A Blob of Protoplasm
The part of the brain responsible for lizard management is the multi-talented medulla oblongata, right there above the neck, rear portion specifically, where spine meets brain, keeping the body in ship-shape. It also has a lot of nerve, cranials 10-12 to be exact.
"Cranial nerve 12 is the hypoglossal nerve. This nerve controls tongue movement and is crucial to speech and swallowing."
According to neurophysiologist, John D. French, "Guarding the rear of the medulla is the reticular formation, a thimble-sized web of interlocking neuron circuits. Within this tangle ticks the brain's alarm apparatus, monitoring the sensory signals that pass through. The smell of smoke would instantly set off the alarm, alerting the decision-making cortex to start its neuron motors. Without that silent warning a person would be reduced to a helpless, senseless, paralyzed blob of protoplasm."
I'd say some blobs of protoplasm trying to speak on the public stage could use a jolt to that 12th cranial nerve. Tongues are flapping senselessly out of control. Perhaps they've mistakenly swallowed their pride. They probably could use some repairs to their neuron motors as well. A lube maybe, some tightening of screws. Neuronic motors I call them. Not to cast aspersions, of course.
Long live the Mighty and Magnificent Medulla Oblongata!!!
posted by jm at 4:00 PM
81 Comments:
Just read this aloud to B. We both had a nice chuckle at your clever post.
A tune up or lube, baby point me in the station. Many are the days the crank is needing a kick start.
CN X or tenth cranial nerve, the Vagus nerve has parasympathetic control of lungs, heart, digestive tract. It has control over you living and breathing. Ja that primitive lizard part of the brain is a command control center. So much of our body functions run competently without our vaunted mind.
I had a lot of fun writing this one. So glad to share with B.
Really. Our vaunted minds often annoyingly get in the way. Good designer for that primitive center.
I was thinking about the automatic systems that so beautifully keep us alive and well. Maybe there are social, psychological, and political systems that also run automatically while we mess things up.
The primitives might not be primitive in the way it's often looked upon. Maybe they're basic building blocks. Foundations, not subject to insanity and delusion. They're immune to smart-ass human intervention. But then something must be overseeing the vaunted mental development.
I think there's a lot to be said for relaxing somewhat and letting things do what they do. For using effort efficiently. Let vagus be vagus.
Ah, the vagus nerve enervates and facilitates the activity of all kinds of organs, including those of speech. Yoga teachers talk a lot about it. When it is active in people at rest, its activity is associated with feelings of altruism, compassion, love, gratitude, happiness, caretaking and ethical intuition. This is part of the enhanced vision or perception to which I sometimes refer.
Yes Kadimiros.
I've seen massage of Vagus nerve enable astounding recoveries or even more simple calming.
While medicine calls this nerve zone primitive I prefer the word ancient, and given our electromagnetic universe, a potentially divine connection beyond the physical body.
An aside; the homeopathic remedy Carbo Vegetabilis has remarkable action on the vagus nerve. Simple vegetable charcoal (potentized).
Vegetable charcoal was a staple medicine on my grandmother's shelf. She was who taught me how to do the vagus nerve massage. Old native american wisdom.
"While medicine calls this nerve zone primitive I prefer the word ancient, and given our electromagnetic universe, a potentially divine connection beyond the physical body."
I thought similarly! The age does not mean under-developed. It gains many important functions. Will be very interesting as understanding of this grows.
I would label some of modern medicines's practices "primitive." If something is useful since ancient times I would not call it primitive in the negative sense.
"Primus" meaning first. Prime means basic. The vagus and other parts are basic components of our survival mechanism. Maybe it's a language shortcoming.
If something is essential to survival in any life form there is a certain perfection in its function no matter when it evolved. I am completely in favor of recognizing the divine connection, naturally. It's time to think about teaching this to our children in our "primitive" school system. Cold rejection of the divine in favor of our modern thinking is probably anti evolutionary.
Evolution and so called advancement in human thought has its pitfalls. Separating the divine from the mundane is reactionary. I think it affects behavior badly.
Divine reality is not just belief.
Altruism and the vagus. Could be that human function is naturally accessed not learned or forced. Just touch your vagus, people! No need to lecture and moralize or try to legislate altruism.
It's the size of a guitar string, huge for a nerve!
And it is so responsive to music.
There's an Elvis song, too!
All you need's a strong heart and a nerve of steel.
Viva las vagus, viva las vagus!
Guitar string, that's HUGE!
Very interesting, regarding the vagus and the voicebox. when people are nervous their voices pinch and go higher. I can read a thousand things from the sound of their voices. So maybe a key to great singing is less tense scale repeats and more relaxation. Singing must be highly therapeutic. Maybe that's the pleasure of singing in the shower under warm water. Food for thought!
The connection to the gut makes me think good vocal habits help digestion along with other organ functions. The voicebox could be a point of magic. We certainly exercise it a lot.
News readers appear to have pleasing voices but they are not. The modulation isn't good. Maybe broadcast news is affecting societal health in more ways than realized.
So the cosmic fear of the "virus" could have been exacerbated by shrieking incorrect vagus application. The spread would be the same with or without the shrieking. Maybe less without. They should have covered the mouths of the broadcasters first. In these instances, keeping the heart rate down is a good idea.
😁 you could be on to something JM
Everything is resonance Consider the deep healing of music at 432hz &
528 hz.
Elvis! Ha! Las Vagus man! I think he excited other nerves.
I recently read a brief article about the healing properties of silence. Like a darkened room for sleep, silence is essential.
"Everything is resonance". Inarguably.
Those are the after effects I mentioned regarding your art. It's reverberation in music. It's the effect of sound waves hitting surfaces or synchronizing with them and amplifying them. It's all vibration. Wave forms travel here there and everywhere while we receive them and resonate. I suppose it defines the fullness of life. That's why I love live music so much. Sounds interact with a million objects. What determines response is an interesting subject. I wonder where resistance to healing is and why.
No doubt about the magnificence of silence, if it's even possible. As long as we're alive we hear something. It's relative. The chaotic noise in the world is my greatest challenge, but I live in a quiet place where I heal continually. I've even turned off the radio. Silence is precious.
So silence equals emptiness for many and they are afraid. Giving the senses a rest is probably a sure bet in healing. In that case the mind can help. Wandering into the world of imagination can temper sensual demand.
It is said that the last sense we lose when dying is hearing. I believe it.
Even before birth we are listening, the pulse of our mother our own, other sounds as well.
Yup, last to leave. I think it might also be the first to arrive.
It's our connection in utero to the outside world. The other sounds.
I think sound and smell are the leaders in ensuring safe passage on the terrain. They are multi-directional and seem to trigger alarm and reaction quicker.
Yes Sweet T, I have had the sense when sitting with a beloved who is dying that they are listening for just the right sound or vibration to hook on to, to depart.
That beautiful zen image of a bell ringing in an empty sky.
Safe passage on a new terrain. Beautiful thought.
I think the pulse of our mother is our safety on the new earth plane. It's steady, trustworthy. Funny how we hear hers as life begins and after birth we no longer hear it at all. We're on our own truly.
When I was pregnant I had a stretching / exercise routine I did to Pachelbel's canon in D. After he was born, i didn't listen to it again for several months. A was babbling when I switched on the music. You should have seen the reaction, shocked silence then arms reaching.
Sound! Memory!
We are all so much more than protoplasm. Though I'd be first to agree it's mighty fine stuff this protoplasm.
Rhythm of breathing affects memory, emotional processing and anxiety in the brain. I wonder if some people for whom release feels dangerous inhibit their breathing.
"Be comfortable with mystery" is a phrase that came to mind recently, as I thought about some of the interesting questions raised at RU recently and in the past. It's a religious idea but I think of it more basically as a healthier psychological stance than dogmatic beliefs — release anxiety to live with joy.
In anechoic chambers, the quietest rooms ever built, you can hear your heart beat and your blood flow. Some people become disoriented with that extreme level of quiet; it throws off the body's sense of balance and its ability to maneuver. After more than half an hour, one must be seated.
Listening to one's heartbeat can help with feelings.
Some people are unwilling to cultivate the spontaneous, joyful aspects of the self. They may regard the self as inherently bad or unworthy, instead of as the living conduit of good, formed by and from good. Self-mistrust prevents trust of others. Mistrust of others, and the attendant militarization, has been at the heart of major world conflicts. A healer told me that childbirth-related post-traumatic stress symptoms play an unrecognized and significant role in cultural anxieties and fears.
My bet is that people can learn to have a positive relationship to mystery. Vital spontaneity, creative serendipity, opening one's life to luck and opportunity, healing of the body, and social tolerance (healing of the communal body) seem to point in that direction. Mystery is close to us, in the automatic, healthful processes of the body and the mind, in the fertile ground from which the life of the universe spontaneously generates and regenerates.
Kadimiros, I can attest to losing balance in silence you describe where the heart beat and blood flow are not just heard but disturbingly loud.
Additionally this was in complete darkness. I was overwhelmed by an intense desire to escape. Not an experience I'm keen to repeat.
The anechoic chambers are beyond the sound baffled room I was in It is hard to imagine.
Comfortable with mystery.....yes, contented. As you say mystery is close to us. The Saami say, “We are this, and this is us, no difference.” My papa would add,”Very simple, but hard to live.”
JM, I know it's not cheetos, but March 11 is popcorn lovers day!
I may have to pop up a bowl and honor the day. Butter of course and maybe grapefruit juice? You can keep the grape Nehi. We won't ask Kadimiros about beverages. Was it tomato juice on cereal? Each to his own.
Ah, Pachelbel's Canon. I'm reading now that a mathematics professor, Alissa Crans, won the National Merten M. Hasse Prize in 2011 for her discovery that Pachelbel's Canon has a geometric pattern with dihedral symmetry. It's abundant in art and nature — we see it in snowflakes, starfishes, and in DNA molecules during protein synthesis.
"My papa would add,”Very simple, but hard to live."
Your papa is so wise!
"Was it tomato juice on cereal?"
I think it was in an old, black-and-white Cheerios commercial or ad.
Good for hangovers!
OMG what a cool discovery - Pachelbel's canon's pattern.
My papa was wise, extraordinary in many ways. He lived very close to nature, knew mysteries of trees. I was very lucky.
I think that orange juice will work in a pinch. But actually, I normally like to use oat milk and rice milk these days.
In our family, we don't knock it until we try it. One time, we were at dinner with cousins in a restaurant, chatting about cooking. A cousin asked if my brother uses any special ingredients. He said, "Wellllll....There is something I do that isn't typical." He paused for effect. I'd never seen him cook since he never cooked when he lived at our parents' house. The words "peanut butter" popped into my mind as I studied his face. He then explained to us how he put a little bit of peanut butter into some dishes.
My sister is very creative on her feet. She whips up dishes and when people ask for the recipe, she says, "There is no recipe! I just make it up as I go along."
"My papa was wise, extraordinary in many ways. He lived very close to nature, knew mysteries of trees. I was very lucky."
Trees were my fave when I was a kid. They were on my wavelength. I saved fallen leaves which I pressed flat in books to dry and then I strung them together.
Yes, in the Canon we get to hear and feel the variations, the reflections and rotations as it were, of the musical patterns.
HA HA! Cheetos! I'll be poppin' on the 11th. I just bought three beautiful containers of organic grapefruit juice at a great price. I'll go with that!
What a wonderful child you have.
Sound and memory. Yes. I think sound also inspires hope and future aspirations. All mixed together in blissful and poignant longing.
Hangovers! Does anything work? Spirits and poisons, the old combo.
I couldn't find the words to describe my feelings about trees if I wanted too. Your Gemini Dad and I, Tseka, would get along really well.
I always sleep by a window next to a tree. I have an intimate relationship with each tree I live with and there are lots of them here now. I've been with them through vigorous life and sad slow death. My childhood was spent by a tree outside my bedroom. A big healthy one. A good start for my trunk, limb, and leaf filled life.
My mountain ash, by my front door, is full of spirit and mischief. It's absolutely gorgeous, but it gets some kind of pest in the buds that doesn't hurt the tree-it makes these hard things called galls which fall all over and hurt my feet since I'm always barefoot. They knock me on the head too. I admire my tree's ability to put up with these annoyances without complaint. It's always trying to get into my house, though. There's no room for it and I have to be firm.
You guys are great friends!
"A good start for my trunk, limb, and leaf filled life."
That's a great image.
I liked drawing pictures of people turning into trees and trees growing people.
I picture the nervous system and the two brain hemispheres as a kind of tree.
One thing is attached to another.
Trees! Some of my very best friends. I grew up on a bluff between a rainforest and a shallow bay. Heaven.
To my long-tether friends of RU 💓💓
Tree women, the trees who lose their leave and bear fruit, many are their stories. It is said that in distant time they were married to raven. This sacred union was when all ravens were white, before the great flood, when life inverted and things separated.
The prophesy is when white raven returns mankind will be ready to walk the path of harmony and beauty again. She arrived here a decade ago. Her children are white or mottled. When I despair, i remember her and that time is held differently.
I was looking just now at a pencil drawing from an old sketchbook. It's a woman who is also a tree. I didn't draw her looking distressed like in the Greek myth of the water nymph Daphne fleeing the heated attentions of Apollo. I drew a woman's face with a look of bliss on her face. Her eyes are closed in meditation, her face tilted slightly upward to the light. Tufts of leaves grow from her long hair. Her arms appear to extend past the bounds of the page.
I love this image Kadimiros.
Good morning.
The ash tree is dropping catkins and the wee green leaves are glowing in the morning sun. Frost still, to remind winter has not finished. Slipping between seasons here.
Where I grew up images were carved into trees - our library.
Nature lovers. The best. Enlightenment, Bhudda style, was found under a tree. Have you two been hanging out under trees lately? Oh no, of course not. It's winter!
I grew up next to a forest too. There were many many growing human sprouts in my neighborhood and that's where we spent our chilhoods. In fact, almost everyone in my town lived next to trees and deer. The deer, of course, could be problematic. They came into yards and ate the bushes for dinner. Tasty human grown delicacies.
Beauty and harmony are there for the taking in this generous world. Happy almost spring.
The spine supports our personal tree trunk and that mighty guitar string goes from top to bottom. The music of the biped!
Tree branches tapping a rhythm against the roof right now. Wind is creating flickering patterns of light and shadow. Biegolmai - the wind man creating a late winter joik. Ulli Maki and I are cozy inside taking it all in.
"Taking it all in." Letting it all come through, keeping what I want letting the rest go on its way. Resistance can be used sparingly and accurately.
Light and shadow, perfect duo. I'm interested in perfecting my relationship with the disturbing elements. There are certainly circumstances beyond my control, but merely acknowledging that fact might suffice.
There are so many ways to engage or not engage. Nature knows. A great teacher right on our roofs and at our windows and doorsteps. I'm coming around to thinking these seemingly unfortunate times have the usual precious metal linings that can be accessed any time. Fortune and mishap go hand in hand. Let the trees tap dance. I will join in. I have excellent rhythm.
Dappled light. My favorite. A jangled nerve medicine.
When I took a "book art" class in college, I figured out after the first week that the teacher was bored by normal books. He was a sculptor. It was a very free form class, no real curriculum.
Thereafter, I would make "books" from found materials — ash leaves, slabs of slate tied together with twine, metal and rods of carbon.
One book was made of silver plated triangles threaded with silver webs and adorned with a silver spider and a dime. "Spider Grandmother!" My brother declared when he saw it. "Why have you come down from the Moon?"
Another was made from slate I'd found discarded somewhere. You know how one can just find things, and then hold on to them until one figures out what they're for.
The boys in our class grinned when they saw the door slowly open until a gap widened just enough for me to slide carefully through, sideways, while carrying a large box. I set the box gently down on a desk. "Looks heavy", the boy next to me remarked. The teacher's eyes kept straying to it as he kept talking.
When it was time to discuss our projects, I unboxed mine. "Does that really count as a book?" a classmate asked, dubious, perhaps slightly disturbed, when she saw the two slabs of blue-green slate hinged with heavy, brown twine. "Where are the pages?"
"You have to know how to read it," I explained.
It's funny that our culture tends to think of math as lifeless and abstract but then we feel moved when we are enveloped by it in the form of music, or we see the expressive motion of animals running or flying.
As I think about myths and traditions, I'm also thinking that moderns have misconceptions of the ancients because we see them through modern filters and categories.
We think of their ancient temples as white columned structures, but in ancient times the columns and friezes were painted with strong, bright colors.
And when we think of Aristotle, we may remember the white bust of a old, bearded mathematician, unrealistically paraplegic and cut off above the heart. I started reading today about Aristotle as the ancient world's greatest biologist and naturalist. He spent several years as a young man studying marine life at the island of Lesbos, diving into clear Aegean waters to swim and see how fishes, starfish and anemones lived and behaved.
So he was far from divorced from physical experience. Like his predecessor, Heraclitus, Aristotle believed that "knowledge enters through the door of the senses."
To the ancients, movement is not only locomotion. Movement encompassed many things, including plant growth, voting and passing of motions, music moving people, and lodestones moving bits of iron.
When a lodestone moved iron filings, that was because of the will of the lodestone's soul.
Life was understood as an expression of internal will which allowed living things to initiate movement. Our broader notion of "action" is closer to their understanding of "movement".
And I think we're doing similar things to the ancients when we chat with our friends about art, the stars or the phenomena and events we observe in our societies. Sometimes, when we try to read the books of our lives, we're philosophically and experientially closer to our remote predecessors than our Newtonian style public school educations aimed to make us.
I had an unforgettable experience in high school. My 10th grade English teacher, sensing that she had an unusually bright group, decided to experiment. There were about a dozen or fifteen of us. She grouped us in a circle and she sat among us turning the class into a discussion group with the students in charge. We adhered to the curriculum but all year we directed the class ourselves. It was fabulous and incredibly enjoyable. The discussions were fascinating and self esteem skyrocketed. I looked forward to every class. We discussed great books and let the conversation go wherever it went. The end result was not so much mastery of the subjects, but love and respect for ourselves and our talents.
There are always innovators, thankfully. And our school was good. It encouraged her. Miss Longo, I still love you!!
Miss Longo! Lucky you.
I had very relaxed education for the most part.
Aristotle. A and I would sit on a big rock under a tree and read him.
You and your beautiful child. Snacking together on Aristotle under the leaves. An interesting development on schooling has come up which I will write about. This lapse has precious metal linings too.
I'll never cease being impressed with your schooling of that tall extra smart kid of yours.
The finches are back!
I often think Math comes the closest to interpreting the universal order.
Kadimiros I love, live your books! Ha! A typo but maybe live works as well?
It's a funny thing about telling stories to people who do not share similar backgrounds. We think we do but we don't.
Often when I tell a story from my people there is a rush, yes! And one will say how like another story from western culture. But the point is completely missed. The nuance connected to other stories that create distinct cultures is missing.
I own a book by Wah Kay Dub. He was tribal elder when my papa was young. He was the last of the hereditary chiefs from before the treaty. He learned english to write the old legends. What happened? People who knew english as a first language rewrote the stories. My book is signed by him, one of the few that were the originals. The stories are similar in both books but not the same and the meanings are very dissimilar. Translation is hard even between generations.
I look forward to your “interesting development”
The thing with A & I is we are very curious people, we love to read and share ideas. Even when we disagree, we have fun.
Most kids are robbed of their natural curiosity by rote learning.
Good point about not sharing similar backgrounds and story-telling. Thus cultural identity based on shared language. Family, village, to national identity. Lessons are learned about living in these stories. Other communications go on cross-culturally, but the intra-culture persists. It has to. This understanding comes in Sagittarius. People trade and share customs naturally. They resist other cultures as well, naturally.
After the differences are recognized in Sagittarius (anthropologist of the zodiac), they are blended in Aquarius for other purposes. The distinctions remain intact. Cultural memory can't be obliterated, even if artifacts are. Honest vs false collectivism is sure to be revealed with Pluto in Aquarius. Even those of us who like to see ourselves as advanced have recurring memories of some incontrovertible differences, some bringing conflict. Societies develop tools to co-exist through time, experiment, and experience.
When I was in college I spent most of a semester in the trees. I was a juggler then, and one afternoon I was juggling 5 clubs on the grass beneath the huge Elms of Penn State campus. Suddenly a woman dropped out a tree some 100 feet away from me and began running towards me at full tilt. The last 30 feet or so were a series of hand springs ending in a flip to land about 5 feet in front of me. She said simply “we’ve been watching you” and want you to join us. She was part of a group of gymnasts / acrobats that met in the trees most days. So for the rest of the term we were up there... climbing, living in some alternate magical reality, doing things only child acrobats would think to do. I can’t remember if I told you guys this story before... It’s been so many years. There are languages we have forgotten how to speak and ways of moving remembered somewhere only deep in our blood.
Oh! I remember the juggling but not the second half, living in trees with acrobats. What a perfect semester for a daughter of trees. No wonder the Mountain Ash is trying to steal in your front door. This is such a fun story!
Yes, we remember in our blood, our DNA.
I'm still smiling seeing you all perching on your leafy branches, limber as young twigs moving with the wind.
"We adhered to the curriculum but all year we directed the class ourselves. It was fabulous and incredibly enjoyable. The discussions were fascinating and self esteem skyrocketed. I looked forward to every class. We discussed great books and let the conversation go wherever it went. The end result was not so much mastery of the subjects, but love and respect for ourselves and our talents."
Students are likelier to graduate from schools where they learn to exercise their talents. I often like to imagine that in the far, far, far future, students will reach adulthood with competencies in a couple of arts as well as a couple of technical fields.
They will acquire those competencies through enjoyment and camaraderie. They will know not just what to learn but how to learn.
I love, live your books! Ha! A typo but maybe live works as well?"
Yes...."Love life, and live love."
Those were words that came to me after the 9/11 attacks. I had premonitions and a vision about the attacks which I told my best friend on 9/10. The vision was of a drawing in an art gallery or museum, depicting the fateful event. A few days after it actually happened, I dreamed that I saw many people gathering and leaving the planet. They had been traveling together for many lifetimes, and it was time to go home.
There are stories within stories, and stories behind stories. Things seem good and bad on one level, but at another level can seem suffused with sacredness.
Oh, I meant to mention another "book" I made for the class. I used big copper washers that I found in a copper parts store. I strung them with twine from copper coated carbon rods (the kind used as electrodes), and the result was a kind of pendulum toy that rang with clear, sweet, chiming sounds when two washers struck each other. It had a kind of Asiatic look to it, I thought, with the washers reminding me of old coins with holes in them. A classmate was quite taken with it, and he played with it for a long time.
"What happened? People who knew english as a first language rewrote the stories. My book is signed by him, one of the few that were the originals. The stories are similar in both books but not the same and the meanings are very dissimilar. Translation is hard even between generations."
That happened with the Lakota Sioux shaman Black Elk, too. They said that when the white biographer wrote down the stories, he stylized them and the voice of Black Elk in the stories was not at all like the speaking style of the real shaman.
I thought there may have been a hint of Christianized overlay, too. It is hard to know for sure how much distortion was introduced.
Black Elk married a Catholic, and he later converted to Catholicism after his first wife died. His children were baptized and reared as Catholic, and about that and his (apparent) conversion, he said his children "had to live in this world." I thought that seemed to leave open the question of what he really believed in his later years.
In a later memoir published years after I read the earlier biography, he confided, "The only thing I really believe is the pipe religion", meaning the spiritual beliefs of his native culture.
He's being considered for sainthood.
"I can’t remember if I told you guys this story before... It’s been so many years. There are languages we have forgotten how to speak and ways of moving remembered somewhere only deep in our blood."
Yes, you did, but maybe with fewer details. What a wonder. Thank you for bringing it up again!
"A classmate was quite taken with it, and he played with it for a long time."
I actually made two, now that I think more about them.
Each one could be moved like a complex pendulum, or like a whirling vortex, because each had two rods. One rod was at the top of the twine, for the hand to hold, and one rod was in the middle to provide weight halfway along the length, with the washers at the bottom hanging from the middle rod.
The middle weight interacting with the washers allowed for a variety of movement patterns controlled by one's hand at the top. Sometimes they could be a little like three acrobats swinging around each other, one arcing higher and wider around the others, while all swung with asymmetry or alternation because of the middle rod.
"Life was understood as an expression of internal will which allowed living things to initiate movement."
I only read about that, and about Aristotle, today in a book, Quantum Evolution, that I picked up recently. It's so funny when one finds validation or reinforcement like that for the way one was seeing or thinking of something.
I wonder what interesting and useful ideas were lost when the Library of Alexandria was torched by Caesar's soldiers, or when in ancient China nearly all recorded knowledge was destroyed and history revised so that the populace could be more easily controlled. But maybe there are enough people that the species can, in the long run, invent or re-invent what it needs to develop its core potentials.
"There are languages we have forgotten how to speak and ways of moving remembered somewhere only deep in our blood."
The body as language spoken by molecules of DNA.
When we speak, our words are like seeds cast on the wind.
I've read this about Black Elk.
Wah Kay Dub sent his daughters to the Catholic mission boarding school. Harriette was tribal elder when I was growing up. It was his belief that the tribe needed to learn to live in the world that was coming. This was common. At the same time he carved a giant story pole so we would never forget the wisdom of the ancestors.
My family did not become Christians but did insist we are Americans now. What saved us all were the arts, crafts, stories. My family holds three old lines; old Norse, Saami and Algonquin. All these circumpolar cultures are more alike than different.
As JM says our memories are very deep.
These things, Stick, are the real wealth in the world. The idea of obliterating culture is preposterous. Even when lost or destroyed, as all physical things are temporal, the underlying impulses come through again, probably even in disparate cultures. Spirit houses itself continually in human creations. People who appreciate humanity's talents are on my A list.
We're wired for the negative, and the commotion in the world reflects this. The contrasting good needs that negativity. To be able to discern the good and continually elevate it comes through great fortune. People who are gifted in this way understand reverence and probably the ability to cultivate it is included. The stories, memories, and everything provide ballast in a turbulent world. It's like an umbilical cord, too.
"There are languages we have forgotten how to speak and ways of moving remembered somewhere only deep in our blood." Another beauty m.p.k. Seems like everyone here agrees.
There's a lot of Pisces amongst us....Pisces rising, NN Pisces 1st, Mars Neptune, Mars in Pisces (m.p.k.).....Seems like we're rising to the spiritual occasion with the Sun passing through and crossing Neptune. Or we're just seeing things.
Come to think of it, all of us are Mars Neptune. Ascendant and NN 1st qualify. So that means our primary thrust into life is under the influence of Neptune. If someone can figure out where all of us convoluted Mars Neptunians are going, let me know. Mars is a straight arrow shot, Neptune.... well....you know the story. It sure explains all the poetic prose floating around these parts.
Ha, the management must have a policy against spoilers, or looking ahead to the last page of the book. People may have to go through the motions of whatever they do for more reasons than they realize. (Although, maybe it helps to be part of the creative team to get the inside scoop on a production.) Aristotle may have experienced the Eleusinian Mysteries. He was able to describe them, and said of them, "to experience is to learn."
Well, we do know that poetry is older than writing and literacy. It was recited or sung. It still has different rhythms.
Poetry was a medium to talk about events in the world. It was the bearer of news and commentary. It was not primarily about romanticized sadness or unrequited love, the way that our culture tends to think.
It was also oral tradition and collective memory. Maybe it comes from, and returns one, to a deeper, more connected, way of being — to shared experience.
If someone's mind extends far, it forms symbols to express things for which we don't — yet — have mental handles in common speech. And translating it too soon into linear expression may lose something.
I was born when Pisces was rising, and Mars sextiling Neptune and Mars trining Pluto, I believe. Neptune was in Scorpio, which is ruled by Mars and/or Pluto.
Seems suspicious! What are Mars and Neptune up to? Fire and water — are they cooking up something steamy? Who can see what's going on in that atmosphere?
I suspect that modern astrology sees planetary symbols through the lens and filters of our present day culture. To the Greeks, Ares, god of war, was an unlikable character; it was wise Athena who was the ideal war goddess with mastery of strategy and tactics. But to the Romans, Mars (Ares) was admirable. To ancient Mesopotamians, Inanna/Ishtar, whose star is Venus, was the goddess of love, beauty, sex, war, justice and political power. Whew! Perhaps it's no wonder that Rob Hand suggested that astrology works by way of cultural magic, the magic of an entire civilization.
Well, Neptune seems to represent haziness, nebulousness and loss of control to modern astrologers. I wonder how much that depends on the relative position of the observer. Fish breathe water and swim through it. They fly, as it were, supported by the medium. They're not floundering like an unprepared man out of his element. They can get places.
Hmm....Maybe a positive interpretation of Mars-Neptune connections (if we think they are meant to send us a message and not random accident) is active imagination or imaginal cognition. One form is described as a conscious method of experimentation using creative imagination as an organ for "perceiving outside your own mental boxes."
People who hold restrictive beliefs automatically exclude a large range of thoughts and perceptions. New ideas have to come in through a side or back door, perhaps by way of a friend, a spouse, or a bartender. Or through an altered state of consciousness. For some people, a dream or a warm shower does the trick. For others, a transcendent experience of some kind. Or we think we have to withdraw and go within. Mystics talk about the normal condition of society as being a state that is full of delusion and unconscious assumptions. Maybe people who are dissociated or disconnected in the way that passes for "normal" need more Neptunean conditions to reconnect.
Maybe it doesn't have to be as far as they think. People tend not to question where their thoughts and ideas come from. "What a coincidence", "great minds think alike", "right place at the right time", we sometimes say in surprise. Maybe thoughts, feelings, are like fishes that swim through consciousness. If we stick to shallow shoals, to familiar beaches, empty shells and driftwood, we might miss the more exotic species and bigger specimens.
Mars is about transcendence. It's the end of the wheel where one leaves the earth plane. Rising above the mundane is the prelude.
Mars is the beginning. He's all in on earthly reality, just getting started, ready to take on the world. Big conflict.
Should I come or should I go? Should I attack or should I retreat? Is it all about me or is it all about it or whatever? Am I tiny speck of a mere mortal or am I an infinite mass of cosmic energy?
Of course these things can be synthesized for inspired action but that comes and goes.
Basic conflicts remain. Mars wants to go somewhere, Neptune doesn't. That's why m.p.k. and I (who have direct Mars Neptune contacts) love that ouspensky quote about life taking us nowhere. There's nowhere to go with Neptune. We're already there. Or here. Or everywhere.
I find the ascendant to be the most important point in the chart. It's what we're becoming and thus we can have a hand in sculpting ourselves. So you in particular can do what you wish with Pisces. It's a birth right.
The Scorpio (Asc. ruler sign) and Capricorn interfere however. Scorpio is far too manipulative for Pisces and Capricorn is far too intellectual and controlling. Ultimately Pisces determines how it all goes.
As an aside, Mars Neptune has great physical magnetism but Neptune often wants to transcend coarse Mars sexuality. This sometimes leads to a desire for abstinence or limited sexual engagement. Or Mars can perceive himself as the greatest lover in the universe (Neptune). Not that partners would view it that way.
All in all, self image with Mars Neptune can surpass simple accuracy. Inspired Martian movement exists on the plus side. Dance, martial arts, etc.
Yes, I meant to mention the movement arts as a broad area that seems to align well with the symbolism.
Can a dance performance on stage be said to go anywhere? The movement has non-physical ends and is a collective composition.
Great question about a dance performance. It doesn't seem to go anywhere. It works with elements right where they are on the stage and stimulates imagination. It transports the audience ideally and whether or not that means going somewhere is also a good question. It makes me think stage performance is Neptunian. Movies are supposed to be, but the 2D factor makes me wonder. Fantasies and visions are there in film but do they really capture Neptune's dimensions? Hmmmm....
I think often about my decision to forgo film school for the live stage. This is beginning to make sense, if anything Neptunian can!
You're right about the non-physical ends. That's the trick with Mars and Neptune. Mixing completely physical Mars with the vapors and imaginings of Neptune. And the inability to capture them. Neptune dissolves just as you catch it. You know, grasping illusion, since the physical self likes to have substance.
A lot of it has to do with the non-linear nature of Neptune as far as progressive movement is concerned. Is going around in circles going somewhere? If going in those circles is your goal, then I suppose it is. What is progress really?
Then since Pisces is the end of the wheel, where is there to go? Useless effort is a big Neptunian concern.
Your situation is slightly different from actual Mars Neptune contacts, but the overall perception of the infinite is probably the same. I'd be interested in hearing your views from both your intuitive sense and your mythological expertise. And your experience, being a Pisces rising!
I have a great affinity for Neptune and Pisces.
Another factor is the fog Neptune is famous for. It makes it hard to go forward in the usual sense. I often think Neptune puts blinders on ordinary vision so other-worldly vision can manifest. We're guided differently, guided spiritually if you will. It probably comes more, the less we try to see in the ordinary way. So you can imagine how Mars and his cock-sure self with his purposeful path can be daunted by Neptune's hazy abstract meanderings. Unless the wise Martian purposely seeks divine understanding.
People say they are lost and confused under Neptune's influence, but are they ultimately?
Also, In Virgo, useful effort is the story in pursuit of perfection. Across the way, Pisces abandons effort and essentially flows with the universal. But I've come to think that Pisces might be the sign of perfection. Virgo tries to make it, Pisces knows it's already there.
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"Also, In Virgo, useful effort is the story in pursuit of perfection. Across the way, Pisces abandons effort and essentially flows with the universal. But I've come to think that Pisces might be the sign of perfection. Virgo tries to make it, Pisces knows it's already there."
That's an interesting use of the symbolism. There are questions of definition, and of value judgment. And, do we use our various frameworks (including astrology) in a Virgoan way or a Piscean way, neither or both?
Some people like to think there is more than one type of Pisces. There may be a Pisces that has circled (spiraled) around a few times and contains the other signs as part of its experiential matrix. Her understanding of perfection will be different. The word "perfection" encompasses a bunch of related concepts which don't wholly align or contain contradictions.
Is perfection a finished state or an ongoing process? Perfection cannot be a thing in itself although the word for it is, deceptively, a noun. If we say "perfectly" instead of "perfection", then we can ask, Perfectly what with respect to what? Fitness may require responsive change; a species that cannot change will become maladapted as environmental conditions change. Evolutionary process is change from shuffling of genes and from mutations.
Virgo is said to emphasize order, organization and utility. But true practicality recognizes that the irregular can be useful. (So, how many types of Virgo are there?)
Aristotle thought that perfection means to be complete, with nothing to be added or subtracted. Others think that perfection depends on incompleteness. The perfection of the artistic performance of our swanning dancers depends on the active attention and imagination of its audience.
If we say that "perfection" merely means "excellence", then it's good to acknowledge the aspect of divine discontent that calls forth excellence and subsequent contentment.
If one wants more contentment (Right here, right now! And I want to speak to the manager!) then one way is to accept that one's life thus far has sufficient value, and/or that continuation in one's course has value. You feel that you did, or that you are doing, enough to fulfill your yearning though yearning may continue or surge anew.
If you are process, you are never frozen as absolutely one thing or condition, but like the taiji symbol contain the seeds of movement and change within any state.
In the bigger picture, continuation needs some change; perfection can depend on incompleteness; contentment follows discontentment; utility makes use of irregularity.
Maybe our hypothetical Virgoan seeker fails to achieve and is frustrated, or achieves and still feels insufficient value. That sense of lack may lead her to reflect on why she pursues her goals. Piscean reflection opens the way to feel more significance though her achievements be modest. Perhaps she reframes and sees more value. If she goes further, then deeper questions become more important than superficial answers. The questions allow her to feel the shape of her life more fully, and as more answers come, they bring more questions. She may embrace mystery as a source of meaning.
Lao Tzu wrote that meaning can come from being an expression of the universe, whose essence is mysterious. (Note: "Lao Tzu" may actually have been many taoists.) He suggested that meaning can come without effort; we might say by the grace of the universe. He was not advocating idly sitting back to be served (that would not be harmony with the Tao) but simplicity and modesty in work and in rest. (Those of us who are more full of ourselves might grudgingly say, Keeping things in proportion or perspective.) He wrote, "One who persists is a person of purpose."
Life matters because we engage in it; we engage because life matters. The vast would not be vast without something to which it is vast. We are vast to an ant, and small to the galaxy. A creator would not be a creator without her creation. A person is a person through other persons. A bigger purpose or sense of meaning, or building value, cannot be only oneself, nor can it be something completely separate from oneself. Each individual relates the aspects of reality that enters its experience, develops the relationships and find the meaning that speaks to it.
If we reject the terms of existence, then we end up rejecting ourselves. We can't grasp everything, but in grappling with our relationships to others, or in encountering the larger psychological dimensions of our reality, we may sense that existence is inherently meaningful to us. We allow for the natural movement, and the ebbs and flows, of the psyche.
"It transports the audience ideally and whether or not that means going somewhere is also a good question. It makes me think stage performance is Neptunian."
I am visualizing Swan Lake, with dancers swanning about rather energetically.
Well, what's the symbolism of swans if I look it up? I read, "The meaning of a swan is grace, beauty, love, trust, and loyalty. Swan symbolism is also linked to inner beauty and self love. A pair of swans represent soul mates for life."
Those sound very Neptunean.
I picture the human "swans" dancing their performance of Swan Lake. For a time, that is their way of being.
If Mars symbolizes individuation, then Neptune can symbolize transcendent, swan-like, qualities that are emergent and depend on the individual's relations with self, others and the environment.
"A lot of it has to do with the non-linear nature of Neptune as far as progressive movement is concerned. Is going around in circles going somewhere? If going in those circles is your goal, then I suppose it is. What is progress really?"
Progress implies a straight line development to a specific goal. One man's progress may be another man's backsliding.
No movement in a circle ever returns to exactly the same point in spacetime. If we sit still, we and our chairs are still tumbling through spacetime. Successive frames of a movie film strip look very similar yet different. Life implies motion and change.
I picture a spiral. Like the seasons that facilitate the rich evolution of earthly life, the spiral is like a shifting circle that both revisits and moves on. It can allow for a richer set of experiences than otherwise possible. There's a complex dance.
Physicist John Wheeler explained that mass tells space how to curve while curved space tells matter how to move. As Mars affects the space around it, that also entails that space affects it. Mars moves along the shortest path between any two points in 4D but in 3D that same path curves around the Sun which in turn orbits the galactic center. The planets trace spirals.
It's hard to argue that that reality, or the multiverse, as a whole is moving towards one absolute endpoint. Rather, it seems more that its potentials unfold in as many directions as possible. The straightest line is as much part of that multiplicity as the wiggliest and waggliest.
"Your situation is slightly different from actual Mars Neptune contacts, but the overall perception of the infinite is probably the same. I'd be interested in hearing your views from both your intuitive sense and your mythological expertise. And your experience, being a Pisces rising!"
Oh? Ha, my expertise is improvisational. There are individual variables in perception, so there might be differences.
Well, what's infinity (if that's what we're talking about)?
Aristole stated, "Infinity turns out to be the opposite of what people say it is. It is not 'that which has nothing beyond itself' that is infinite, but 'that which always has something beyond itself'."
Like other ancient Greeks, he distrusted infinity and irrationals. He disbelieved in actual infinity but believed in potential infinity. I don't think that modern views agree with all the details of his argument. But he seems to have a valid point in that infinity cannot be a finished condition. To be finished to to cease development, and to cease development is a kind of finite limitation. Some argue today that our ideas about thingness is simplistic. They variously claim that all is process, relations, mathematics or some other abstraction.
History shows that time and again, humans have discovered they were part of something bigger than they thought could exist. In that sense, the movement of the individual is not away but to explore more informed relationships with the medium in which it lives.
"Virgo is said to emphasize order, organization and utility. But true practicality recognizes that the irregular can be useful."
That's where Pisces comes in. There is perfection in the whole, flaws included. Virgo is analysis, Pisces is synthesis. A picked apart life becomes perfect in its totality. It's completion.
"I often think Neptune puts blinders on ordinary vision so other-worldly vision can manifest. We're guided differently, guided spiritually if you will. It probably comes more, the less we try to see in the ordinary way. So you can imagine how Mars and his cock-sure self with his purposeful path can be daunted by Neptune's hazy abstract meanderings. Unless the wise Martian purposely seeks divine understanding."
If Neptune is a personification of the sea, then it is a restless place full of currents and movement. It doesn't have any one purpose, but is suited to many purposes.
Maybe Neptune can represent a medium within which Mars can have purpose and encounters.
We could compare Mars-Neptune to the spiritual warrior figures of martial arts traditions, or to Western legends of questing knights seeking a sacred cup. The cup exists, but its transformative power remains merely potential without the knight's seeking.
Metaphorically speaking, Mars is an explorer. Then, if Mars goes far, it encounters the Neptunean spaces on the map, the "Here be dragons". (It was believed that there were many big specimens of dragons in the Far East, and that diamonds were draconites (dragon stones) extracted from their heads.)
The knight encounters illusions, distractions, temptations and challenges along the way.
The unfamiliar appears at odds with, abnormal to, familiar reality. For the determined questing explorer, confusion is transitional and precedes comprehension. After the transition, the familiar may appear delusive if it insists that it represents the whole truth.
A spiritual healer may also fit. Mars would be like the focal point of spiritual resources. A healing resolution is sought to inner conflict.
Yogis talk about the spiral force, kundalini. Kundalini is said to be a kind of energy abiding within the root chakra — which, by the way, is associated with Mars, survival instincts and orientation within space. If awakened, it rises and successively activates higher energy centers which are more complex and inclusive. They resonate with and recapitulate lower centers within themselves, like a kind of fractal system. Essentially, consciousness enlarges its scope.
Now, if you say "fog" and "confusion", etc., then one thing I do is to ask, "How can we see through physical fog?" It seems obvious to me that there can be ways to do so. I weigh the assumptions instead of taking them entirely for granted; I like to see some things for myself.
So, one way, I read, is "noisy light". Fog disrupts ordinary (relatively coherent) light. But that is not a problem for "noisy light" which can't be disrupted much further than it already is. It's average properties are more robust than those of a regular signal. The clever physicists devised a way to extract enough information from randomized light to track moving objects obscured by fog or other scattering media.
It's not complicated at all, according to them. "You take the intensity variations of the light that comes out and then you construct a power spectrum of those fluctuations and you look in different frequency bands in that spectrum. This is done in real time as it does not require sophisticated calculations — it is just a power spectrum analysis." Ah, college.
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