There is a cautionary tale from Ireland which tells the story of a foolish man who refused to listen to the promptings of his inner world. He lived way up on the moor in a ramshackle croft. It was so run down it had no lintel above the door. The winter wind swept in and the man shivered by his low peat fire wondering what to do. Then he had a brilliant idea. At the top of the moor was an ancient standing stone which had been there since memory began. Perhaps it had been erected by his ancestors, unknown forebears honoring unknown gods. Anyhoo, it was just what he needed for a lintel and so next day he set out with his hand cart and a spade to dig it up.
As he began to dig at the base of the stone his imagination was suddenly filled with the fantasy that his house was burning down. He ran all the way home, relieved to find it still in one piece. After another cold night he became determined to fetch the stone and next day he set off once more. Again, as he began to dig, the vision of his croft aflame leapt into his imagination so strongly that he was compelled to throw down his tools and run all the way back to discover that all was as he had left it. On the third day, the crofter had had enough and made his way up to the lonely stone with a hardened heart. He took his mattock and dug the ground all about the ancient sigil. He took ropes and bound it, wrenching it from the cold earth, bundled it into the cart and dragged it home to find his croft in ashes, burnt to the ground.
Since time immemorial disasters from out of the blue have been considered as the commentary of the Gods on earthly hubris. The more circumspect you become the more you understand that there’s some kind of connection between inner attitudes and outer events. In the story of the Fisher King from the Grail legends we find that a plague is sweeping through Logres, ‘the proud land’ on account of the king’s failure to take up the Grail quest. In the story of Oedipus a plague sweeps through Thebes on account of a crime committed by the king who is so inflated and out of touch that he considers the plague to be fake news…
‘What is the meaning of this supplication? These branches and these garlands, the incense filling the city, these lamentations? Some fear?’ Sophocles ‘Oedipus Rex’.
Oedipus inevitably pays the price for his arrogance. The blind seer Tiresias, who has oracular foresight, makes the observation..
‘Pride breeds the tyrant, swollen with ill-found booty. From castled height Pride tumbles to the pit. Who falsely wins, all sacred things profaning, shall he escape his punishment?’
It’s curiously co-incidental that the Corona virus is sweeping through America hard on the heels of Trump’s triumphant impeachment acquittal. It’s as though the Universe just couldn’t bear to see him get away with it, even preparing the ground for his own demise by the folly of dismantling pandemic response teams.
From the New Yorker…
‘The costs of the Senate’s impeachment decision have been cast in sharp relief. It will be a long time before we can reckon with the full damage done by an Administration whose incompetence, disinformation, and sheer bungling in the early stages of the crisis have been at once predictable and breathtaking. Susan Glasser
Conspiracy theories about the origins of Corona virus abound. Yet even the idea that covid-19 might have been manufactured by the Deep State set upon culling its population still manages to keep the explanation for what is happening at the human level and therefor within the realms of control. After all, villains can be foiled. It is less easy to digest, wherever it came from, a weapons facility, a wet market, from bats or monkeys, a bolt of cloth from Ouagadougou,none of these precludes the possibility that behind whatever-it-is, you find Nature’s angry face.
How would it be to think of Covid-19 as Nature’s response to our consumption of the planet, our carelessness and greed? I will see your crippled EPA and raise you a holocaust.
Perhaps we are the disease, or have become so, infected with what the aboriginal world calls ‘Wetiko’, the soulless and devouring yet insatiable ghost of self interest. Perhaps we have created Corona virus, not in the labs of evil geniuses but in the boardrooms of heartless corporations, on the red carpet of glitz and celebrity. Perhaps our incessant gorging has necessitated an auto immune response from Gaia herself which not only kills off some of her infestation but also brings all the itching to a halt.
How co-incidental can it be that all this has happened, is happening, in precisely the moment humanity collectively fails to come together on climate change. It’s as though Mother Nature has said, ‘Right, if you won’t do something, I will.’.. then sent us to our rooms to make us think about what we have done.
In ancient times, plague was believed to be a putrefactive poison carried in the air which went to the heart and destroyed it.
‘The contagion was seen as being generated by poisonous fumes coming from sources of corruption and putrefaction, such as marshes, cesspits, the open sewers of towns, rubbish dumps, from the putrefying animal remains in butchers’ shops, and from the blood dumped outside of the premises of barber-surgeons. The poor and their surroundings were also often identified as sources of plague. The Lancet.
These diverse ideas about the origins of disease have symbolic value. They are all instances of people being out of kilter with themselves, lack of connection, not taking care of your shit, letting the heart become poisoned.
What has happened is what the ancient Greeks called, ‘Enantiodromia,’ its the principle that everything turns into its opposite if pushed too far. ‘Inflation beckons the Raven’s claw,’ as an old saying goes. Enantiodromias are often sudden changes of fortune brought on your own fool head. The plagues of Egypt in the story of Moses is a good example. The plagues are Nature’s response to a leader drastically out of synch with the people and with the land.
It doesn’t take much to make a link to Trump and climate change denial. His staggering inflation, the Quizotic tilting at windmills, his insistence that the cure should not be worse than the disease, as though he were closing a deal, as though he could negotiate with covid-19 personally.
‘Corona virus, if you’re listening..’
The Chinese ‘Book of Five Rings’, warns the general not to underestimate the enemy. Always assume your opponent is at least as smart as you. In the movie, ‘Waterloo’ there’s a lovely moment where Napoleon is deep in thought and suddenly asks himself ,’ what am I not understanding?’
Perhaps what we are still in the process of understanding is that this experience is an opportunity as well as an affliction. UN environment chief Inger Anderson calls the pandemic ‘Nature’s shot across our bows….’
which might have the effect of bringing about much needed initiatory change of our collective mind set.
‘To prevent further outbreaks both global heating and the destruction of the natural world for farming, mining and housing have to end.’ ibid
Such urgent change requires a transformation of collective values. Perhaps our collective consciousness evolves by the same sudden changes which often seem to govern individual development. Crossing a developmental threshold always seems to involve a brush with death, the seeming theft of all protection, the disorientation and seclusion of liminal space.
When the psyche becomes dis-eased it’s because it’s out of balance somehow. When the world is dis-eased it’s for the same reason. Balance has to be restored and what a good job Pestilence does. Centuries of the Dark Ages were no match for the Black Death back in the Fourteenth century. It restructured society, enriched the peasants, created the middle classes and triggered the Renaissance. It changed consciousness itself.
So maybe this too, is the beginning of something new. Since the virus hit I hear again and again the fresh re-appraisal which folk are making of their relationships with one another, of their connection to the Earth, and of their relationship with the Gods. It seems to be generating a resurgence of the human spirit, the desire to repair and renew, the wish to connect in place of the compulsion to control, an unshackling of the Principle of Relatedness.
