All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Pounding Stone at the Confluence

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POEMS OF CHILDHOOD: A SUITE

No Proof

I tossed a rock

Into a lush backwash

From a high ledge,

The splash

Pushing striders,

Lighter than water,

Out of their refuge.

In a moment, they

Returned, seemingly

Unperturbed

By the explosion—

The rocks bigger, my fervor

Ever greater as I kept

Missing the mark.

The striders finally

Vanished, all

At once, and I felt

Mean for ruining

An ancient, pristine order. 

I climbed back down

The cliff, hoping

The striders would return.

As I stepped out

Onto slippery stones,

A black snake 

Slithered toward me

On top of the water,

Its body suddenly

Whipping around rocks,

Quick as a dipper.

I swayed slightly,

Curious, incredulous—

In seconds the snake

Lunged at my chest.

As it flew toward me,

I held up my hand, palm

Open, the front of its fangs

Hitting flat life lines;

It tumbled back

Into the river and slid off,

Surprised that it had not

Hooked into flesh—

Then between stones

It vanished

As liquid as ripples,

Leaving me unable to prove

That I had been attacked

By a fierce guardian

Of the river.... 

  All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Pounding Stone with Pestle in Mortar

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ACCEPTING THE WORLD

   I often hike in the Sierra Nevada Mountains just to encounter stones. Some rocks, though resembling magnificent spires or edifices, confront the soul with a sublimely nonhuman order. Other stones covered with moss and humus seem as alive in their niches as anything else in their ecosystem. Though forever silent about human and natural history, some stones contain traces of a Native American presence that in the Sierra Nevada Mountains has all but disappeared within the last century or so, the mortars filled with grass, humus, water, sometimes even pestles. A vibration from eon's ago, perhaps from the beginning of time, permeates stones: Occasionally in the mountains I am so impressed by stones that I feel a crazy desire to worship them.
   The energies within stone and earth form the physical ground of being, which has existed far longer than the human race, far longer than any organic life on the planet. These energies establish the basic reality around which countless forms of life have surged forth only to pass away, enabling other forms to fill their niche. These energies are the bedrock of creation itself, but they also usher in the King of Terrors, for whatever tabernacles in physical form must perish. Because all form eventually breaks down, even the tallest mountains, the Gods of creation also force us to face the inescapable realities of suffering and death. The life-force is in a field of constant change, of creation and destruction, which allows the new to supplant the old in a never-ending cycle.
   The Gods of creation have birthed forms beyond the human race's ability to conquer or control, live volcanoes from the ocean's floor and vast mountain ranges and seemingly endless deserts. Tiny humans huddle on firm, flat ground as much as possible, often ignoring or forgetting the intimidating forms of nature, yet something within us longs for places with sublime natural forms that tower above us—for contact with another order of being, primordial and majestic, that humbles and amazes us and reminds us of the inexplicable vastness of space and time.
   The soul needs to be fed as much as the body. As revealed by the Tree of Life, there are nine energetic states, or chambers, of the soul, each of which requires a steady influx of the corresponding energy of its vibrational frequency. The level of the energy of the womb of creation is very high, associated with the supernal Emanation on the Tree of Life known as Understanding, or Binah in Hebrew. Since this state is on the other side of what the Qabalists call the Abyss, far beyond brain consciousness, the soul must be very still and calm to tune to this primal energy, as still and calm as stones.

The World: Saturn

   The ancients fashioned Gods that represent the basic forms and energies of creation, from Ptah in Egypt, to Cronus in Greece, to Saturn in Rome. My soul opened to the energies of the physical ground of being after I had hiked many miles through the mountains, so impressed by rocks, large and small, that I began to feel their frequency. Saturn is perhaps the symbolic form of the primordial Gods of Creation most recognized by modern human beings. Saturn's Greek name is Cronus, Father Time. Associated with the Grim Reaper, Saturn rules our subjective sense of time, including our sense of mortality. In a human being's short span of life, Saturn is the crucible that burns away trivial or artificial characteristics. Saturn's pressure keeps you focused on your own path even if you find that some goals force you to plod through great difficulties in order to establish inner wisdom and discipline—even though all the while fear and regret may accompany you. Known as the “greater malific,” Saturn, the most feared planet in astrology, demands that you accept your true nature, your higher self, and take control of your life, finding what must be done to avoid or solve problems. Tests and trials occur so that you know and accept your higher self and face obstacles with wisdom and courage. Saturn never promises success, but through discipline and perseverance, and by avoiding distractions and overcoming doubts and gaining knowledge and skill, you can earn mastery regardless of the outcome.
   Similar in many ways to Saturn, the ancient Egyptian God Ptah is the fashioner of the egg, who dreamt creation in his heart and called the world into being, his name meaning “the opener,” in the sense of opening the mouth to speak the Word. From chaos he fashioned the universe through harmonics and thought and established the harsh discipline of form. As the creator of form, like Saturn, Ptah is a God of restriction and stability and obedience to structures that serve individual or collective purposes. On the personal level also, Ptah is a God of planning and determination, of boundaries and limitations.
   These days I appreciate the more frightful aspects of Saturn because as a teenager I experienced a great deal of confusion and fear about death. Not long after my grandmother passed away, a year after my grandfather died, my cousin and his girlfriend, both in their early twenties, were killed in a car accident. I was fourteen. The entire family remained devastated by the loss for many years. 

   A few years later, my father died, three days before his fifty-sixth birthday, about a month after I turned seventeen. I still have a vivid memory of his body laid out on a single bed in his best suit the day my mother picked out his coffin. His face was waxy and unnatural; the embalmers had attempted to make it seem like he was just sleeping—without success. That same day my mother opted to purchase a concrete vault for the casket that would purportedly survive fifty years instead of twenty-five—for twice the money.
   All my other relatives who had died, placed on display during visitation, seemed pasty and slightly misshapen, as if someone had replaced the real body with a poorly rendered, life-sized doll. Shocked by their almost real-life appearance, I thought that I might be expected to pretend that they weren't dead. Whatever the reason for their appearance, I found that I couldn't bring myself to grieve openly; my formal clothes, the limousines, the hasty ceremonies, the flowery grave sites all felt unreal. The only time I experienced true grief was during my cousin's funeral when my uncle lifted son's hand from the coffin and wouldn't let go. He and my aunt wept uncontrollably, which caused me to bolt, sobbing, out of the funeral chapel. After my father died, my surviving family avoided talking about death, and my friends avoided me, as if I might somehow bring death into their world.
   In the physical world, things fall apart. People suffer from serious defects and illness and pain. As someone who has experienced a chronic illness for forty-five years, I know that even people close to you often remain in denial about your illness or blame you for not overcoming your condition. They act like they would rather just avoid dealing with it and would prefer that you would just function "normally" in the social arena and in their presence. Like death, illness triggers the primal self-preservation instinct.
   Unfortunately, since people often avoid you when they learn that you have an illness, even one that isn't contagious, as I have grown older, I have grown more and more solitary. After a recent trip to the mountains, I realized that I needed to honor the basic energies of existence, which include suffering and death, and I needed, as a person with a chronic disease, to let go of regret in order to live more fully.
   I doubt that people can truly experience the vibrational levels of the life-force if they are in denial about suffering and death. If we cannot grieve or suffer openly, if all hint of death and illness must be hidden from sight so we can pretend that they don't exist, aren't we shutting out the life-force? If we glorify youth and strength and ignore aging and illness and weakness, aren't we also ignoring the life force in all its manifestations? If we shut down emotionally when faced with suffering and death, can we truly live?
   We contact the subtle forces with both the intellect and the emotions. We cannot experience the life-force with the intellect alone. If we shut down our emotions, we cut ourselves off from the life-force on all levels—and the soul starves.
   I invoked the God Saturn as a way to experience basic energies of the life-force and to accept the world and all it suffering. I also invoked Saturn to release my regrets. After the ritual, I realized that I have ended up doing what I had always felt compelled to do—though with much greater financial limitations than I had expected. I had once believed that a career would have enabled me to do the things I wanted—without recognizing that a career would have eaten up most, if not all, of the time that I needed in order to be a creative, politically active, spiritual person. I have discovered that lingering regret can end up being worse than illness itself, but the emotional pain can also become a catalyst to grow into the person that you feel compelled to be. With regret also comes anger at the people who have stood in your way. I realized as well that I need to release that anger.
   Because of my ritual, I have felt free of anger and regret. In a moment of reflection, I understood that suffering and sorrow and limitation have helped me to grow as a person. Despite my illness, or perhaps because of it, I have developed the discipline to overcome obstacles and focus on what I need to do to accomplish my goals. On the Pillar of Severity, Mars and Mercury are both Saturn on a lower arc, Mars on the ethical level and Mercury on the intellectual level. Opening the self to the influence of Mars can lead to a compulsion to fulfill the moral imperative for justice. Opening the self to the influence of Mercury can lead to the compulsion to fulfill the moral imperative for truth. Like Saturn, both Mars and Mercury are anchored in severe (some might even say "harsh") discipline.

   I have finally made a clean break. Why should I feel guilt or have regrets? I accept my true nature—I know I have lived up to the demands of my higher self.
   I am free of guilt and regret and denial. I accept the world as it is.

 

Armies

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BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

   Parking by a load of rubbish near Fancher Creek, I pulled up the parking brake: No one in the immediate vicinity. Then I grabbed my buck knife from the glove compartment, slid it onto my belt, and trotted across the oiled, single-lane road which snakes through one abandoned Native American village site after another in the lower foothills. Before I jumped up on the rock and stepped over the barbed wire, I noticed Fresno etched in the distance, so I rushed back to my car and checked again to see if the doors were locked.
   The foothills safer than most urban areas in the Valley, I could hike all the way to the Kings River if I wanted to, my path only blocked by orchards just before I made it to the river. Cows might stampede in complete terror away from me (or toward me), quails would occasionally burst out of the bushes, coyotes would pause and gaze and lope off as if hoping to be chased back to their lair. There was a slight chance that I might encounter a bobcat or a mountain lion or a rattlesnake, but with my buck knife I felt ready for anything.
   Most of the paths on the bluffs converged in the floodplain of the creek, whose bed miles away had functioned as one of the Valley's first irrigation ditches for a farmer who lured the railroad, the catalyst for urban growth, to the region. I chose a favorite path, noting all the pounding stones and pestles and house pits along the way that had apparently evaded the sight of the average trespasser, and perhaps of even the rancher, for over a century.
   After my first discoveries, I had trained myself to notice large, flat stones where I might find round holes filled with water or earth and grass and leaves, slightly tapered stones possibly used for grinding, and midden earth in oblong or circular indentations in the ground. These, along with the paths kept distinct by cattle and horses, were the only signs left of a civilization that had flourished in the area for thousands of years, the tribe gone now over a century, in which time the city had grown one pop-n-fresh neighborhood after another, subdivisions leap-frogging toward the hills.
   Hotter than I had expected. I had planned to hike for a mile or two in my work clothes, but after only about half a mile, I was thirsty and unusually tired, so I took a detour to my favorite pounding stone, where eleven pestles still silently waited. As I approached the pounding stone I noticed a bobcat in the distance stalking something in the grass, suddenly pouncing, then carrying a squirrel away in its teeth. After the bobcat skulked away, I found the site of the kill dotted by feces and stained by a streak of blood, far less gore than I had expected.
   A squirrel in the rocks was chirping loudly in fear or grief, or both, even though I was only a few feet away. At first I thought that I was only projecting human emotions onto the squirrel, but I had never before heard a squirrel make such a racket, even though it was still in danger because the bobcat and I were both in its vicinity. The squeals might have functioned as an alarm, but after a minute, they began to resemble cries of utter despair.
   I plopped down on the pounding stone as the squirrel's screams began to taper off. Suddenly I felt regret. I had been unable to grieve at my father's funeral. No outward display of emotion. I leaned back against a tree and closed my eyes. In my mind's eye, I saw my father's coffin in the funeral chapel, so I cleared my mind. After a while a few images flickered across the screen of my mind, but I cleared everything away again in my meditation by focusing on blackness, going into the gap between words, between sounds.
   After what might have been a long time, I imagined myself ascending a tree, the leaves wet with dew like tiny stars, and golden eagles wheeling around it. As I reached the middle of the tree, I gazed at the sky and faced, not the sun, but a bright, golden, equal-armed cross hanging, completely still, in the blue. Floating at each end of the cross was an indistinct angel, each dressed in a colored robe, one blue, one red, one yellow, and one white.
   I continued to focus on the balanced cross, hoping that each angel would become clearer, and suddenly I was bathed in warm, golden light, which felt so good that I didn't want to open my eyes. I continued to rise, almost against my will, as though I were floating upward on some moon path toward the Source of all creation. People and cars in the Valley below inched forward in the distance, utterly impermanent, as I rose closer to a brilliant light more intense than the brightest sunlight. I looked at my hands, which were empty. My entire body was empty, only transparent, crystalline light. All was emptiness except for the light, which permeated everything. At the light's edge, my mind truly became blank for a moment. I was just a spark of consciousness in a sea of light.
   Suddenly I heard a loud shuffling and with a jerk I came back to myself: only a squirrel scurrying through dry leaves. I had instinctively grabbed for my buck knife, but I couldn't pull it out immediately because a button held it securely within its sheath, which troubled me a bit, so I looked around carefully. Gazing at the pounding stone, I noticed two pestles with grass growing out at the edges of the mortars.
   The stone communicated nothing about the people who had pounded acorns there for millennia. I stood up and stepped into one of the house pits and closed my eyes. In my mind's eye I saw a Native American woman, light moving over her face and shoulders, as though I were envisioning either her image reflected in a pool, or the light from a pool of water reflected on her shoulders and face. I realized that the image could be like the reflection of someone looking at herself in water.
   I felt as if something were tugging at my ankles and shins and that I could drop into another world, as though through the center of the earth and out the other side, yet I felt at the same time that I was being presented with some choice, as though I were standing in the shallows of a pool, looking out toward the deep. Some Native Americans buried their dead in the earth under their houses, and I imagined my mind somehow mingling with the mind of the Native American woman, as if time were an ocean, as if I were somehow part of all of the energy fields of the world throughout human history and beyond.
   And it was empty. The act of putting one foot in front of another, empty. The act of thinking, empty. The city in the distance, growing like an anthill, gone in the silence. I gazed at a baby blue eye, no longer myself but the eternal gazing at itself, the observer and the observed and the process of observation. I was the flower and the stone and the oaks, a point of consciousness within a brilliant tapestry of infinite consciousness, and I felt the pressure of innumerable points of consciousness communicating with me in the heat in countless messages that I would never fully comprehend. I felt a timeless, eternal emptiness, the emptiness of transient form. Within seconds I again separated myself mentally from my surroundings, out of habit, carrying with me both the sense of timelessness that imbues everything in the woods and the realization that I was losing the sense of oneness--which made me want to head back to the car.
   Regretting that I was returning home sooner than I had planned, I drove to an old, disintegrating road, partially on private property and partially on public land, which sloped down to Sycamore Creek. Sliced by rivulets and broken up by roots, the road, unused for decades, descended about half a mile to a "gauging station," a measuring stick cemented into the creek bed. Although it appeared that no other signs of civilization existed for miles, hidden by bushes on the other side of the creek, the remains of a stone wall stood next to two piles of rocks, both the size of graves. A mile beyond the confluence of the two creeks, the walls of another stone house stood, the stones on top pulled down for two other piles, also the size of graves, nearby.
   The first time I had trespassed at Sycamore Creek, I knew when to stray from the old road into the grass to the pounding stone on the ridge, perhaps because the faint rushing sound in the distance pulled me from the road or because I had noticed a trail etched in the grass, but because of my excursions in the foothills I had begun to believe in retro-cognition. I couldn't see the past, like a truly gifted psychic, but on occasion had known with overwhelming certainty, in places that I had never been before, where I would find trails and pounding stones. Once, sitting on a pounding stone, I actually heard the laughter of women, as if the earth and the stones were all to some degree conscious and retained the memory of all that had transpired, and I could access that memory because I could tap into the timeless consciousness in moments of profound stillness.
   I rested in the shade, part of an ocean of consciousness holding all time, near a trail thousands of years old. I was the rock, the tree, the squirrel, the woodpecker--my consciousness not just a wave but the ocean itself. I also extrapolated that I was also one with every human being but dismissed that thought immediately.
   When I'd first started trespassing, I had dismissed the possibility of finding house pits as unlikely because at least a hundred years had passed since the tribe had occupied the area. For a long time, I had believed that resting cattle had made the indentations in the ground, but after witnessing many abandoned village sites, I finally understood, with a slight shiver, the significance of shallow hollows in the ground near pounding stones.
   Obviously I could not prove that where I stood uncountable generations had loved and slept and given birth and died. I couldn't prove that settlers (probably all killed around the same time) were buried under those piles of rocks unless I wanted to dig up the bones, and I lacked both the time and the stomach for that. Showing how those settlers had taken over an ancient village site would change nothing. Proving that an ancient civilization once thrived there would not keep the area from being developed. Far worse had happened there already with the aid of the army or militias: most of the tribe had been killed or driven onto a reservation where the members succumbed to alcoholism and disease and starvation, the most recent generations operating casinos on reservation land. I was quite certain of one thing after finding many abandoned village sites along the creeks in the lower foothills: After a point no mercy had been shown anyone. And history, I suspected, without a major change in the human consciousness, would keep repeating itself.
   I counted the mortars in the pounding stone again and stared above the tops of the sycamores to the ridge on the other side, squinting to see a hint of the other pounding stones across the creek, my gaze finally following a slope down to another ancient village site about a half mile away on a small hill above Sycamore Creek. I tried with my binoculars to make out the trail that led on that slope to the village site near the ruins of the stone house, again without success, but I could make out without difficulty the house being built on the ridge about half a mile away.
   I could go out on a little night hike, since no one was living in the house yet, douse the wood with gasoline and light a match, and no one would know that I had started the fire, in all probability. This was my window of opportunity. I decided then to hike on the trail next to the creek, past other pounding stones, climbing over barbed wire to the building site.
   Standing on a slope overlooking the creek, the house was less than a mile from a hub of ancient Native American trails where a rancher had dropped blocks of salt. On a forty acre lot at the edge of public land, the house was ostentatious, commanding a view of a large territory that I had explored for years, with only cattle and wild animals witnessing my intrusions. In that area alone I had found a pestle collection and three pounding stones with pestles still in the mortars. Two of the trails led over a hill down to a huge abandoned Native American village site next to another creek several miles away. For Sale signs had popped up all along the road advertising forty acre lots, with wells and utilities.
   Each time I trespassed in the hills, photographing the artifacts and the rare or threatened species, I imagined spear-heading an effort to preserve the lower foothills, pressuring government officials to buy up development rights along a fifteen mile stretch where ancient village sites were still connected by a network of continuous trails thousands of years old, but even that would provide protection for only so long. As an activist for many years, I had witnessed how the system of private property, enshrined in law, coupled with “representative” democracy, remains the instrument for piecemeal development that profits both landowners and developers. Elected officials were continually changing zoning and land designations whenever expedient. Most ag-lands and wildlands were doomed, it seemed to me, yet very few seemed to notice.
   The ranchers probably did not go beyond the barbed wire strung along the edges of their own lands. No one else seemed aware of the significance of the trails or the mortars or the pestles. (I estimated that about one out of ten pounding stones I had discovered still had pestles on or near them.) A freeway extension was being constructed in the valley just over ten miles away from the main village site at the base of the hill, but along the creeks, little had changed for over a hundred years except for that house.
   I sat down on a pile of wood and pulled out a box of matches from my backpack. I struck the match and let it burn down to my fingertips. The house where I had grown up was still at the end of its street, nondescript, occupied by another family for many years. This mansion, on the other hand, was being built for elites, promising a life of seclusion and happiness while the Valley in the distance was boiling over with trouble.
   I let the match singe my fingers again. The mansion was the first sign of urban sprawl that in the next fifty years was going to engulf the foothills. The last traces of a whole race would be wiped out in the process, leap-frog development conveniently eliminating the signs of genocide committed by a system spreading into the far corners of the earth, ecocide the logical partner of genocide.
   I lit up another match and held up the flame, hearing woodpeckers cackle and the peeps of bush-tits, the air growing cool. Being an activist in the Central Valley was like stepping with a bow and arrow into a mine field to face the tanks of a well-equipped army. I did not want to harm anyone or destroy property. I knew that I had to decide then whether or not I should continue fighting covert battles by myself until they caught up with me. 
   People in the San Joaquin Valley who challenged the system were sooner or later slapped down (usually sooner, if effective). A few had lost jobs; professionals had been slandered with impunity; an organization had to close down because of bogus lawsuits; one activist, a teacher, had been fined and bankrupted for using his democratic right to sue the government for higher review of a local land use decision. I had witnessed or heard about activists being threatened and blackballed by developers and government officials and townspeople alike.
   I felt spaced out, a little unsteady on my feet, unable to belch, with pain in my joints, all symptoms of celiac disease. I had indulged in a few bites of toast (which contained gluten and corn syrup) at breakfast and was suffering the consequences. If I ate any more gluten, I would risk severe muscle and joint pain, fatigue, depression, atrial fibrillation; I might have difficulty functioning at my job the next day. If I continued eating it despite the warning signs, I would become sure that I had some terminal illness or would start mumbling on a street corner.
   I wouldn't be able to function in jail.
   My life was no more and no less significant than the tribe members who once occupied this area, no more and no less significant than the buckeyes and sycamores and oaks, the bluebirds and the juncos, the rosinweed and blue curl.
   This sorry civilization, I thought, was going to blow itself up or let climate disruption finish it off. We should feel anger like a clean flame (I chuckled), not self-pity. We should burn out all the corruption, cauterizing as much of the cancer as possible.
   I was making a speech in my head. Sighing, I put the box of matches away. I envisioned a white flame at the crown of my head, stretching down to my heart, then down to my groin and feet. I was on fire while everything around me was swirling, transient, empty.
   Bats looped silently overhead, the sun kindling the bare branches of the oaks in the distance. The moss-covered stone, cold in the light, now seemed almost as warm as an animal in the cooling air. The buckeyes and sycamores smelled dusty and wet at the same time, the creek still gurgling, making more sense than I would ever understand and no sense at all. The first lights were appearing in the valley and the sky, one constellation on the ground for a moment appearing to reflect another in the sky. With an almost inaudible groan, I stood up and started the hike back on a moon path toward my home.

 All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Fairy Lanterns and Wood Stars

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THE HOLY SPIRIT AND DISASTER CAPITALISM

   Once, in a vision I was strolling in a soft-blue monk's habit on a stone path through an enclosed garden. In the distance I could see a stone statue, which I suspected was religious in nature. As I approached, I saw a statue of Jesus on the cross, and I knelt down, but when I looked up, to my surprise, the statue had transformed into the Virgin Mary.
   This vision occurred while some friends and I were “chakra toning,” a New Age technique for stimulating the energy centers of the aura; in other words, we sang or hummed the musical note associated with each primary chakra for an extended period without stopping, from the root chakra to the crown, a total of seven in all. The toning session begins with the note corresponding to the lowest chakra and proceeds up the scale without interruption to the highest chakra. By the sixth note, after humming nonstop for about thirty minutes, I had achieved an altered state of consciousness through hyperventilation.
   I was surprised by the vision for several reasons. First of all, I have never worshiped Christian icons, and before then I had mainly experienced visions of symbols associated with the Tree of Life, the sacred glyph of the mystical Qabalah. Even more surprising to me, in the vision I was a monk in a monastery garden. I had entertained the idea of becoming a pagan priest but never a Christian monk. Moreover, I was wearing a hooded robe of the purist soft blue, which both intrigued and confused me, because I thought that monks only wore black or brown or white robes. Before then, I had never imagined kneeling myself before the Virgin Mary or any other feminine deity, an act which I interpreted as a show of willingness to sacrifice myself in some way. The very act of becoming a monk, of course, requires sacrificing a worldly life for a spiritual one. Donning the robes proclaims detachment from the ornaments and distractions of the world.
   I told my friends about the vision but soon forgot it since the symbolism seemed boringly conventional. At the time, I did not know enough about the complex symbolism of the Tree of Life in the Western esoteric spiritual tradition to truly understand the vision. Finally, after many spiritual experiences and over ten years of study, the meaning of the vision, which is more Qabalistic than I had initially imagined, has grown much clearer.
   Without even knowing it, for most of my life, I have manifested the archetypal energies of the Goddess, no matter the circumstances. In the vision, I was worshiping the celestial Goddess, the feminine principle of creation, and revealing my devotion to Her. Though strange, the vision seemed appropriate to me because of my devotion to the arts and the natural world from childhood on, but the vision revealed a deeper level of meaning that can only be understood in the context of the Tree of Life.
   There is an old saying in the Mysteries: “All the Gods are one God, and all the Goddesses are one Goddess, and there is but one true initiator.” In terms of the Tree of Life, that means that the feminine principle shows up as different Goddesses on different levels, or “paths.”
   The Tree of Life reveals the evolution of the cosmos from the finest spiritual energy to the densest physical manifestation through ten primary states of being known as Emanations, or Sephiroth in Hebrew. Each Emanation within the cosmos emerged from the previous state of being and eventually emanated the next. The first three states contain the basic principles of creation, for instance the duality of the masculine and feminine states and the existence of unity within multiplicity, but remain outside of manifestation. The Virgin Mary is symbolically associated with the third Emanation on the Tree of Life known as Understanding, in a dimension above the Abyss.
   The celestial Virgin, the archetypal feminine principle above manifestation, therefore experiences immaculate conception, and gives birth to a savior God, the “Son” of the Trinity manifested on this plane. Understanding, the Emanation of the celestial Virgin, is the primal womb of manifestation from which all form originates, hence its association with Saturn, with stone, and with the sea. The third Emanation, though outside creation, ushers in the lord of all terrors. The word Mary comes from the Hebrew word marah, “bitter” or “bitterness.” The great sea of evolving life is bitter: Whatever is born must die.
   The feminine principle, as I mentioned, is associated with other Goddesses on different paths on the Tree, most notably with Victory, the seventh Emanation ruled by Venus—the sphere of nature, beauty and the arts. I was born under the sign of Aquarius, which on the Tree links the Emanation of the Moon known as the Foundation with the Emanation of Victory, each of which emphasizes different aspects of the Goddess. 

   In my vision, though, I was worshiping the celestial Goddess. I had already manifested the energy of Venus through my art and adored Demeter through my love of nature. I had experienced the energy of the Moon through meditation and the arts and had worked for Ma'at through my efforts for truth and justice. In terms of the Tree of Life, the vision made perfect sense: I have sacrificed my personality to manifest the energies of the Goddess in different ways.
   Several connecting paths on the Tree of Life, including the Path of Gimel, the Path of Daleth, the Path of Teth, the Path of Lamed, and the Path of Tau, also reflect aspects of the Goddess, so the adventurer on the Tree of Life has the opportunity to meet the Goddess at many points on the spiritual journey. In the archetypal hero's journey, the meeting with the Goddess represents a stage in the adventure when a person experiences a relationship that has the power and significance of an all encompassing, unconditional love. Also known as the sacred marriage, the union of opposites, the “meeting” may take place on a purely psychological level, representing the unification of the self during which the hero begins to see himself in harmony with all creation.
   A psychic, about a year before my vision, told me that my aura is soft blue, which may partially explain why in the vision the monk's habit is blue. Renditions of Mary portray the Queen of Heaven and Earth and the Great Sea in blue also. My monk's garb in the vision is, on one level, an emblem of my adoration for the Goddess. Pure, soft blue is also associated with the spiritual level in Wisdom, the sphere of dynamic, masculine energy opposite Understanding; in that way my vision symbolically connects the primarily masculine energy of the celestial God with the energy of the celestial Goddess.
   According to Dion Fortune, an authority on the modern Qabalah, the bible, which is essentially a Qabalistic book, contains God-names that pertain to the different Emanations on the Tree of Life (1). For instance, all references to the Father concern the manifestation of the Source known as Jehovah in the Emanation of Wisdom; all references to the Son apply to Beauty, the Christ-center; and all references to the Holy Ghost, the feminine principle within the trinity, correspond to Yesod, the Foundation, the Emanation associated with the Moon. From the Foundation evolved the Kingdom, the physical plane. The Holy Ghost attracts archetypal spiritual forces like a magnet to the Kingdom, the material world. The dance of the Gods, feminine and masculine, is the dance of the archetypal energies of one Source through different dimensions of the cosmos, energies which ultimately manifest in the physical realm.
   The paths of the Goddess bring peace and harmony and a sense of oneness with all creation. Only after I started meditating and envisioning spiritual symbols did I realize that the feminine force goes by different names, World Soul, Holy Spirit, Goddess, and that one aim of occult spirituality is to contact this great force and experience its powerful influence—and also contact through its influence other great forces that in Christianity go by the name of the Son and the Father of the trinity.
   Recently I experienced an epiphany about why, during an extended period of meditation, I had a vision of a golden, equal-armed cross. In the vision, the golden cross floated in a deep, blue sky, and at each end of the cross an angel hovered, each angel in a colored robe, one yellow, one red, one blue and one white. This was one in a series of visions of archetypal symbols, all of which, I eventually discovered, are associated with the Tree of Life, the great composite symbol of the mystical Qabalah. As I have mentioned before, the visions came as a total surprise: Before I began meditating at the age of forty-two, I was oblivious to spiritual symbolism in general, so the full meaning of the symbols that I have envisioned has sometimes taken me a long time to understand.
   According to Dion Fortune, the brilliant 20th Century Qabalist, Beauty, or Tiphareth in Hebrew, is a point of transition or transmutation between the planes of form and formlessness, and the Foundation, or Yesod in Hebrew, is a subtle plane of form directly “above” the physical plane.
   Even though I was unaware of it at the time, the vision of the equal-armed cross and the angels revealed the basic structure for rituals that involve the spiritual energies of the Holy Ghost and the four archangels representing the elements that form the background energies of manifestation, the basic structure, in other words, of the banishing and invoking rituals used by occult lodges. Since her book is so dense that at first it seems written in code, it has taken me years to unpack the meaning of Fortune's Mystical Qabalah. In what first seemed to me merely a passing remark, Fortune mentions that the occult lodges worship the Holy Ghost, associated with Yesod, the Foundation, from which the physical universe emanated (2). In a previous section, Fortune reveals that the Holy Ghost is the feminine aspect of the trinity (3).
   These two key points have profound implications for Christianity and society as a whole. One of the goals of personal mysticism is communication with the Holy Guardian Angel, or higher self, which is connected to the divine core of being and transcends space and time. The mystic, as Fortune points out, begins in the humble manger, not on the Mount (4), so the first communications from the higher self come through Yesod, the Foundation, the state of being associated with the Holy Ghost and the feminine principle of creation, in visions of archetypal symbols and voices. The composite symbol of the Tree of Life itself, which represents the unseen forces in the collective consciousness of humanity, is a gift from Yesod, the subtle realm that reveals spiritual principle through symbolic form.
   Higher psychism is the domain of the Son, Tiphareth, the Christ center: The subconscious mind, in other words, first accesses spiritual principle through archetypes and symbols in Yesod, the subtle plane of form above the physical plane. Beauty, the Christ center, is the sphere of the Sun, of blinding illumination, where form dissolves in light. Only after shaking free from the physical plane and making initial contact with the Foundation and experiencing spiritual principle through visions of symbols can the mind begin to make sense of illuminations from the higher planes. The mind slowly builds, piece by piece, an inner temple with symbols representing spiritual principle, which makes comprehensible the experiences of illumination and exultation that swing the mind beyond the Foundation into the blinding sphere of the Son, the center of cosmic equilibrium, harmonizing love and spiritual inebriation.
   According to Fortune,

Illumination consists in the introduction of the mind to a higher mode of consciousness than that which is built up out of sensory experience.... Unless, however the new mode of consciousness is connected up with the old and translated into terms of finite thought, it remains as a flash of light so brilliant that it blinds. We do not see by means of the ray of light that shines upon us, but by means of the amount of that ray which is reflected from objects of our own dimension upon which it lights. Unless there are ideas in our minds which are illuminated by this higher mode of consciousness, our minds are merely overwhelmed, and the darkness is more intense to our eyes after that blinding experience of a high mode of consciousness than it was before. In fact, we do not so much change gear as throw the engine of our mind out of gear altogether. This, for the most part, is what so-called illumination amounts to. There is enough of a flash to convince us of the reality of superphysical existence, but not enough to teach us anything of its nature. (5)

   Before I knew the Tree of Life even existed, I had during meditation envisioned many of its symbols. Eventually I realized that these symbols have enabled me to translate spiritual principle into “terms of finite thought” so that illumination would not merely blind me. The symbols reveal not only spiritual principle but, in one instance at least, the basic structure of practical magic that connects the practitioner with powerful subtle forces, such as the Holy Ghost and the Son of the trinity as well as Archangels and Gods and Goddesses fashioned by the human mind to represent unseen subtle forces throughout the ages. Contemplation of the paths of the Tarot on the Tree of Life and of the symbolic representations of the Gods is an effective way of translating spiritual experience into comprehensible ideas.
   The Annunciation, on one level, symbolically suggests this process. The Annunciation is the announcement by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her son Yeheshua, meaning "YHWH is salvation.” The Archangel Gabriel in the Qabalah is assigned to the Foundation, the sphere of the Holy Spirit: Through the feminine principle, the first conception of the Son—the recognition of the higher self—occurs. The higher self then can link up with the macrocosm, the cosmic consciousness of the Father. In fact, the God name of Beauty is “Eloah va Daath,” which can be translated as “God manifested in the mind.” The feminine principle, the Holy Ghost, elevates the mind into the superphysical, into this greater illumination.
   As Fortune points out, through the type of consciousness associated with the Foundation, “mystical experience gradually builds up a body of images and ideas that are lit up and made visible when illuminations take place” (6). In order to build this temple of images, symbols, and ideas illuminated by higher modes of consciousness, the mind must be open to spiritual influences, which requires a passivity and a receptiveness associated with the feminine Holy Ghost and the Foundation. One must go deep into the subconscious mind, below worries and desires and fears and frustrations, to experience the astral treasures with the psychic senses. Spiritual development, instead of just being a series of magnesium flashes of illumination and exaltation, is a gradual expansion of the mind, a process that is mapped out by the Tree of Life.
   Before I began having visions, I was a materialist, believing that only the physical universe exists. To understand my visions, however, I was forced to expand my idea of the cosmos. I had also experienced accurate premonitions and intuitions which revealed that some part of my psyche can transcend my brain and physical senses, but I had simply forgotten or dismissed them—until I began having the visions. When I started piecing the moments of illumination together, I discovered that it is helpful to think of the cosmos as consisting of many types of energy in one vast fabric, from the finest spiritual vibrations to the grossest physical matter, and that as an extension of the cosmos, my being also contains those energies, hence the paranormal experiences of nonlocal consciousness that have occasionally surprised me over the years. At the “higher” end, the energies are formless, evolving into planes of form, the physical universe being the plane of densest matter. We experience “nonphysical” or subtle planes of form in the imagination when we dream at night or daydream or have visions of symbols. When we simply know something is true through intuition, consciousness is operating on a higher, formless plane, rising from Beauty, the sphere of the Son, to Wisdom, the sphere of the Father, and in the Book of Creation, the Sefer Yetzirah, Wisdom and the Crown are equal.
   Immersing myself in nature, the realm of the Goddess, is one way that I began to open myself to the Holy Spirit and the illuminations of higher consciousness, at first unknowingly, then intentionally. The beta mode of consciousness, the dominant mental state in this highly competitive society, allows intense focus on the external world but blocks access to subtle spiritual influences, which is why for me at least there will always tend to be a basic conflict between the driving forces of capitalism and the subtle forces of the spiritual dimensions, why, in fact, I lived forty years in a spiritual desert. The affairs of business channel the mind away from spiritual frequencies. In a predominantly masculine, patriarchal, capitalistic culture, a barrier remains: Attaining Christ consciousness requires receptiveness and a fair amount of passivity, both qualities associated with the feminine.
   Dion Fortune states that a religion without the Goddess is halfway to atheism. In the Qabalah, the masculine and the feminine as well as the physical and the spiritual are polarities that allow the One to manifest as the Many. To vilify, exploit, or misuse the physical or the feminine is to blaspheme the Source of all creation. By demonizing feminine, passive, receptive states of the mind, patriarchal religions and societies block access to the Holy Ghost, thereby effectively establishing a barrier to the other forces of the trinity. One can experience the illuminations of the Son, the Christ force, but cannot fully understand them without experiencing the feminine state of the Holy Ghost in the Foundation—and, let us remember, the Son shows us the Father. Perhaps that is why so many Christians love the Virgin Mary and Saint Francis of Assisi, the great soul who loved all creatures, who empathized so much with the Christ and the suffering of humanity that he experienced the stigmata.
   One of the places where I have often experienced the Holy Spirit is the San Joaquin River Gorge, an ecosystem that was almost destroyed by a dam at Temperance Flat. In an example of an economic development described by Naomi Klein as “disaster capitalism,” which results in a redistribution of wealth from the public sphere into private hands (7), farmers in the San Joaquin Valley used the drought as a way to “take” public lands for private benefit even though a large percentage of the water created by a new reservoir would go to water-guzzling crops such as almonds in a semi-arid region (the biggest crop in the San Joaquin Valley is almonds, and each almond takes over a gallon of water to produce), as well as to other commodity crops and fodder crops that have no business being grown in a desert. For ensconced private interests, a dam would save the economy because those with wealth, land, and the means of production would have the opportunity to continue business as usual. If the dam had been approved, the private interests who benefit would not have been required to replace unique public land with another public park or to compensate the public in any meaningful way for the loss of land, nor would those private interests be forced to change their unsustainable practices (8).
   The bottom line of capitalism dominates. Based on my experience in the political realm, I've discovered that the public's opportunity to connect with the spiritual forces within nature is rarely, if ever (I am tempted to say “never”), a concern to those with power and money or to the politicians they influence. Approval of the dam would simply be one more example of how capitalism effectively blocks connection between the individual and the Holy Spirit, and by extension with the Son and the Father, revealing once again a basic conflict between Christianity and capitalism.
   The feminine brings forth physical life, and since whatever is born must die, the feminine also ushers in the King of Terrors. Physical life is corruptible, always subject to the vagaries of time and the infirmities of sickness and old age. But to the Qabalist, “the natural is but the dense aspect of the spiritual”(9), the outer robe of concealment that covers the inner robe of glory. All life, including plants and insects and reptiles and animals, is spirit manifested in matter. Everything dies but rises through regeneration. Spiritual beings exist everywhere around us in physical forms that sometimes ravish us, sometimes amuse us, sometimes repulse us, sometimes terrify us. The false dichotomy that presents physical energy as impure and spiritual energy as pure suggests that at the heart of patriarchy is the fear of the subtle emotional, sexual, psychic and spiritual power of women, a fear that has manifested throughout the centuries as witch hunts and as an emotional disconnection from the Holy Ghost.
   In the Tarot, the equal-armed cross, which is called by initiates the Cross of Nature and represents power in equilibrium is included in cards that represent aspects of the Holy Spirit: Judgement, the Ace of Cups, and The High Priestess. In the Tarot, color has great symbolic significance. In the Ace of Cups the cross is black, in Judgement red, in The High Priestess white. In the symbol system of the Tree of Life, the black equal-armed cross is associated with Malkuth, the Kingdom, or physical universe; the red in Judgement symbolizes compassion, which is linked through the Archangel Gabriel with the Foundation; the white in The High Priestess is associated with the unity and the spiritual laws of the supernal Emanations above the Abyss. The gold equal-armed cross, which appeared in my vision but does not appear in the Tarot, is symbolically associated with Beauty, since gold, representing the incorruptibility of the spirit, is the color associated with the Sun, the Christ-center. In my vision, the golden equal-armed cross links the Son with the Holy Spirit.
   In the Tarot card Judgement, the Archangel Gabriel, who is associated with the Foundation and the Holy Ghost, blows a trumpet to awaken souls in their tombs, and the souls arise in gray, etheric bodies. These souls heed the trumpet call with psychic senses, not physical senses, and rise in exultation. In two other Tarot cards with Archangels, Temperance and The Lovers, each Archangel represents a higher mode of consciousness linked with the  higher self. In Judgement, the Archangel Gabriel suggests an individual's encounter with the Holy Ghost and the superphysical nature of the psyche, which as I discovered can lead to a reassessment of the nature of existence.
   In the symbol of Venus, the circle on top of an equal-armed cross reveals the perfection of the spirit above the elements in equilibrium. In the Ace of Cups, on the other hand, the equal-armed cross within a circle is being carried by the dove into the cup of manifestation: The Holy Spirit brings the black, equal-armed cross within the pure, white circle to the realms of form where the spiritual and the physical coalesce. In this way also, the Holy Spirit conceives the higher self in the planes of form, resulting in the integration of the psyche.
   On the path of The High Priestess, the soul is confronted by the feminine principle on a higher arc on a path that crosses the Abyss between the planes of form and the supernal planes of formlessness. Here the equal-armed cross is white, representing unity, in opposition to the black cross of Malkuth, the Kingdom, the white cross suggesting the logic of unity, which is very different from the logic of the physical world, suggesting that the logic resulting in harmony within higher modes of consciousness is also very different from the logic of brain consciousness and the lower personality dealing with the exigencies of physical existence. Spirit can bring the soul into balance in a way that the lower personality doesn't expect or even understand at first. As in the Tarot card The Lovers, the masculine aspect of the psyche looks to the receptive feminine aspect in order to know the higher self, which is very different from the belief systems of societies with long, embedded attitudes of patriarchy.
   Several times recently during invoking rituals, I have experienced a vision of the jewel in the lotus, representing the spiritual energies of the Source which come down the planes through the primary chakras to the earth. The vision emphasizes for me that the Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram, combined with the Middle Pillar Exercise, brings spiritual energy into the mind and manifests it in the world here and now. These visions stem from the equal-armed cross, associated with the Holy Ghost and the elements in equilibrium. I am living proof that, with an openness to the feminine aspects of the psyche and the cosmos, and with a little effort, a dedicated person can bring powerfully transformative spiritual energies into his or her sphere of influence.

(1) Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabalah. (London: Society of Inner Light, 1998) 179.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Ibid,, 47
(4) Ibid., 180
(5) Ibid.
(6) Ibid.
(7) http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
(8) http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/3-disheartening-truths-about-americas-commodity-crops.html/?a=viewall
(9) Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabalah. (London: Society of Inner Light, 1998) 194.

 All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Angels

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EARTH'S ANGELIC HOSTS

   Wherever I walk in the forest, I encounter angels.
   It all started one spring when my wife and I were driving on Watt's Valley Road east of Fresno, and we stopped next to a hillside blanketed by flowers. Though an agnostic, I couldn't help but mumble, “There is a God.” I returned a few years later after I had experienced a spiritual awakening through meditation, and I scrambled up the slope in the rain, my feet slogging through a tapestry of fairy lanterns, Chinese houses, tarweed, and Ithuriel's spears. That day, no matter which way I turned, magnificent arrays of flowers ravished my soul, and I eventually paused for a long time—not just because I was trying to avoid stepping on any more plants. I could sense a unique consciousness emanating from each species, a slightly different frequency of the life-force, all the species within their niche tuned to each other. Later, I read in a book on esoteric philosophy that each species in nature is the manifestation of an angelic, overarching consciousness. I like that. I like to imagine that each species is an angel that I can experience with both physical and psychic senses. I am extremely cautious while in nature because every animal has the right to survive and defend itself and its young, but after I have been in the forest awhile I tune my spirit to the energy of its angels. Even rocks seem to contain a strange, angelic energy, more primeval than the grass and trees, manifesting on earth far longer than any protoplasm.

   Recently I woke up in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep. Suddenly, after many anxious thoughts, I found myself within the sun, and I sensed its power and light within all the manifested angels of creation. I believed that I knew my purpose, as one sometimes does in the middle of the night when one cannot sleep: I was born to spread the word that everything in nature is the dense aspect of the spiritual, each species the manifestation of an angel, each physical angel brimming with spiritual light. Then I understood why shamans connect with power animals: Each animal is one of Earth's angels, at least as significant to humans as the shining ones of other spiritual realms. As physical beings, we are always closer to Earth's angels than to nonphysical beings. In other words, it is inevitably easier to commune with the host of Earth's angels than with angels from other planes of being. These earthly angels can each give us power and knowledge and help us to survive and thrive in the material realm.
   A conventional image of an angel, of course, is a personification, a symbol, but the human mind naturally anthropomorphizes as a way to give form to the unseen realities of spirit. Some animal species, such as humans, are evolving individual consciousness, yet as humans we also retain the potential for contacting subtle forces and experiencing the underlying unity of all consciousness. The figures of angels and gods have helped the human mind make this contact throughout history. The mystical Tree of Life shows the relationships of these archetypal subtle energies; a study of the Tree reveals the types of unseen energies represented by gods and angels throughout history.
   When I woke up the next morning, of course, I came to my senses, realizing that many people, especially the most “rational” among us, would consider my new "mission" ridiculous or insane. Most atheists and religious people, I've discovered, have their own belief system already set in stone, and skepticism, if my experience is any indication, fuels agnosticism. What if, though, humanity suddenly experienced a sea change in attitude and believed that each species is one of Earth's angelic hosts and then extrapolated that Earth is the dense, physical manifestation of a spiritual Source that is both immanent and transcendent?
   As I have progressed through life, I can't help but discern patterns and abstract meaning from circumstances. I call this meaning spiritual principle. Others might call it a gestalt or some other term. For example, I have striven over the years, successfully or not, to develop myself as an artist, writer, composer, activist and spiritual seeker. Each of these pursuits has required sacrifices of time, energy, and money. In each case, I have had to give up something basic to achieve my goals, and I have had to forgive people who have harmed me along the way. (No doubt some of them have had to forgive me). When I look back, however, I realize that I have experienced an expansion of consciousness from each inspiration and each sacrifice. And, at some point during each sacrifice, I have experienced a new and larger sense of self.
   Moreover, I have come to realize that spiritual principle applies whether or not I feel religiously inclined. For instance, in retrospect, even when I was an agnostic, without knowing it, whenever I sacrificed something for beauty, justice, or truth, I was manifesting spiritual principle. Eventually, after encountering natural splendor many times, I became more aware of the existence of the higher self and the angelic hosts within nature and spiritual principle in general. I now can clearly see that my readiness for an expanded perspective developed from a series of experiences associated with inspiration and sacrifice.
   The spiritual principle known as the “Mysteries of Sacrifice,” I have discovered, consists of a process with three stages: first, of course, the actual sacrifice, the giving up of something for a greater good; then, forgiveness of anyone who harmed me along the way; and finally, transformation, a blossoming into a more inspired state of being. These stages have occurred and the spiritual principle has applied whether or not I have been the least bit concerned with religion or spiritual development.
   In the Qabalah, the Christ is a spiritual force that has manifested as different saviors and gods in cultures throughout history. In the West our savior figure is Jesus, in whose story the stages of sacrifice play out dramatically through his crucifixion, his forgiveness, and his resurrection. Each one of us, I believe, experiences these stages to some degree whenever we commit to a greater good, such as raising a family in difficult economic times, creating a work of beauty, or overthrowing a tyrant, whether in politics, academia, or the workplace.
   The process of sacrifice resembles the act of rolling a large rock up a hill, but when the person reaches the summit, he or she experiences an expansion of consciousness, a greater understanding of spiritual principle and the world and a larger sense of self. With sacrifice and forgiveness also comes freedom. The act of forgiveness itself results in a release from bitterness and anger and hatred, a cleansing that leads to a clearer perspective. Don't get me wrong—the act of forgiveness is rarely easy and often only occurs years after the actual offense, but in my experience the elimination of negativity is absolutely necessary in achieving freedom and clarity and an expansion of self.
   Sacrifice and forgiveness also result in breaking away from social conditioning. One recognizes how false and illusory are many beliefs maintained by the establishment culture, which tends to focus on hierarchies and power relationships. For me, sacrifice has led to a greater understanding of spiritual principle, which has released me from the materialistic bonds of a capitalistic society. I no longer feel compelled to gain wealth, status, or power. I am free to act according to the ideals of my higher self, to strive for harmony and exultation through the arts and spirituality. 

   This might strike a sophisticated modern human being as rather archaic. However, I have come to believe in abstractions such as truth, justice, and beauty because life has initiated me. Like many others, I have connected with subtle energies, and I know their place on the Tree of Life, the mystical glyph that reveals the evolution of the cosmos and the evolution of humanity. As I have mentioned before, Life has initiated me in one way through meditation: I had a number of visions of symbols associated with the Tree of Life—even while I was still an agnostic.
   A person often progresses from one stage to another through sacrifice, which requires intention and attention to spiritual principles, such as truth, beauty, harmony, and balance. The mind must make a commitment and focus time and energy on attaining its goal, which is a basic form of sacrifice, instead of simply focusing on feeling pleasure and avoiding pain. When rising above the Kingdom, the material plane, the mind breaks out of purely physical concerns to understand cause and effect, which on the Tree of Life is associated with the plane of intellect known as Splendor. In the sphere of Mercury, the highest virtue is truth, which is a way for the human mind to establish internal and external harmony. After a person has sacrificed in order to align with the energies of Splendor, a person is prepared to tune the mind to the harmony and beauty of nature and the arts, the sphere associated with Venus known as Victory. The mind tunes to the harmony of nature and great human works of art by “feeling with” the spirit within the creation; when a person feels a profound piece of music, for instance, he or she understands the meaning with the heart, whether or not that understanding can be articulated. When a person begins to understand with the heart, he or she is moving toward Beauty, the Emanation of harmony and selfless love and sacrifice, also known as the Christ center.
   I should make clear that I am not a Christian in the conventional sense. I am, however, living proof that a person who has never been "saved" can experience the Christ force. People throughout history have experienced the force of harmony and selfless love even if they have never heard of Christianity, but identifying with the archetype of Jesus, I believe, is an effective way of tuning the heart and soul to that energy, as long as the vice of that sphere, pride, doesn't rear its ugly head—just as identifying with Mercury can help to provide the mind with an intellectual focus or identifying with Venus can help to maintain an artistic focus and a reverence for the angelic hosts of the earth.

   Also, over the years, I have worked with activists who have kept fighting for social and environmental justice despite attacks on their credibility and reputation. I still stand in awe of them. They have revealed to me the power of sacrifice, which sometimes results in people doing the right thing just as a situation appears to be at its bleakest. When I was working as a political organizer, I was an agnostic, but I began to recognize sacrifice as a spiritual principle as I worked with so many amazing activists. In other words, I experienced the Christ-force, not in a church, but while active in politics. I witnessed how other activists sacrificed just about everything they had for a higher purpose, and they continued to fight despite being vilified, threatened, blackballed, or ruined financially.
   An activist chooses a life of sacrifice. Beyond the sacrifice of time, energy, and money, he knows that he is taking a risk when standing up to powerful people in business or academia or politics. He does not know exactly what sacrifice will be demanded but knows that it will occur. In the San Joaquin Valley, an activist learns the score pretty quickly. If an activist is effective, people in power eventually try to undermine him because he threatens their interests or reputation. Local and state governments often practice a kind of faux democracy, where political representatives go through the process of listening to testimony at public hearings in order to fulfill legal requirements, thereby maintaining the illusion that average citizens can influence the political process. Even in the most backward communities, political representatives have learned how to “dot the i's and cross the t's” for legal documents such as environmental impact reports, while relying on their staff and industry attorneys to ensure that their decisions are bullet-proof. Elected officials, however, are more often than not influenced by money, and their votes too often boil down to what is expedient and beneficial for their contributors, not what is morally right or in the public's best interest.
   Vested interests use a number of tactics to undermine activists behind the scenes. Powerful people can complain to the activist's employer, for instance. They can get politicians or business leaders to question an activist's credibility. For example, one activist in the Valley sued a developer for inadequate environmental review. During the settlement process, in which the activist demanded that the developer preserve a tract of farmland in perpetuity as mitigation, a local government official phoned the activist and stated that he had called the school district where the activist worked as a substitute. The official wanted the activist to know that he had complained about the activist's organization to the school district. When I spoke to him last, the activist had not been called to work for the school district in over a month, yet even that didn't stop him.
   I too have experienced forms of ambiguous intimidation. I have lost several jobs, for instance, one after an unscheduled evaluation where the administrator begrudgingly marked excellent in each category. He, however, refused to hold a post-evaluation meeting with me, and I discovered a few days later that I would not be rehired as a teacher at that community college. (Part-time instructors are usually hired on a semester by semester basis.) This was a few weeks after a local newspaper had published an op-ed piece of mine opposing dams on public land. I had worked as an adjunct instructor at the college for over twelve years, receiving a rating of excellent in every category on every evaluation. I had never received a reprimand or a warning, yet I was not rehired. A similar process occurred a few years later. I was still publicly opposing proposals that would benefit agribusiness and destroy public land, and I received an email informing me that I was not being rehired at the community college. This, coincidentally, was not long after a “People vs. fish” rally that members of the college took time off to attend, during which they carried signs supporting the ag industry. Some employees of the college brought their signs back to the college campus and stashed them in their offices. A few years after I had been fired, or, as the case may be, “unrehired,” scientists could only find one delta smelt in San Francisco Bay. Apparently the farmers had won their PR campaign.

   I can't, of course, prove that I was fired or unrehired for opposing the ag industry. I am, however, pretty sure I have been fired from several other jobs in academia simply for telling the truth, but since so much occurs behind closed doors, and loose lips can lead to lawsuits, I cannot provide any definite proof. Coincidentally, academia is the sphere of Mercury, where truth is the highest virtue—and deception is its vice. My experience with academia is no doubt similar to experiences in corporate culture: In academia, maintaining and supporting power relationships is usually more important than truth or merit.
   In a faux democracy, an activist can grow quite paranoid. For instance, a friend from collage called me out of the blue one evening. I hadn't heard from him in years. The first thing he asked about was an op-ed piece that I had written opposing development in the river bottom. He invited me to a party, and he and his friend and I jammed on electric guitars for most of the evening. As I was placing my guitar in the trunk of my car, for some unknown reason my friend tried to get me to drive even though I had imbibed at least four beers. He had been friendly the entire evening until I insisted that my wife drive home. Then he snarled offensive remarks that impugned my masculinity. His friend also made fun of me while I was getting into the passenger seat of the car. When I refused to drive, they both seemed to panic, as if they both were desperate to get me behind the wheel in an inebriated state. Their remarks were so vulgar and mean-spirited that I kept an eye out for a cop car, and while my wife was driving home I noticed not far from my friend's house a man sitting in what might have been an unmarked police car.
   Before that wonderful party, I had published an article critical of a judge who had fined a local activist hundreds of thousands of dollars for a frivolous lawsuit. During the last public hearing the activist had submitted testimony about the precedent-setting and growth-inducing impacts of rezoning the river bottom, and the judge considered his testimony insufficient for a lawsuit, a legal decision which could have established precedent that would have enabled developers to sue just about anyone who does not participate in every stage of a land use decision. The judge's decision was overturned on appeal, but not before the activist had been driven to bankruptcy.
   Even though we'd had a blast during the party, I never heard from my former “friend” again. Believing that a former friend might try to get me arrested on a felony DUI charge might seem like a case of extreme paranoia; I cannot help but remain in a state of agitated hyper-vigilance, however. Causing an activist's life to unravel is an extremely effective way to keep an activist from participating in the democratic process.
   For several years, I worked as the director of an effective environmental organization. I organized coalitions, testified at public hearings, spoke at press conferences, and gained public support in a number of ways. Just when the organization was stopping projects such as coal-fired power plants and a hazardous waste incinerator and establishing the public support to pass legislation forming a Unified Air Pollution Control District, I was named in a sexual harassment lawsuit because I allegedly allowed sexual harassment in the workplace. I had not witnessed, nor had I seen any evidence of sexual harassment, but the organization in Fresno eventually had to close its doors due to the lawsuit: The organization, already in the red, had to settle out of court instead of paying extremely high court costs. At the same time, the organization was evicted from the building where it had rented office space for over four years--not for failure to pay rent, but for failure to pay overdue late charges. As the director, I experienced trouble every day from every side. For instance, a bogus organization, which paid its employees under the table, started canvassing on similar issues. Burglaries of the office became commonplace. The local newspaper started placing our recruitment ad in the sales section of the classifieds even though we were not selling anything. We were simply exercising our right to free speech and involving the public in the democratic process.
   Activism matters in one way at least. Even though laws and policies are always subject to change, and even though activists in places like the San Joaquin Valley remain vulnerable, I have seen how the most effective activists through discipline and sacrifice manifest the ideal virtues associated with the Tree of Life. 

   Sometimes I can't help feeling that I have failed as an activist. Often, as soon as I become effective on an issue, I also become beset by nearly insurmountable problems, and sometimes I never achieve even a fraction of what I had hoped to accomplish. In the process, I have alienated many powerful people in academia and business and politics. I now stand alone, which is not usually a good thing when one is trying to develop public support for a political or moral position. However, I believe now that manifesting the ideal energies associated with the higher self can deeply affect people on the emotional and spiritual levels. 

   The best activists, I have discovered, maintain a powerful sense of "dominion," a strong sense of self. Those who have sacrificed a great deal have had a powerful effect on our collective consciousness. The more they sacrifice, the more they inspire and motivate others to do the real work of creating and maintaining sustainable communities and protecting the angels of the earth.

 All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Oak Tree and Lupine Bushes at the Confluence

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THE JUDGE

   An oak tree towers above two rivers and a one-lane road. Over a decade ago, I stood transfixed for ten minutes as an oriole trilled from one of its branches. Today, as I stare into its canopy, I remember that its branches soared above me fifty years ago when my father first brought my family to the confluence. We had parked by the road to search for a fishing hole, encountering bush lupine in bloom and a tranquil pool that suddenly sweeps around a curve to merge with the Kings River. That day fifty years ago as I stood dwarfed by the oak tree, I was comforted by the false belief that trees, no matter how majestic, are inferior to humans because they lack intelligence or a soul. I was eleven, too young and full of myself ever to have entertained the idea that other creatures are sentient, too young to have entertained the possibility that my grandparents and father and uncle would all, within a short period of time, pass away. My mother at the age of ninety-two recently died from a stroke after a long battle with dementia. The oak is somehow more magnificent than ever. My brother and I that day fifty years ago hid behind lupine bushes, heaving rocks at each other. No one else now shares that memory. The oak seems more open to the awesome forces of the sun and the moon than I ever have been. For a moment, I want to believe that the oak remembers a few fleeting moments of my family's history. I have nothing to confirm that belief, but I know that living things are connected in ways that are sometimes difficult to comprehend. In one way, the oak is my judge, if only because it compels me to reexamine fifty years of my life.
   The Rough Fire charred the eastern slopes above the road, but now the slopes are vivid green, and most of the oaks look like fire has never molested them. Due to above-average rainfall and unseasonable warmth, flowers are blooming about a month early. The first white-tipped lupine crowds the grass near the road and poppies ignite the hillsides. Within blazing orange patches, a few large patches of white stick out like blemishes, as if some pale cancer is spreading through the fiery flesh. At first I think the white might be unusually dense patches of popcorn flowers, but then I find an abundance of bird's eye gilia along the road, and farther up the hills I see forces of blue and white and orange, lupine and poppies and bird's eye gilia, clashing with each other, the three species of flowers after the Rough Fire in this wet year vying early for dominance of the hillsides. The word lupine is based on the Latin word lupus, which means wolf. Like the wolf packs of old, lupine has the tendency to take over an area, but these two other species seem just as exuberant and aggressive and unwilling to give an inch of their territory. I am witnessing the battle of three brilliant armies from afar, a battle I have never witnessed before and might never again.

Three Armies: Bird's Eye Gilia, Lupine, Poppies

   As I peer up the hillsides, I can see that this battle contains unparalleled splendor, which tempts me to scale the dangerous slopes. Since the steep hillsides were blasted away to create the thin, gray ribbon of road, the way up the hill is too challenging or overgrown in most places, but I finally discover an incline gradual enough and open enough for me to climb, and I gain somewhere between five hundred and a thousand feet in elevation before I step into the battle of three armies. There are times when one is forced to revise one's limited notions about nature, especially when confronted with a splendor that is arguably more ravishing and more tranquil than anything in human society. 

   The individual flowers of each species might be struggling for a place in the sun, but these species share a niche that is no doubt far older than any human community in North America. I don't sense hostility in this niche, only freshness and unity. Soon I feel my mind tune to a kind of vibration that induces a feeling of oneness. I am once again connected to an order containing intelligences that are less fragmented and separate from the Source than my human consciousness.
   My immersion in the battle of the flowers awakens awakens within me the intelligence of my soul. I feel a different vibration emanating from each species, a slightly different frequency of the life-force. I feel an eternal spirit within each species that is not limited to their cyclic, transient manifestation on this earth. I also feel a timelessness that makes modern ideas about human progress seem absurd. The sense of loss that I felt so keenly under the towering oak completely vanishes. I sense that each human being is just as eternal but with a unique intelligence, whereas each species of flower is part of a group mind. I also sense that humans often feel fragmented and separate precisely because we have each evolved a distinct, individual intelligence. Yet humans, since we have evolved within nature, also have the ability to shift consciousness to experience the unity and eternity within ourselves and other forms of life.
   On the Tree of Life, this difference in consciousness is represented by Victory, the Emanation of nature and beauty and the arts associated with Venus, and Splendor, the Emanation of concrete intelligence associated with Mercury and the intellect. Victory on one level is the sphere of the instincts and the group mind within nature; Victory, according to the Qabalists, emanated the sphere of Splendor in the process of cosmic evolution. Splendor is the Emanation of unique individual intelligence represented so spectacularly, especially in modern times, by human consciousness. This evolution has enabled humanity to create amazing civilizations and technologies, but the sense of fragmentation and separation that accompanies distinct individual intelligence has led to much conflict. Once trapped in the sense of separateness and individuality, the human mind can fixate on prejudice and anger and hatred, which makes it difficult to feel the power of the forces of nature. I know from experience that a person in this condition of fragmentation and separateness can no longer see with the eye of the soul and understand that the physical is the dense aspect of the spiritual.
   Years ago in this river canyon, in a troubled time, I asked out loud what I should do next, and the answer came immediately, “Be free.” I did not expect that answer, but I am beginning to understand what freedom means. As I stand in the stunning flowers, without effort I let go of beliefs about my personality, about what should be or what should have been, and I simply breathe. At times in this canyon over the years, I have felt a great sense of loss because memories of my family fishing at the North Fork of the Kings River flood back to me. My father died when I was seventeen, and my sense of security and continuity died with him, so by the river I sometimes mourn the end of my childhood. But as I breathe in the fresh air from the flowers, I feel free of loss. I feel a twinge of nostalgia when I recall those times, but the grief and sadness disappear. Oddly, my sense of freedom is not about escape from my life or my responsibilities but is tied to my sense of spiritual connection, my ability to forget myself and shift consciousness so that I feel the eternal, underlying unity of life.
   At one time I stood before a great tree and could not understand its significance. I ran through flowers without recognizing their loveliness. I did not feel the peace within nature until I experienced much stress and conflict and fragmentation and separation. I did not know then that there is a transcendent aspect of the human psyche that can link us to the underlying unity of all consciousness. Surrounded by the flowers, I have the feeling that internalizing that knowledge would end humanity's tribalism and divisiveness in a heartbeat. I did not know how precious and mysterious life is until I experienced many losses. I believed then that my family and society would last forever. 

   Now when I gaze upon the tree by the confluence I simply want to know the history of the river and the flowers as well as the people and animals who have passed through, the history of the effects of fire and rain and the sun and the moon. Somewhere in that history, perhaps, my family searches for a good fishing hole and my brother and I throw rocks at each other and chase each other through the lupine by the river.