Or “Knowledge Does Not Enrich Us”
C. G Jung, in his American travels, spent some time with the Pueblo people of New Mexico. Jung perceived that there was something shared by the entire tribe to which he was not privy. “…the air was filled with a secret known to all the communicants, but to which the whites could gain no access. This strange situation gave me an inkling of Eleusis, whose secret was known to one nation and yet never betrayed. I understood what Pausanias or Herodotus felt when he wrote “I am not permitted to name the name of that god.” This was not, I felt, mystification, but a vital mystery whose betrayal might bring about the downfall of the community as well as of the individual.”
Finally, through doggedness and persistence, he drove the chief of the Taos Pueblos, Ochwiay Biano, (Mountain Lake) to exasperation. On their relations with the Americans, Mountain Lake said:
“…[They] want to stamp out our religion. Why can they not let us alone? What we do, we do not only for ourselves but for the Americans also. Yes, we do it for the whole world. Everyone benefits by it.”
I could observe from his excitement that he was alluding to some extremely important element of his religion. Therefore I asked him: “You think then, that what you do in your religion benefits the whole world?” He replied with great animation, “Of course. If we did not do it, what would become of the world?” And with a significant gesture he pointed to the sun.
…”After all”, he said, “we are a people who live on the roof of the world; we are the sons of the Father Sun, and with our religion we daily help our father go across the sky. We do this not only for ourselves, but for the whole world. If we were to cease practising our religion, in ten years the sun would no longer rise. Then it would be night forever.”
I then realized on what the “dignity”, the tranquil composure of the individual Indian, was founded. It springs from his being a son of the sun; his life is cosmologically meaningful, for he helps the father and preserver of all life in his daily rise and descent. If we set this against our own self-justifications, the meaning of our own lives as it is formulated by our reason, we cannot help but see our poverty. Out of sheer envy we are obliged to smile at the Indians’ naïveté and to plume ourselves in our cleverness; for otherwise we would discover how impoverished and down at the heels we are. Knowledge does not enrich us; it removes us more and more from the mythic world in which we were once at home by right of birth.
… The idea, absurd to us, that a ritual act can magically affect the sun is, upon closer examination, no less irrational but far more familiar to us than might be assumed. Our Christian religion – like every other, incidentally – is permeated by the idea that special acts or a special kind of action can influence God – for example, through certain rites or by prayer, or by a morality pleasing to the Divinity.”
Jung is never wrong, you can agree or disagree, but you can’t brush him off or dismiss him outright. Nor can you ignore Spence, Frazer, Hawkes, Campbell and so many others, who all say the same thing. But, while reading books is well and good, armchair mythologists like myself might also be inspired to get up early and climb the nearest decent lookout point. Thus, I’ve been catching a lot of sunrises of late. Two reasons for this: I don’t mind rising early on weekends, and there is a lovely climb to the top of a hill nearby from which to see them.
It’s a form of modest trigonometry, the establishment of a lop-sided triangulation with the earth and the sun, and a focalization on the position of things. It seems to me that we spend a good deal of time situating everything in relation to ourselves – how they can be of use to us, whether they matter or not, how to establish a hierarchy that benefits our well-being and advancement – rather than observing where we are in relation to things. While they could be considered one and the same thing, there is nevertheless an inversion of viewpoint, and a certain placing of self outside self, to better see the view.
I enjoy the constantly shifting palette, the contrasts and the juxtapositions of light and shadow. I enjoy the curious combination of static and fleeting, the warm and cold pastels, the moving cloudfield above. (And New Zealand has the most energetic skies, cloud watching in Wellington is like a day at the races.)
While I’m watching, I’m imagining of course. I’m imagining the Earth slowly turning to face the sun, the oceans being slowly lit, the clouds rolling across continents and other generally cosmic musings. (I’m also often wondering why on earth I didn’t pack a second sweater.) This because there is no pretension involved. No affectation or ostentation. Yes, I’m up there making sure the sun rises for the rest of you, but only weekends; after all, I’ve got a day job during the week. Self-styled druids, modern shamans and reinvented sun rituals and the like fill me with skepticism, because they are once more focusing everything on themselves. I just want to disappear for a moment in an infinitely repeated cosmic event, in something so mundane and predictable and enduring that it is, as far as the brief spans of our lives are concerned, infinite. Watching the sun rise is standing on the edge of time.
Standing on the edge of time, by the way, is easier than you might think. Looking at any art object – painting or potsherd – is looking into time. (The same logic pushes me to those places where I cannot go, but only stand on the edge of and look out upon.) The same search for triangulation can take place in front of a painting, or a dusty chipped object in a museum. The essential quality of these things is that they are beyond our influence, they are impervious to us. While we (or the museum) can possess the physical painting or object, the moment of realization is something that cannot be changed, only imagined. I wonder about the materials used, the conversations that took place nearby as it was being painted or fashioned, the patron’s smile or pursed lips, the languages and the accents, the worlds outside the atelier door. I know they are all in the painting somewhere, or the clues to them are, if only I knew a little more. Or, I’m imagining the sun rising on day after day to light an easel. The same sun as today.
I’m imagining all the faces turned to the rising sun over millennia, whether in worship or curiosity, and marveling at our ability to imbue with significance our actions. (Thankfully, mine have none, or none that go beyond a dawn waiting for the sun.) I’m wondering about all these things, because they are complex and (in my case at any rate) disordered thoughts about meaning and symbol, history and understanding, and the rising light illuminates them more clearly than any reading lamp. It doesn’t help me organize them, but it does remind me of their importance, and why it is important not to forget. And, perhaps most fundamentally, I’m doing my best to remind myself how astonishingly beautiful the impermanent, shifting map of the sky can be, and how to capture even just a hint of that quotidian magic in some future painting.
Knowledge does not enrich us. It is simply the elaborate setting into which we set the carefully fashioned jewels of our real riches: thought, memory, intuition and art.
For the armchair reader, when not chasing the sun:
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. 1963
Jacquetta Hawkes, Man and the Sun. 1962
LIFE UPSIDE DOWN
After over three years (and a pretty sizeable jar full of pencil stubs) in the Antipodes pondering the nature of Hobbits and dwarves, work has recently turned very very busy, and newsletters harder and harder to write. I am counting on a few kind souls who have offered to step in with guest newsletters to rescue me from my self-imposed deadlines and hope nevertheless to be able to carry on at very least monthly and more or less on time. However, with the December release date approaching and post-production going apace, the next months will be busy indeed.
But, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Oh bother. I do believe it’s a dragon.