Get Beyond Fear: Save What You Love

The other night I dreamed that the sky has darkened to the point where it is almost as black as night. In the dream, I say to Karen Vogel (the woman who co-created the Motherpeace cards with me in the late 1970s in Berkeley), "Isn't this tornado weather?" Then right before our eyes, the black energies begin to take form as a huge funnel cloud, but it seems almost too large to be an ordinary tornado. It's frightening and we begin to withdraw into a kind of cave-overhang in a cliff side. But then suddenly I understand that this fearfulness is a wrong approach and I fold my hands in front of my chest, saying: "It's the Black Dakini. Blessed Be!"

And therein lies my hope for the world — the Dark Goddess, Nature herself as a compassionate karmic force, as the Goddess Nemesis, an ancient representation of the workings-out of Natural Law. There is truly a dark cloud on the horizon, and when I listen to the politicians, I am not in the least bit comforted by their formulations and rhetoric. Nor am I reassured by the scientists with their chemical and science-fiction scenarios for saving the planet. If not for my spiritual practices and my sense of connection to the invisible world of spirits and helpers, I would surely despair.

Even as I write this paragraph, sirens are blaring as fire trucks and emergency vehicles race toward the third catastrophic wild fire we have had here in Santa Cruz County in the last month — and it's only June 20th, the Summer Solstice, the very beginning of summer and the dry season. At the very least it is all quite disorienting.

This spring I lost interest in my work. Rarely in my life has this happened. I have had an almost insatiable appetite for reading, writing, scholarly research, and intellectual engagement in the pressing issues of the day. Now all I want to do is put plants in the ground. I want to turn my ordinary little yard in Santa Cruz into a paradise of vegetables, medicinal herbs, and flowering plants adored by the birds, bees, and butterflies. I can't seem to stop myself from spending all my extra money and time on this garden. Even as a severe drought is spreading in California and wildfires are burning endlessly out of control, in my backyard I am creating a world of living things that require little more than water, sunshine, and reasonable soil for their existence. I love the physical, backbreaking labor of digging in the clayish dirt and amending the soil with the bags of gorgeous, rich compost I've bought at the organic nursery nearby. I am as delighted as a child by the emergence of tiny green sprouts shortly after I've seeded an area with wildflowers and herb seeds. The unfolding of my artichoke plants positively takes my breath away. I eat fresh arugula everyday, and now the sweet sugar snap peas and heirloom tomatoes have started to ripen on the vine.

As I write, a flock of finches perch on a telephone wire, chirping madly as they take turns at the feeder I've installed just outside my office window. Twice daily I have to refill it, so fierce are their appetites. Yesterday I watched a mother bird go to and from the feeder, retrieving a seed for a waiting juvenile bird and patiently placing the food into its frantic open mouth; the baby bird was puffed up with what could only be called excitement, eager to learn this basic skill of survival. Today the finches are all wet and fluffing their feathers after a visit to the lovely birdbath I bought for myself two years ago as a birthday present. Two local cats skulk through the yard on a regular basis, hiding in the tall grasses and, presumably, lusting after the birds — but they never actually attack them. Perhaps they are getting old, as I am, and feel contented just to imagine and remember the wilder impulses of their youth. Yesterday I planted catnip for them.

Ironically, I have come in from the woods after almost a decade of isolation from urban life, and here in my crowded neighborhood in this dynamic little beach town, I am finding an active connection to wildlife and the elemental forces of nature. Just being near the water is part of the change. As I walk along the cliffs looking out over the Pacific Ocean almost daily, I am surprised to find myself fascinated by the surfers, who make up a distinct subculture here in Santa Cruz. Rain or shine, hot or cold, they are out there in their sleek black wetsuits looking like a different species, focused in their all-consuming need to catch a wave. Every age partakes, from youngsters learning the craft to older people in their sixties and seventies. Women as well as men make up this population of mostly tanned, buffed bodies strong enough to withstand the extremely cold temperatures of our northern California coastal waters. (I have never gone deeper than my knees into ocean waters here, although I have lived in California for more than thirty years!) I love watching the waves crashing against the rocky cliffs, and if I don't go to the water for two or three days, I swear I feel Her calling me. At night when I go to sleep, I can hear the rhythmic and powerful sound of the ocean, breathing.

Astrologically, this year Pluto is conjunct with my Juno in Capricorn and squaring my Mars-Ceres conjunction in Aries. Everything I have been committed to over the years (Juno) is apparently up for re-evaluation, and my old habitual passions (Mars) seem to have suddenly become quite muted. The Goddess of agriculture (Ceres) rules this newfound focus of mine: to cultivate the earth and my relationship with nature. I have always loved birds and have fed them over the years. Now I have the pleasure of mindfully creating an environment designed for them, and feeding them not only from my feeders, but from the garden itself and the things I can grow all around the yard. Already hummingbirds have enjoyed the salvias and penstemon plants I have grown for years in a wine barrel. Now I have planted a dwarf elderberry tree in the front garden, so that the birds will come for the berries. Several sunflowers in early stages of growth line my back fence and I can only imagine how happy the birds are going to be when the flowers bloom and present them with hundreds of fresh seeds.

There are more profoundly motivating factors that lie behind all this activity, of course. I remember a day more than a decade ago, when I got caught in a traffic jam near San Rafael (just north of San Francisco) and learned that there was a serious toxic spill of some powdered chemical that was already in the air. None of us in that gridlock situation could do anything to avoid or escape. As I drove home later that day (wishing I didn't have to breathe), I heard my inner voice say, "Save what you love, because it's all coming down."

That message came in the vernacular of the revolutionary organic “seed savers,” whose books I was reading at the time. I thought then that, for an urban person like myself, this meant to save spiritual traditions like the Tibetan Buddhist Dakini practices I have since adapted for women, or preserve ancient occult methodologies as we did with the Motherpeace tarot.
The apocalyptic scenario has only increased since then, in my mind and also in the world, and I have never forgotten that message to "save what you love." Now I find myself deliberately cultivating some of the more endangered medicinals — herb species that have been over-harvested and wild-crafted almost out of existence. The black cohosh and motherwort that I've started to plant around the yard can spread to their hearts' content, while I can feel a part of something larger — a global collective of human souls believing in the future of life.

The proof is in the pudding, as they used to say before women in our culture stopped spending our days in the kitchen cooking everything from scratch. Recently I had to have three teeth extracted and the dentist sent me home with a foul-looking blue liquid in a bottle. He wanted me to splash it around in my mouth every hour to prevent infection during my recovery process. Faced with this sudden pressing need for real medicine, I realized my garden had become a hands-on resource where I could almost certainly find what I needed. As the novocaine wore off, I got out all my herbal guidebooks and quickly learned that there were at least seven naturally antiseptic and/or antibiotic plants already growing in my backyard, several of which were explicitly recommended as a medicinal mouthwash. I gathered them (sage leaves, lavender, basil, chamomile flowers, thyme, and lemon balm), created an infusion (that's herbal talk for "strong tea"), used it to wash out my mouth and drank it as a tea with valerian pills for pain. I felt a sense of accomplishment quite out of proportion to the level of gardening I have so far achieved.
I have a ways to go before I will be truly grounded in the practices of the ancient women about whom I have written so enthusiastically over the thirty years, and around whose knowledge of plants and animals whole societies in the past were organized. But I am definitely in an emergency process of recovery that honors their long existence and positions me within their lineage. And in this newfound horticultural obsession, with my hands in the dirt and my filthy fingernails to prove it, I am blessed and I feel once more in contact with the joy of being alive on this planet.

I feel an almost desperate need to reconnect this way every day. With all the artificiality of current cultural fashions pressing in from every direction (cosmetic surgery, genetically modified foods, computer generated images, C-section births), this simple daily connection to joy functions for me as an antidote in a time of overwhelming destruction and uncertainty.

Throma, the Black Dakini, is known for cutting through illusion; her violent epithet, "phet!" dissipates and dissolves all obstacles through the direct perception that they are unreal, nothing more than figments of our imaginations. I have sung her mantras for more than a decade now, at least a million times. She challenges us to conquer our collective and individual fear of death by facing it, head on. To me this means, don't hide from the fact that the polar ice caps are melting, weather patterns are changing for the worse, and the most precious resources have been squandered.

If I were depending on Science to save us, I would have to admit defeat, because I don't believe it is possible to "save the world" through any known means at this time. On the contrary, I put my faith in Nature; my hope is for the earth's magical and potent regeneration. I align myself with the Black Dakini, that dark goddess who dances in a ring of fire and shouts a loud earth-shaking "ha!" of liberation. I vow to cut through the pain and loss and sorrow, and instead make my pledge to daily find the joy and celebrate it. The time I spend in my garden is nothing more or less than my spiritual discipline brought down to the earth plane and grounded in a tangible reality.

In honor of this sacred cross-quarter holy-day of Lammas, with the New Moon Solar Eclipse crowning this already numinous day, may all beings realize the Dakini, be free from suffering, and experience peace on earth.

Blessed Be.

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