Emerald Tablet: 21st Century Insights on Its True Nature and Meaning (SFTS, 3/26/23)

 

VIDEO: Emerald Tablet: 21st Century Insights on Its True Nature and Meaning (SFTS, 3/26/23)

Emerald Tablet - Legend

Tabula Smaragdina (Latin)

Lawḥ al-zumurrudh (Arabic)

Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus (“Hermes the Thrice-Greatest”), aka Thoth

noun: demi-god

a being with partial or lesser divine status, such as a minor deity, the offspring of a god and a mortal, or a mortal raised to divine rank. – Oxford Languages

  “…in Egyptian religion, a god of the moon, of reckoning, of learning, and of writing” - Encyclopedia of Britannica

8th-9th Century - Arabic sources

12th-13th Century - Translated into Latin

Earliest known version appeared in Apollonius of Tyana’s

 Sirr al-khalīqa wa-ṣanʿat al-ṭabīʿa (The Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature)

 Apollonius was a Neo-Pythagorean, just as Plotinus was a Neo-Platonist

A contemporary of Jesus and Buddha, he too performed numerous miracles.

Unlike Jesus and Buddha who chose to move  among the poor and downtrodden, Apollonius chose to move among the upper classes, nevertheless, according to H.P. Blavatsky, “the three ‘miracle-workers’ exhibited striking similarity of purpose”

“His existence is surrounded with such a veil of mystery that he is often mistaken for a myth … It is quite true that this Sage, who stands unrivalled in his thaumaturgical powers to this day – on evidence historically attested – came from it, no one seems to know whither. But the reasons for this are evident. Every means was used – especially during the 4th and 5th centuries of our era --- to sweep from people’s minds the remembrance of this great and holy man.” – H.P. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, Vol. III

According to Apollonius, he discovered a vault hidden below a statue of Hermes. Inside the vault, he found an old corpse on a golden throne. The corpse held the Emerald Tablet in its hands.

 Much has been projected on to the Emerald Tablet over the centuries.

Medieval alchemists looked to it for the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone.

 Modern mystics and occultists have woven their world-views around the Tablet’s signature declaration, “As above, so below.”

 “it is first and foremost and fundamentally an alchemical formula, relating both to the alchemy of the base metal and the divine alchemy of human regeneration” - Manly Palmer Hall, “Secret Teachings of All Ages”

 The Emerald Tablet is only fourteen lines long.

In preparation for this talk, I compared and contrasted numerous translations and renderings, including those of the great Sir Isaac Newton, Theosophical Society founder H.P Blavatsky and Sufi author Idries Shah. The differences are mostly insignificant. The version I chose to use here is that of the early 20th Century French alchemist Fulcanelli (translated into English by Sieveking), Fulcanelli was the author of the brilliant “Mystery of the Cathedrals.”  …

Emerald Tablet – The One

“Above” and “below” are so limited and limiting. Even though this phrasing is healthier than that of the religionists who exalt “Heaven” and debase the so-called mundane world, this phrasing still warps and denigrates the meaning of the teaching it is meant to convey. This powerful truth is not about “Heaven” and “Earth.” They are not two. They are not separate. It’s not “Gods” and “Angels” above and “humans” and other “animals” below. And even though it says “as above, so below,” it’s still a separation that only exists in the human mind, you are not “a soul” in “a body,” you are not “here” now and going “there” after, they say “as” – it’s not “as” it’s “IS,”

‘IS above IS below’ would really work better.

 This phrasing is the old patriarchal paradigm repeated over and over. And no, the Sky is not “Masculine,” just because the Earth is “Feminine.” It’s a false correspondence.

So in my rendering of the Emerald Tablet, I supplant “As above so below” with –

The Microcosm is within the Macrocosm and the Macrocosm is within in the Microcosm.

The next lines in this particular translation show a deeper understanding, so no strikethrough.

“all things exist in and emanate from the ONE Who is the ultimate Cause, so all things are born after their kind from this ONE”

Yes, indeed. Now who is this “ONE”?

Gaia is the Macrocosm, I am, you are, the Microcosm. The Ecosystem of the Planet, which is itself the Intelligence of the Planet, is the Macrocosm, my five bodies are the microcosm. All of it spirals upward and outward, downward and inward, SIMULTANEOUSLY. Gaia is the Microcosm, the Solar System is the Macrocosm. The Solar System is the Microcosm, the Galaxy is the Macrocosm, and on and on …

For nearly the entire history of life on this planet, 85 percent of that history in fact, life consisted solely of of microorganisms. The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) for every life-form on this planet was bacterial. Again: The last universal common ancestor for every life-form on this planet was bacterial ... In fact, every life-form we see - again, every life-form, including you and me - is simply a modification of bacteria in a more complex form ... The Gaian ecosystem, the self-organized system that we know as Earth, came into being with the emergence of the global bacterial community. The bacterial community is still the foundation of the world. It is Gaia. It is the interconnected network of millions of bacterial biofilms, individual bacteria, and symbiogenenic, bacterially generated, complex life-forms that lies deep within the crust of the Earth (perhaps by as much as 5 kilometers), covers the surface of the planet, and extends at least 50 kilometers above the Earth's surface ... The original neural networks that are present in all bacteria and their communities have been expanded in both shape and extent over long time lines. All the living self-organized systems that we know of as life-forms contain neural networks based on the original neural network that emerged. And the neurochemicals that bacteria originally developed have been refined over long time lines and are now used by virtually every life-form that exists. Our neural network is only modification of an already extant neural reality that pervades the entire Earth ecosystem; it is only a specific instance of a general condition.This expansion of the neural net, in multiple forms, all interconnected, facilitates the intake and processing of environmental information at ever more sophisticated levels of the Gaian network as a whole. Each self-organized system, that is, each subset of the larger whole, possesses a drive to fulfill its ecological function within the whole, and each possesses a sophisticated neural network with which it gathers data about the local environment in which it exists. Each also possesses free will as to how it accomplishes its function and how it responds to environmental perturbations. Gaia does not use top-down control over the parts that make-up the whole. - Stephen Harrod Buhner, Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm

Emerald Tablet - Sun & Moon

The Emerald Tablet - Sun and Moon

Languaging is so important, so pivotal … Languaging impacts the stream of consciousness, if it’s off, if it’s unhealthy, it can warp a truth, it can flatten it out, make it brittle and thin, make it square,  drain it of its Sakti … Esoteric, metaphysical, mystical, spiritual languaging concerning the Sun and the Moon offers vivid examples of this abuse … In all of the Table of Erroneous Correspondences, nothing is as egregious as the characterizations of the Sun and Moon as “Active and Receptive, Male and Female, Yang and Yin,” wrong, wrong, wrong … To anthropomorphize the Sun and the Moon into “Father” and “Mother” is patriarchal, sexist, Samsaric … it is trivializing and misleading ..  

Consider the Sun …

26,000 light years from the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, the Sun holds the planets of this solar system in its thrall, pulling them with it as it circumambulates that galactic core.

 At an average speed of 450,000 miles an hour, each circumambulation takes 230 million years.

All the while, the Sun is delivering the heat and light that make life on Earth possible.

Noun: photosynthesis

the process by which green plants and some other organisms use sunlight to synthesize foods from carbon dioxide and water. Photosynthesis in plants generally involves the green pigment chlorophyll and generates oxygen as a byproduct. – Oxford Languages

“It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of photosynthesis in the maintenance of life on Earth. If photosynthesis ceased, there would soon be little food or other organic matter on Earth. Most organisms would disappear, and in time Earth’s atmosphere would become nearly devoid of gaseous oxygen. The only organisms able to exist under such conditions would be the chemosynthetic bacteria, which can utilize the chemical energy of certain inorganic compounds and thus are not dependent on the conversion of light energy.” - Britannica

“Sunlight kills bacteria. Many of us spend a lot of time indoors ... Sunlight may reduce high blood pressure ... Sunlight can regulate the immune system ... Sunlight strengthens bones ... Sunlight can improve sleep quality ... Sunlight boosts mood …” - GoodRx Health, 5/27/22

 “Nothing is more important to us on Earth than the Sun. Without the Sun's heat and light, the Earth would be a lifeless ball of ice-coated rock. The Sun warms our seas, stirs our atmosphere, generates our weather patterns, and gives energy to the growing green plants that provide the food and oxygen for life on Earth.” - NASA

And as for the Moon …

“The Moon's radius is larger than a quarter of Earth's radius, a much larger ratio than most moons to their planets.” - Space.com

“The brightest and largest object in our night sky, the Moon makes Earth a more livable planet by moderating our home planet's wobble on its axis, leading to a relatively stable climate. It also causes tides, creating a rhythm that has guided humans for thousands of years.” - NASA

 “Earth's moon is vitally important in making Earth the planet we know today: the moon controls the length of the day and ocean tides, which affect the biological cycles of lifeforms on our planet. The moon also contributes to Earth's climate by stabilizing Earth's spin axis, offering an ideal environment for life to develop and evolve.” - The Week, 2/7/22

Father and mother? Putting the gender stereotypes aside, even if it were a metaphor predicated on healthy parenting, your parents bring you into the world, then you grow up and live your life, you individuate, maybe at the end of theirs you help them out of this life just as they helped you in … But the Sun and the Moon, they did not just give birth to the world, and these mysteries, they are at the center of them moment by moment, sustaining it all, organizing it all at every level, now and ever since, and for as long as they endure, they are central to it all, and allow for the rise of Gaian Intelligence, they empower Gaia to paint her masterpieces upon the canvass of her own luminous flesh, yes …

So in my rendering of the Emerald Tablet, I supplant ““The Sun is the father and the Moon the mother …” with –

Within the Cauldron of the Creatrix, the Yin and the Yang swirl ceaselessly, likewise the Yin within the Yang and the Yang within the Yin swirl ceaselessly. Feel all of this.

The true alchemy of this living planet owes a lot to the Taoists –

Every whole "thing"--from a tree to a person to a business, an atom, planet, or universe--can be seen as a metaphorical Tai-Chi, with corresponding Yin and Yang aspects. Once Yin and Yang are distinguished, each one can also be seen as a whole and broken down further into its own integral Yin and Yang parts. We can see this creative process unfold all around us. The universal process of Being arising from Non-Being through the fusion of opposites, followed by the differentiation and increase of complexity from oneness to myriad forms, can be observed in the studies of modern cosmology, the evolution of species, the conception and development of individuals, and the arising of ideas ...  - Simmone Kuo

 “Yin and Yang are one vital force -- the primordial aura.” – Yangming Wang

“The motion of yin and yang generates all things in nature” - Meh Jiuzhang & Guo Lei

Emerald Tablet - Philosopher's Stone

Hajar al-Falāsifa (Arabic)
Lapis Philosophorum (Latin)

“The alchemists believed that the universal formula contained in the Emerald Tablet was the basis for a spiritual technology first introduced on the planet in ancient Egypt more than 10,000 year ago. The formula consists of seven consecutive operations, performed on the ‘matter’ – whether it be of a physical, psychological, or spiritual nature.” – Dennis William Huack, The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation

I looked up ‘Philosopher’s Stone” in the index to Manly Palmer Hall’s “Secret Teachings of All Ages,” I had to laugh. Among the numerous references, two in particular stood out.

One entry read “Philosopher’s Stone contains all the powers of Nature CLVIII” Lol.

You know what else “contains all the powers of Nature”? N-A-T-U-R-E! Nature Herself. Gaia.

Another entry read “Philosopher’s Stone represented by Isis XLVII”

Well, yes, but really it’s not “symbolism.” It would be more accurate to say “Isis is the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Philosopher’s Stone is Isis.”

Isis, of course, being one of Gaia’s many divine disguises.

Please don’t misunderstand me, “Secret Teachings of All Ages” is a marvelous tome, a rich resource, but the minds of white men from earlier centuries (even the 20th but especially the 19th) are utterly at a lost when it comes to the deep feminine mysteries of this planet.

I find myself wanting to declare “This is the true alchemy of our living planet!” Because, well, it is. But I need to add a caveat, I am not saying this is the only true alchemy. There is the true alchemy of Carl Jung and his path of individuation. Jung’s encounter with the Emerald Tablet in particular, and his inquiry into alchemy as a whole, would be a talk unto itself, and such a meaningful one, there is the true alchemy of novelist Paolo Coehlo. In “The Alchemist,” he writes, “Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.” The history of alchemy is vast and sprawling. There is Chinese alchemy, there is Indian alchemy, deep troves overflowing with treasures. There is a whole alternate, suppressed herstory of alchemy, Mary the Jewess is considered the first known alchemist. 200 CE. And, of course, here in this very Lodge, we honor the life and work of the legendary African American alchemist Light Devoy Edward Harris who left this plane of existence in December 2014. “L-I-G-H-T Light! S-O-U-N-D Sound! Light and Sound! Sound and Light! Light and Sound Sound and Light. L-I-G-H-T Light! S-O-U-N-D Sound!” Yes, there are many true alchemies! This talk is just a reflection on my encounter with the Emerald Tablet, it is what I feel to speak through these five bodies with my voice in my words, calibrated to our present circumstances. We are in the throes of this Planetary Emergency. Anthropogenic Climate Disruption and the Sixth Great Extinction pose an existential threat to civilization itself. And only through the Ascendancy of the Feminine and the spread of Eco-Feminism, in philosophy, psychology, mysticism and the arts, in politics, science and commerce. The arc of human evolution is leading us beyond patriarchy. Thus I say this is the true alchemy of our living planet.

“The Tablet supposedly contains the secrets of alchemy and the recipe for the philosopher's stone, an artifact capable of giving its user eternal life.” – The Archaeologist: Civilizations of the World

Well, yes, but …

I suggest to you that the great Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) knew more than the men who came before her, more than the men of her time, and more than the men who came after her.

And Hildegard wrote about what she called Vriditas, the “Green Flame,” the “Greening Force.”

“O most honored Greening Force, You who roots in the Sun; You who lights up, in shining serenity, within a wheel that earthly excellence fails to comprehend. You are enfolded in the weaving of divine mysteries. You redden like the dawn and you burn; flame of the Sun.” - Hildegard of Bingen, “Causae et Curae”

In my rendition of the Emerald Tablet, I swap out the cryptic lines about alchemical operations involving four (of the five) elements, e.g., “… the wind carried it in his belly. Earth is its nurse and its guardian …” and I supplant it all with this –

The Green Flame is the Emerald Tablet in ceaseless motion, the Emerald Tablet is the Green Flame in utter stillness. They occupy the same space. Within that space, every incarnation is lived and all karmas are played out. The Green Flame forges the Emerald Tablet. The Emerald Tablet fuels the Green Flame. Immerse yourself in this mystery and realize that you are a mystery within a mystery, a miracle within a miracle.

Within Nirvana, Gaia is the Philosopher’s Stone. Within Samsara, the individuated being, the woke being, the being that has fallen awake, is the Philosopher’s Stone. And yes, Nirvana and Samsara occupy the same space. So that’s where it all is, what it all is, utterly INCOMPREHENSIBLE, utterly UNSPEAKABLE, and yet, we can know it and speak it …

Worlds without End!

Gaian Poetics, Gaian Politics

VIDEO: Gaian Poetics, Gaian Politics (SFTS, 11/13/22)

[NOTE:  On November 11, 2022, I was honored to speak at the closing reception for MPOWERDANCE Project's year long year long exhibition of MOTHERpeaceMOTHERwar at the Theosophical Society of San Francisco. It was a powerful event featuring dance p, art, music and spoken word. Here are a video recording and transcript of my remarks. - Richard Power]

#GaianPoetics #GaianPolitics

I was asked to speak about Climate Action and our Planetary Emergency. I have spoken and written a lot on this subject, and we have all been living through it in our own ways.

In my “Secret Engine of the World: Further Notes on Primal Reality, Gaian Politics & the Arc of Human Evolution,” which I published in 2021, I articulated three deadlines that would define the next decade – for me and for anyone who resonates with my perspective.
The first two deadlines are the U.S. federal elections in 2022 and 2024, but we’re not going to go into any of that here tonight. The third of the three is kind of an arbitrary one that I set for the Climate Crisis, for the Climate Emergency, for the threat we face as a species, along with all of the other species that we have endangered with our genius and our foolishness. And that deadline is ten years after the publication of “Secret Engine,” so 2031.
I spent over 20 years trying to scare people about Climate Change, because that was the appropriate thing to do, to try to scare people in power so that they might come to understand what we were trying to tell them. Cassandra. Those with reasons not to listen do not listen. Of course, I was right, we were right, whatever. Now I find myself trying to calm people down. Not to reassure them at all, but to make people feel that there is hope. I am not talking about people in power now, I am talking about people in general, my friends and allies. I am trying to show There is some way forward. We’re talking about thirty or forty years here. It happened. It’s already underway. It’s no longer about trying to stop Climate Change, we are in its throes now, we can see the floods that are more than floods, the droughts that are more than droughts, the fires that are more than fires, the storms that are more than storms. The death of the soil. The places in which the temperature is becoming uninhabitable. The melting poles. The glaciers that feed the Ganges. We can see it all around us. So It’s happening. But there is still a narrow window in which humankind can make some course corrections and mitigate the worst impacts, the worst consequences, of what we have unleashed. So there are in this moment, in the month, in this week, there are encouraging trends in the world, and there haven’t been many times when we could say this. One encouraging development is that the Congress of the United States passed the Biden administration’s massive climate action as part of an even larger piece of legislation that is now law. Hundreds of billions. Desperately needed. Designated for truly meaningful climate action. Now is it enough? Of course it’s not enough. But it’s the most that’s ever been passed, it will be the most that’s ever been spent in the history of the world. It’s a turning point. We’ve gone from “Is Climate Change real?” and “Yes, it is!” to “Are we doing enough?” and “No, we’re not doing enough.” That’s a different conversation. That’s a healthier conversation to have. So that’s a big shift for this country. And at the same time, in the Brazilian elections, Bolisnaro, a huge climate denier and enabler of predatory capitalism in terms of deforesting the Amazon, LOST, and the incoming Lula administration is committed to climate action, and in fact the incoming President Lula is working with the leaders of Indonesia and the Congo, and they’re going to form a “Rainforest OPEC” to leverage their power – because they control most of the rainforest in the world, and those are the lungs of Gaia. They’re going to try to dictate terms rather than the other way around. This is a big shift. These are not insignificant steps forward. And right now in Cairo, COP27 is meeting. Don’t look necessarily for anything much more to come out of all the talking and the speechifying, but just know there is a shift going on in the world, and we are part of that shift. Well, actually, there was one bold, significant stride forward at COP27: “Deal on compensation for climate impacts represents major milestone for climate justice. The 27th UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) has ended with an historic deal to create a new fund, in which countries responsible for high carbon emissions will compensate vulnerable countries suffering from climate impacts” (The Lancet, 12/8/22)
I am laughing because the President stopped by COP27 on his way to the G20, and he said in his speech: “The science is devastatingly clear; we have to make vital progress by the end of this decade. That's why the United States is rallying the world around climate game changers."
So I just want to say that President Biden and I are on the same page, and that the page is from this book, “Secret Engine of the World.”
Because in that speech, he said “by the end of this decade.”
That’s the first time in these DECADES, where I could say any POTUS and I were on the same page literally in terms of the dwindling number of years we have left to make sufficient impact.
Now we’re going to jump to Aristotle. S-Q-U-A-R-E. Both Aristotle and Plato were pretty square. The Pre-Platonic Philosophers (e.g., Heraclitus) and the Neo-Platonists (e.g., Plotinus) were/are much more interesting to me and relevant to our circumstances.
But in Aristotle wrote Poetics in 335 BC and Politics in 350 BC. And they sit there in all of the university libraries. Everyone bows to them. Hardly anyone reads them, of course, or references them, because, well, Aristotle is so square. But they are foundational to the story that western civilization tells about itself, as it goes forward from ancient Greece.
So these two tomes are there at the beginning of the long arc that brought so much - from the Sistine chapel to the Hubble telescope, from Illuminated manuscripts in Irish monasteries to global communications through social media on your iPhone, from Beethoven’s 5th to the life-saving science of vaccines, but this is life, there is both evolution and devolution, so of course the story of these two thousand years also includes pathologies – oligarchy, patriarchy, misogyny, racism, predatory capitalism, authoritarianism, weapons of mass destruction and yes, overshadowing all of them Anthropogenic Climate Disruption. Have you ever heard that term? That’s actually a more accurate, technically precise term than Climate Change or Global Warming. In the sense that humans have done this. Not a volcano, not a comet, not some nonsense about “natural cycles of cooling and warming.” No, no, this was us! We did this. And we didn’t just do this with the burning of fossil fuels, although that’s a huge piece of it – we also did it with deforestation, with overpopulation, and with our appetite for meat mass produced through industrialized agriculture, I would say those are the big four contributing factors.
So here we are. The genius that was unleashed across that long arc has so far outdistanced our sanity and our conscience that we are destroying the very balance, the global climate, that this civilization is predicated upon, by punching holes in it and jacking up the heat. Here we are in this moment. At this crossroads..
In the midst of this must-win ten year stretch.
This is how, in the course of writing the first of these three books, “Wyrds of Power” (actually five books all together in one volume), I coined the phrases “Gaian Poetics” and “Gaian Politics.” OK, Aristotle, step aside, we need new ways to think about our languaging and our governance.
By Gaian Poetics I don't mean writing about the beauty of "Nature" although of course that's wonderful, and a part of it, and always to be done.
By Gaian Politics, I don't mean activism or environmentalism, although of course that's a vital, critical, absolutely essential aspect.
I’m talking about something else. Most important, by Gaian Poetics and Gaian Politics, I mean an internal shift within us, within each of us.
Gaia isn't a goddess whose world this is, She isn’t a statue, She isn’t something we pray to, She isn’t some anthropomorphized “Divine Being” who has rulership over this planet, Gaia IS this planet we are not Gaia’s children, we are Gaia’s cells, we’re not Gaia’s “stewards,” I know they mean well but whenever people start talking about being “stewards” of Nature I get very uncomfortable, because that’s this madness, the human pathologies got started, you are not the “stewards” of anything, you are the cells of one vast planetary being.
The true Oneness is our life within Her, science and shamanism are seeing the same reality now. We are not Gaia’s children, we are not Her stewards, we are a part of her. The planet, Gaia, is alive, sentient, a self-organizing intelligence, we all exist within that being, we are all cells of Her body, every creature, every plant, every stone, every river, the seas, the atmosphere.

Sentience is in some ways the mystery of mysteries

Gaia dreams her world-dream. And within her world-dream, she dreams the whales dreaming their world-dreams, and the humans dreaming their world-dreams. Yes, our world-dreams are utterly dependent upon hers, they arise within hers, and they are re-absorbed into hers. Likewise the world-dreams of the tree frogs, the world-dreams of the salmon, the world-dreams of the madrones, the world-dreams of the emeralds. Gaia herself is a sentient being and ALL life on the planet has its existence within her, all life here is composed of her, sustained by her, and reabsorbed into her.

This isn’t only a shamanic truth, this is a scientific truth.

OK, so stay with me here, every once in a while, not often, but now and then, our friend, the legendary American sage Joe Miller would say something like this:
“At some future time and place, we'll have grown to a stature where our bodies can be an entire planet and all the humanity the same as the particles within our physical bodies now. We'll know about all that when the life itself is love. Love and life are one.” (Joe Miller, Great Song, p. 53)
He's saying on this arc of human evolution, assuming we don’t go the other way, we can evolve into celestial beings. Meaning not some anthropomorphic goddess or god, no, the actual intelligence of a planet or a star, a different order of intelligence, completely inhuman, incomprehensible to the human mind. We can only project what we know. We evolve into these different realms of intelligence.
I see this view of Joe’s as very relevant to the science of Gaia that is coming out from brilliant thinkers like Stephen Jay Buhner and James Lovelock (as problematic as he can be).
In Plant Intelligence, Buhner writes, “…  that the world is alive, intelligent, aware, communicative and filled with soul; that we are not alone; that we are part of something much larger than ourselves; that we are companioned by millions and millions of related life-forms; and that the dead mechanical world we have been taught about in school does not exist and never has.” 
Gaia is a divine intelligence, a self-organizing being of divine intelligence. And we are all part of that. This is why the Japanese talk about “forest-bathing.” This is why we feel so renewed when we enter into a true forest. This is like a sorceress stirring a tonic for you to drink, that’s what a forest is. So that’s on the arc for each of us if we go deeper and deeper into the nature of reality.
To deal with our current planetary and national emergencies, we have to tap into our Gaian Poetics and our Gaian Politics. Gaian Poetics is when the words are informed by Her from the inside out, Gaian Politics is when our governance philosophy is informed by Her from the inside out.
What do I mean by Gaian Politics? Well, the “Founding Fathers” modeled the U.S. Constitution selectively on the Iroquois federation’s “Great Law of Peace.” They took a few very good ideas from it, but conveniently left out other very good ideas. It’s time now, way past time really, to embrace more of that wisdom medicine.
For example, it was a matriarchy. Their Senate was composed of the Grandmothers. They could remove the Chief if they didn’t approve of his actions. And in the process of making important governance decisions, they pondered the impacts and consequences seven generations into the future.
Can the governing principles be grounded in altruism? Can our governing principles be grounded in sustainability? Can we be guided by those two overarching imperatives, altruism and sustainability?
I will close with one more reading, this one from “Secret Engine” –

Gaia is a Mistress of Disguises. She has a safe deposit box in the Central Bank of the Cosmos. She has stashed many passports under fabricated identities, from “Tara” to “Zeus” to “Isis” to “Thor.” She has stashed bundles of cash in all the world’s currencies. She has stashed pouches of brilliant diamonds and fat bricks of gold and platinum. This treasure allows her to cross any border and do business in any country. Her true identity is the Earth itself. She is the Divine Intelligence of the planet.

All life thriving within the thin sheath of atmosphere she has spun around this globe is hers. We not only “live and move and have our being” in her, our “being” itself is hers, we are her at the cellular level, we are the strands of her hair, the drops of her blood, we are her very embodiment, every tree, ever mountain, every human, every whale, every insect, every mushroom, every cloud, every mongoose, every body of water, every forest, everything and at every order of magnitude, from microcosm to macrocosm, all of this. Hers. Our sentience. The Chi that animates us. All of this is literally her.

For those of us in human incarnation, there are many paths. In one sense, there are as many paths as there are beings. The pathless path is the truest, and all of the other paths empty out into it before the end.

Life. Not beyond life. Not life after death. Life. This world. Not some other world. Not the next world. This world. But not a dream of this life, not a dream of this world, no, the reality of it all. Here and now. From before and beyond. And always on, ON, and ON …

Gaia, Sakti, Lilith, Dark Goddess, Durga Ma, Madonna, Isis, so many names for the Divine Intelligence, revealing herself ceaselessly.

To celebrate her, to serve her, embodied as she is in life and the world, this is our true purpose. To feast on her, and be fed to her.

This is the pathless path. To alleviate or at least mitigate suffering

To see clearly what is, to discern the reality of what is, and so live and move FREELY. This is true story of it all. To know her, we must know ourselves. To know ourselves, we must know her …

Each atom is a temple of her celebration. Each strand of hair. Each cell. Each leaf. Each drop of rain. Each blossom. Each pool of molten lava. East wasp nest. Each coconut. Each tortoise. Each hunk of amethyst. Each heap of yak dung. Each glacier. Each of the five bodies that constitute every single human incarnation. All are temples in which she is celebrated ceaselessly, simply by being fully and truly ourselves. She is the Divine Intelligence within all of this. And there is a unique architecture for each class of these seemingly infinite temples. To know ourselves is to know her.