As I write, Wild Rite’s autumn season of workshops is about to begin. And I am wondering what the people who come to work with us will bring to share with the communities we form and to the magical landscape we work in?
For sure, we have already witnessed this year the stress and anxiety that has arisen from the ‘great pause’, from lockdowns and the isolation of social distancing. People are yearning to be met by Nature, to be soothed by Her peace and held in Her graceful arms. But more than that, we hear a calling out for meaning, for a retrieval of something we have lost; deeper ways of relating to each other and to the greater creation of which we are just a part. So, it feels like a good time to say a little more about the cosmology that Wild Rites works with.
One of the functions of myth is to provide us with a cosmology, a way of relating to and understanding our place in the cosmos. In the British Isles the most prevalent cosmology is that of the Abrahamic traditions (Judeo-Christian-Islamic.) All are rooted in a creation myth, in which one creator known as God makes the known universe or material world in 6 days yet remains separate from the creation.
There then comes the first humans to be made, Adam and Eve/Hawwa who are tempted and promptly banished from their Garden of Eden after they eat from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil and create sin. The garden and the perfection of the Godhead are ruined for humans and they remain separate from God and His unattainable perfection.
This separation from God, together with God’s edict "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." (Genesis 1:28), has in part contributed to humans treating planet Earth and embodied existence as something to conquer, dominate and transcend. Consciousness remains above and separate to Matter, and matter can be considered dead or at least subservient. I’m sure this cosmology is why many of us unconsciously or consciously continue to relate to Earth in this way.
In contrast the Medicine Wheels offer an emanation myth, in which the Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine do not create the world, instead they become the world. The world is therefore Divine, suffused with spirit, not somewhere to dominate, transcend or conquer but a place of relationship, experience and community with other beings. This is the Sundance. The emanation story even provides us with the first layer of the medicine wheel without which there is no Life.
The story goes a little like this…
THE FIVE COUNT[1]
“In a time before the beginning there was our Great Grandmother, the Great Zero, she was no-thing and therefore every-thing in potential. As she resided in Eternity, she grew bored and lonely so she turned in on herself and divided in two creating our Great Grandfather. Our Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother made love and their first child was our Grandfather the fiery dancer we know as the Sun. They enjoyed making love and so did it again creating their second born our Grandmother the Earth. We now have One, The Sun in the East and Two the Earth in the West.
The Sun married the Earth, this created a flow of energies, gases, evaporation, rain, rivers and oceans. The Water and flow enabled the plants and Trees to grow they were known as the Standing People. Giving us Three the Standing People who reside in the South. When the Sun married the Standing People they grew, they breathed in Carbon dioxide and exhaled Air. Air is birthed from the marriage of One the Sun and Three the Standing People. Four is the element of Air which gave birth to the moving people, the animals for with air they grew lungs and begun to move about. The four is placed in the North.
The Five is the marriage of One the Sun, or more accurately the energy and consciousness of the Sun aka Spirit and the animals creating the divine animal or HU-man. Five sits in the centre of the Medicine Wheel and is know as Fully Human.”
To be Fully Human is to reside at the centre of our experience in balance with the One, Two, Three and Four, in relationship to the spiritual powers that sit behind the directions as we experience them.
What I have just shared is referred to as the 5 count and is also known as the Children’s Count. We are all children of our Great Grandmother, the Great Zero and this count was taught to children to bring them into relationship with this world. The wheels build on and on in a way that enables us to perceive the relational nature of this world in which we have our Being and participation.
The Wheel places spirit in everything, rather than somewhere else, other, out-there in a Heaven to be attained. It provides a living map which brings us into I-Thou relationship with both our inner and outer world and beyond.
If you would like to stand at the centre of your own wheel and learn more about the way of relating to nature and soulmaking then join us for our 4-day soulmaking intensive “Call of the Wild Soul” where you will begin to experience your own medicine wheel and learn more about this ancient cosmology.
We have 2 places available for our last retreat of the year “Call of the Wild Soul” October 1st – 4th. Is one of them yours?! I really look forward to exploring the four directions and the medicine wheel with you.
[1] Adapted from oral instruction as is traditional.