The
Casual Alchemist June 2020.4 Your Ersions
Guides to Chaos, Order, Meaning and
The Unknown
We all have
our own special cast, our family, our clan of characters and characteristics
that help make us who we are. We’ve inherited some and learned to favor and
develop others. Some are big and noisy. Some we shun and shoo away, others
arrive and visit quietly almost like a gentle breeze.
Some come
and go. Getting to recognize and live with this group is a life-long adventure.
They carry energy, meaning, joy and sadness into our lives.
One
old Greek said: Bidden or not, the gods arrive
The virus of
this last year has changed the landscape and habitat of many of these forces. The slowing down and times in one place,
particularly The Home have made these forces more available to
humans. There’s now more opportunity to see them anew and learn more about them
and their part in our lives. They are Guides, Tenders, Stationmasters of the
Openings and Portals to learn more about our human nature and ways to create
and renew meaning in our lives. First, these energies do not really have
any one or simple name or form. They are tendencies, bundles, inflections.
They have appeared throughout human history as fairy folk, alux, household
gods, invisible friends, anima, Ix, Ux, Icklers, Itz, Itches, Ersions.
Tricksters bring with them the gifts of illumination, playfulness,
revelation, truth and balance. the ability to help us
question life, embrace uncertainty and become receptive to seeing
everything just as it is. What is Your Flavor of
Holy Madness? think about your own inner
Trickster. Has it been judged, banished, fered? outlawed to your Shadow?
Do you give it enough healthy expression in your life? What does it look like,
sound like and feel like? www.terrain.org/reviews/8/christensen.htm
fairies, demons, nature spirits and the other ‘small gods’
haunting the margins of Christendom
undisciplined tendency to evade such efforts at exorcism.
Lurking in forest or fairy-mound, chuckling in dark corners of the home or of
the demoniac’s body, they both define and disturb the borders of a religion that is endlessly
syncretistic and in endless, active denial of its own syncretism.'Small Gods' at the Margins of
Christendom Ostling,Michaelbritannica.com/topic/angel-religion/Types-of-angels-and-demons
But they do
all share certain ways:
They
prefer to be off-center, hiding in the margins, wayward, shadowy,
interstitial.
They are nature-based waiting
to integrate animal and human nature, accessing the wisdom inherent in instinctual
nature. Be in Nature. They are there.
They believe
in the positive value of disorder, decay, uncertainty,
anxiety, waiting. They vex and annoy to stay in touch, alert. They
believe in “inherent vice”: the
tendency of material to deteriorate due to the essential instability of the
components or interaction with other things. They are committed to Change,
ushering new “versions” of things, all kinds of versions.
They
are Shapeshifters: appearing as people, animals, objects, events using
tricks and accidents to convey meaning.
The
Spiral, particularly
The Meandering Spiral is a comfortable image for them.
They are dedicated
to holding opposites and polarities together. This is the way they put it to Buddha: “Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise.”
They made sure The Gospel of
Thomas was written, lost, then found, 1900 years later
“The
Kingdom of God is inside/within you and all about you, not in buildings/mansions
of wood and stone. When I am gone. Split a piece of wood and I am there, lift
the/a stone and you will find me."
They
inhabit a different form of Time. Theirs is Kairos, time
infused with meaning. Our preferred form of time is Chronos, regular, linear
time.
Ways and Times Humans Might encounter them
Recall
Defining Life Events. breech birth, lost body parts, early deaths. They present in even normal shifts/jolts
in human use of time & space through job change, aging, sickness, moving,
trauma. Take note of events of disorder in your Home: accidents, breaks, leaks. This is their
language. They
like being remembered in Stories of unusual events, coincidences.
Be alert to Shadows and Patterns
Be with Children,
especially
3 to 6 year old’s, who have ways of sensing the feral and the fleeting. Check those pictures they give you.
Also, be alert to children’s Imaginal Friends and favored toys
the invention of invisible
friends can be seen as an exercise in the understanding of others’ points of
view, imagination used in the service of social maturing. “Appreciating the
knowledge, desires, intentions, or perspectives of another is
ultimately an act of the imagination,” Wigger points out. “By playing with mind, by imaginatively
representing other minds—even when invisible—children are fine-tuning their
ability to understand others” (p. 107).
www.davidhalperin.net/invisible-companions-imaginary-friends-and-j-bradley-wigger/
Play with the Words Discover
prefixes, suffixes, rhymes, anagrams and puns that fit with Ersions, Ix, Ux,
Icklers, Itz, Itches. They
like this kind of play.
You may be lucky enough to come upon their nest. where
they keep their toolkits of bees legs, finger and toenails, stolen puzzle
pieces, toothpaste caps and used dental floss.
They especially present
in Objects made, found, gifted and bought.
Make them offerings. They
respond to attention from humans. It may
be filling birdfeeders or repairing a broken cup.
In your home
altars and totems. It’s likely you already have a relationship
with these characters. Check what’s collected on your mantles, shelves and
dresser tops.
They
are skilled in asemic writing, a pre-conscious communication almost
impossible for humans to understand consciously. Be Alert to bits of this you might
have around. Sometimes it’s the hair you find on the shower
wall
They
usually inhabit marginal objects: Folk Art,
Scholars Rocks, Outsider Art, Deviant Art, Street Art, Found Art
Scholars Rocks Use
the grotesque and picturesque, the sacred and profane. built around an
appreciation for experimentation; sensuous, biomorphic forms; refined,
carefully wrought materials; a sense of humor and whimsy
Scholar's
rock (gongshi) based on subtleties of color, shape, markings,
surface, and sound. Prized qualities include: awkward,overhanging asymmetry[10] resonance/ringing when struck[10]
representation or resemblance to mountainous landscapes,
particularly ones believed to be inhabited by immortal beings [1] or figure[10][11] texture[10] moistness or glossy surface[10] The stone may be displayed on a rosewood pedestal
carved specifically for the stone.
most amazing is the duality
of scale, the way the forms continually switch between miniature and actual
size, from rock to mountain to rock again.
various textures -- smooth, dimpled, pocked, rippling, folded and
wrinkled -- enhance this fluidity by suggesting bronze, wood, ceramic and elephant
skin. almost motion, suggest cascading sheets of water
rather than stone. the power of the scholars'
rocks lies in the way their formal fluidity mirrors the shifting fluidity
of the human imagination.their seeming naturalness cuts through the
defenses briought to more obviously manufactured works of art. these objects set
the mind in motion with unusual directness, inspiring esthetic experience FLOW? Kairos
What OBJECTS are Emerging? WHY “Wholeness” via melancholy to vex rein
in
They
are meant as prickers, ticklers for your own thinking and feeling.
In the ancient world each
thing was seen as inhabited by a daemon, a kind of intermediary
between the gods and the earthly world. Proclus said: “What we see is not the god himself, but an emanation
from him which is partly mortal, partly divine, and even this we do not see with our physical eyes but with the eyes of our astral body according to the principle ‘like is
perceived by like’.” Learning is the discipline required to awaken the astral or soul
body, the capacity to perceive the outer world as image. The central task of learning is not accumulation of information, but learning to learn. process consists of coming to realize the individual body in
conjunction with the body of the world and
to appreciate the conjunction as
container and reflector of soul p51 www.sup.org/books/title/?id=31306
Objects, frequently remain idle around us for a long period of
time. After we have used them, they rest inanimate, there, in our living places gathering dust, waiting to perform their next task. This
idling is the object’s “INANIMATE MOMENTS”, when an object can offer new expressive
possibilities. Now the object is there alone and perhaps not functioning it is
only something to look at. Its presence Has to speak for itself
this can be the signifying moment that permits us to design in the
object a moment-story: a metaphorical
moment,
a connecting moment. http://publish.uwo.ca/~pschweng/Site/Main_Page.html
https://phmuseum.com/guybatey/story/the-melancholy-of-objects-e637386546
They
Influence how and what humans make. We are all
makers.. Some of us make dinner, objects, trouble … The
hands are an extension of what’s in our hearts. We have to Make. They want us all
to get involved.
Again, it’s
objects in service of meaning and interaction.
Find people in touch with them
Carl Jung recognized them as “Archetypes”
Poet W. H. Auden: “We
are being lived by powers we pretend to understand.”
Rumi, Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda know them
Albert Einstein The
intuitive mind is a sacred gift andthe
rational mind is a faithful servant.
If
you want your children to be intelligent, read
them fairytales. If you want them to be
more
intelligent, read them more fairy tales.
Thich Nhat Hanh calls them “The Remembrances”. He describes five:
1. I am subject to aging. No way
to avoid aging.
2. I am subject to ill health. No
way to avoid illness.
3. I am going to die. No way to avoid
death
4. Everyone and thing I love will
change and be separated from me.
5. Only true possessions are my
actions, I cannot escape their consequences.
Do not suppress knowledge of our
frailty, impermanence and fears that lie in the depths of our consciousness. To
be free of these fears invite the Remembrances into our consciousness and
stop seeing them as enemies.
