THE FOLLOWING IS COPYWRITTEN MATERIAL
NO PART OF IT MAY BE REPRODUCED
WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR
This is Part 3 of an 11-Part Series
Extracted from Chapter Two of my book The Seven Gates of Soul
Previous posts in this series include:
The Fear of Death in Early Cultures
The Fear of the Soul’s Journey After Death
Toward a Cyclical Conception of Death as a Part of Life
A less fearful attitude toward death was evident in tribes whose life was naturally more plant-based, where hunting was secondary to some form of agriculture or foraging for wild edibles. In these cultures, such as those originating in the temperate climates of southern Europe, the tropical rainforests of South America and the more fertile regions of Africa, death was often much less feared. Even in the undiminished potency of its capacity to undo everything considered to be a part of life, death was considered to be a natural phenomenon, comparable to the return of a seed to the Earth, when a rotten piece of fruit fell from its vine. It was not considered less valuable than that which brought success, abundance, fertility, and power. For such cultures, life depended on death for its vitality, the way a seedling depended upon the nourishment of the composted soil in which it was planted. Within this dependency was a sense of continuity that stretched from one generation to the next and bound the community together as a whole encompassed by the great cycle of Life. Among these cultures, death was not conceptualized as something to be repelled, thwarted or postponed, but rather as a natural progression of events to be expected, even welcomed, as part of a cyclical process. Life and death were not antithetical to one another, but alternating phases in a larger, more mysterious process that included, yet transcended both.
An African folktale (Wilson) illustrates this point. Life and Death were traveling together and came upon a spring. The owner of the spring greeted them, and informed them that it was the custom for the elder to drink first. Life stepped forward to drink, explaining that it was obvious he was the elder, since only that which lives can die, and therefore, life must precede death. But death replied, “On the contrary. Death is the unknown, out of which the Creator has molded everything that lives. Therefore, death is a father to life.” Asked to settle their dispute, the owner of the spring told them, “You are both right. Neither one of you came first, and neither one of you can exist without the other.” Life and death then knelt down to drink from the spring together.
The perennial juxtaposition of life and death is depicted even more poignantly in another African folktale (Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, pp. 118-119), in which the Chief of Death, who presides over the fate of each individual member of the tribe, has a face that is beautiful on one side, but rotten and crawling with maggots on the other. One day, the Chief prophesizes from the beautiful side of his face and life blooms in magnificent abundance. The next day, he prophesizes from the rotten side of his face and death stalks its prey and takes away what life has bestowed.
These tales illuminate an important feature of our relationship to soul, which must be central to any language we devise to understand it. To the extent that death is a part of life – and no one who has ever experienced loss, or failure, or the necessity for letting go can deny it – then it seems reasonable to assume that the soul’s journey through life will also be a journey into the mystery of death. At times, the journey will appear to be about moving forward, creating, building, and growing into a realization of our potential. At other times, it will appear to be about falling backward, suffering the decay and dissolution of what we have created, and failing to realize the promise held forth by life. Life will wax and wane within a cyclical rhythm with death, and soul will come into being through a deepening awareness of who we are in relation to these cycles.
As it says in the famous passage of Ecclesiastes (3:1-8):
There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven:
A time for giving birth,
a time for dying;
a time for planting,
a time for uprooting what has been planted.
A time for killing,
a time for healing;
a time for knocking down,
a time for building.
A time for tears,
a time for laughter;
a time for mourning,
a time for dancing.
A time for throwing stones away,
a time for gathering them up;
a time for embracing,
a time to refrain from embracing.
A time for searching,
a time for losing;
a time for keeping,
a time for throwing away.
A time for tearing,
a time for sewing;
a time for keeping silent,
a time for speaking.
A time for loving,
a time for hating;
a time for war,
a time for peace.
From this perspective, which seems more enlightened than the fear-based approach governing hunting cultures, the cultivation of soul, like the cultivation of a garden, involves learning to live in harmony with the seasons of one’s life. These seasons, like the turning of the seasons each year, occur in a recognizable cyclical rhythm, which we can anticipate and prepare ourselves to experience as consciously and as effectively as possible. As we will explore in more detail later, a cyclical awareness of the seasons of life is the conceptual basis for the astrological worldview, a feature that makes it an attractive model for the language of soul we are attempting to evolve.
