feb./March.
There are many festivals held in honor of the Hindu God Shiva every year, but the most important is Maha Shivaratri, the Great Night of Lord Shiva. Hindu devotees on this night throng Shiva shrines everywhere, but the grandest of all activities revolve around Pashupatinath temple located on the banks of the sacred Bagmati River about three kilometres east of downtown Kathmandu.
This all-night vigil and the exciting crowded festival days before and after attract thousands of people from India and Nepal.
Pashupatinath temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva in the form of Pashupati, Lord of the Animals, who protect and care for all men. It is said that Lord Shiva once roamed as a deer in the forest behind Pashupatinath.
The large pagoda temple, open only to Hindus, stands above broad stone platforms at the river’s edge – the ghats, where the dead are burned. All around are small shrines, temples and pavilions where yogis and priests talk, relax, chant prayers and meditate.
The days before and after Shiva’s night are like a mela, or religious fair, at its best. People fill the roads around Pashupati Temple – holy men, beggars, Indian pilgrims, children and gawking tourists. Vendors of red tika powder, sacred rudraksha beads do a rousing business.
On the occasion, pilgrims and sadhus from all around the country and from India visit the Pashupatinath temple and spend the night lightning sacred fires, singing praises of the deity, and keeping a constant vigil to greet his descent to earth on the grassy hills around the temple to enjoy the warmth of good companionship and chatting around.
At midnight Shivaratri officially begins with priests making offerings inside the temple. Throughout the night, devotees take a holy dip in the sacred Bagmati River and bring holy water in their cupped palms to offer it to the stone stele, the phallic symbol of Lord Shiva, enshrined in the splendid temple and throw flowers.In the morning priests start the recitation of sacred texts, continuing until about noon, when the chanting of sacred songs begins. This is a favourite time, for some of the finest tabla and sitar musicians, of course, from India and Nepal come to make musical offerings to Lord Shiva.For visitors, Shivaratri offers a fascinating look at the Hindu sacred men – yogis or sadhus. Smeared with ash, with minds focused far from the everyday concerns of the world, they can be seen sitting quietly in small groups. These ascetics, naked with no sense of shame, have mastered cold and heat, hunger and sensual desire. These wanders, thin but powerful, with fierce intelligent eyes, live a life detached, seeking union with Lord Shiva.
Temple priests in ochre coloured robes perform elaborate ceremonies and offerings to Lord Shiva. They devote their lives to chanting the Holy Scriptures, performing wedding ceremonies, presiding over cremations, looking after temples, and caring for the spiritual needs of all Hindus.Although the priests’ vows forbid taking intoxicants, the yogis’ “Sixteen Elements of Shiva Worship” include marijuana and its derivatives. The Brahmins will often be seen performing their ceremonies alongside a host of sadhus riding away on clouds of smoke into uncharted realms of consciousness.
Ascetics, worshipping gods of a different name, have lived in sacred forests like the one above Pashupati for even longer. However, Maha Shivaratri is one of the few times and places where one can look millennia into the past.
The Himalayan Kingdom Nepal is rich in scenic nature to diverse culture. Thus, the foreigners would like to say “Every other building is a temple; every other day is a festival (in Nepal)”.Thus, every country’s cultural heritage needs to be made known to the world which would help in sharing of the cultural borrowings made possible.
Article published in The Rising Nepal on March 06, 2005
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Writings by Kathleen Harrison
Roads Where There Have Long Been Trails ...
by Kathleen Harrison
In the rugged semitropical mountains of southern Mexico, in the northeastern comer of the state of Oaxaca, the Mazatec Indians grow corn, beans, and coffee. The Mazatecs are one of many discrete linguistic and ethnic groups in that diverse state. Due to their long isolation in the deeply folded terrain of the Sierra Madre Oriental, both the natural habitats and the cultural traditions have been able to remain somewhat more intact than in many more accessible areas.
Although traditions of healing with plants are rich and varied across much of Mexico, the Mazatecs are renowned for their facility with plant medicine and ritual healing. As a Zapotec man from another region of Oaxaca explained to me two years ago, when I was setting out on my ethnobotanical fieldwork in that area, “My people know many herbs; so do the Mixtec and the Mixe. But the Mazatecs know magic. They know how the plants talk.” By looking at the way that the Mazatec people see nature and interact with it, both in the field and ritually, we can understand something of the indigenous Mesoamerican concept of natural order and of health and illness within that order. We can also get a glimmer of an enduring, multileveled worldview, which is rooted in the many species that dwell in their mountains and valleys and which resides deep in the animated landscape itself.
The rivers flow largely underground, through miles of cavernous tunnels. The world's greatest spelunkers are only now exploring the subterranean torrents of what is known as the Huautla Complex. During an all-night Mazatec healing ceremony with a curandera or curandero (a female or male shaman who cures), there is heartfelt prayer, beautiful singing, and chanted invocation. In the penetrating silences that fall between these expressions, one can hear, or perhaps I should say one can feel, the river flowing close by underground. Each river, cave, spring, and the water itself has an individually named spirit, a dueño, that guards the water source and must be treated with exacting respect, or else, I am told, there will be dire personal consequences for the careless transgressor.
The curandero inhales the scent of his meter-long beeswax candle, which acts as the hourglass for the prayer session and tells us where the bees who made the wax came from and which flower pollen they were collecting. The pollinators, their blossoms, and the effort of making their hive are part of the offering we make to the deities we are invoking. He sings about the bees. He prays to a large, fresh Nicotiana tabacum (tobacco) leaf on the table, addressing it as two saints. “San Pedro,” he murmurs, “San Pedro and San Pablo, please protect these people here and this work that we do tonight. Carry our prayers to God and help us communicate our gratitude and our needs.” On the leaf lies a small mound of crumbled green tobaccos, piciete, two or sometimes three varieties, each grown nearby by a friend or relative or sought from healer-gardeners in distant villages. The shape and color of the flower—rose, creamy white, or the rarer purple—distinguish the variety visually, but it is the espiritu in the plant that makes it prayer medicine. Each variety has its particular being and qualities that differ from the next; each contributes a personality and a specific force to the act of diagnosis or protection that the healer is attempting. It is believed that together the spirits of two or three tobaccos, of two or three saints, listening and working on behalf of the one who needs help, will be better than one. During the ceremony, the tobacco saints will be rubbed briskly on the skin or held in a small quid in the cheek by the healer and perhaps by the patient. The participants will speak to these santos, whom they feel sure are listening, and request that they urge the other spirits of life-forms, elements, rocks, sky, and ancestral time to engage in the ritual conversation too. The curandero will name every spirit he feels might help in his endeavor of the moment and win express gratitude to many more.
Over the past five hundred years, as the stories of the saints have been told, retold, embellished, and made locally relevant by neophyte converts to Catholicism, the saints' qualities meshed with the qualities that are particular to certain plant species and the primordial beings that have long resided in those plants, according to native recognition. The personification of plant species reflects a palpable perception of their intrinsic character, but it also provides a way to communicate with each species as a being, in a dialogue about the environment, the relationship with other species, and with humans. Through a leaf, even without ingesting it, one can speak to the spirit of the species, give thanks, make requests for intervention or insight, and observe alliances. In fact, the spirit is the medicine, and it can be invoked without the plant material if necessary. The healers' divination and healing skills do not arise solely from the psychoactive chemistry of some of these plants, although they are powerful teachers. The practitioners know and assert that the spirit of some medicines can make one crazy, can leave one with mind-shadows, if one approaches without gratitude or without humility. Bodily purification, pure intentions, and direct verbal interspecies communication—prayer—are essential aspects of the medicine and the teachings.
During a late-night ceremony, the curandero and his patient have eaten the leaves of Salvia divinorum, which the Mazatecs call Shka Pastora, the Leaves of the Shepherdess. La Pastora is very shy, they tell me, timid like a deer. She will only come when we have eaten many pairs of the leaves and sit very quietly, perfectly still in the darkness, as in a glen in the forest in the moonlight. If someone moves or speaks suddenly, she will disappear in a moment. If we invite her and we are very clear and open to her, she will come; she will speak. She will whisper to us what we need to know and show us what she sees. She may help to heal us or bless us with good fortune. But we must pray, and we must listen. And we must pay her our full attention in the still darkness of the hut perched on the steep mountainside—amid the maize patches, the savory leaves of Piper sanctum, and the night-scented blossoms of the rosy Brugmansias.
We are on a rock mountain, beside a clean spring, above a narrow path. One wall of the hut in which the healers live and do their work is solid, swirled, vertical rock. It is el Cerro de Curación, they tell me, the Hill of Healing. Four of us sit facing the rock wall with its suggestive patterns as we pray. “That is why we came here, to gaze upon the rock, to speak to the rock, because we can heal here, and no one will bother us,” smiles the elder. Recycled planks, black tar paper, and battered tin make up the other walls and roof of the two-room house. The floor is swept earth. An old table set against the rock wall is the altar, with flowers, single leaves, seedpods, candles, and paper images of the saints arranged along it.
The Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, the spiritual heart and soul of its native people, is there too. She speaks through some of the plants that are used in ceremony. A Mazatec lay anthropologist has told me that the same goddess spoke through these plants in preconquest times. She just had a different name then, but always the same compassion, the same personaje. The Seeds of the Virgin, from two species of morning glory, Ipomoea violacea and Rivea corymbosa, are ingested to seek vision and to help in difficult childbirth. The leaves of Santa Maria, another name for La Pastora, help with prayer and insight. But no matter what, she is always there to speak with—the compassionate emissary who will bring solace and carry prayers on to Dios. She has God's ear. Flowers, tears, and beautiful words, copal incense, candlelight, and absolute honesty are offered to La Guadalupe. She is not jealous of the other saints, nor of the spirits of the plants and the deities of the earth that are called together in these ceremonies. Together, they are a team of spirit-beings who can be invoked in times of need if the intentions are good and the proper offerings are made.
The healers know that at this level of awareness there are no absolute cultural boundaries: Catholic and chthonic, cave and book, ancestors and mushrooms, indigenous and international—all are working in a vibrating tapestry of la medicina. Not everyone knows how to ask for medicine or how to receive it, they tell me, but there is no one in the world who does not need medicine in their lives.
The Leaves of the Shepherdess, Shka Pastora, grow in small hidden glades in the upland moist forest. The plant is rarely known to set seed, propagating itself vegetatively from the fallen nodes, usually with the help of those few humans who know where it grows. It is speculated that through centuries of human tending, it has lost the ability to set seed effectively. Or perhaps it is so rare and sensitive in nature, confined to a small region and very specific conditions, that had it not been for its beautiful medicine and human alliance, it would have died out long ago as a species. We hike higher into the mountains to visit a hidden patch, which I am told has been the curandero's family patch “forever.” No one else knows of it, nor would any honorable person harvest leaves from these plants even if they stumbled upon them, for the Shepherdess is known to have a delicate relationship with the man or woman who tends her in the forest, and she would not work for another who took her illicitly.
We were up on a mountain that was known and named for its pines, the ocotes, yet I saw only twenty or so of these pines on the mountain, up above us on a precipitous ridge. The spring is also named for the ocote, and the ocote is the namesake of the ancient, stone-stepped trail on which we ascended. When I asked why there were so few pines, my friend told me that all the others had been taken, to build with, in the past fifteen years. These few were preserved only because they were too hard to take down. We were silent for a while, eating bananas that we had picked nearby and appreciating the vista of folded hills, worn stone-lined trails, cornfields, forest remnants, and distant dwellings. Above us, at the very end of the pine trail, was a small extended family settlement of three houses, with a donkey and a goat pegged in the swept yard. My friend gestured across the landscape and said, “From up here one can see all the cerros, also the distant higher mountains, and it is not too hot to work in the milpa [the cornfield].” He nodded at the several wattle-and-daub huts with tin roofs across the lush ravine from us. “These people live a good life up here, quiet, growing their food,” he mused. The tiny grandmother raised her hand in greeting from their door. Two young women looked up from a bench in the shade where they sat embroidering flowers on white dresses. A brilliant yellow rectangle of corn was raked out to dry in the sun next to them. “And besides,” he continued, “up here they get great television.”
One day as I was walking on a muddy path high up above the town of Huautla, the now-bustling center of Mazatec country, looking for interesting plants and the occasional wandering herbalist to question, I saw a remarkable “worm” in a wet wheel rut. It was several inches long, thick and greasy-looking, a rather transparent gray, with incipient organs and dark eyes visible through its oily surface. It seemed to have no means of mobility, and as I gently turned it over with a twig, I saw the beginnings of six tiny legs trying to poke through its fat sides like thorns. I am intrigued by unusual natural phenomena, but something about the murkiness of this creature repulsed me. It was probably an insect larva of some sort, I thought, that had perhaps fallen onto the road from an overhanging tree. Two weeks later, on another hot, wet afternoon, when my Mazatec parabiologist friend and I were exploring the high trails, I spied another such entity lying in a mud puddle.1 Excited, I asked my friend what it was. He said that he had seen them from time to time and that during the rainy season, it was normal to see them in the red mud of the roads. I asked him if it was indeed the larva of an insect and if he knew what kind of insect it would become. Surprised at my assumption, he asserted, “It is not an insect. It is the seed of a small tree.” Unconvinced, I questioned him again, and he described the tree it would become. I felt the cognitive ground shift beneath us and reminded myself that diversity comes in remarkable packages.
Another time, I visited a family in a small town in the lowlands, at the end of one of the roads that radiate out over the steep countryside. The forty-year old husband has a teaching credential and instructs twelve- and thirteen-year-old students in both Mazatec and Spanish. He is curious about the world and enjoys discussing many contemporary issues, although he has not traveled far and laments the shortage of interesting visitors. The teenage daughter and three younger sons all prize education and hope to study further at the university in the neighboring state of Puebla. They have a bookshelf, a rarity, in their two room, stuccoed, tin-roofed house on the hill above town. Like everyone else, they draw water from a well, wash their dishes in a plastic tub on stones outside, and cook over a fire on a pounded-earth table. Loofah sponges hang like green cucumbers from a vine on their arbor.
From dusk on, the scent of Queen of the Night, huele de noche (Cestrum nocturnurn), fills the air, and her leaves are cooked in chili and vinegar to accompany meals. The youngest child in the family, a boy of seven, asked me if I would like to taste his favorite food. I said yes, wondering what was up as he ran off into the trees. Soon he was clambering up a huge leguminous tree and came running back with several fifteen-centimeter-long caterpillars, thick as your thumb, brilliantly patterned in yellow, lime green, and black. He grabbed a twig off the ground and thrust it lengthwise through one of the caterpillars, forcing out its innards. He quickly slipped the elastic skin off the stick, turning it inside out, and offered me the pearly tube that remained. “They're best fried,” he explained. His mother told me that in midsummer, when certain trees are covered with the larvae, they eat platters of these crispy caterpillars. They leave many behind, she assured me.
The next time I visited the family, a regional election was taking place. We discussed their political views and their dissatisfaction with the hopelessly self-obsessed ruling party. After the heat of the day had passed, they offered to walk me up to a viewpoint above the town. As we ascended a rough trail through the trees, past rocky hollows known by the children for their individual snake inhabitants, under the ripening edible fruits of a vast tree, they stopped to point out the exquisite blossoming epiphytes higher up. When we reached the rocky peak, they noted how the trees had grown and the path had shifted and that someone had planted tiny plots of corn in the sunny spots. We stepped out onto the rocky promontory together and examined the town far below us. They told me the history of the streets and the school, of the church and its decay and revival now under the guidance of an Indian priest. “He is a good liberal,” they said. “He respects us all, and he knows the plants!” In the basement of the church, young women make tinctures and salves from the local native plants and sell them for only a peso or two, with advice, to anyone who needs medicine. “The state has forgotten about our people except when they want votes—then they build a few more miles of road. But we are remembering how to take care of ourselves. It is so important that our children understand that la Naturaleza [Mother Nature], can sustain us, if we pay attention.” The schoolteacher stopped talking, and we all looked out over the valley and the village. One of the children I know there wants to add English to his Mazatec and Spanish and become a translator. His cousin wants to grow food and gather from the wild, like his grandfather. Everyone wants to eat tomorrow and to grow up to have their own families.
We scanned the trail that wound up the mountainside immediately across from where we were. Steeper and higher, it felt as though we could reach out and touch it. I was told that the spirit of that hill is a woman, very tall and very fat, who wears a beautiful dress, almost too beautiful to look at. She is a spirit of abundance. Sometimes the curanderos of the village are blessed with a vision of this guardian woman.
Because the landscape that the Mazatecs live in is so vertical, with so little horizontal space and so many interwoven hillsides, they long ago developed a whistling language to augment their spoken one. Like yodeling, the whistle-speech can project across chasms and along mountainsides. This versatile language has a great variety of tone and meaning. Not everyone knows it anymore, but I often heard the young men whistling to each other instead of using words as we traveled in the backs of trucks through the small towns that dot the ridges and valleys of the Sierra or when we walked the trails through hamlets without roads. Many Mazatecs are monolingual, and most of the older people who live outside of the larger towns speak only their native tongue. Many of the women in their forties and older do not know, nor do they seem to need, Spanish. Much of the negotiation in the marketplaces and almost all private conversations occur in Mazatec. Despite five hundred years of colonization and intentional cultural disruption by Europeans in a country next door to the United States, there are large populations for whom the colonizer's tongue is neither primary nor even widely known. Their tenacious nurturing of their own pragmatic and poetic languages reflects the degree of living diversity of the culture, the endurance of their ritual traditions and vibrant mythology, and their interactive encyclopedia of natural phenomena.
Since I was there to study plants, cures, and plant lore, I often asked people for the names of things. Most often I was told that there was no corresponding Spanish name and that the Mazatec name for one thing often combined the names of other things or qualities in nature, so that the name of each species reflects its metaphorical or literal association with other species or natural processes. Nothing exists by itself. A bird can be named after a flower and thunder, a flower named for the ear of an animal, or a wind for the scent that it carries. It occurred to me: If a pollinator were decimated by a virus or an herbicide, and the blossoms could not fruit, and then the next year the flowers did not scent the air, what would we call the wind? If the diversity of the natural world is intact and the human world is able to note and appreciate that diversity, then it all rolls along as a self-aware system of interdependence. The Mazatec wise people maintain that all participants in that system communicate with one another in dynamic relationships, using languages that call on all the heightened senses. From the very multiplicity of life-forms a unified world is created. To recognize a deity in each place and thing is not contradictory to the unity of all things. Rather, in this biodiverse worldview, it is a requirement.
After I had been in the Sierra Mazateca a while, collecting medicinal plants, photographing, cleaning beans, interviewing those who live on the trails, watching a new concrete house being built on the roadside, listening to conversations, carrying water, and playing with the children, I began to notice a certain dissonance in the biotic mapping. My friends had mentioned characteristics of the deer in their description of plant qualities, and yet considering the scarcity of animal protein in the local diet, I wondered why they hadn't mentioned deer as an animal they hunted for food.
One evening, the elder and his grandson, armed with a shotgun, invited me along on a hunt for armadillo, hoping for a rare meal of meat. As we watched in the deepening dusk from under a huge mango tree, having seen no armadillos, I was relieved to sense that we were about to give up. I asked about the deer. “There are no more deer here,” confirmed my young friend. “We killed them all for food or scared them away. But we still speak of them in our songs. A few live up very high in the mountains,” he announced with a matter-of-fact resignation that was neither guilty nor tragic. But when I told him in Spanish that many deer graze each evening in my wild Northern California garden, does and fawns and even the occasional buck, he was deeply impressed. He quickly translated this into Mazatec for his grandfather, the curandero. This presence of deer in my life became one of my best credentials for learning about shamanic work. It compensated somewhat for the almost unbelievable fact that I did not know how to make tortillas.
The psychoactive mushrooms that grow in the area have many folk names that describe who they are and how they grow. The little ones that spring forth. The little holy children. The landslide. One species is called San Isidro, the patron saint of laborers, whose aid is solicited in beginning a new endeavor. A beloved species of Psilocybe is called los pajaritos, the little birds. As a midwife-curandera sorted through a banana-leaf packet of mushrooms that a trusted collector had brought to her, she held up one small, brown, elf-capped mushroom and said, “Es un pajaro [It is a bird].” Since they are always eaten in pairs to reflect the balance of the feminine and the masculine, she carefully matched it with a smaller one. “Un pajarito [a little bird],” she chirped. “Together, the little birds sing.”
According to my naturalist-assistant Carlito, he and his father sometimes go high up and far away, on a pilgrimage, to collect with their own hands the particular species of mushroom they need. But it is a long trek, and sometimes they have to hunt or camp for days waiting for the mushrooms to appear after rain in the misty weather. The alternative is to “order” them from someone, a particularly reverent and discreet man who collects the mushrooms only from distant, wild places that are very “clean.” He knows la Naturaleza and picks the mushrooms in the right way—with prayer and attention to other entities or possible magical disturbances in the surroundings. The collector's intentions will be absorbed by the mushrooms, so it is crucial that he be a good soul. This year it was hot and dry during the height of the rainy season, so there were almost no mushrooms, and only one healing session had occurred in three weeks. When there are mushrooms and all is well, two healing or blessing ceremonies might occur each week in this household. This is possible several months of the year when there has been normal rainfall.
At other times of the year, the leaves and seeds of other species are the medicines. My friends became increasingly worried about the shift in weather, the blazing heat, the absence of medicine, and the man in a nearby town who had received only the first of two sessions necessary to cure him from hecheceria, a bad spell that had been put on him. They were concerned about the health of the seventy-year-old curandero himself, whom they call “the chief of the wise ones.” He seems strong today, but he is now beginning to sing about his vulnerability. Only in the recent ceremony did they acknowledge aloud that someday he would be gone, like the deer, like the jaguar they have not seen in years. During the mushroom ceremony, he sang to us that his son, his wife, his grandson, and even I, his friend, must learn fast—before it is too late to learn.
For years, the family has lived in the sky blue casita, tucked high in the forest and milpas, camouflaged by lilies and coffee trees, above a little-traveled trail. Privacy is essential, they tell me, for doing medicine and for staying out of harm's way as doctores. But now they are building a concrete-block house down by the road, much more spacious, with concrete rather than dirt floors. Their younger son left his own family, moved to Mexico City where he works in an office, and married a second wife who is urban Mixe and very modern. He returns for a weekend every month or two to help with construction and to bring money for building. During my stay we moved, bit by bit, down into the road house. They assured me that the curandero would continue to hold his diagnostic consultations and that ceremonial work would continue in the old hut on the hill. But in the meantime, contemplative time was being interrupted frequently by the foot traffic on the road, the curious acquaintances who stopped by, and the distraction of the occasional passing truck.
The road has only passed through this valley for the past seven years, and still very few people own vehicles. The ubiquitous Coca-Cola truck, the battery dealer, and the pickups that ferry passengers, animals, and supplies make up the two or three vehicles that pass each hour. The old curandero pantomimed to me that the people of the road, himself included, are now like monkeys because they all rise to their feet at the sound of an approaching engine to stand in a row and stare at the road. No conversation is more important than who is passing, he said to his grandson, mocking himself. He plans to sell sodas and aguardiente, cane-liquor, from the bedroom window, since so many people do like to, ask him for advice anyway, and he figures he can make enough money to paint his new house that way. After all, he conceded, it was getting harder for him to climb the mountain and work in the steeply inclined patches of coffee, beans, and corn with his digging stick. He'd rather plant lower down in the valley and buy some of his food from others.
One day Carlito and I walked and hitched ten kilometers beyond the town, down a road that was only three months old. It was a wide, raw cut in the landscape, a few men still cracking the most obstinate rocks with hammers. Children stood in front of each of the few houses along the way, watching us pass. When a beer truck dropped us at the end of the new road, we found that it abruptly narrowed again into a footpath, an ancient camino, with shaded resting places, large stones set flat to use as the occasional bench, and trees generously hung with edible pods along the way.
Returning up the road, we stopped to visit an herbalist and his wife and six children. They all had an illness they had never heard of and didn't know how to treat. I was sure that it was mumps, and we agreed to use some of their plants for fever and discomfort while I assured them that they would get well. I asked how they liked living on a road after years of living only on a path. “Well, we like it so far because we can sell more plants, and sodas of course, and maybe the peanuts and ginger that we have planted up the mountain.” The herbalist informed me that the ginger he had planted came all the way from India and that it was both good medicine and good food. “Not many people have it here,” he explained, “and the peanuts make a valuable protein for us because we don't have much meat. We can make a better living with the road going past us,” he proclaimed optimistically. His green coffee was spread out in the sun to dry an arm's length from the road's edge, Aristolochia vines were hung to age in the shade for tea against stomachaches, and I counted seven species of butterflies flitting around the dung of their single pig. The whole family, with swollen necks, wanly posed for a photo—at their request because this was an opportunity to preserve a memory.
A couple of months later, while I was recovering from hepatitis A, which I had contracted while I was in the Sierra, I thought about the road and what it opens up, what it lets in, and what it lets out. More disease enters, for one thing, and news of the world, and theft and trade and gossip and allies and enemies. Education, politics, influence, and change. Some Mazatecs leave, looking for work. Outsiders like me come in, for better and for worse. The sixteenth-century reports of Bernardino de Sahagún convey that the old native people, observing the increased use of the early roads for trade and for carrying tribute to their conquerors, gave the name coatl, or serpent, to the road:
Thus they said: “Can it be that it is a little danger, a little serpent of our Lord?” Or they said: “How hast thou come? Can it be that it is the serpent, the road of stumbling?” They named the road “serpent” because it is long and winding. And they called the road tequatoc, since there is stumbling, there is the running of thorns into the feet.2
In this deeply metaphorical world, the serpent winds its way into the known and changes it as he goes. The Indians saw that the serpent-road causes change and that he consumes what he needs as he goes. As consolation, I try to remember that there are things of value that we each bring, that we leave behind, that we are given, and that we take with us. Is there a way, I wonder, as the past melds into the future, that we can contribute by spiritual and cultural means to nurture the diversity of life-forms?
These people were able to maintain or creatively adapt their language, much of their culture, and their spiritual traditions in the face of their defeat and colonization by Spanish systems of commerce and forced labor. Diseases introduced by the colonizers in the sixteenth century decimated the majority of the native population, and with the promulgation of Catholicism, the folk religions were suppressed, their sacraments banned. The geographical isolation and the scarcity of resources for generating change have long worked to the advantage of the Mazatec people and their territory. With the developments of recent decades—roads, services, dams, communication—they already live much more in the world of the outside. The roads opened the doors, and the outside has come in.
But there are still learned healers, the plants continue to be known and collected for singing powerful prayers, and offerings are still left where water wells up from rock. Daylong pilgrimages are made by townspeople, collecting armloads of scented leaves as they ascend, to offer to the beings who dwell on mountaintops and who have the power to bestow good luck on the pilgrims. Cause and effect are documented in the natural-mythical world because, I am told, no species can live without its spiritual alliances. It just won't work. These alliances are what make the world hold together, the real world that is seen in the visions. Thankfully, there are contemporary indigenas (Indians) and mestizos (of mixed Spanish and Indian heritage) in all regions of the diverse state of Oaxaca who are involved in cultural-revitalization movements. They photograph and record rituals, interview the old ones who will talk, and hold multiethnic meetings to discuss their successes and frustrations. But all three of the healers with whom I have worked these past two summers did not want any such documentation. Nor did they welcome the intrusion of outsiders unless they had come for healing, and then only after a course of recommendations and intuitive prediagnostic interviews.
“When we are singing with la medicina, if you turned on the machine with the little red light,” said the elder curandero, “the spirits simply would not stay with us. They would run back into the darkness, and then what would be the point of it all?” So, instead, we are given stories to share, and we are taught that profound attention is our best instrument.
Notes
1. Some anthropologists might call my friend an informant, but I prefer the term parabiologist, which I feel is more accurate and more respectful of his bountiful knowledge.
2. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, trans. Arthur J.0. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research; University of Utah Press, 1963), p. 269.
Kathleen Harrison is an ethnobotanist who studies the relationships between plants and humans, particularly as expressed in ritual and story.
It was first published in the summer 1998 issue of Terra Nova: Nature and Culture.
The Leaves Of The Shepherdess
Kathleen Harrison
The Salvia divinorum Research and Information Centeris created and maintained by Daniel Siebert
I had grown the plant—Salvia divinorum—for twenty years, and I knew the scant botanical and anthropological literature on this rare, sacred plant, but I'd never successfully had a visionary experience from ingesting the leaves. Once I'd tried putting thirty leaves in a blender with water and drinking the green slurry, but other than a headache and distinct empathy with a trapped butterfly, not much had happened. In the summer of 1995 I was ready for another in my series of solo ethnobotanical fieldwork adventures, and so I headed off for a month in the mountains of northern Oaxaca, Mexico. My son and daughter were staying with family, and I had work to do: not only investigating the folk uses and beliefs regarding healing plants, but also a health challenge of my own. For a couple of years following the dissolution of my marriage and the sad, slow death of my father, my heart had not been beating regularly I'd always had a heart murmur and the strain of recurrent anemia, but this was more disturbing, grabbing my breath away After one episode with a doctor, I decided I wanted to ask a Mazatec healer to do a ceremony for me with the Leaves of the Shepherdess. The Mazatecs are renowned for their ritual shamanism, made world-famous by the twentieth century “discovery” of their ancient practices using psilocybin mushrooms. The curandera María Sabina became the emblematic shaman who was revealed and unfortunately sacrificed to Western popular attention. The mushroom rituals intrigued me of course, but I was most drawn to the more elusive medicina of these leaves. I wanted to meet La Pastora, the Shepherdess. An anthropologist friend gave me directions to an old curandero's hut, perched above a tiny village in a remote valley of those tropical mountains. I came bringing greetings from our mutual friend and gifts of multivitamins and vegetable seeds. I was met with caution, which I felt was appropriate, and interviewed over two days as to my life experience and my intentions. The curandero and his son, who acted as our interpreter from Spanish to Mazatec, agreed to gather the leaves for a session with me. Shka Pastora, the Leaves of the Shepherdess, grows in small, hidden glades in the upland moist forest of the Sierra Mazateca. The plant seems to propagate itself from nodes of the fallen stems, perhaps with the help of humans who tend their private patches. It is speculated that the species diminished its ability to set seed through centuries of human tending. And perhaps this highly sensitive species—growing in light-speckled seclusion in such a small region of the world—would have long ago disappeared, had it not been for its lovely medicina and gift to human consciousness. Each healer's patch is a family secret, and the spirit of the plant is known to have a personal relationship with one who cares for her. Not just anyone can pick her leaves and derive benefit from her medicine. One's purpose must be clean and clear. Among many indigenous, nature-based peoples, significant plant species are each personified as a being with a name and particular attributes of character that relate to the plant's effects. The plant spirit is a persona, to be honored, solicited, and thanked for its gifts. Over the past five hundred years, a veneer of Catholicism has been laid over the rich indigenous animistic worldview, and stories of the helper-saints have meshed with the perceived primordial qualities of certain plant allies. The Virgin is often identified with plants that aid us; the Mazatecs recognize two species of morning glory (Ipomoea violacea and Rivea corymbosa) that produce “seeds of the Virgin,” used for vision and difficult childbirth. Another name for La Pastora is Santa María, again a variation of the compassionate Mother Goddess. We gathered for the session, a late night ceremony before a rough altar that held flowers, candles, pictures of the saints, and powdered tobacco. We sat, the family and I, facing the stone wall that emerged from the earth there, against which they had built their tiny abode of tin, tarpaper, and wood. La Pastora is very shy, they told me, timid like a deer. She will come only when we have eaten many pairs of the leaves and sit very quietly, perfectly still, in utter darkness, as in a glen in the forest in the moonlight. If someone moves or speaks suddenly, she will disappear in a moment. If we invite her, and are very clear and open to her, she will come, she will speak. She will whisper to us what we need to know and show us what she sees. She may help heal us, or bless us with good fortune. But we must pray and we must listen, and we must pay her our full attention. Do you know how to pray, really pray with all your heart? If not, tonight you will learn. The curandero unrolled banana-leaf bundles of hand-sized Salvia divinorum leaves, slightly wilted, and sorted them into pairs. Both mushrooms and leaves are measured in pairs, he told me, representing masculine and feminine. He doled out forty pairs to me, rolled them into a long wad, rather like a salad rolled into a cigar. He explained that after he said the invoking prayers and we stated aloud our intentions, I was to eat the leaves. I was told not to hesitate at their bitterness, not to stop until I had eaten them all, and above all, not to laugh throughout the entire session. Laughter, he counseled, would steal away the power of the medicine. The curandero held our leaves up to the altar, to the stone emerging from the mountain, and murmured a long prayer that included La Pastora, the Virgin of Guadalupe, San Pedro, San Pablo, and names of native deities I could not recognize. He signaled me to state my intentions, make my request. I greeted the spirit of La Pastora, identified myself, asked her to come be present with me that night. I asked, “Please help my heart to become strong and clear and without fear, so that it can pump smoothly.” I asked, as I always do when I enter into relationship with sacred medicine, “What is my work now? May I please see the next stretch of the path?” I took my first bite, staunched my reaction to the bitterness, and proceeded steadily through many bites to the end. By the time I had consumed almost the entire bundle, I was saturated with a taste that was sharp and fresh and ancient all at once. I had a momentary sense of how very long these people had been doing this ritual, the generations that had sought the wisdom of this plant spirit. Suddenly there was a shimmering, the curandero blew the candles out for total darkness, and within seconds I was completely in another realm, astonished. Some part of me ate the final bite “ and I relaxed into another place: I was in the presence of a great female being, a woman, twenty feet high and semitransparent. I was standing in her garden. There she was, some distance away, at the edge of her garden, near the forest, standing amidst her lovely plants against a small, white picket fence. There were butterflies and hummingbirds flying around and through her. Her great translucent face, the density of rainbows, leaned toward me and away. She moved through the garden, tending her leaves and flowers, leaning over them and standing again, beams of sunlight pouring through her. I felt a great longing for her to move toward me, to touch me, and I realized I could not move my feet from the earth where I stood. I felt the other human spirits around me—the old curandero, his wife, his son and the little granddaughter—and they were all giving her their full attention. I realized then that we were plants at the edge of her garden. She drifted slowly toward us, reached out and ran her hands through us, like a breeze, like a ripple, and I knew in those moments that my body was clear, that when she touched me I was in perfect order. I knew in my bones that if we ever asked for her to touch us, and we gave in exchange our most profound attention when she did, all would be well. I inhaled and exhaled her presence. She circled the garden again and returned to us. When she passed her hand through my chest a second time, I saw a tiny, ornate wooden door in my heart. It was carved with flowers and vines, and had an intricate golden filagreed handle and hinges. As her grand spirit fingers brushed it, I felt a strong breeze open the tiny door and a pocket of hurt blew away into the sweet air of the garden. There is this enduring memory of my own face gazing out of a plant, and the dark but not unfriendly presence of the woods nearby. As she faded from view and I returned to a sense of the present, I heard the words repeatedly, in both Spanish and English: Les muestra el borde del jardin. “Show them the edge of the garden.”
That is my work.
Kathleen Harrison is an ethnobotanist who studies the relationships between plants and humans, particularly as expressed in ritual and story.
by Kathleen Harrison
In the rugged semitropical mountains of southern Mexico, in the northeastern comer of the state of Oaxaca, the Mazatec Indians grow corn, beans, and coffee. The Mazatecs are one of many discrete linguistic and ethnic groups in that diverse state. Due to their long isolation in the deeply folded terrain of the Sierra Madre Oriental, both the natural habitats and the cultural traditions have been able to remain somewhat more intact than in many more accessible areas.
Although traditions of healing with plants are rich and varied across much of Mexico, the Mazatecs are renowned for their facility with plant medicine and ritual healing. As a Zapotec man from another region of Oaxaca explained to me two years ago, when I was setting out on my ethnobotanical fieldwork in that area, “My people know many herbs; so do the Mixtec and the Mixe. But the Mazatecs know magic. They know how the plants talk.” By looking at the way that the Mazatec people see nature and interact with it, both in the field and ritually, we can understand something of the indigenous Mesoamerican concept of natural order and of health and illness within that order. We can also get a glimmer of an enduring, multileveled worldview, which is rooted in the many species that dwell in their mountains and valleys and which resides deep in the animated landscape itself.
The rivers flow largely underground, through miles of cavernous tunnels. The world's greatest spelunkers are only now exploring the subterranean torrents of what is known as the Huautla Complex. During an all-night Mazatec healing ceremony with a curandera or curandero (a female or male shaman who cures), there is heartfelt prayer, beautiful singing, and chanted invocation. In the penetrating silences that fall between these expressions, one can hear, or perhaps I should say one can feel, the river flowing close by underground. Each river, cave, spring, and the water itself has an individually named spirit, a dueño, that guards the water source and must be treated with exacting respect, or else, I am told, there will be dire personal consequences for the careless transgressor.
The curandero inhales the scent of his meter-long beeswax candle, which acts as the hourglass for the prayer session and tells us where the bees who made the wax came from and which flower pollen they were collecting. The pollinators, their blossoms, and the effort of making their hive are part of the offering we make to the deities we are invoking. He sings about the bees. He prays to a large, fresh Nicotiana tabacum (tobacco) leaf on the table, addressing it as two saints. “San Pedro,” he murmurs, “San Pedro and San Pablo, please protect these people here and this work that we do tonight. Carry our prayers to God and help us communicate our gratitude and our needs.” On the leaf lies a small mound of crumbled green tobaccos, piciete, two or sometimes three varieties, each grown nearby by a friend or relative or sought from healer-gardeners in distant villages. The shape and color of the flower—rose, creamy white, or the rarer purple—distinguish the variety visually, but it is the espiritu in the plant that makes it prayer medicine. Each variety has its particular being and qualities that differ from the next; each contributes a personality and a specific force to the act of diagnosis or protection that the healer is attempting. It is believed that together the spirits of two or three tobaccos, of two or three saints, listening and working on behalf of the one who needs help, will be better than one. During the ceremony, the tobacco saints will be rubbed briskly on the skin or held in a small quid in the cheek by the healer and perhaps by the patient. The participants will speak to these santos, whom they feel sure are listening, and request that they urge the other spirits of life-forms, elements, rocks, sky, and ancestral time to engage in the ritual conversation too. The curandero will name every spirit he feels might help in his endeavor of the moment and win express gratitude to many more.
Over the past five hundred years, as the stories of the saints have been told, retold, embellished, and made locally relevant by neophyte converts to Catholicism, the saints' qualities meshed with the qualities that are particular to certain plant species and the primordial beings that have long resided in those plants, according to native recognition. The personification of plant species reflects a palpable perception of their intrinsic character, but it also provides a way to communicate with each species as a being, in a dialogue about the environment, the relationship with other species, and with humans. Through a leaf, even without ingesting it, one can speak to the spirit of the species, give thanks, make requests for intervention or insight, and observe alliances. In fact, the spirit is the medicine, and it can be invoked without the plant material if necessary. The healers' divination and healing skills do not arise solely from the psychoactive chemistry of some of these plants, although they are powerful teachers. The practitioners know and assert that the spirit of some medicines can make one crazy, can leave one with mind-shadows, if one approaches without gratitude or without humility. Bodily purification, pure intentions, and direct verbal interspecies communication—prayer—are essential aspects of the medicine and the teachings.
During a late-night ceremony, the curandero and his patient have eaten the leaves of Salvia divinorum, which the Mazatecs call Shka Pastora, the Leaves of the Shepherdess. La Pastora is very shy, they tell me, timid like a deer. She will only come when we have eaten many pairs of the leaves and sit very quietly, perfectly still in the darkness, as in a glen in the forest in the moonlight. If someone moves or speaks suddenly, she will disappear in a moment. If we invite her and we are very clear and open to her, she will come; she will speak. She will whisper to us what we need to know and show us what she sees. She may help to heal us or bless us with good fortune. But we must pray, and we must listen. And we must pay her our full attention in the still darkness of the hut perched on the steep mountainside—amid the maize patches, the savory leaves of Piper sanctum, and the night-scented blossoms of the rosy Brugmansias.
We are on a rock mountain, beside a clean spring, above a narrow path. One wall of the hut in which the healers live and do their work is solid, swirled, vertical rock. It is el Cerro de Curación, they tell me, the Hill of Healing. Four of us sit facing the rock wall with its suggestive patterns as we pray. “That is why we came here, to gaze upon the rock, to speak to the rock, because we can heal here, and no one will bother us,” smiles the elder. Recycled planks, black tar paper, and battered tin make up the other walls and roof of the two-room house. The floor is swept earth. An old table set against the rock wall is the altar, with flowers, single leaves, seedpods, candles, and paper images of the saints arranged along it.
The Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, the spiritual heart and soul of its native people, is there too. She speaks through some of the plants that are used in ceremony. A Mazatec lay anthropologist has told me that the same goddess spoke through these plants in preconquest times. She just had a different name then, but always the same compassion, the same personaje. The Seeds of the Virgin, from two species of morning glory, Ipomoea violacea and Rivea corymbosa, are ingested to seek vision and to help in difficult childbirth. The leaves of Santa Maria, another name for La Pastora, help with prayer and insight. But no matter what, she is always there to speak with—the compassionate emissary who will bring solace and carry prayers on to Dios. She has God's ear. Flowers, tears, and beautiful words, copal incense, candlelight, and absolute honesty are offered to La Guadalupe. She is not jealous of the other saints, nor of the spirits of the plants and the deities of the earth that are called together in these ceremonies. Together, they are a team of spirit-beings who can be invoked in times of need if the intentions are good and the proper offerings are made.
The healers know that at this level of awareness there are no absolute cultural boundaries: Catholic and chthonic, cave and book, ancestors and mushrooms, indigenous and international—all are working in a vibrating tapestry of la medicina. Not everyone knows how to ask for medicine or how to receive it, they tell me, but there is no one in the world who does not need medicine in their lives.
The Leaves of the Shepherdess, Shka Pastora, grow in small hidden glades in the upland moist forest. The plant is rarely known to set seed, propagating itself vegetatively from the fallen nodes, usually with the help of those few humans who know where it grows. It is speculated that through centuries of human tending, it has lost the ability to set seed effectively. Or perhaps it is so rare and sensitive in nature, confined to a small region and very specific conditions, that had it not been for its beautiful medicine and human alliance, it would have died out long ago as a species. We hike higher into the mountains to visit a hidden patch, which I am told has been the curandero's family patch “forever.” No one else knows of it, nor would any honorable person harvest leaves from these plants even if they stumbled upon them, for the Shepherdess is known to have a delicate relationship with the man or woman who tends her in the forest, and she would not work for another who took her illicitly.
We were up on a mountain that was known and named for its pines, the ocotes, yet I saw only twenty or so of these pines on the mountain, up above us on a precipitous ridge. The spring is also named for the ocote, and the ocote is the namesake of the ancient, stone-stepped trail on which we ascended. When I asked why there were so few pines, my friend told me that all the others had been taken, to build with, in the past fifteen years. These few were preserved only because they were too hard to take down. We were silent for a while, eating bananas that we had picked nearby and appreciating the vista of folded hills, worn stone-lined trails, cornfields, forest remnants, and distant dwellings. Above us, at the very end of the pine trail, was a small extended family settlement of three houses, with a donkey and a goat pegged in the swept yard. My friend gestured across the landscape and said, “From up here one can see all the cerros, also the distant higher mountains, and it is not too hot to work in the milpa [the cornfield].” He nodded at the several wattle-and-daub huts with tin roofs across the lush ravine from us. “These people live a good life up here, quiet, growing their food,” he mused. The tiny grandmother raised her hand in greeting from their door. Two young women looked up from a bench in the shade where they sat embroidering flowers on white dresses. A brilliant yellow rectangle of corn was raked out to dry in the sun next to them. “And besides,” he continued, “up here they get great television.”
One day as I was walking on a muddy path high up above the town of Huautla, the now-bustling center of Mazatec country, looking for interesting plants and the occasional wandering herbalist to question, I saw a remarkable “worm” in a wet wheel rut. It was several inches long, thick and greasy-looking, a rather transparent gray, with incipient organs and dark eyes visible through its oily surface. It seemed to have no means of mobility, and as I gently turned it over with a twig, I saw the beginnings of six tiny legs trying to poke through its fat sides like thorns. I am intrigued by unusual natural phenomena, but something about the murkiness of this creature repulsed me. It was probably an insect larva of some sort, I thought, that had perhaps fallen onto the road from an overhanging tree. Two weeks later, on another hot, wet afternoon, when my Mazatec parabiologist friend and I were exploring the high trails, I spied another such entity lying in a mud puddle.1 Excited, I asked my friend what it was. He said that he had seen them from time to time and that during the rainy season, it was normal to see them in the red mud of the roads. I asked him if it was indeed the larva of an insect and if he knew what kind of insect it would become. Surprised at my assumption, he asserted, “It is not an insect. It is the seed of a small tree.” Unconvinced, I questioned him again, and he described the tree it would become. I felt the cognitive ground shift beneath us and reminded myself that diversity comes in remarkable packages.
Another time, I visited a family in a small town in the lowlands, at the end of one of the roads that radiate out over the steep countryside. The forty-year old husband has a teaching credential and instructs twelve- and thirteen-year-old students in both Mazatec and Spanish. He is curious about the world and enjoys discussing many contemporary issues, although he has not traveled far and laments the shortage of interesting visitors. The teenage daughter and three younger sons all prize education and hope to study further at the university in the neighboring state of Puebla. They have a bookshelf, a rarity, in their two room, stuccoed, tin-roofed house on the hill above town. Like everyone else, they draw water from a well, wash their dishes in a plastic tub on stones outside, and cook over a fire on a pounded-earth table. Loofah sponges hang like green cucumbers from a vine on their arbor.
From dusk on, the scent of Queen of the Night, huele de noche (Cestrum nocturnurn), fills the air, and her leaves are cooked in chili and vinegar to accompany meals. The youngest child in the family, a boy of seven, asked me if I would like to taste his favorite food. I said yes, wondering what was up as he ran off into the trees. Soon he was clambering up a huge leguminous tree and came running back with several fifteen-centimeter-long caterpillars, thick as your thumb, brilliantly patterned in yellow, lime green, and black. He grabbed a twig off the ground and thrust it lengthwise through one of the caterpillars, forcing out its innards. He quickly slipped the elastic skin off the stick, turning it inside out, and offered me the pearly tube that remained. “They're best fried,” he explained. His mother told me that in midsummer, when certain trees are covered with the larvae, they eat platters of these crispy caterpillars. They leave many behind, she assured me.
The next time I visited the family, a regional election was taking place. We discussed their political views and their dissatisfaction with the hopelessly self-obsessed ruling party. After the heat of the day had passed, they offered to walk me up to a viewpoint above the town. As we ascended a rough trail through the trees, past rocky hollows known by the children for their individual snake inhabitants, under the ripening edible fruits of a vast tree, they stopped to point out the exquisite blossoming epiphytes higher up. When we reached the rocky peak, they noted how the trees had grown and the path had shifted and that someone had planted tiny plots of corn in the sunny spots. We stepped out onto the rocky promontory together and examined the town far below us. They told me the history of the streets and the school, of the church and its decay and revival now under the guidance of an Indian priest. “He is a good liberal,” they said. “He respects us all, and he knows the plants!” In the basement of the church, young women make tinctures and salves from the local native plants and sell them for only a peso or two, with advice, to anyone who needs medicine. “The state has forgotten about our people except when they want votes—then they build a few more miles of road. But we are remembering how to take care of ourselves. It is so important that our children understand that la Naturaleza [Mother Nature], can sustain us, if we pay attention.” The schoolteacher stopped talking, and we all looked out over the valley and the village. One of the children I know there wants to add English to his Mazatec and Spanish and become a translator. His cousin wants to grow food and gather from the wild, like his grandfather. Everyone wants to eat tomorrow and to grow up to have their own families.
We scanned the trail that wound up the mountainside immediately across from where we were. Steeper and higher, it felt as though we could reach out and touch it. I was told that the spirit of that hill is a woman, very tall and very fat, who wears a beautiful dress, almost too beautiful to look at. She is a spirit of abundance. Sometimes the curanderos of the village are blessed with a vision of this guardian woman.
Because the landscape that the Mazatecs live in is so vertical, with so little horizontal space and so many interwoven hillsides, they long ago developed a whistling language to augment their spoken one. Like yodeling, the whistle-speech can project across chasms and along mountainsides. This versatile language has a great variety of tone and meaning. Not everyone knows it anymore, but I often heard the young men whistling to each other instead of using words as we traveled in the backs of trucks through the small towns that dot the ridges and valleys of the Sierra or when we walked the trails through hamlets without roads. Many Mazatecs are monolingual, and most of the older people who live outside of the larger towns speak only their native tongue. Many of the women in their forties and older do not know, nor do they seem to need, Spanish. Much of the negotiation in the marketplaces and almost all private conversations occur in Mazatec. Despite five hundred years of colonization and intentional cultural disruption by Europeans in a country next door to the United States, there are large populations for whom the colonizer's tongue is neither primary nor even widely known. Their tenacious nurturing of their own pragmatic and poetic languages reflects the degree of living diversity of the culture, the endurance of their ritual traditions and vibrant mythology, and their interactive encyclopedia of natural phenomena.
Since I was there to study plants, cures, and plant lore, I often asked people for the names of things. Most often I was told that there was no corresponding Spanish name and that the Mazatec name for one thing often combined the names of other things or qualities in nature, so that the name of each species reflects its metaphorical or literal association with other species or natural processes. Nothing exists by itself. A bird can be named after a flower and thunder, a flower named for the ear of an animal, or a wind for the scent that it carries. It occurred to me: If a pollinator were decimated by a virus or an herbicide, and the blossoms could not fruit, and then the next year the flowers did not scent the air, what would we call the wind? If the diversity of the natural world is intact and the human world is able to note and appreciate that diversity, then it all rolls along as a self-aware system of interdependence. The Mazatec wise people maintain that all participants in that system communicate with one another in dynamic relationships, using languages that call on all the heightened senses. From the very multiplicity of life-forms a unified world is created. To recognize a deity in each place and thing is not contradictory to the unity of all things. Rather, in this biodiverse worldview, it is a requirement.
After I had been in the Sierra Mazateca a while, collecting medicinal plants, photographing, cleaning beans, interviewing those who live on the trails, watching a new concrete house being built on the roadside, listening to conversations, carrying water, and playing with the children, I began to notice a certain dissonance in the biotic mapping. My friends had mentioned characteristics of the deer in their description of plant qualities, and yet considering the scarcity of animal protein in the local diet, I wondered why they hadn't mentioned deer as an animal they hunted for food.
One evening, the elder and his grandson, armed with a shotgun, invited me along on a hunt for armadillo, hoping for a rare meal of meat. As we watched in the deepening dusk from under a huge mango tree, having seen no armadillos, I was relieved to sense that we were about to give up. I asked about the deer. “There are no more deer here,” confirmed my young friend. “We killed them all for food or scared them away. But we still speak of them in our songs. A few live up very high in the mountains,” he announced with a matter-of-fact resignation that was neither guilty nor tragic. But when I told him in Spanish that many deer graze each evening in my wild Northern California garden, does and fawns and even the occasional buck, he was deeply impressed. He quickly translated this into Mazatec for his grandfather, the curandero. This presence of deer in my life became one of my best credentials for learning about shamanic work. It compensated somewhat for the almost unbelievable fact that I did not know how to make tortillas.
The psychoactive mushrooms that grow in the area have many folk names that describe who they are and how they grow. The little ones that spring forth. The little holy children. The landslide. One species is called San Isidro, the patron saint of laborers, whose aid is solicited in beginning a new endeavor. A beloved species of Psilocybe is called los pajaritos, the little birds. As a midwife-curandera sorted through a banana-leaf packet of mushrooms that a trusted collector had brought to her, she held up one small, brown, elf-capped mushroom and said, “Es un pajaro [It is a bird].” Since they are always eaten in pairs to reflect the balance of the feminine and the masculine, she carefully matched it with a smaller one. “Un pajarito [a little bird],” she chirped. “Together, the little birds sing.”
According to my naturalist-assistant Carlito, he and his father sometimes go high up and far away, on a pilgrimage, to collect with their own hands the particular species of mushroom they need. But it is a long trek, and sometimes they have to hunt or camp for days waiting for the mushrooms to appear after rain in the misty weather. The alternative is to “order” them from someone, a particularly reverent and discreet man who collects the mushrooms only from distant, wild places that are very “clean.” He knows la Naturaleza and picks the mushrooms in the right way—with prayer and attention to other entities or possible magical disturbances in the surroundings. The collector's intentions will be absorbed by the mushrooms, so it is crucial that he be a good soul. This year it was hot and dry during the height of the rainy season, so there were almost no mushrooms, and only one healing session had occurred in three weeks. When there are mushrooms and all is well, two healing or blessing ceremonies might occur each week in this household. This is possible several months of the year when there has been normal rainfall.
At other times of the year, the leaves and seeds of other species are the medicines. My friends became increasingly worried about the shift in weather, the blazing heat, the absence of medicine, and the man in a nearby town who had received only the first of two sessions necessary to cure him from hecheceria, a bad spell that had been put on him. They were concerned about the health of the seventy-year-old curandero himself, whom they call “the chief of the wise ones.” He seems strong today, but he is now beginning to sing about his vulnerability. Only in the recent ceremony did they acknowledge aloud that someday he would be gone, like the deer, like the jaguar they have not seen in years. During the mushroom ceremony, he sang to us that his son, his wife, his grandson, and even I, his friend, must learn fast—before it is too late to learn.
For years, the family has lived in the sky blue casita, tucked high in the forest and milpas, camouflaged by lilies and coffee trees, above a little-traveled trail. Privacy is essential, they tell me, for doing medicine and for staying out of harm's way as doctores. But now they are building a concrete-block house down by the road, much more spacious, with concrete rather than dirt floors. Their younger son left his own family, moved to Mexico City where he works in an office, and married a second wife who is urban Mixe and very modern. He returns for a weekend every month or two to help with construction and to bring money for building. During my stay we moved, bit by bit, down into the road house. They assured me that the curandero would continue to hold his diagnostic consultations and that ceremonial work would continue in the old hut on the hill. But in the meantime, contemplative time was being interrupted frequently by the foot traffic on the road, the curious acquaintances who stopped by, and the distraction of the occasional passing truck.
The road has only passed through this valley for the past seven years, and still very few people own vehicles. The ubiquitous Coca-Cola truck, the battery dealer, and the pickups that ferry passengers, animals, and supplies make up the two or three vehicles that pass each hour. The old curandero pantomimed to me that the people of the road, himself included, are now like monkeys because they all rise to their feet at the sound of an approaching engine to stand in a row and stare at the road. No conversation is more important than who is passing, he said to his grandson, mocking himself. He plans to sell sodas and aguardiente, cane-liquor, from the bedroom window, since so many people do like to, ask him for advice anyway, and he figures he can make enough money to paint his new house that way. After all, he conceded, it was getting harder for him to climb the mountain and work in the steeply inclined patches of coffee, beans, and corn with his digging stick. He'd rather plant lower down in the valley and buy some of his food from others.
One day Carlito and I walked and hitched ten kilometers beyond the town, down a road that was only three months old. It was a wide, raw cut in the landscape, a few men still cracking the most obstinate rocks with hammers. Children stood in front of each of the few houses along the way, watching us pass. When a beer truck dropped us at the end of the new road, we found that it abruptly narrowed again into a footpath, an ancient camino, with shaded resting places, large stones set flat to use as the occasional bench, and trees generously hung with edible pods along the way.
Returning up the road, we stopped to visit an herbalist and his wife and six children. They all had an illness they had never heard of and didn't know how to treat. I was sure that it was mumps, and we agreed to use some of their plants for fever and discomfort while I assured them that they would get well. I asked how they liked living on a road after years of living only on a path. “Well, we like it so far because we can sell more plants, and sodas of course, and maybe the peanuts and ginger that we have planted up the mountain.” The herbalist informed me that the ginger he had planted came all the way from India and that it was both good medicine and good food. “Not many people have it here,” he explained, “and the peanuts make a valuable protein for us because we don't have much meat. We can make a better living with the road going past us,” he proclaimed optimistically. His green coffee was spread out in the sun to dry an arm's length from the road's edge, Aristolochia vines were hung to age in the shade for tea against stomachaches, and I counted seven species of butterflies flitting around the dung of their single pig. The whole family, with swollen necks, wanly posed for a photo—at their request because this was an opportunity to preserve a memory.
A couple of months later, while I was recovering from hepatitis A, which I had contracted while I was in the Sierra, I thought about the road and what it opens up, what it lets in, and what it lets out. More disease enters, for one thing, and news of the world, and theft and trade and gossip and allies and enemies. Education, politics, influence, and change. Some Mazatecs leave, looking for work. Outsiders like me come in, for better and for worse. The sixteenth-century reports of Bernardino de Sahagún convey that the old native people, observing the increased use of the early roads for trade and for carrying tribute to their conquerors, gave the name coatl, or serpent, to the road:
Thus they said: “Can it be that it is a little danger, a little serpent of our Lord?” Or they said: “How hast thou come? Can it be that it is the serpent, the road of stumbling?” They named the road “serpent” because it is long and winding. And they called the road tequatoc, since there is stumbling, there is the running of thorns into the feet.2
In this deeply metaphorical world, the serpent winds its way into the known and changes it as he goes. The Indians saw that the serpent-road causes change and that he consumes what he needs as he goes. As consolation, I try to remember that there are things of value that we each bring, that we leave behind, that we are given, and that we take with us. Is there a way, I wonder, as the past melds into the future, that we can contribute by spiritual and cultural means to nurture the diversity of life-forms?
These people were able to maintain or creatively adapt their language, much of their culture, and their spiritual traditions in the face of their defeat and colonization by Spanish systems of commerce and forced labor. Diseases introduced by the colonizers in the sixteenth century decimated the majority of the native population, and with the promulgation of Catholicism, the folk religions were suppressed, their sacraments banned. The geographical isolation and the scarcity of resources for generating change have long worked to the advantage of the Mazatec people and their territory. With the developments of recent decades—roads, services, dams, communication—they already live much more in the world of the outside. The roads opened the doors, and the outside has come in.
But there are still learned healers, the plants continue to be known and collected for singing powerful prayers, and offerings are still left where water wells up from rock. Daylong pilgrimages are made by townspeople, collecting armloads of scented leaves as they ascend, to offer to the beings who dwell on mountaintops and who have the power to bestow good luck on the pilgrims. Cause and effect are documented in the natural-mythical world because, I am told, no species can live without its spiritual alliances. It just won't work. These alliances are what make the world hold together, the real world that is seen in the visions. Thankfully, there are contemporary indigenas (Indians) and mestizos (of mixed Spanish and Indian heritage) in all regions of the diverse state of Oaxaca who are involved in cultural-revitalization movements. They photograph and record rituals, interview the old ones who will talk, and hold multiethnic meetings to discuss their successes and frustrations. But all three of the healers with whom I have worked these past two summers did not want any such documentation. Nor did they welcome the intrusion of outsiders unless they had come for healing, and then only after a course of recommendations and intuitive prediagnostic interviews.
“When we are singing with la medicina, if you turned on the machine with the little red light,” said the elder curandero, “the spirits simply would not stay with us. They would run back into the darkness, and then what would be the point of it all?” So, instead, we are given stories to share, and we are taught that profound attention is our best instrument.
Notes
1. Some anthropologists might call my friend an informant, but I prefer the term parabiologist, which I feel is more accurate and more respectful of his bountiful knowledge.
2. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, trans. Arthur J.0. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research; University of Utah Press, 1963), p. 269.
Kathleen Harrison is an ethnobotanist who studies the relationships between plants and humans, particularly as expressed in ritual and story.
It was first published in the summer 1998 issue of Terra Nova: Nature and Culture.
The Leaves Of The Shepherdess
Kathleen Harrison
The Salvia divinorum Research and Information Centeris created and maintained by Daniel Siebert
I had grown the plant—Salvia divinorum—for twenty years, and I knew the scant botanical and anthropological literature on this rare, sacred plant, but I'd never successfully had a visionary experience from ingesting the leaves. Once I'd tried putting thirty leaves in a blender with water and drinking the green slurry, but other than a headache and distinct empathy with a trapped butterfly, not much had happened. In the summer of 1995 I was ready for another in my series of solo ethnobotanical fieldwork adventures, and so I headed off for a month in the mountains of northern Oaxaca, Mexico. My son and daughter were staying with family, and I had work to do: not only investigating the folk uses and beliefs regarding healing plants, but also a health challenge of my own. For a couple of years following the dissolution of my marriage and the sad, slow death of my father, my heart had not been beating regularly I'd always had a heart murmur and the strain of recurrent anemia, but this was more disturbing, grabbing my breath away After one episode with a doctor, I decided I wanted to ask a Mazatec healer to do a ceremony for me with the Leaves of the Shepherdess. The Mazatecs are renowned for their ritual shamanism, made world-famous by the twentieth century “discovery” of their ancient practices using psilocybin mushrooms. The curandera María Sabina became the emblematic shaman who was revealed and unfortunately sacrificed to Western popular attention. The mushroom rituals intrigued me of course, but I was most drawn to the more elusive medicina of these leaves. I wanted to meet La Pastora, the Shepherdess. An anthropologist friend gave me directions to an old curandero's hut, perched above a tiny village in a remote valley of those tropical mountains. I came bringing greetings from our mutual friend and gifts of multivitamins and vegetable seeds. I was met with caution, which I felt was appropriate, and interviewed over two days as to my life experience and my intentions. The curandero and his son, who acted as our interpreter from Spanish to Mazatec, agreed to gather the leaves for a session with me. Shka Pastora, the Leaves of the Shepherdess, grows in small, hidden glades in the upland moist forest of the Sierra Mazateca. The plant seems to propagate itself from nodes of the fallen stems, perhaps with the help of humans who tend their private patches. It is speculated that the species diminished its ability to set seed through centuries of human tending. And perhaps this highly sensitive species—growing in light-speckled seclusion in such a small region of the world—would have long ago disappeared, had it not been for its lovely medicina and gift to human consciousness. Each healer's patch is a family secret, and the spirit of the plant is known to have a personal relationship with one who cares for her. Not just anyone can pick her leaves and derive benefit from her medicine. One's purpose must be clean and clear. Among many indigenous, nature-based peoples, significant plant species are each personified as a being with a name and particular attributes of character that relate to the plant's effects. The plant spirit is a persona, to be honored, solicited, and thanked for its gifts. Over the past five hundred years, a veneer of Catholicism has been laid over the rich indigenous animistic worldview, and stories of the helper-saints have meshed with the perceived primordial qualities of certain plant allies. The Virgin is often identified with plants that aid us; the Mazatecs recognize two species of morning glory (Ipomoea violacea and Rivea corymbosa) that produce “seeds of the Virgin,” used for vision and difficult childbirth. Another name for La Pastora is Santa María, again a variation of the compassionate Mother Goddess. We gathered for the session, a late night ceremony before a rough altar that held flowers, candles, pictures of the saints, and powdered tobacco. We sat, the family and I, facing the stone wall that emerged from the earth there, against which they had built their tiny abode of tin, tarpaper, and wood. La Pastora is very shy, they told me, timid like a deer. She will come only when we have eaten many pairs of the leaves and sit very quietly, perfectly still, in utter darkness, as in a glen in the forest in the moonlight. If someone moves or speaks suddenly, she will disappear in a moment. If we invite her, and are very clear and open to her, she will come, she will speak. She will whisper to us what we need to know and show us what she sees. She may help heal us, or bless us with good fortune. But we must pray and we must listen, and we must pay her our full attention. Do you know how to pray, really pray with all your heart? If not, tonight you will learn. The curandero unrolled banana-leaf bundles of hand-sized Salvia divinorum leaves, slightly wilted, and sorted them into pairs. Both mushrooms and leaves are measured in pairs, he told me, representing masculine and feminine. He doled out forty pairs to me, rolled them into a long wad, rather like a salad rolled into a cigar. He explained that after he said the invoking prayers and we stated aloud our intentions, I was to eat the leaves. I was told not to hesitate at their bitterness, not to stop until I had eaten them all, and above all, not to laugh throughout the entire session. Laughter, he counseled, would steal away the power of the medicine. The curandero held our leaves up to the altar, to the stone emerging from the mountain, and murmured a long prayer that included La Pastora, the Virgin of Guadalupe, San Pedro, San Pablo, and names of native deities I could not recognize. He signaled me to state my intentions, make my request. I greeted the spirit of La Pastora, identified myself, asked her to come be present with me that night. I asked, “Please help my heart to become strong and clear and without fear, so that it can pump smoothly.” I asked, as I always do when I enter into relationship with sacred medicine, “What is my work now? May I please see the next stretch of the path?” I took my first bite, staunched my reaction to the bitterness, and proceeded steadily through many bites to the end. By the time I had consumed almost the entire bundle, I was saturated with a taste that was sharp and fresh and ancient all at once. I had a momentary sense of how very long these people had been doing this ritual, the generations that had sought the wisdom of this plant spirit. Suddenly there was a shimmering, the curandero blew the candles out for total darkness, and within seconds I was completely in another realm, astonished. Some part of me ate the final bite “ and I relaxed into another place: I was in the presence of a great female being, a woman, twenty feet high and semitransparent. I was standing in her garden. There she was, some distance away, at the edge of her garden, near the forest, standing amidst her lovely plants against a small, white picket fence. There were butterflies and hummingbirds flying around and through her. Her great translucent face, the density of rainbows, leaned toward me and away. She moved through the garden, tending her leaves and flowers, leaning over them and standing again, beams of sunlight pouring through her. I felt a great longing for her to move toward me, to touch me, and I realized I could not move my feet from the earth where I stood. I felt the other human spirits around me—the old curandero, his wife, his son and the little granddaughter—and they were all giving her their full attention. I realized then that we were plants at the edge of her garden. She drifted slowly toward us, reached out and ran her hands through us, like a breeze, like a ripple, and I knew in those moments that my body was clear, that when she touched me I was in perfect order. I knew in my bones that if we ever asked for her to touch us, and we gave in exchange our most profound attention when she did, all would be well. I inhaled and exhaled her presence. She circled the garden again and returned to us. When she passed her hand through my chest a second time, I saw a tiny, ornate wooden door in my heart. It was carved with flowers and vines, and had an intricate golden filagreed handle and hinges. As her grand spirit fingers brushed it, I felt a strong breeze open the tiny door and a pocket of hurt blew away into the sweet air of the garden. There is this enduring memory of my own face gazing out of a plant, and the dark but not unfriendly presence of the woods nearby. As she faded from view and I returned to a sense of the present, I heard the words repeatedly, in both Spanish and English: Les muestra el borde del jardin. “Show them the edge of the garden.”
That is my work.
Kathleen Harrison is an ethnobotanist who studies the relationships between plants and humans, particularly as expressed in ritual and story.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Dimrost
Tolkien ephemera
Dimrost: The Rainy Stair
A cascading waterfall on the stream of Celebros, where it flowed down to meet the River Teiglin on the borders of Brethil. The tumbling falls raised a fine spray into the air, from which they took their name, which means 'Rainy Stair'. Above Dimrost, the Men of Brethil had constructed a wooden bridge to cross the Celebros.
From the bridge, a wide view could be seen, showing the Ravines of Teiglin two miles distant. When Níniel was first brought to Brethil, when she saw that view from the bridge, she started shivering uncontrollably - so much so that the name of Dimrost was changed to Nen Girith, the 'Shuddering Water'. It was only later that the cause of her foresightful fear was discovered: the Ravines she had seen from the bridge would be the place of her tragic death.
Dimrost: The Rainy Stair
A cascading waterfall on the stream of Celebros, where it flowed down to meet the River Teiglin on the borders of Brethil. The tumbling falls raised a fine spray into the air, from which they took their name, which means 'Rainy Stair'. Above Dimrost, the Men of Brethil had constructed a wooden bridge to cross the Celebros.
From the bridge, a wide view could be seen, showing the Ravines of Teiglin two miles distant. When Níniel was first brought to Brethil, when she saw that view from the bridge, she started shivering uncontrollably - so much so that the name of Dimrost was changed to Nen Girith, the 'Shuddering Water'. It was only later that the cause of her foresightful fear was discovered: the Ravines she had seen from the bridge would be the place of her tragic death.
Monday, February 27, 2006
Summer Jam 1973
The Summer Jam at Watkins Glen and Cal Jams I & II by Robert Santelli
The largest crowd that ever gathered for a rock festival did so at Watkins Glen, New York, in July of 1973. Outdrawing the previous high at Woodstock almost two to one, more than 600,000 young people sardined themselves into Watkins Glen Grand Prix Raceway for a single-day festival known as the Summer Jam. Featured groups were the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and the Band.
Many historians claimed that the Watkins Glen event was the largest gathering of people in the history of the United States. In essence, that meant that on July 28, one out of every 350 people living in America at the time was listening to the sounds of rock at the New York state racetrack. Considering that most of those who attended the even hailed from the Northeast, and that the average age of those present was approximately seventeen to twenty-four, close to one out of every three young people from Boston to New York was at the festival. And yet, aside from the stupendous attendance figures, the musical and social significance of the event was minimal compared to, say, Woodstock or even Altamont. Watkins Glen is more important for what it wasn't. It was not a history-making event, in a strict musical sense. Unlike Woodstock, where the lineup consisted of close to thirty acts, Watkins Glen's billing was comprised of only three supergroups. The Allman Brothers, the Band, and the Grateful Dead were established acts (the latter two were Woodstock veterans); all had been on the touring circuit and in the recording studios for at least three years. The groups' fans, perhaps the most dedicated around in 1973, had most likely seen them perform live at least once or twice prior to Watkins Glen. They had come to expect certain things from the musicians. In short, there was no overly excited rush to the stage generated by their mere presence at Watkins Glen. Each of the three groups at Watkins Glen played unusually long sets. The Grateful Dead performed for five hours, the Allman Brothers for four, and the Band for three, including a thirty-minute break due to a thunderstorm. Woodstock had had a continuous change of musical formats and styles. Each time a new act stepped out in front of the massive crowd, a revitalization occurred, creating a renewal of faith in the event and in the power of music. Energy was forced to flow. At Watkins Glen a feeling of monotony and tedium constantly challenged the viewers' interest in the music and the proceedings onstage. Long, winding solos were frequent. The heat, the lack of comfort, and the crowded conditions dulled otherwise stirring moments. Many of the 600,000 could barely see the stage, let alone the musicians. And most important, festivalgoers had only one day to soak up the rock-festival aura. Many in attendance were often too busy doing and seeing other things to bother to listen seriously to the music for extended periods of time.
Woodstock also had had two sets of LPs and a movie to carry on its significance. No such enduring properties came out of Watkins Glen. Although the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band had their own sound people record their sets, the Dead would not give their consent to a Watkins Glen album. Their participation was crucial, since they represented over one third of the music and time performed onstage. CBS shot some footage of the event, but the Dead refused to allow it or any other film to be released commercially. Their unyielding position on the matter stemmed all the way back to Monterey, when the band had refused to participate in D.A. Pennebaker's film of the event, "Monterey Pop."
The Dead had always demanded full editorial control of their music and live performances. Whenever they were denied such power, they simply declined to be part of the project. Watkins Glen did not register with the political portion of the youth culture as had some festivals in the past. To have 600,000 young people at one time in one place would have been the ultimate dream for any sixties radical. But that was just it - the sixties were over. The Vietnam War was over; the peace agreement had been signed in January of that year. Not that there was a lack of issues Watkins Glen could easily have been an immensely powerful response to Nixon and the Watergate scandal. But the youth of the nation had grown tired of being politically active. Many had tasted the partial delight of seeing some peace in Southeast Asia and felt it was enough. The word most commonly associated with the Watkins Glen festival, according to those reporters who covered the event, was "party." For some young people Watkins Glen was an opportunity to experience a rock festival in abbreviated fashion, and they relished every minute of it. All this added up to the fact that the protests, the placards, the defiance, and the true revolutionary zeal of the young had actually subsided. Enter the "me" decade. The 1970s had finally arrived. But Watkins Glen did point out that rock music was alive and well, and that there still remained within the youth culture a seemingly unquenchable desire to attend rock festivals. Young people still marveled at the power of such gatherings. Young people wanted to be there, had to be there.
Shelly Finkel and Jim Koplik, the two promoters of Summer Jam, had been producing rock concerts in Connecticut and had established a regular audience. In 1972 they staged a series of shows in Hartford, one of which was a Grateful Dead concert. During their performance members of the Allman Brothers Band who were backstage were invited to come out for an informal jam. The reception they received from the Deadhead-dominated crowd was lavish and striking. Finkel and Koplik loved what they saw and heard. The promoters talked with members of the Dead and the Allman Brothers to see if they were interested in a large outdoor concert that would feature the two bands performing separately and then, at the conclusion, merging for one spectacular, memorable jam. The promoters added that the profits could be astronomical for all involved if a large enough concert site was chose. Both bands were very interested. Finkel and Koplik searched high and low for an appropriate site. The Pocono International Raceway was considered, but when the promoters heard of the availability of the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Raceway, they immediately made plans to talk with raceway officials there. Both the town of Watkins Glen and the racetrack management were accustomed to handling large crowds, and since the event was to be a one-day affair, few obstacles prevented a contract from being signed. Finkel and Koplik promised to limit ticket sales to 150,000. Privately, raceway officials doubted whether the rock promoters could sell even 100,000 tickets. But more power to them. They had certainly paid a considerable sum to rent the facilities for the day. In order to fill out the remainder of the billing, Koplik and Finkel suggested that another band or performer, perhaps Leon Russell, be added to the show. The Dead and the Allmans both agreed to the concept but felt that the Band would be more appropriate than Russell. Besides, they were local New York State boys from the Woodstock area and had a more concentrated Northeastern following than Leon Russell. The Band was approached with the idea and quickly signed a contract. Two weeks prior to the festival more than 100,000 tickets at $10 each had been sold. The promoters secured permission to put on sale an additional 25,000 tickets the day of the show, since it was obvious that many more people than were originally anticipated would show up. Watkins Glen was to be the first huge rock music event in New York to be produced since the state passed the Mass Gathering Code following Woodstock. Koplik and Finkel adhered to the stringent rules in a precise, almost religious manner. More than one thousand portable toilets were rented and twelve wells were dug to increase the racetrack's water supplies, in addition to strategically locating more than a thousand gallon jugs of mountain spring water throughout the grounds. The promoters even ordered 300,000 premoistened paper towelettes, although no one could figure out what real value they would have to a rock festival. A makeshift heliport was also built. Henry Valent, president of the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Corporation, was impressed. Jim Koplik and Shelly Finkel seemed to be real professionals. Watkins Glen would not be like those other rock festivals he had read about. It would be different, he thought. It would be a first-class operation. People began arriving a full week before the festival. Many thumbed their way in or drove campers or vans early to select an ideal camping location. On the Tuesday before the show, the first thirty ticket gates opened. Rather than have the young people mill about the town, the promoters and Valent agreed to open up a bit early. But there was cause for consternation. Summer Jam, as it was called, was supposed to be a one-day affair. Sure, promoters and track officials had realized that many would show up early. That's why they had prepared sizeable campgrounds. But not this early. And not this many. The crowd grew. On Wednesday the New York State police estimated fifty thousand people were at Watkins Glen. On Thursday the approximation more than doubled. By Friday afternoon they were certain that a full quarter of a million kids had made camp in or near the festival grounds. The troopers recalled Woodstock and the nightmarish traffic problems. This was worse. Cars sitting in traffic stretched back almost fifty miles, while the impact of it all could be felt one hundred miles away. They began turning back young people with or without tickets. There was no doubt about it. Summer Jam was going to be bigger than Woodstock. Much bigger. A sound check was scheduled for Friday. Bill Graham's FM Productions had been contracted to employ the Digital Audio Delay Line system, a computerized sound system designed so that people sitting up front and near the towers of speakers would not be blasted into the universe. It also enabled people sitting way in the back to hear the music just as clearly as those closer to the stage. With such a system, sets of speakers are set up a hundred yards apart. The first set of speakers receives the sound from the stage and relays it back to the second set. This set rebounds the sound to the third set. All this occurs with spit-second precision. It is not discernible to the human ear that there is a microlapse in the sound. For both the sound check and the actual concert, the system worked like a charm. When the Grateful Dead went to do their sound check, more than 100,000 of the 250,000 people present at Watkins Glen were already assembled in front of the stage. Graham suggested what the hell, might as well start the concert early.The Dead consented, and the sound check turned into a two-hour set with a few interruptions to balance out the wall of sound. The Band and the Allman Brothers felt compelled to do likewise. They delivered one-hour and two-hour sets, respectively. In all, a five-hour prefestival performance disguised as a soundcheck.
After it was over Jim Koplik sat himself in a chair in the backstage trailer and remarked to Finkel, "I'm beat. I feel like everything is over and we actually pulled this off." Finkel nodded and broke a tired smile. "I can't believe, though, that wasn't the real thing. Tomorrow is the real thing. Tomorrow is the concert. We have to do it all over again, for at least twice as long and probably for twice as many people."Koplik glanced over at his partner. Shelly Finkel had fallen into a deep sleep. The Grateful Dead returned shortly before noon on Saturday to officially open Summer Jam in front of 600,000 people stretched out over every available inch of raceway property. There was the usual threat of rain, but no dark clouds were in sight. Instead the sun shone brightly as the heat grew to noticeable but still tolerable proportions. Stretched out across the ninety-acre grassy knoll that faced the stage was a youthful, exuberant sea of humanity. It was an awesome, emotional sight. And it was scary. What if... But negative thoughts were set aside.
The Grateful Dead played and played and played. For five hours Jerry Garcia smoothly rolled out solos like only Jerry Garcia could do. Bob Weir backed him up on rhythm guitar, filling in and closing up weak areas and balancing out a generally tender sound. Phil Lesh on bass and Bill Kreutzman on drums provided Garcia with takeoff and landing strips. Donna Godchaux sang, and her husband, Keith, added bits and pieces on keyboards. "Uncle John's Band," "Casey Jones," "Friend of the Devil," "Ripple," "Sugar Magnolia," "Truckin'," "Not Fade Away," "Me and Bobby McGee." They kept comin'. It took little over an hour for the stage crew to disassemble the Dead's equipment and ready the area for the Band's set. Out in the crowd things were good considering the multitude of people. There was a marked decrease in the use of hard drugs and hallucinogens at Watkins Glen, although there were plenty of dealers on hand and pot was everywhere. The ground was littered with empty bottles of Jack Daniel's and Southern Comfort, signs of the large increase in the consumption of hard liquor. There was an abundance of food and water available, and most of the portable toilets seemed to be functioning, but the lines to use the facilities and thetrek getting there were the real problems. A round trip to and from a Port-O-San, including a very brief stay inside it, could take more than three hours. For the sluggish or the stoned, it was like five. The sun had been overtaken by a series of ominous, dark stormclouds by the time the Band began to crank it up. Not quite an hour into their set, the rain, thunder, and lightning all struck with alarming might. The Band was forced from the stage to wait it out. Thirty minutes later the storm passed, leaving behind 600,000 wet bodies and - what else - mud. Prior to the storm, however, four skydivers had jumped from a circling Cessna, intending to land somewhere on the festival grounds. All of them carried colorful flares to mark both the success of the event and their downward path. The crowd cheered them on as they gradually assumed a shape in the sky. But something had gone wrong up there for one of the chutists. Seconds into his freefall, one of the skydivers' flares prematurely exploded and ignited his garments. Helplessly falling downward, the diver managed to open his chute as the flames engulfed his suit and body. It wasa terrible way to die.
The Band's set lost much of its impact after the storm's interruption. Many people returned to the campsites to cook up some supper and put on dry clothes.Others began the journey back home. But theBand played on - free-flowing, countrified rock with traditional foundations. The instrumentation was defined and exact; the delivery, sharp and authoritative. The Band represented the antithesis of slickness in the summer of '73. None of their music was souped up or hammered out via record-company formulas. Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel offered to rock what the poppish, syrupy bands could not: unadulterated, unpatterned, unmistakable music. Finally it was the Allman Brothers' turn. The Brothers had the reputation ofrarely putting on less-than-dazzling performance. The high-quality compositions and the arousing artistic competency of the band resisted mediocre displays. Dickie Betts had fully assumed the role left vacant by Duane Allman's death. It was a big order to fill, but Betts was just coming into his own. He was confident and, most important, aggressive. He and Gregg Allman were the stars and the leaders that dictated the group's direction. In terms of comparison, neither the Dead nor the Band measured up to the overall ebullience of the Allmans. With the song, "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed," it all came together nicely. It was two o'clock in the morning. The crowd had shrunk considerably, but, as promised, the event would conclude with an all-out jam. Not all the members of the Dead and the Band came out, and realistically, there were too many tired musicians for anything truly memorable to result. More solos. Some basic blues. The last song was a spirited if not overly effective version of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."
Watkins Glen had stolen the headlines much the same way that Woodstock had four years before, but with much less intensity and drama and for a much shorter period of time. In the NEW YORK TIMES Grace Lichtenstein described the Watkins Glen even as she had seen it: ...At times the scene in the moist darkness resembled a Bosch painting - half naked bodies coated with brown slime, moving rhythmically to the music amid huddled figures curled sleeping in the mud at their feet in barbiturate or alcohol induced stupors. The overall success and incredible turnout at Watkins Glen prompted other rock promoters to think seriously about staging single-day rock festivals. Rock-concert production was steadily growing more sophisticated and professional, and many of the new concepts employed in them were carried over into festival production. This was ultimately accomplished at the expense of the rich, unconstrained, natural improvisations that had made past festivals exciting for the festivalgoers and the media and precariously unstable for the promoters, the local townsfolk, and the police. By 1974 the evolution of the rock festival had finally caught up with the technological, impersonal mid-1970s.Out in California a former rock manager, Lenny Stogel, went to ABC television after hearing about Watkins Glen with plans for a similar event on the West Coast. He asked the network if they would be interested in financing and filming a single-day rock festival produced at the Ontario Motor Speedway in southern California. Stogel told ABC officials that he intended to bring in eight or nine topnotch recording acts for a twelve-hour concert. He had figured out, he told them, the ways to make it run smoothly, without the problems encountered at Watkins Glen or any of the other festivals. ABC listened and liked what they heard. They put Sandy Feldman, vice-president in charge of live events, on the job. Together, he and Stogel were to complete plans for what would later be called Cal Jam. Even though two previous rock concerts held at the Ontario Motor Speedway had been near financial disasters, Stogel felt certain that it was the ideal place for Cal Jam. Its accessibility was perfect; two highways bordered the speedway -- the San Bernadino and the Pomona major roads. It was also located within driving range of Los Angeles, San Diego, and all of Orange County. Southern California ranked with the New York metropolitan area as possessing the most voracious rock appetite in all of America. Ontario had parking for fifty thousand cars and was far enough away from any immediate population centers so that traffic would not be catastrophic. Ontario was the place. At first Stogel and Feldman hoped to lure either Led Zeppelin, the Band, or the Rolling Stones into signing contracts. But this never materialized due to the awesome fees of the supergroups. The promoters next went to proven stars such as Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Black Sabbath; and Deep Purple to headline the show, backed up by Black Oak Arkansas; Seals and Crofts; Rare Earth; the Eagles; and Earth, Wind and Fire. Admittedly the lineup was not spectacular, but the promoters counted more on the "event" rather than the groups to attract a big crowd to Ontario. Many people out on the West Coast had not participated in Watkins Glen. Cal Jam would be their chance. In order to prevent the problems that had dominated rock festivals in the past, Stogel felt that the audience must be totally captivated for the entire twelve hours of the show. Once the kids grew restless, the event was in trouble. Keep them busy, keep them seated, make them feel they would miss something important and interesting if they didn't pay attention. That, according to Stogel, wasthe key to success. The promoters hired Imero Fiorentino to design the stage, which he conceived as a complex structure of hydraulic lifts and movable platforms built on railroad tracks. This way, as one band on one platform finished its set, another act onanother platform was ready and waiting to be slid into the spotlight. A maximum lapse of fifteen minutes was all that was to be tolerated. Due to the excessive amount of equipment used by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, a separate platform was constructed for the English trio. Throughout the day skydivers, stunt men, skateboarders, and other entertainers would keep the audience occupied. Cal Jam occurred on Saturday, April 6, 1974, and drew 200,000 fans paying $1O a ticket. The gross of $2 million was one of the largest in the history of rock. ABC filmed it and televised the concert on their "In Concert" series. It had all gone so smoothly. Rare Earth, the opening act, took the stage fifteen minutes *ahead* of schedule. The crowd was orderly. There were very few drug problems and almost no gate-crashers. They expected 200,000 to attend and that's exactly the number of people that showed up. So structured. So systemized. So calculated. There were mixed reactions to Cal Jam. Most marveled at the precision and organization. The event was the epitome of efficiency. The media dubbed it a computerized rock festival. Others, however, looked upon it with disappointment. There was no room for creativity or a do-your-own-thing attitude. The musicians were forced to perform in a machinelike fashion. No excitement; too predictable. Boring.During an interview in June of 1979, just a few weeks before his death in Chicago in a DC-10 plane crash, Lenny Stogel recalled Cal Jam. "When I knew I was putting on a show for 200,000 young people, I didn't want anything popping off unexpected. I wanted to be in total control and know exactly what was happening that moment and what would be happening in the next few hours. Two hundred thousand kids was a big responsibility. I used to get a funny feeling in my stomach whenever I thought about it. I had to be in control - for the preservation of my sanity." The financial achievements of Cal Jam necessitated a sequel to the event; thus another Cal Jam was held in March of 1978. It was basically a repeat of the original formula: efficiency plus organization equals success and big bucks. Instead of 200,000, Cal Jam II attracted 250,000. It was held at the same location and produced by the same promoters. It was filmed for television, and this time an album also resulted from the concert. The lineup was once again less than outstanding. Actually the billing reflected the stagnation that had gripped rock, especially mainstream rock, at the time. It also revealed that the younger portion of the vast rock audience was not really bothered by the situation. Only Santana, Dave Mason, and to a lesser extent, Heart, played music reminiscent in style to the old festival sets. Most of the other bands uncorked a numbing, combustible orgy of manic power that bullied its way through the speakers. Hard rock was being abused: it was being exploited for its colorful audacitymore than anything else. Aerosmith and Ted Nugent blitzed the crowd with frenzied and furious energy. Mahogany Rush and Rubicon tried to follow suit but failed. Bob Welch had members from Fleetwood Mac come to his aid. The festival spirit was only superficially present at Cal Jam II. Some members of the crowd clutched to remaining threads of the past, while a few of the performers tried to simulate an emotion vaguely remembered by the older members of the crowd. Rock had become big business, and festivals like Cal Jam were, to many, just big-business ventures. The performers had their choice of either being helicoptered from the Beverly Hills Hotel to the festival grounds or chauffeured there in lavish, customized vans with paintings of the same band's latest album cover on the exterior panels. Backstage requests were ludicrous in many cases. Some performers wanted pinball machines for their amusement. Others required specially prepared dishes. One band wanted plates of M&Ms placed in their dressing rooms, but no yellow ones were to be included. As a result, a Cal Jam employee had to sift through the mounds of candy, separating the yellows from the rest. Cal Jam I and II were hybrid forms of the old rock festival phenomenon. Cal Jam's promoters sought to present a festival to the atmosphere in a highly regulated and supervised environment. Eight or nine years back a rock festival would have smothered under such conditions, but for the late seventies it was the right way to handle such events. It was easy to determine the differences that existed between an outdoor rock concert and an outdoor rock festival. It was also easy to comprehend that in terms of rock music and rock events, 1968 and 1978 were really and truly a full decade apart.
Excerpted from "Aquarius Rising: The Concert Festival Years" by RobertSantelli (New York: Delta Books, 1980).
The largest crowd that ever gathered for a rock festival did so at Watkins Glen, New York, in July of 1973. Outdrawing the previous high at Woodstock almost two to one, more than 600,000 young people sardined themselves into Watkins Glen Grand Prix Raceway for a single-day festival known as the Summer Jam. Featured groups were the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and the Band.
Many historians claimed that the Watkins Glen event was the largest gathering of people in the history of the United States. In essence, that meant that on July 28, one out of every 350 people living in America at the time was listening to the sounds of rock at the New York state racetrack. Considering that most of those who attended the even hailed from the Northeast, and that the average age of those present was approximately seventeen to twenty-four, close to one out of every three young people from Boston to New York was at the festival. And yet, aside from the stupendous attendance figures, the musical and social significance of the event was minimal compared to, say, Woodstock or even Altamont. Watkins Glen is more important for what it wasn't. It was not a history-making event, in a strict musical sense. Unlike Woodstock, where the lineup consisted of close to thirty acts, Watkins Glen's billing was comprised of only three supergroups. The Allman Brothers, the Band, and the Grateful Dead were established acts (the latter two were Woodstock veterans); all had been on the touring circuit and in the recording studios for at least three years. The groups' fans, perhaps the most dedicated around in 1973, had most likely seen them perform live at least once or twice prior to Watkins Glen. They had come to expect certain things from the musicians. In short, there was no overly excited rush to the stage generated by their mere presence at Watkins Glen. Each of the three groups at Watkins Glen played unusually long sets. The Grateful Dead performed for five hours, the Allman Brothers for four, and the Band for three, including a thirty-minute break due to a thunderstorm. Woodstock had had a continuous change of musical formats and styles. Each time a new act stepped out in front of the massive crowd, a revitalization occurred, creating a renewal of faith in the event and in the power of music. Energy was forced to flow. At Watkins Glen a feeling of monotony and tedium constantly challenged the viewers' interest in the music and the proceedings onstage. Long, winding solos were frequent. The heat, the lack of comfort, and the crowded conditions dulled otherwise stirring moments. Many of the 600,000 could barely see the stage, let alone the musicians. And most important, festivalgoers had only one day to soak up the rock-festival aura. Many in attendance were often too busy doing and seeing other things to bother to listen seriously to the music for extended periods of time.
Woodstock also had had two sets of LPs and a movie to carry on its significance. No such enduring properties came out of Watkins Glen. Although the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band had their own sound people record their sets, the Dead would not give their consent to a Watkins Glen album. Their participation was crucial, since they represented over one third of the music and time performed onstage. CBS shot some footage of the event, but the Dead refused to allow it or any other film to be released commercially. Their unyielding position on the matter stemmed all the way back to Monterey, when the band had refused to participate in D.A. Pennebaker's film of the event, "Monterey Pop."
The Dead had always demanded full editorial control of their music and live performances. Whenever they were denied such power, they simply declined to be part of the project. Watkins Glen did not register with the political portion of the youth culture as had some festivals in the past. To have 600,000 young people at one time in one place would have been the ultimate dream for any sixties radical. But that was just it - the sixties were over. The Vietnam War was over; the peace agreement had been signed in January of that year. Not that there was a lack of issues Watkins Glen could easily have been an immensely powerful response to Nixon and the Watergate scandal. But the youth of the nation had grown tired of being politically active. Many had tasted the partial delight of seeing some peace in Southeast Asia and felt it was enough. The word most commonly associated with the Watkins Glen festival, according to those reporters who covered the event, was "party." For some young people Watkins Glen was an opportunity to experience a rock festival in abbreviated fashion, and they relished every minute of it. All this added up to the fact that the protests, the placards, the defiance, and the true revolutionary zeal of the young had actually subsided. Enter the "me" decade. The 1970s had finally arrived. But Watkins Glen did point out that rock music was alive and well, and that there still remained within the youth culture a seemingly unquenchable desire to attend rock festivals. Young people still marveled at the power of such gatherings. Young people wanted to be there, had to be there.
Shelly Finkel and Jim Koplik, the two promoters of Summer Jam, had been producing rock concerts in Connecticut and had established a regular audience. In 1972 they staged a series of shows in Hartford, one of which was a Grateful Dead concert. During their performance members of the Allman Brothers Band who were backstage were invited to come out for an informal jam. The reception they received from the Deadhead-dominated crowd was lavish and striking. Finkel and Koplik loved what they saw and heard. The promoters talked with members of the Dead and the Allman Brothers to see if they were interested in a large outdoor concert that would feature the two bands performing separately and then, at the conclusion, merging for one spectacular, memorable jam. The promoters added that the profits could be astronomical for all involved if a large enough concert site was chose. Both bands were very interested. Finkel and Koplik searched high and low for an appropriate site. The Pocono International Raceway was considered, but when the promoters heard of the availability of the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Raceway, they immediately made plans to talk with raceway officials there. Both the town of Watkins Glen and the racetrack management were accustomed to handling large crowds, and since the event was to be a one-day affair, few obstacles prevented a contract from being signed. Finkel and Koplik promised to limit ticket sales to 150,000. Privately, raceway officials doubted whether the rock promoters could sell even 100,000 tickets. But more power to them. They had certainly paid a considerable sum to rent the facilities for the day. In order to fill out the remainder of the billing, Koplik and Finkel suggested that another band or performer, perhaps Leon Russell, be added to the show. The Dead and the Allmans both agreed to the concept but felt that the Band would be more appropriate than Russell. Besides, they were local New York State boys from the Woodstock area and had a more concentrated Northeastern following than Leon Russell. The Band was approached with the idea and quickly signed a contract. Two weeks prior to the festival more than 100,000 tickets at $10 each had been sold. The promoters secured permission to put on sale an additional 25,000 tickets the day of the show, since it was obvious that many more people than were originally anticipated would show up. Watkins Glen was to be the first huge rock music event in New York to be produced since the state passed the Mass Gathering Code following Woodstock. Koplik and Finkel adhered to the stringent rules in a precise, almost religious manner. More than one thousand portable toilets were rented and twelve wells were dug to increase the racetrack's water supplies, in addition to strategically locating more than a thousand gallon jugs of mountain spring water throughout the grounds. The promoters even ordered 300,000 premoistened paper towelettes, although no one could figure out what real value they would have to a rock festival. A makeshift heliport was also built. Henry Valent, president of the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Corporation, was impressed. Jim Koplik and Shelly Finkel seemed to be real professionals. Watkins Glen would not be like those other rock festivals he had read about. It would be different, he thought. It would be a first-class operation. People began arriving a full week before the festival. Many thumbed their way in or drove campers or vans early to select an ideal camping location. On the Tuesday before the show, the first thirty ticket gates opened. Rather than have the young people mill about the town, the promoters and Valent agreed to open up a bit early. But there was cause for consternation. Summer Jam, as it was called, was supposed to be a one-day affair. Sure, promoters and track officials had realized that many would show up early. That's why they had prepared sizeable campgrounds. But not this early. And not this many. The crowd grew. On Wednesday the New York State police estimated fifty thousand people were at Watkins Glen. On Thursday the approximation more than doubled. By Friday afternoon they were certain that a full quarter of a million kids had made camp in or near the festival grounds. The troopers recalled Woodstock and the nightmarish traffic problems. This was worse. Cars sitting in traffic stretched back almost fifty miles, while the impact of it all could be felt one hundred miles away. They began turning back young people with or without tickets. There was no doubt about it. Summer Jam was going to be bigger than Woodstock. Much bigger. A sound check was scheduled for Friday. Bill Graham's FM Productions had been contracted to employ the Digital Audio Delay Line system, a computerized sound system designed so that people sitting up front and near the towers of speakers would not be blasted into the universe. It also enabled people sitting way in the back to hear the music just as clearly as those closer to the stage. With such a system, sets of speakers are set up a hundred yards apart. The first set of speakers receives the sound from the stage and relays it back to the second set. This set rebounds the sound to the third set. All this occurs with spit-second precision. It is not discernible to the human ear that there is a microlapse in the sound. For both the sound check and the actual concert, the system worked like a charm. When the Grateful Dead went to do their sound check, more than 100,000 of the 250,000 people present at Watkins Glen were already assembled in front of the stage. Graham suggested what the hell, might as well start the concert early.The Dead consented, and the sound check turned into a two-hour set with a few interruptions to balance out the wall of sound. The Band and the Allman Brothers felt compelled to do likewise. They delivered one-hour and two-hour sets, respectively. In all, a five-hour prefestival performance disguised as a soundcheck.
After it was over Jim Koplik sat himself in a chair in the backstage trailer and remarked to Finkel, "I'm beat. I feel like everything is over and we actually pulled this off." Finkel nodded and broke a tired smile. "I can't believe, though, that wasn't the real thing. Tomorrow is the real thing. Tomorrow is the concert. We have to do it all over again, for at least twice as long and probably for twice as many people."Koplik glanced over at his partner. Shelly Finkel had fallen into a deep sleep. The Grateful Dead returned shortly before noon on Saturday to officially open Summer Jam in front of 600,000 people stretched out over every available inch of raceway property. There was the usual threat of rain, but no dark clouds were in sight. Instead the sun shone brightly as the heat grew to noticeable but still tolerable proportions. Stretched out across the ninety-acre grassy knoll that faced the stage was a youthful, exuberant sea of humanity. It was an awesome, emotional sight. And it was scary. What if... But negative thoughts were set aside.
The Grateful Dead played and played and played. For five hours Jerry Garcia smoothly rolled out solos like only Jerry Garcia could do. Bob Weir backed him up on rhythm guitar, filling in and closing up weak areas and balancing out a generally tender sound. Phil Lesh on bass and Bill Kreutzman on drums provided Garcia with takeoff and landing strips. Donna Godchaux sang, and her husband, Keith, added bits and pieces on keyboards. "Uncle John's Band," "Casey Jones," "Friend of the Devil," "Ripple," "Sugar Magnolia," "Truckin'," "Not Fade Away," "Me and Bobby McGee." They kept comin'. It took little over an hour for the stage crew to disassemble the Dead's equipment and ready the area for the Band's set. Out in the crowd things were good considering the multitude of people. There was a marked decrease in the use of hard drugs and hallucinogens at Watkins Glen, although there were plenty of dealers on hand and pot was everywhere. The ground was littered with empty bottles of Jack Daniel's and Southern Comfort, signs of the large increase in the consumption of hard liquor. There was an abundance of food and water available, and most of the portable toilets seemed to be functioning, but the lines to use the facilities and thetrek getting there were the real problems. A round trip to and from a Port-O-San, including a very brief stay inside it, could take more than three hours. For the sluggish or the stoned, it was like five. The sun had been overtaken by a series of ominous, dark stormclouds by the time the Band began to crank it up. Not quite an hour into their set, the rain, thunder, and lightning all struck with alarming might. The Band was forced from the stage to wait it out. Thirty minutes later the storm passed, leaving behind 600,000 wet bodies and - what else - mud. Prior to the storm, however, four skydivers had jumped from a circling Cessna, intending to land somewhere on the festival grounds. All of them carried colorful flares to mark both the success of the event and their downward path. The crowd cheered them on as they gradually assumed a shape in the sky. But something had gone wrong up there for one of the chutists. Seconds into his freefall, one of the skydivers' flares prematurely exploded and ignited his garments. Helplessly falling downward, the diver managed to open his chute as the flames engulfed his suit and body. It wasa terrible way to die.
The Band's set lost much of its impact after the storm's interruption. Many people returned to the campsites to cook up some supper and put on dry clothes.Others began the journey back home. But theBand played on - free-flowing, countrified rock with traditional foundations. The instrumentation was defined and exact; the delivery, sharp and authoritative. The Band represented the antithesis of slickness in the summer of '73. None of their music was souped up or hammered out via record-company formulas. Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel offered to rock what the poppish, syrupy bands could not: unadulterated, unpatterned, unmistakable music. Finally it was the Allman Brothers' turn. The Brothers had the reputation ofrarely putting on less-than-dazzling performance. The high-quality compositions and the arousing artistic competency of the band resisted mediocre displays. Dickie Betts had fully assumed the role left vacant by Duane Allman's death. It was a big order to fill, but Betts was just coming into his own. He was confident and, most important, aggressive. He and Gregg Allman were the stars and the leaders that dictated the group's direction. In terms of comparison, neither the Dead nor the Band measured up to the overall ebullience of the Allmans. With the song, "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed," it all came together nicely. It was two o'clock in the morning. The crowd had shrunk considerably, but, as promised, the event would conclude with an all-out jam. Not all the members of the Dead and the Band came out, and realistically, there were too many tired musicians for anything truly memorable to result. More solos. Some basic blues. The last song was a spirited if not overly effective version of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."
Watkins Glen had stolen the headlines much the same way that Woodstock had four years before, but with much less intensity and drama and for a much shorter period of time. In the NEW YORK TIMES Grace Lichtenstein described the Watkins Glen even as she had seen it: ...At times the scene in the moist darkness resembled a Bosch painting - half naked bodies coated with brown slime, moving rhythmically to the music amid huddled figures curled sleeping in the mud at their feet in barbiturate or alcohol induced stupors. The overall success and incredible turnout at Watkins Glen prompted other rock promoters to think seriously about staging single-day rock festivals. Rock-concert production was steadily growing more sophisticated and professional, and many of the new concepts employed in them were carried over into festival production. This was ultimately accomplished at the expense of the rich, unconstrained, natural improvisations that had made past festivals exciting for the festivalgoers and the media and precariously unstable for the promoters, the local townsfolk, and the police. By 1974 the evolution of the rock festival had finally caught up with the technological, impersonal mid-1970s.Out in California a former rock manager, Lenny Stogel, went to ABC television after hearing about Watkins Glen with plans for a similar event on the West Coast. He asked the network if they would be interested in financing and filming a single-day rock festival produced at the Ontario Motor Speedway in southern California. Stogel told ABC officials that he intended to bring in eight or nine topnotch recording acts for a twelve-hour concert. He had figured out, he told them, the ways to make it run smoothly, without the problems encountered at Watkins Glen or any of the other festivals. ABC listened and liked what they heard. They put Sandy Feldman, vice-president in charge of live events, on the job. Together, he and Stogel were to complete plans for what would later be called Cal Jam. Even though two previous rock concerts held at the Ontario Motor Speedway had been near financial disasters, Stogel felt certain that it was the ideal place for Cal Jam. Its accessibility was perfect; two highways bordered the speedway -- the San Bernadino and the Pomona major roads. It was also located within driving range of Los Angeles, San Diego, and all of Orange County. Southern California ranked with the New York metropolitan area as possessing the most voracious rock appetite in all of America. Ontario had parking for fifty thousand cars and was far enough away from any immediate population centers so that traffic would not be catastrophic. Ontario was the place. At first Stogel and Feldman hoped to lure either Led Zeppelin, the Band, or the Rolling Stones into signing contracts. But this never materialized due to the awesome fees of the supergroups. The promoters next went to proven stars such as Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Black Sabbath; and Deep Purple to headline the show, backed up by Black Oak Arkansas; Seals and Crofts; Rare Earth; the Eagles; and Earth, Wind and Fire. Admittedly the lineup was not spectacular, but the promoters counted more on the "event" rather than the groups to attract a big crowd to Ontario. Many people out on the West Coast had not participated in Watkins Glen. Cal Jam would be their chance. In order to prevent the problems that had dominated rock festivals in the past, Stogel felt that the audience must be totally captivated for the entire twelve hours of the show. Once the kids grew restless, the event was in trouble. Keep them busy, keep them seated, make them feel they would miss something important and interesting if they didn't pay attention. That, according to Stogel, wasthe key to success. The promoters hired Imero Fiorentino to design the stage, which he conceived as a complex structure of hydraulic lifts and movable platforms built on railroad tracks. This way, as one band on one platform finished its set, another act onanother platform was ready and waiting to be slid into the spotlight. A maximum lapse of fifteen minutes was all that was to be tolerated. Due to the excessive amount of equipment used by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, a separate platform was constructed for the English trio. Throughout the day skydivers, stunt men, skateboarders, and other entertainers would keep the audience occupied. Cal Jam occurred on Saturday, April 6, 1974, and drew 200,000 fans paying $1O a ticket. The gross of $2 million was one of the largest in the history of rock. ABC filmed it and televised the concert on their "In Concert" series. It had all gone so smoothly. Rare Earth, the opening act, took the stage fifteen minutes *ahead* of schedule. The crowd was orderly. There were very few drug problems and almost no gate-crashers. They expected 200,000 to attend and that's exactly the number of people that showed up. So structured. So systemized. So calculated. There were mixed reactions to Cal Jam. Most marveled at the precision and organization. The event was the epitome of efficiency. The media dubbed it a computerized rock festival. Others, however, looked upon it with disappointment. There was no room for creativity or a do-your-own-thing attitude. The musicians were forced to perform in a machinelike fashion. No excitement; too predictable. Boring.During an interview in June of 1979, just a few weeks before his death in Chicago in a DC-10 plane crash, Lenny Stogel recalled Cal Jam. "When I knew I was putting on a show for 200,000 young people, I didn't want anything popping off unexpected. I wanted to be in total control and know exactly what was happening that moment and what would be happening in the next few hours. Two hundred thousand kids was a big responsibility. I used to get a funny feeling in my stomach whenever I thought about it. I had to be in control - for the preservation of my sanity." The financial achievements of Cal Jam necessitated a sequel to the event; thus another Cal Jam was held in March of 1978. It was basically a repeat of the original formula: efficiency plus organization equals success and big bucks. Instead of 200,000, Cal Jam II attracted 250,000. It was held at the same location and produced by the same promoters. It was filmed for television, and this time an album also resulted from the concert. The lineup was once again less than outstanding. Actually the billing reflected the stagnation that had gripped rock, especially mainstream rock, at the time. It also revealed that the younger portion of the vast rock audience was not really bothered by the situation. Only Santana, Dave Mason, and to a lesser extent, Heart, played music reminiscent in style to the old festival sets. Most of the other bands uncorked a numbing, combustible orgy of manic power that bullied its way through the speakers. Hard rock was being abused: it was being exploited for its colorful audacitymore than anything else. Aerosmith and Ted Nugent blitzed the crowd with frenzied and furious energy. Mahogany Rush and Rubicon tried to follow suit but failed. Bob Welch had members from Fleetwood Mac come to his aid. The festival spirit was only superficially present at Cal Jam II. Some members of the crowd clutched to remaining threads of the past, while a few of the performers tried to simulate an emotion vaguely remembered by the older members of the crowd. Rock had become big business, and festivals like Cal Jam were, to many, just big-business ventures. The performers had their choice of either being helicoptered from the Beverly Hills Hotel to the festival grounds or chauffeured there in lavish, customized vans with paintings of the same band's latest album cover on the exterior panels. Backstage requests were ludicrous in many cases. Some performers wanted pinball machines for their amusement. Others required specially prepared dishes. One band wanted plates of M&Ms placed in their dressing rooms, but no yellow ones were to be included. As a result, a Cal Jam employee had to sift through the mounds of candy, separating the yellows from the rest. Cal Jam I and II were hybrid forms of the old rock festival phenomenon. Cal Jam's promoters sought to present a festival to the atmosphere in a highly regulated and supervised environment. Eight or nine years back a rock festival would have smothered under such conditions, but for the late seventies it was the right way to handle such events. It was easy to determine the differences that existed between an outdoor rock concert and an outdoor rock festival. It was also easy to comprehend that in terms of rock music and rock events, 1968 and 1978 were really and truly a full decade apart.
Excerpted from "Aquarius Rising: The Concert Festival Years" by RobertSantelli (New York: Delta Books, 1980).
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The Tao Te Ching...a personal rendering
This version of the Tao Te Ching is a personal compilation of many translations. I've taken the liberty of cobbling them together into rendition I find personally satisfying and true to the spirit of Tao as I understand it.
I
The Tao that can be told
is not the constant Tao.
The way that can be named
is not the constant way.
Nameless, it is the progenitor
of heaven and earth.
Named, it is the mother of all things.
Hence ridding yourself of desires
will disclose its secrets.
Clinging to false desire
will produce its manifestations.
These two aspects are the same
but differ in name as they issue forth.
Together they are the Mystery.
Mystery upon mystery
the gateway of the manifold secrets.
II
It is because all the world recognizes the beautiful
as beautiful that the idea of the ugly arises.
It is because all the world recognizes the good
as good that the idea of bad arises.
Thus being and non-being produce one another;
Difficulty and ease complement one another.
The high and the low determine one another.
Note and tone harmonize with one another.
Before and after follow one another.
Therefore the sage abides in non-action
and practices wordless teaching.
The ten thousand things arise from it
yet it claims no authority
Gives them life yet claims no possession
Benefits them yet exacts no gratitude
Accomplishes its task yet lays no claim to merit.
It is because it lays no claim to merit
that merit never leaves it.
III
Not to employ men of ability
will keep the people from contention.
Not to value goods hard to come by
will keep them from theft.
Not to display what is desirable
will keep their minds from becoming unsettled.
Therefore the sage in governing the people
empties their minds but fills their bellies,
weakens their will but strengthens their bones.
He keeps them from knowledge
and free from desire
and restrains the clever from acting.
When there is no action, order prevails.
IV
The Tao is empty yet use will not exhaust it.
How deep! How still!
It is the progenitor
of the ten thousand things.
Blunt the sharpness
untangle the knots
soften the glare
bring yourself into agreement
with the obscurity of others.
How still! How deep!
As if it would continue forever.
I know not whose son it is.
It was prior to the existence of God.
V
Heaven and earth act not from benevolence
and treat all things as straw dogs.
The sage acts not from benevolence
and treats the people as straw dogs.
Is not the space between Heaven and Earth
like a bellows?
It is empty without being exhausted.
The more it works the more issues forth.
Much speech leads quickly to silence.
Guard your inner being and keep it free.
VI
The spirit of the valley never dies.
This is called the mysterious female.
The gateway of the mysterious female
is called the root of heaven and earth.
Deep and still, its power is forever unbroken
yet use will not exhaust it.
VII
Heaven and earth are long enduring.
The reason why heaven and earth
are long enduring is that
they do not give themselves life.
Hence they are long enduring.
Therefore the sage puts his person last
and it comes first
treats it as extraneous
and it is preserved.
Is it not because he is without thought of self
That he is able to accomplish his ends?
VIII
The highest good is like water.
It benefits the myriad creatures
without contending with them
and settles in the low places
that men dislike and avoid.
It comes close to the Tao.
In a home it is the site that matters.
In quality of mind it is stillness that matters.
In associations it is good faith that matters.
In speech it is sincerity that matters.
In government it is order that matters.
In affairs it is ability that matters.
In action it is timeliness that matters.
One with the highest excellence
does not contend about his low position
and therefore does not go astray.
IX
A vessel filled to the brim is in danger of spilling.
Better to have stopped in time.
Temper the sword edge to a point
and its sharpness cannot be preserved.
When bronze and jade fill your hall
it can no longer be guarded.
Wealth and position breed insolence
that brings ruin in its wake.
To withdraw when the task is done
is the way of heaven.
X
Can you keep the perplexed bodily soul from straying,
hold fast to the One and not let go?
Can you, while concentrating your breath
become as supple as a babe?
Can you wipe clean your vision of the mystery
and leave no blemish?
Can you love the people and rule the empire
yet remain unknown?
Can you in opening and shutting the gates of heaven
abide by the role of the female?
Can your mind penetrate the four directions
and yet remain without knowledge?
It gives them life and nurtures them.
It gives them life yet claims no possession,
Benefits them yet exacts no gratitude.
It is the steward yet exerts no authority.
Such is called the mysterious virtue.
XI
Thirty spokes converge on a hub.
The use of the wheel depends on the emptiness therein.
Knead clay to make a bowl.
The use of the bowl depends on the emptiness therein.
Cut out doors and windows
to make a house.
The use of the house depends on the emptiness therein.
Thus is something gained
by virtue of nothing.
XII
The five colors make blind men’s eyes.
The five notes make deaf his ears.
The five flavors jade his palate.
The chariot and the hunt make wild his mind.
Goods hard to come by hinder his progress.
Hence the sage
satisfies the stomach
but not the eye.
He puts away one but not the other.
XIII
Favor and disgrace are equally to be feared.
High rank, like one’s body,
is a source of great trouble.
What is meant by speaking thus
of favor and disgrace?
Gaining favor leads to the fear
of losing it.
Losing it leads to still greater fear.
This is what is meant by speaking thus
of favor and disgrace.
What is meant by saying that high rank
like one’s own body and is a source of great trouble?
The reason I have great trouble
is because I have a body.
If I had no body
what trouble would I have?
Thus he who regards the empire as he does
his own body may be entrusted with the empire.
He who would administer the empire with the
same love he bears towards his own person
may be given custody of the empire.
XIV
What cannot be seen is called invisible.
What cannot be heard is called inaudible.
What cannot be touched is called subtle.
These three cannot be described
and so they are combined to obtain the One.
Its upper part is not bright.
Its lower part is not obscure.
Ceaseless in action and yet it cannot be named
and returns to that which is unsubstantial.
This is called the form of the formless
and the image without substance.
It is called indistinct and fleeting.
We meet it and do not see its front.
We follow it and do not see its back.
Hold fast to the Way of the old
to direct the things of today.
When we know the beginning as it was of old
it is called unwinding the thread of Tao.
XV
He of old who was skillful in the Tao
possessed subtle penetration
and mysterious comprehension.
It is because he was beyond the
knowledge of men that he can
only be given a general description:
Tentative, like one who fords a stream in winter.
Hesitant, as if in fear of his neighbors.
Solemn, like a guest.
Evanescent, like melting snow.
Empty, like a valley.
Dull, like muddy water.
Who can make clear the water?
Let it be and it will become clear.
Who can secure rest?
Let movement continue and rest
will arise of itself.
Who hold fast to this Tao
desires not to be full.
It is because he is not full
that he can endure use without being renewed.
XVI
Do your utmost to attain emptiness.
Hold firmly to stillness.
All things go through their cycles of activity
and then return to their source.
The ten thousand things
all return to their separate roots.
Returning to ones roots is known as stillness.
That stillness is known as
fulfilling one’s appointed end.
Fulfilling one’s appointed end
is known as the constant.
Ignorance of the constant
leads to evil issue.
Acting from knowledge of the constant
will lead to impartiality
and a feeling of community with all things.
Feeling of community leads to kingliness
kingliness to heaven
heaven to the Tao
the Tao to perpetuity
and to the end of your days
you will meet with no misfortune.
XVII
Of old, the best of rulers were
but a vague presence to their subjects.
Then came the ruler they loved and praised
Then came the one they feared
Then came the one they despised
Thus when the Tao is deficient in the ruler
it is found to be wanting in the people.
Hesitant, he does not utter words lightly.
When his task is accomplished and his
work done, the people say
“it happened to us naturally.”
XVIII
When the Tao falls into disuse
there is benevolence and rectitude.
Then shrewdness and subtly appear
and there is great hypocrisy.
When the six relations are out of harmony
there are filial children.
When the state falls into disorder
there are loyal ministers.
XIX
Renounce sagacity discard wisdom
and the people will benefit a hundredfold.
Renounce benevolence discard rectitude
and the people will again be filial.
Renounce ingenuity discard profit
and there will be no more thieves.
These three being deficient are not enough.
Exhibit the unadorned and
embrace the Uncarved Block.
Have little thought of self and few desires.
XX
Renounce learning and there will be no troubles.
Between yes and no
how much difference is there?
Between good and evil
how great is the difference?
What all men fear
one also must fear.
Endless are the questions requiring discussion!
The multitude is joyous
as if partaking of a feast
as if mounted on a terrace in Spring
I alone am inactive and reveal no signs.
like an infant that has not yet smiled.
Listless, as though with no home to go to.
The multitude has more than enough
I alone seem to be in want.
My mind is that of a fool - how empty!
Ordinary men are clear
I alone am confused.
Ordinary men are alert
I alone am drowsy.
I seem to be carried about as on the sea
drifting, with nowhere to rest.
Ordinary men have a purpose
I alone am dull and foolish.
I alone am different from others
but value being nourished by the Mother.
XXI
The scope of all pervading power
acts through the Tao and the Tao alone.
For the Tao is
illusive indistinct
yet within it are all forms.
Indistinct illusive
yet within it, their semblances.
Shadowy and dim
yet within it, their essence.
This essence unfolds the truth
from the present back to antiquity.
Its name endures forever.
Hence are all things formed
that never know decay.
How do I know that the many things are so?
By means of this.
XXII
The partial becomes whole
the crooked straight
the empty full
the worn new.
He whose desires are few attains them.
He whose desires are many goes astray.
Thus the sage embraces the One
and is a model for the empire.
He does not show himself and so is conspicuous
He does not assert himself and so is distinguished
He does not boast and so is acknowledged
He is not complacent and so is exalted
It is because he does not contend
that no one in the empire can contend against him.
The way the ancients have it,
“the partial becomes whole”
is no idle saying.
Truly, it preserves one to the end.
XXIII
He of few words
obeys the stillness of his nature.
A violent wind cannot last all morning.
A sudden rain cannot last all day.
Who is it that produces these?
Heaven and earth.
If heaven and earth cannot endure forever
how much less can man?
That is why one follows the Tao.
A man of Tao conforms to the Tao.
A man of virtue conforms to virtue.
A man of loss conforms to loss.
He who conforms to the Tao
is accepted by the Tao.
He who conforms to virtue
is accepted by virtue.
He who conforms to loss
is accepted by loss.
When there is insufficient faith on his part
there is found a want of faith in others.
XXIV
He who tiptoes cannot stand firm.
He who strides cannot walk.
He who shows himself is not seen.
He who asserts his righteousness is not distinguished.
He who boasts will have no merit.
He who is selfish will not endure.
From the standpoint of the Tao
these are the stale remnants of food
or a tumor on the body which all dislike.
Hence those who pursue the Tao
do not abide in them.
XXV
There is something formless yet complete
that existed before heaven and earth.
How still! How Empty!
It stands alone and does not change
reaches everywhere and does not weary.
It may be regarded as the mother of all things.
I do not know its name
so I call it the Tao.
Were I to name it further I would call it the Great.
Being great it passes in constant flow.
Passing on it becomes remote.
Becoming remote it turns back.
Hence, the Tao is great.
Heaven is great earth is great
and the king also is great.
In the universe four things are great
and the king counts as one.
Man takes his decree from the earth
earth from heaven
heaven from the Tao
and the Tao from that which is naturally so.
XXVI
As the heavy is the root of the light
so stillness is the lord of movement.
Therefore the prince when
traveling the whole day
never strays far from the laden carts.
However magnificent the view
he sits quiet and dispassionate.
How should a lord of ten thousand chariots
carry himself before the empire?
If lightly the root is lost.
If restlessly the throne is lost.
XXVII
The skillful traveler leaves no trace
The skillful speaker makes no slip
The skillful reckoner uses no tallies
The skillful closer uses no bolts
yet what he has sealed cannot be opened.
The skillful binder uses no cords
yet what he has bound cannot be undone.
Likewise the sage is skillful at saving men
and so abandons no one.
Always skillful in saving things
and so abandons nothing.
This is called following one’s discernment.
Hence the man of skill is a teacher
to one who has not the skill
and one who has not the skill is the helper
of one who has the skill.
Not to honor the teacher
nor to respect the helper
though he have much learning
betrays great ignorance.
This is called the essential secret.
XXVIII
Know the male
yet cleave to the female
and become like a ravine to the empire
receiving all things under heaven.
Being thus
the constant virtue will not desert you
and you will attain the state of childhood.
Know the white
yet cleave to the black
and become a model to the empire.
Being thus
the constant virtue will not be wanting
and you will return to the limitless.
Know glory
yet cleave to the ignoble
and become a valley to the empire.
Being thus
the constant virtue will be sufficient
and you will return to the Uncarved Block.
When the Uncarved Block is divided
it is made into vessels.
The sage makes use of these and becomes
lord over the ministers.
Truly, the greatest carver does the least cutting
XXIX
Who ever would take the empire
by tampering with it
will have no success.
The empire is a sacred vessel
risky to tamper with.
Those that tamper with it harm it.
Who ever lays hold of it will lose it.
Hence some things lead and others follow
Some breathe gently and others breathe hard
Some are strong and some are weak
Some destroy and others are destroyed.
Hence the sage avoids excess
extravagance and indulgence.
XXX
He who would assist a ruler of men
by means of the Tao will not
intimidate the empire by a show of arms.
Such a course is sure to have repercussions.
Where armies encamp
briars and thorns spring up.
In the wake of a mighty army
blight follows without fail.
A skilful commander aims at bringing
his campaign to a conclusion
but dares not intimidate thereby.
He brings it to a conclusion but does not boast;
He brings it to a conclusion but does not brag;
He brings it to a conclusion but is not arrogant;
He strikes as a matter of necessity
but does not intimidate.
Things in their prime doing harm to the old
is not in accordance with the Tao.
That which is not in accordance with the Tao
will come to an early end.
XXXI
It is because arms are of ill omen
and hateful to all creatures
that one in the Tao
does not abide by their use.
In peace the left hand is
the place of honor;
In war the right hand is
the place of honor.
Arms are of ill omen,
not the instruments of the superior man.
He uses them without relish.
To glorify victory
is to exult in the killing of men.
He who exalts in the killing of men
will not have his way in the empire.
A host that has slain men
is received with grief and mourning.
He that has conquered in battle
is received with rites of mourning.
XXXII
The way is forever nameless.
Though the uncarved block
is small, the whole world
dare not contend with he
who is its advocate.
Could kings and queens but hold fast to it
all would submit of their own accord.
Though no one so decrees,
heaven and earth unite
sending down sweet dew
equally in all directions.
Only when the block is carved
are there names.
As soon as there are names
men should know cessation.
Knowing cessation they are
free from danger.
The Tao is to the world
what the ocean is to the stream.
XXXIII
He who knows others is discerning
He who knows himself is stealthy
He who overcomes others is strong
He who overcomes himself is mighty
He who knows contentment is rich
He who preservers is a man of firm resolve
He who maintains his position will endure
He who lives out his days will have a long life
XXXIV
The Tao is all pervading
reaching to the left as well as to the right.
The ten thousand things depend on it for life
yet it claims no authority.
It accomplishes its task
yet lays no claim to merit.
It makes provision for the myriad creatures
yet lays no claim to being lord.
Free of desire, it can be called small.
Yet as it presides over the return
of all things to their root
without claiming lordship,
it can be called great.
Hence the sage accomplishes
his ends by never attempting
himself to be great.
XXXV
To him who holds the great Image
the whole world repairs.
They who resort to him receive no hurt
but find rest, ease, and tranquility.
Music and food
induce the wayfarer to stop.
The Tao in its passage through the mouth
is without flavor.
It cannot be seen
it cannot be heard
yet it cannot be exhausted by use.
XXXVI
If you would have a thing contracted
you must first expand it;
If you would have a thing weakened
you must first strengthen it;
If you would have a thing laid aside
you must first take it up.
This is called concealing
the light of procedure.
The submissive and weak
overcome the hard and strong.
The instruments of power in a state
must not be revealed to anyone.
XXXVII
The Tao never acts
yet nothing is left undone.
If kings and princes could hold fast to it,
all things of themselves would be transformed.
If desire should arise,
I would press it down
by the weight of the uncarved block.
Simplicity without a name
is free from all desire.
If I cease from desire
and remain still,
all things will be at peace of their own accord.
XXXVIII
The man with the highest
attributes of Tao does not show them in
the fullest measure.
is not the constant Tao.
The way that can be named
is not the constant way.
Nameless, it is the progenitor
of heaven and earth.
Named, it is the mother of all things.
Hence ridding yourself of desires
will disclose its secrets.
Clinging to false desire
will produce its manifestations.
These two aspects are the same
but differ in name as they issue forth.
Together they are the Mystery.
Mystery upon mystery
the gateway of the manifold secrets.
II
It is because all the world recognizes the beautiful
as beautiful that the idea of the ugly arises.
It is because all the world recognizes the good
as good that the idea of bad arises.
Thus being and non-being produce one another;
Difficulty and ease complement one another.
The high and the low determine one another.
Note and tone harmonize with one another.
Before and after follow one another.
Therefore the sage abides in non-action
and practices wordless teaching.
The ten thousand things arise from it
yet it claims no authority
Gives them life yet claims no possession
Benefits them yet exacts no gratitude
Accomplishes its task yet lays no claim to merit.
It is because it lays no claim to merit
that merit never leaves it.
III
Not to employ men of ability
will keep the people from contention.
Not to value goods hard to come by
will keep them from theft.
Not to display what is desirable
will keep their minds from becoming unsettled.
Therefore the sage in governing the people
empties their minds but fills their bellies,
weakens their will but strengthens their bones.
He keeps them from knowledge
and free from desire
and restrains the clever from acting.
When there is no action, order prevails.
IV
The Tao is empty yet use will not exhaust it.
How deep! How still!
It is the progenitor
of the ten thousand things.
Blunt the sharpness
untangle the knots
soften the glare
bring yourself into agreement
with the obscurity of others.
How still! How deep!
As if it would continue forever.
I know not whose son it is.
It was prior to the existence of God.
V
Heaven and earth act not from benevolence
and treat all things as straw dogs.
The sage acts not from benevolence
and treats the people as straw dogs.
Is not the space between Heaven and Earth
like a bellows?
It is empty without being exhausted.
The more it works the more issues forth.
Much speech leads quickly to silence.
Guard your inner being and keep it free.
VI
The spirit of the valley never dies.
This is called the mysterious female.
The gateway of the mysterious female
is called the root of heaven and earth.
Deep and still, its power is forever unbroken
yet use will not exhaust it.
VII
Heaven and earth are long enduring.
The reason why heaven and earth
are long enduring is that
they do not give themselves life.
Hence they are long enduring.
Therefore the sage puts his person last
and it comes first
treats it as extraneous
and it is preserved.
Is it not because he is without thought of self
That he is able to accomplish his ends?
VIII
The highest good is like water.
It benefits the myriad creatures
without contending with them
and settles in the low places
that men dislike and avoid.
It comes close to the Tao.
In a home it is the site that matters.
In quality of mind it is stillness that matters.
In associations it is good faith that matters.
In speech it is sincerity that matters.
In government it is order that matters.
In affairs it is ability that matters.
In action it is timeliness that matters.
One with the highest excellence
does not contend about his low position
and therefore does not go astray.
IX
A vessel filled to the brim is in danger of spilling.
Better to have stopped in time.
Temper the sword edge to a point
and its sharpness cannot be preserved.
When bronze and jade fill your hall
it can no longer be guarded.
Wealth and position breed insolence
that brings ruin in its wake.
To withdraw when the task is done
is the way of heaven.
X
Can you keep the perplexed bodily soul from straying,
hold fast to the One and not let go?
Can you, while concentrating your breath
become as supple as a babe?
Can you wipe clean your vision of the mystery
and leave no blemish?
Can you love the people and rule the empire
yet remain unknown?
Can you in opening and shutting the gates of heaven
abide by the role of the female?
Can your mind penetrate the four directions
and yet remain without knowledge?
It gives them life and nurtures them.
It gives them life yet claims no possession,
Benefits them yet exacts no gratitude.
It is the steward yet exerts no authority.
Such is called the mysterious virtue.
XI
Thirty spokes converge on a hub.
The use of the wheel depends on the emptiness therein.
Knead clay to make a bowl.
The use of the bowl depends on the emptiness therein.
Cut out doors and windows
to make a house.
The use of the house depends on the emptiness therein.
Thus is something gained
by virtue of nothing.
XII
The five colors make blind men’s eyes.
The five notes make deaf his ears.
The five flavors jade his palate.
The chariot and the hunt make wild his mind.
Goods hard to come by hinder his progress.
Hence the sage
satisfies the stomach
but not the eye.
He puts away one but not the other.
XIII
Favor and disgrace are equally to be feared.
High rank, like one’s body,
is a source of great trouble.
What is meant by speaking thus
of favor and disgrace?
Gaining favor leads to the fear
of losing it.
Losing it leads to still greater fear.
This is what is meant by speaking thus
of favor and disgrace.
What is meant by saying that high rank
like one’s own body and is a source of great trouble?
The reason I have great trouble
is because I have a body.
If I had no body
what trouble would I have?
Thus he who regards the empire as he does
his own body may be entrusted with the empire.
He who would administer the empire with the
same love he bears towards his own person
may be given custody of the empire.
XIV
What cannot be seen is called invisible.
What cannot be heard is called inaudible.
What cannot be touched is called subtle.
These three cannot be described
and so they are combined to obtain the One.
Its upper part is not bright.
Its lower part is not obscure.
Ceaseless in action and yet it cannot be named
and returns to that which is unsubstantial.
This is called the form of the formless
and the image without substance.
It is called indistinct and fleeting.
We meet it and do not see its front.
We follow it and do not see its back.
Hold fast to the Way of the old
to direct the things of today.
When we know the beginning as it was of old
it is called unwinding the thread of Tao.
XV
He of old who was skillful in the Tao
possessed subtle penetration
and mysterious comprehension.
It is because he was beyond the
knowledge of men that he can
only be given a general description:
Tentative, like one who fords a stream in winter.
Hesitant, as if in fear of his neighbors.
Solemn, like a guest.
Evanescent, like melting snow.
Empty, like a valley.
Dull, like muddy water.
Who can make clear the water?
Let it be and it will become clear.
Who can secure rest?
Let movement continue and rest
will arise of itself.
Who hold fast to this Tao
desires not to be full.
It is because he is not full
that he can endure use without being renewed.
XVI
Do your utmost to attain emptiness.
Hold firmly to stillness.
All things go through their cycles of activity
and then return to their source.
The ten thousand things
all return to their separate roots.
Returning to ones roots is known as stillness.
That stillness is known as
fulfilling one’s appointed end.
Fulfilling one’s appointed end
is known as the constant.
Ignorance of the constant
leads to evil issue.
Acting from knowledge of the constant
will lead to impartiality
and a feeling of community with all things.
Feeling of community leads to kingliness
kingliness to heaven
heaven to the Tao
the Tao to perpetuity
and to the end of your days
you will meet with no misfortune.
XVII
Of old, the best of rulers were
but a vague presence to their subjects.
Then came the ruler they loved and praised
Then came the one they feared
Then came the one they despised
Thus when the Tao is deficient in the ruler
it is found to be wanting in the people.
Hesitant, he does not utter words lightly.
When his task is accomplished and his
work done, the people say
“it happened to us naturally.”
XVIII
When the Tao falls into disuse
there is benevolence and rectitude.
Then shrewdness and subtly appear
and there is great hypocrisy.
When the six relations are out of harmony
there are filial children.
When the state falls into disorder
there are loyal ministers.
XIX
Renounce sagacity discard wisdom
and the people will benefit a hundredfold.
Renounce benevolence discard rectitude
and the people will again be filial.
Renounce ingenuity discard profit
and there will be no more thieves.
These three being deficient are not enough.
Exhibit the unadorned and
embrace the Uncarved Block.
Have little thought of self and few desires.
XX
Renounce learning and there will be no troubles.
Between yes and no
how much difference is there?
Between good and evil
how great is the difference?
What all men fear
one also must fear.
Endless are the questions requiring discussion!
The multitude is joyous
as if partaking of a feast
as if mounted on a terrace in Spring
I alone am inactive and reveal no signs.
like an infant that has not yet smiled.
Listless, as though with no home to go to.
The multitude has more than enough
I alone seem to be in want.
My mind is that of a fool - how empty!
Ordinary men are clear
I alone am confused.
Ordinary men are alert
I alone am drowsy.
I seem to be carried about as on the sea
drifting, with nowhere to rest.
Ordinary men have a purpose
I alone am dull and foolish.
I alone am different from others
but value being nourished by the Mother.
XXI
The scope of all pervading power
acts through the Tao and the Tao alone.
For the Tao is
illusive indistinct
yet within it are all forms.
Indistinct illusive
yet within it, their semblances.
Shadowy and dim
yet within it, their essence.
This essence unfolds the truth
from the present back to antiquity.
Its name endures forever.
Hence are all things formed
that never know decay.
How do I know that the many things are so?
By means of this.
XXII
The partial becomes whole
the crooked straight
the empty full
the worn new.
He whose desires are few attains them.
He whose desires are many goes astray.
Thus the sage embraces the One
and is a model for the empire.
He does not show himself and so is conspicuous
He does not assert himself and so is distinguished
He does not boast and so is acknowledged
He is not complacent and so is exalted
It is because he does not contend
that no one in the empire can contend against him.
The way the ancients have it,
“the partial becomes whole”
is no idle saying.
Truly, it preserves one to the end.
XXIII
He of few words
obeys the stillness of his nature.
A violent wind cannot last all morning.
A sudden rain cannot last all day.
Who is it that produces these?
Heaven and earth.
If heaven and earth cannot endure forever
how much less can man?
That is why one follows the Tao.
A man of Tao conforms to the Tao.
A man of virtue conforms to virtue.
A man of loss conforms to loss.
He who conforms to the Tao
is accepted by the Tao.
He who conforms to virtue
is accepted by virtue.
He who conforms to loss
is accepted by loss.
When there is insufficient faith on his part
there is found a want of faith in others.
XXIV
He who tiptoes cannot stand firm.
He who strides cannot walk.
He who shows himself is not seen.
He who asserts his righteousness is not distinguished.
He who boasts will have no merit.
He who is selfish will not endure.
From the standpoint of the Tao
these are the stale remnants of food
or a tumor on the body which all dislike.
Hence those who pursue the Tao
do not abide in them.
XXV
There is something formless yet complete
that existed before heaven and earth.
How still! How Empty!
It stands alone and does not change
reaches everywhere and does not weary.
It may be regarded as the mother of all things.
I do not know its name
so I call it the Tao.
Were I to name it further I would call it the Great.
Being great it passes in constant flow.
Passing on it becomes remote.
Becoming remote it turns back.
Hence, the Tao is great.
Heaven is great earth is great
and the king also is great.
In the universe four things are great
and the king counts as one.
Man takes his decree from the earth
earth from heaven
heaven from the Tao
and the Tao from that which is naturally so.
XXVI
As the heavy is the root of the light
so stillness is the lord of movement.
Therefore the prince when
traveling the whole day
never strays far from the laden carts.
However magnificent the view
he sits quiet and dispassionate.
How should a lord of ten thousand chariots
carry himself before the empire?
If lightly the root is lost.
If restlessly the throne is lost.
XXVII
The skillful traveler leaves no trace
The skillful speaker makes no slip
The skillful reckoner uses no tallies
The skillful closer uses no bolts
yet what he has sealed cannot be opened.
The skillful binder uses no cords
yet what he has bound cannot be undone.
Likewise the sage is skillful at saving men
and so abandons no one.
Always skillful in saving things
and so abandons nothing.
This is called following one’s discernment.
Hence the man of skill is a teacher
to one who has not the skill
and one who has not the skill is the helper
of one who has the skill.
Not to honor the teacher
nor to respect the helper
though he have much learning
betrays great ignorance.
This is called the essential secret.
XXVIII
Know the male
yet cleave to the female
and become like a ravine to the empire
receiving all things under heaven.
Being thus
the constant virtue will not desert you
and you will attain the state of childhood.
Know the white
yet cleave to the black
and become a model to the empire.
Being thus
the constant virtue will not be wanting
and you will return to the limitless.
Know glory
yet cleave to the ignoble
and become a valley to the empire.
Being thus
the constant virtue will be sufficient
and you will return to the Uncarved Block.
When the Uncarved Block is divided
it is made into vessels.
The sage makes use of these and becomes
lord over the ministers.
Truly, the greatest carver does the least cutting
XXIX
Who ever would take the empire
by tampering with it
will have no success.
The empire is a sacred vessel
risky to tamper with.
Those that tamper with it harm it.
Who ever lays hold of it will lose it.
Hence some things lead and others follow
Some breathe gently and others breathe hard
Some are strong and some are weak
Some destroy and others are destroyed.
Hence the sage avoids excess
extravagance and indulgence.
XXX
He who would assist a ruler of men
by means of the Tao will not
intimidate the empire by a show of arms.
Such a course is sure to have repercussions.
Where armies encamp
briars and thorns spring up.
In the wake of a mighty army
blight follows without fail.
A skilful commander aims at bringing
his campaign to a conclusion
but dares not intimidate thereby.
He brings it to a conclusion but does not boast;
He brings it to a conclusion but does not brag;
He brings it to a conclusion but is not arrogant;
He strikes as a matter of necessity
but does not intimidate.
Things in their prime doing harm to the old
is not in accordance with the Tao.
That which is not in accordance with the Tao
will come to an early end.
XXXI
It is because arms are of ill omen
and hateful to all creatures
that one in the Tao
does not abide by their use.
In peace the left hand is
the place of honor;
In war the right hand is
the place of honor.
Arms are of ill omen,
not the instruments of the superior man.
He uses them without relish.
To glorify victory
is to exult in the killing of men.
He who exalts in the killing of men
will not have his way in the empire.
A host that has slain men
is received with grief and mourning.
He that has conquered in battle
is received with rites of mourning.
XXXII
The way is forever nameless.
Though the uncarved block
is small, the whole world
dare not contend with he
who is its advocate.
Could kings and queens but hold fast to it
all would submit of their own accord.
Though no one so decrees,
heaven and earth unite
sending down sweet dew
equally in all directions.
Only when the block is carved
are there names.
As soon as there are names
men should know cessation.
Knowing cessation they are
free from danger.
The Tao is to the world
what the ocean is to the stream.
XXXIII
He who knows others is discerning
He who knows himself is stealthy
He who overcomes others is strong
He who overcomes himself is mighty
He who knows contentment is rich
He who preservers is a man of firm resolve
He who maintains his position will endure
He who lives out his days will have a long life
XXXIV
The Tao is all pervading
reaching to the left as well as to the right.
The ten thousand things depend on it for life
yet it claims no authority.
It accomplishes its task
yet lays no claim to merit.
It makes provision for the myriad creatures
yet lays no claim to being lord.
Free of desire, it can be called small.
Yet as it presides over the return
of all things to their root
without claiming lordship,
it can be called great.
Hence the sage accomplishes
his ends by never attempting
himself to be great.
XXXV
To him who holds the great Image
the whole world repairs.
They who resort to him receive no hurt
but find rest, ease, and tranquility.
Music and food
induce the wayfarer to stop.
The Tao in its passage through the mouth
is without flavor.
It cannot be seen
it cannot be heard
yet it cannot be exhausted by use.
XXXVI
If you would have a thing contracted
you must first expand it;
If you would have a thing weakened
you must first strengthen it;
If you would have a thing laid aside
you must first take it up.
This is called concealing
the light of procedure.
The submissive and weak
overcome the hard and strong.
The instruments of power in a state
must not be revealed to anyone.
XXXVII
The Tao never acts
yet nothing is left undone.
If kings and princes could hold fast to it,
all things of themselves would be transformed.
If desire should arise,
I would press it down
by the weight of the uncarved block.
Simplicity without a name
is free from all desire.
If I cease from desire
and remain still,
all things will be at peace of their own accord.
XXXVIII
The man with the highest
attributes of Tao does not show them in
the fullest measure.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
That deadly duo of monsters, resource depletion and overpopulation, are killing off vast areas of the biosphere
“Is it possible that global civilisation might collapse within our lifetime or that of our children? Until recently, such an idea was the preserve of lunatics and cults. In the past few years, however, an increasing number of intelligent and credible people have been warning that global collapse is a genuine possibility. And many of these are sober scientists, including Lord May, David King and Jared Diamond-people not usually given to exaggeration or drama.” - Dylan Evans, December 21, 2005 Guardian
Ralph Metzner on the Collapse of Civilization
Well, it now appears that I can count myself among the “intelligent and credible people”, who have been saying that the collapse of our global civilization is a distinct possibility. The article below, from the Guardian, spells out the interlocking scenarios that have led to the collapse of previous, more localized, civilizations. In one respect, though, I have already left the company of the “intelligent and credible”, since I don’t think civilizational collapse is possible-I say it is happening now. Even as we read each other’s e-mail, and drink to the New Year. That deadly duo of monsters-resource depletion and overpopulation-are killing off vast areas of biosphere. And our leaders (the biggest gangsters), instead of focussing on searching for ways to cooperate and to mitigate the lethal consequences of the collapse, have chosen to apply their technological skills in increasingly violent military actions to support the organized predation of the multinational energy corporations, while skilfully weaving a stupefying hypnotic fog of denial into their subject populations and keeping them in mindless robotic consumerist trance. I also have to depart from my “intelligent and credible” fellow observers in their rather sanguine assessment that the collapse of industrial civilization will just entail the return to a pre-industrial life-style. In other words, like the horse-and-buggy days of colonial America-doesn’t sound too bad. Perhaps this will be the final new social equilibrium, but in the meantime, what happens when civilization collapses, as Uncle Karl pointed out, is barbarism. I think we can all agree that the images emerging from the worldwide military prison gulag, and the fact that the possible ethical and legal justification of torture has become a topic of debate and discussion in politics and academics, is one sign of a civilization that is collapsing into barbarism. This barbarism is sometimes (falsely I believe) called the “law of the jungle”: kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. But that notion is not a “law of the jungle”-it is a false choice, a rigid, fear-based survival program. There are many other, healthier and more productive ways for us to expend our energy and direct our intention, besides killing or being killed, eating or being eaten. What are these ways? We can start by “turning our swords into ploughshares”, demilitarizing society and committing ourselves to the non-violent ways of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and Jesus of Nazareth. We can sit down and talk: talk about what is really needed for every one,- all human and non-human beings, inhabiting this planet, or this place where we happen to find ourselves;-and how we can best meet those needs. What a fantastic challenge and beautiful opportunity for our collective creativity and ingenuity, our powers of design and imagination. As far as I can tell, humans don’t really need that much-food, water, shelter, health, safety of course, the basics; the opportunity to raise their children in peace, to engage in meaningful work, to practice their creativity, to pursue their spiritual and religious values-don’t they all flow from basic respect for another’s integrity? The Golden Rule is still the Golden Rule.
I have to report I feel neither gloomy nor doomy. I’ve found that letting go of denial and accepting what is happening, is tremendously liberating.
“To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose..” and this is a time of collapse, and renewal.
So, my friends, be of good cheer, and laugh and make music.
Ralph Metzner on the Collapse of Civilization
Well, it now appears that I can count myself among the “intelligent and credible people”, who have been saying that the collapse of our global civilization is a distinct possibility. The article below, from the Guardian, spells out the interlocking scenarios that have led to the collapse of previous, more localized, civilizations. In one respect, though, I have already left the company of the “intelligent and credible”, since I don’t think civilizational collapse is possible-I say it is happening now. Even as we read each other’s e-mail, and drink to the New Year. That deadly duo of monsters-resource depletion and overpopulation-are killing off vast areas of biosphere. And our leaders (the biggest gangsters), instead of focussing on searching for ways to cooperate and to mitigate the lethal consequences of the collapse, have chosen to apply their technological skills in increasingly violent military actions to support the organized predation of the multinational energy corporations, while skilfully weaving a stupefying hypnotic fog of denial into their subject populations and keeping them in mindless robotic consumerist trance. I also have to depart from my “intelligent and credible” fellow observers in their rather sanguine assessment that the collapse of industrial civilization will just entail the return to a pre-industrial life-style. In other words, like the horse-and-buggy days of colonial America-doesn’t sound too bad. Perhaps this will be the final new social equilibrium, but in the meantime, what happens when civilization collapses, as Uncle Karl pointed out, is barbarism. I think we can all agree that the images emerging from the worldwide military prison gulag, and the fact that the possible ethical and legal justification of torture has become a topic of debate and discussion in politics and academics, is one sign of a civilization that is collapsing into barbarism. This barbarism is sometimes (falsely I believe) called the “law of the jungle”: kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. But that notion is not a “law of the jungle”-it is a false choice, a rigid, fear-based survival program. There are many other, healthier and more productive ways for us to expend our energy and direct our intention, besides killing or being killed, eating or being eaten. What are these ways? We can start by “turning our swords into ploughshares”, demilitarizing society and committing ourselves to the non-violent ways of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and Jesus of Nazareth. We can sit down and talk: talk about what is really needed for every one,- all human and non-human beings, inhabiting this planet, or this place where we happen to find ourselves;-and how we can best meet those needs. What a fantastic challenge and beautiful opportunity for our collective creativity and ingenuity, our powers of design and imagination. As far as I can tell, humans don’t really need that much-food, water, shelter, health, safety of course, the basics; the opportunity to raise their children in peace, to engage in meaningful work, to practice their creativity, to pursue their spiritual and religious values-don’t they all flow from basic respect for another’s integrity? The Golden Rule is still the Golden Rule.
I have to report I feel neither gloomy nor doomy. I’ve found that letting go of denial and accepting what is happening, is tremendously liberating.
“To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose..” and this is a time of collapse, and renewal.
So, my friends, be of good cheer, and laugh and make music.
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