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Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Long ago, the child of ‘the new year,’ was named Dionysus; and as an infant he was carried about by the old men Silenus and Hermes.

Back in that day, the child Dionysus, was born at this time of year …when the dark is lifting and the light of day is growing longer… and that child represented bright new life, fresh imagination, sunny impetuosity, joyous spirit without end.

Though in late forms, he was devolved into the God of drunkenness, in earliest understanding he stood for the kind of psychic intoxication that comes from knowing what could be called the et Deus, the God in all things.

And the old man who carried the child in his arms, represented the senex, the old wise man; the one who had lived long, who knew the preciousness of new life, the locations of the trip and fall places, the detours and long-cuts, the underground pathways through… and he was the child’s protector.

Long ago, the child and the old man were not separate ideas, but one. The older one did not die in order to be replaced by the younger. Instead, they represented a hieros gamos of sorts, a sacred union… two critical aspects of inner nature, that when melded, created a third: a conscious and awakened psyche.

And, only if one were severed from the other, disorder would follow. Each would falter, and eventually go awry, then sicken and die… for lack of their life’s work with their balancing opposite.

In our time, in reality, many older persons remain in high and deep spirit by creating deep friendship with the very young, and/or with ideas and attitudes that carry fresh vitality.

In our time too, many of the young feel they are living in the shelter of a mountain because they are near the heart of an elder who is reasonably aged in love, loyalty, praise and prescience.

And in each person’s psyche, regardless of spare number of years lived, there is a senex function too. Even in the very young, there is a source of wisdom, uncanny and reliable, if it is sought out. And in the psyche too, despite a person’s gathering decades, there is also an eternally young spirit, one that never, ever grows old. Thus, even in the frail old, there is a source of leaping in spirit, of laughing, of creating anew daily.

Dropped in at
9:40 PM

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