The Alchemy Of Trans-Modern Mystical Intuition: Beyond Reason And Beyond Wild

“We have seen the feminine instinctive nature looted, driven back, and overbuilt. For long periods it has been mismanaged like the wildlife and the wildlands. It is not by accident that the pristine wilderness of our planet disappears as the understanding of our own inner wild nature fades.” — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Nature is delivering a cruel blow to Australia this summer. Thousands of homes have been destroyed, hundreds of lives lost, engulfed by firestorms of unspeakable horror. ‘Hell and all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria,’ said Prime Minister Rudd. And it’s not over yet. At this writing, the fires are still raging. Monstering across the countryside creating smoke plumes that desperate family-filled cars could not outrun, the wild flames melted everything in their path. There was no negotiation, no second chance. Nature had the final word.

In one mighty unfurling of fiery fury, she has turned the tables on us and cast the trump card. We are now the prey—she, the predator. Arms folding in defiance, long fingers thrumming on her forearm, she leans back in her earthly throne awaiting our next move. We are left speechless from the devastation.

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I cannot possibly begin to know the depths of pain and suffering being felt by those who have directly experienced this tragedy; how it must feel to see one’s entire community disappear, to lose loved ones, to lose the entire landscape and every single belonging. I struggle with the helplessness of it and in that struggle, search to find some kind of meaning. ‘What can I possibly do?’ is uttered over dinner tables and quietly to oneself in the night hours, as we uselessly try to fit ourselves in others shoes.

Giving generously financially is the first port of call and any kind of material donation (clothes, toys, furniture) will help ease the transition as people rebuild their lives. I’ve been so moved to see the extent of generosity and kindness that has emerged in response to the fires.

But as I turn the painful experience over and over in my heart, I wonder what else we might be able to offer on the alter of this catastrophe? I wonder if there is some way we could interpret it that would allow us all to live more deeply—that would allow the senseless deaths to count towards something.

Tragedy carries a special kind of potential. It stops us in our tracks, halts the mind and renders our rational mind helpless. Nature, in her turning of tables, is offering a new perspective, one that perhaps can sit along side us quietly, humbly, as we grieve. Though fierce and uncompromising in her teachings, nature has profound gifts to offer us, if we can open our heart and intellect and see them. And yet listening is not so easy. We’re lost in translation. Our rational mind doesn’t understand her, especially when she expresses so destructively. How do we decipher what is being spoken between the smoke and the ashes?

For some clues, we might allow ourselves to engage with the wild sacred feminine—with the mother of nature herself. We could descend into the realms of the feminine underworld, where the wrathful, fiery, dark goddesses of Hecate, Medusa, Kali, Pele, and Ereshkigal reside. This is where fire and destruction is rooted in our collective psyche. These fierce archetypes provide us with symbols and metaphors to decode what the fires in Victoria might offer to us. Such is the language of the feminine, of nature herself.

Protectresses of the vulnerable, avengers for the earth and all her children, these three fire-breathing ladies also know well the psyche of being ‘the prey’. The feminine—especially the dark side—has been misunderstood, hunted down, raped, burned, disembowelled, hung, plundered and left to starve. Perhaps, while she has us on our knees, she can also teach us about the gifts of being the prey, instead of always being the predator. To pray to, instead of prey on.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes, ‘We have seen the feminine instinctive nature looted, driven back, and overbuilt. For long periods it has been mismanaged like the wildlife and the wildlands. It is not by accident that the pristine wilderness of our planet disappears as the understanding of our own inner wild nature fades.’ Our disconnection from nature, from the wild feminine, has left us unable to smell danger on the ember-filled winds, to sense unsafe terrain, navigate out of leg traps, live in right partnership with our land. It’s left thousands vulnerable in those fires of hell.

Even the name of the ravaged Australian state—Victoria—wags a coincidental finger. The Roman goddess of victory, she had temples erected in her honour. Triumphant generals worshipped her on their return from war.

And war is how the suppression of wilderness, the suppression of our own wildness, our connection with nature, has been achieved. Historically nature- or earth-based systems have been conquered by brutal warfare. So deep are its cuts, war has split our collective psyche in two. Stanford University anthropologist, E Richard Sorenson distinguishes between two very different forms of consciousness: ‘preconquest’, characteristic of the minds of indigenous peoples, and ‘postconquest’, typified by modern rationalism, and our disconnect from nature.

Preconquest consciousness is rooted in feeling, a form of liminal awareness hardly recognised in modern life. Shaped from infancy with intimate body-to-body contact, preconquest consciousness aims not for logic but for pleasure, joy, and peace. As with animals of prey, individuals in such societies are highly sensitive to changes in muscle tension in others, indicating shifts in mood. If others feel good, they feel good; if others feel bad, they feel bad; if others are in danger, they flee too. The preconquest consciousness therefore strives for what feels right and safe for the collective and seeks to accommodate differences.

In knowing this, perhaps, aligning with ‘prey nature’ may not be so bad.

Perhaps it’s only our postconquest mind that struggles with the idea. Postconquest consciousness is significantly different. Based on dialectical reasoning, it intrinsically involves domination or conquest and by nature is confrontational. It yearns to expand knowledge through reason and ‘truth’. But in doing so, takes over the more yielding preconquest consciousness.

Sorenson uses the word ‘conquest’ referring to what happened to Indigenous peoples when the English and French invaded north America and the Spanish conquistadors invaded the rest of the New World. Riding in on their frightening, four-legged companions, the Spanish easily annihilated many of America’s first peoples who had never seen such beasts before. In an odd twist of irony, the horse, an animal of prey, became unknowingly complicit in centuries of domination, brutality, and conquest.

Their partnership with human beings, though fraught with tragedy and violence, has also been one of profound connection and healing. Those who have had the good fortune of sharing in the company of horses know the transformative capacity they have. Strange and miraculous things happen when the two species get together. Wild and sensitive, yet gentle and cooperative, they seem to offer a bridge between ourselves and our wild nature. And it goes without saying that horses and women share a powerful bond.

Linda Kohanov writes in The Tao of Equus, ‘Horses relate to the world from a feminine or ‘yin’ perspective. As a result, the species is a living example of the success and effectiveness of feminine values, including cooperation over competition, responsiveness over strategy, emotion and intuition over logic, process over goal, and the creative approach to life that these qualities engender.’

Horses have long been known to facilitate the socio-sensual connection between humankind and nature, resulting in the re-emergence of creative, instinctual, feminine principles in daily life. Numerous cross-cultural myths attest to this fact. Pegasus—offspring of Medusa, in fact—carried Greek heroes to the stars of immortality, and the magical waters that nourished poets, sprang up where his hoof struck the ground on Helicon. ‘Even mortal horses can lead people to secret springs of lost knowledge,’ writes Kohanov. ‘And they’re fully capable of carrying the living dead, those lobotomised by the current paradigm, to a hidden realm of emotional and creative vitality.’

Knowing this, I recently spent time with my very tall black Friesian gelding, exploring what he had to teach me. I thought I’d listen for a change, and employed a natural horsemanship trainer, Louise, to help me gain some insights. I’d spent my life around horses, several years professionally competing in dressage and running my own riding school. I always intuited there was more to the relationship than what traditional (postconquest) methods were revealing.

There in the round yard with Nat, under the guidance of Louise’s wisdom, I had a profound epiphany that the postconquest rational mind could not follow. There was a ‘way’ forward, informed by an energetic and liminal collaboration with nature. It was instinctual, compassionate, kind, loving and … fiercely uncompromising. It was the way of the feminine. She was unmistakable. Indescribable. I saw that in true communion with an animal, and therefore nature, we could be instructed in how to live peacefully and sustainably. The way of the feminine, a preconquest consciousness, the ‘prey’ nature, has so much to show us.

I know that her emergence in my life mirrors her awakening into the consciousness of humanity. And indeed it does feel as if great shifts are occurring collectively that reflect her arrival. But often when the feminine emerges, after centuries of burial and injustice, she’s angry. Really pissed off. And she wants to catch our attention. She rages with fire and brimstone, turning proverbial men to stone, setting the world alight, setting Victoria alight.

A light.

Victoria is horse country, described by the modern-day mythologies of Banjo Patterson’s famous poem ‘The Man from Snowy River’ and the Melbourne Cup. And yet her horses, like her land, have been related to through the postconquest rational mind. The goddess Victoria is often depicted leading the horses of war heroes; horses who, like us, have been lobatomised by the dominant paradigm.

Perhaps that is why Mother Nature throws flames at our sunburnt soils in the south and floods them in the north. Perhaps she’s asking for some attention. Does that mean implementing all manner of sustainable initiatives? Maybe. But if it’s done with postconquest rationalism, it will just be more of the same. Cloaked wolves. What she’s asking for is something much, much more. Perhaps she’d like us to try a little ‘prey nature’ on for size. And she’s asking for it fiercely, by searing our hearts open over embers of grief.

She’s asking for surrender, for deep care of others as if they were ourselves, for the creative space to let instinct and wisdom arise, for vulnerability to emotion and grief, for wonder, for perception of grace and awe, irrationality, passion, and for connection. If you think of animals of prey, you can imagine their sensitivity. Their survival depends on acute listening, many moments of silence, watchfulness, feeling others, and hanging out in herds. My horse, Nat, can be grazing quietly when a dog walks past the paddock 80 metres away, but if that dog so much as narrows his eyes toward him, Nat is off and running. He feels thought, intention—the slightest change of emotion. Such sensitivity is an important skill.
Must we choose between being prey or predator? Is it an either/or scenario?

I think the metaphor of horse and rider, straight from the hills of the Snowy River, provides us with the answer. Beyond reason and beyond wild, we have the potential to develop trans-modern mystical intuition—and this way of knowing includes and integrates all the others. The lion can walk with the lamb.

Could one of the messages of Victoria bushfires be to bring the dark feminine back to the table, and to let her sit alongside her masculine, rational-mind counterparts? In letting instinct sit next to reason—the rider with the horse? This would look like living more flexibly and resiliently, with respect for, and light-footedness on, the earth, while being willing to implement fierce, uncompromising strategies such as managed burn-offs, and clear, fair government regulations. It means raising our children with deep connection and intimate touch, as preconquest societies have done since the beginning of time, but not being afraid of clear boundaries, so that they grow up to be non-violent, peaceful citizens.

Perhaps part of our healing from the bushfires is in allowing an alchemy to happen inside. Perhaps the tragedy can transmute into some kind of gold in our psyche—the reconnection of nature and humankind. Out of the embers, out of our grief, we can then rise even more whole and wise.

Published in Kindred, Issue 29

You can read more of Kelly’s writing at EQUUS, here.

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