Greek
mythology is eminently a mythology of place. All events pertaining to gods and
demi-gods have a precise location. I live in a part of the world where this is
more readily understood than in others. In Australia, landscape is precisely
scripted by the events of the Dreamtime.
To
aboriginal experience the land was sung into being by the dreamtime spirits.
The deeds, meetings, destinies and conflicts of the ancestral gods shaped the
country. Here, songlines of creation weave a tight tapestry of meaning in which
defining deeds become defining landmarks. To know the land means to know the
story that created it. And to really know the story means to re-experience the
initial deeds through ritual and initiatory states of mind. Thus landscape is meaning,
history, explanation, orientation, home, identification, ritual, worship and
much else. It can and must be read in order to be related to. Nothing is
neutral. Everything is charged, and some things powerfully so.
For the
indigenous population this was and sometimes still is a living experience. For
the newly arrived population this awareness is not directly available, although
it may be unconsciously active. In spite of the wholesale rejection and
suppression of indigenous spirituality of place, this spirituality has
nevertheless begun to claim the western mind.
Perth was
established at a place of major corrobboree and most suburbs of modern Perth correspond
exactly to the tribal moieties of the Nyungar people. Perth’s green spot, Kings Park, features The
Pioneer Women’s Memorial in a place once sacred to aboriginal women. Today a
bronze sculpture of a woman with child stands in the place where indigenous women
gathered to give birth. I know of an
orphanage for boys standing in the same place where young men were initiated. Hospitals
stand in former places of healing and community centres where gatherings were
held.
The western
reading of place is largely unconscious, incomplete, irreverent,
and at times detrimental, a contemporary stutter rather than a grand ancestral
song. But it is there nevertheless.
Those artistically
inclined will often have a sense for the patterning of place, the qualities of
sites, the challenges and gifts of location. To them the idea of a living
location, a scripted place, of sites that carry meaning and landscapes that
speak a language of their own will be familiar. And they will readily recognise
it in places other than Australia. For while geoliteracy was vibrantly kept alive
on the southern continent until very recent times, the understanding of place
is foundational to most, if not all cultures.
The Celts readily
understood the potential of place and enhanced it with edifices of stone. The
many Menhirs, Dolmens and gigantic stone circles such as Stonehenge and attest
to their recognition of place. Some of their sacred sites were later turned
into Christian sanctuaries. In spite of this transformation the local theme
continued under a different guise. One such place is the famous Cathedral of
Chartres.
Long before
it became a Christian sanctuary, the granite promontory rising over the
limestone plain of La Beauce was the centre of worship for the Carnutes, a
Celtic tribe mentioned by Julius Caesar for its fierce resistance against Roman
invasion. The cult of the Carnutes was centred on a seated female figure,
holding a child. The figure was life size,
carved from pear wood and blackened by smoke. Every autumn this ‘Black
Mother Goddess’ was ritually transferred into a natural underground grotto on
the granite promontory. Every spring the figure was returned to the light and
worshipped above ground, rebirthed by the cycle of the year.
According to
legend, Joseph of Arimathea, travelling with the three Maries (Mary Magdalen,
Mary Cleophas and Mary the Egyptian) passed through Chartres on his way to
Glastonbury. Impressed with the sight, he sent messengers to Ephesus to ask
Mary, the Mother of Christ for permission to dedicate the place to her. The
permission was granted and thus the worship of the Mother goddess continued in
Christian garb. The statue of the Black Mother kept in the Grotto became the
Black Madonna kept in the Crypt.
In the
twelfth century an influential school of theological learning developed in
Chartres. The Chartres masters taught a form of semi-heretic Christianity that
focused on the Divine Wisdom, the Holy Sophia, the female or dark side of God.
Central to the Chartres curriculum was the path of learning that ascended
through the Seven Liberal Arts to divine wisdom: Grammatica, Dialectica,
Rhetorica, Musica, Mathematica, Geometrica, Astronomica. Chartres Masters
imagined these arts as seven grand female figures, angelic muses presiding over
one province of wisdom, handmaids of the eternal feminine, aspects of the
Divine Sophia or as she was commonly called: Mary. The aim was nothing less
than to birth the spirit child from the womb of wisdom. They taught what the
Celtic statue expressed.
Hebrew,
Christian and Islamic traditions acknowledge that places have their stories and
stories their appropriate places in which they unfold. The attraction between
locale and what happens in that locale is not restricted to religion.
There are
reasons why Holland has any number of painters that shaped the history of art
but few writers who have done the same. There are reasons why Ireland has writers
of world importance and no painters who have achieved global renown.
There are
reasons why Vienna was the capital of classical music; why Gluck, Hayden,
Schubert, Bruckner, Hugo Wolf, Schoenberg and Mahler were born in in the Danube
residence, and why Mozart and Beethoven lived there most of their lives, to
name but the most famous.
It is for
similar reasons that Athens became the undisputed capital of ancient philosophy.
Long before Anaxagoras brought philosophy to the capital of Attica, and indeed
long before Philosophy even existed, the
city was already dedicated to Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom and thought.
According to myth, this thoughtful goddess, who was born from the head of her
father Zeus, claimed Athens for herself. Here too, like in many other
instances, myths prepared what later became reality. And they prepared reality
because they revealed in pictures what was already imprinted in place.
It was
because of this this latent possibility of locale that Anaxagoras, Protagoras
and Diogenes unfolded much of their work in Athens. And so it is not surprising
that the holy trinity of Greek thought made it the site of their work: Plato
and Socrates were born in Athens, and Aristotle lived there most of his life.
Sparta, on
the other hand, Athens’ unlikely twin, excelled in political stability and
military prowess. But it never birthed nor housed any philosopher of renown.
The cultural contributions of the valiant city-state remained ‘Spartan’ indeed.
The
potentials of place are as readily recognised in the east as in the west. India
is brimming with significant sites. Towering above them all are the Himalayas
to the north of the subcontinent, the imposing citadel of snow-capped peaks
that have drawn yogis into solitary seclusion and monks into monastic life for
millennia.
I recently
saw a documentary on the Indian yogi-saint Yogananda who had a life-long love
for the Himalayas. He died on stage while giving a presentation to an American assembly.
Just before he collapsed he spoke about the Himalayas. His last words were ‘I
am hallowed because I touched that turf’.
It moved me
deeply that this holy man should feel hallowed because he had touched Himalayan
ground. I took it as a testimony to the
esteem these mountains are held in by those who live in their proximity.
It is in
keeping with the theme of this mountain range that it inspired the last
theocracy in Tibet. This bastion of elevated monasticism held its ground
against western influences until the Chinese invasion. The nation was as
fervently orientated to spiritual pursuits as western nations are to commerce.
The monastic community with its strict ritual and high ethics became the
centrepiece of Tibetan life, the monk the highest ideal.
There are
many other mountain ranges and some almost as imposing as the Himalayas. But
neither the European Alps, the Moroccan Atlas, the American Rockies or Andes, nor
the Caucasus have inspired such fervent, ongoing and sincere dedication to the
spiritual life. The whole mountain range strikes me like a gigantic monastery
of nature, an assembly of mountain monks with their snow white hoods, steeped
in silence and solidly meditating on matters of earth.
The
undisputed abbot among the many high-ranking peaks is Mount Kailash, surpassing
all others, not in height but inner weight: Kailash means crystal for obvious
reasons. The power of the jutting peak is palpable, the sight overwhelming. Even
an image of this mountain inspires awe and reverence.
Four of the
longest rivers of Asia have their source below Kailash. Four major religions regard
it as a place of highest significance. Every year thousands of Hindus and Buddhist
circumambulate Kailash in clockwise fashion, Jains and the followers of the
Tibetan Bon walk counter clockwise: a gigantic human prayer mill turning in
both directions at once.
According to
Buddhist tradition it was here that Milarepa, the poet-saint and champion of
tantric practice, overcame his shamanic opponent and so established Buddhism in
Tibet.
To the
Hindus, Kailash is the abode of Shiva, lord of ascetics and fierce destroyer of
ignorance and illusion.
To the Jains
it marks the place where their first spiritual master Tirthankara achieved
enlightenment. The adherents of the ancient Tibetan Bon see it as the seat of
all spiritual power, the place where the founder of their religion, Tonba
Sherab, descended to earth.
The reasons
why the four religions relate to mount Kailash are different. The theme, however,
is the same: spiritual attainment, break-through, initiation.
The ancient
pilgrimage tradition of the four eastern creeds is today joined by a western
one. The Himalayas have become the mecca of mountaineers. Mount Everest has
become the Kailash for those who aspire to height measured in metres rather than to
spiritual elevation. The mountaineers seek through the challenge of body what
saints find by trials of mind. Climbing, for them, is the yoga of the
externalised age, a way of attainment. Though greatly changed, the ancient theme
continues in a new garb.
Many landscapes
of course have their own brand of ‘holy mountain’: Mount Shasta in California;
Agung in Bali; and their smaller but no less powerful kin, the Table Mountain presiding
over Capetown; Micheal Skellig in the west of Scotland; St Michel mount in Glastonbury;
the Extern Rocks close to Bader Born in Germany; the five Holy Mountains of Chinese
traditions; the four peaks sacred to Taoists, the three sacred mountains of
Japan; and of course the enigmatic, powerful rise of red sandstone in the
centre of the Australian continent: Uluru or Ayers rock.
The
spiritual centre of the indigenous culture, it is the centrepiece of songlines
and known to the aboriginal population: a red, slow pulsing heart in the open
air. It is the knot tying all song lines into a coherent whole. Since the
dreamtime this rock has been a place of pilgrimage and corrobboree for the
indigenous population. Today, similar to Himalayas, travellers come from all
over the world on walkabout to see this symbol of indigenous Australia rising
like a statuary statement of the earth itself.
But there is
a difference. And the difference concerns the emerging geoliteracy on
Australian ground. Many unsuspecting tourists, (wether agnostics, atheists or believers
in some faith) admit to the powerful, numinous experience in the presence of
the imposing monolith. I have met a number of people in no way inclined to such
experiences who admitted to something more than they had bargained for.
This place
was a site of initiation for those immersed in aboriginal culture, a locale
that supported major shifts that left those who underwent them profoundly
changed. Even today the power of the place is too palpable to leave outsiders
entirely untouched. Thus this major place of transition for indigenous society
has become a minor place of transformation for western travellers from all over
the world. Here is one of the locations where the earth speaks loudly enough to
be heard even by those whose hearing is habitually weak or impaired. It is a point
of cross cultural corrobboree, where the world’s oldest culture can impart its
most defining gift, the reading and relating to place to younger cultures who
need this awareness to make the notion of Gaia more than a scientific theory.
I bring all
this because Greek mythology, like dreamtime lore, is highly localised. Greece
is thickly mapped with myth: Almost every story has a place and almost every
place a story. Every river is a river god and every well a nymph. The mythical
river of the underworld, Acheron, is also a real river and no less mythical for
that. The gods reside on Olympus. The muses have their abode on Mount
Parnassus. Pegasus kicking the top of Mound Helicon opened the spring
Hippokrene. Zeus was reared in a cave at Mount Ida.
Every place
had its deity and every landscape its God. The island of Delos was sacred to
Apollo. Athens was Athena’s place and the copper island Cyprus favoured by
Aphrodite. Zeus had his oracle at Dodona and his sanctuary in Olympia. Demeter
initiated her followers in Eleusis and Artemis in Ephesus. Asclepius healed the
sick in Epidaurus.
Every important
place was mapped by myth. And no place more profusely than the navel of the
world: Delphi.
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