“Shadow” is Part I of a series of talks for the Theosophical Society of San Francisco.
In this Substack post, I have included the full text and accompanying slides for Part I.
You will also find an embedded video of the talk itself at the end of this post.
To register for Part II (7/20/25), Part III (8/18/25) and Part IV (9/21/25), via Zoom, use this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/.../register/ygrx3Z1ESHCR9muMtKrwDw
There is an increasing sense of my own mortality. It’s not a foreboding. It’s an acknowledgement. A reckoning. It’s math. The math is the math.
And not just the specter of one’s own mortality, but also the WHAT IF … What if you could no longer deliver the message with the requisite force, with the requisite clarity, with the requisite scope?
So this series of talks, along with a series of seven podcasts some of which deal with subjects we don’t discuss in this venue, these four talks, and those seven podcasts, are an opportunity for me to restate and reaffirm my message, in this troubled time, and at this age, for the sake of those in my immediate circle, for those who care, and those who might come across my work in the future.“
“Ye know neither the day nor the hour …” - (Matthew 25:13)
“Not even the Angels in Heaven know,” Matthew goes on to say.
Merriam-Webster Definition: Verity
1. the quality or state of being true or real
2. something (such as a statement) that is true especially: a fundamental and inevitably true value
3. the quality or state of being truthful or honest
Plural: Verities
I chose this image of the Goddess Sophia to serve as the emblem for this series of talks. The statue in the photo is 24 feet tall & stands on a 48-foot pedestal. Erected in 2000, it towers above a main thoroughfare in Sofia, the capitol of Bulgaria. (A statue of Lenin had occupied that spot. Before the fall of the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain.)
Standing beneath that statue of Sofia, in the ancient city named for Her, was a powerful experience. How had I come to be there? I had been invited to Sofia to deliver a briefing on cyber terrorism for a NATO Advanced Research Workshop.
Here is what I wrote about that encounter –
There I was, standing in the dark of night, on a deserted street in Sofia, with Romania to the North, the Black Sea to the East, Greece and Turkey to the South, Macedonia and Serbia to the West.
I felt the whole of Sofia's history pulsating underneath me – strata below strata spiraling backward -- eight thousand years of the human struggle to live, to live free and to savor this life, eight thousand years: a strange swastika made of frog legs carved into the stone by some unknown ancient culture, its name lost long ago, then the Thracians, who gave us the Orphic Mysteries, and after them wave after wave of conquest, migration and melting pot -- the Roman Empire, the Bulgar tribes, Ottoman Empire, the Nazis, the Soviet Red Army and now the Economic Hit Men. Eight thousand years swirling in a single breath.
The richness and potency of this incredible saga is embodied in the statue of the voluptuous goddess Sophia (a.k.a. “Saint Sofia”); she carries a bird of prey on her right arm and an olive branch in her left hand, and stands on a high pedestal overlooking downtown Sofia. Not far away there is a cathedral with seven bells. The bells were forged from the bullets fired in the great battle for independence from the Ottoman Empire. When those bells were tolled for the first time they shattered all the windows in the vicinity of the cathedral.
Yes, Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom
Theosophia – Theo (Divine) Sophia (Wisdom)
BTW, in a recent scientific study of 100 names, Dr. Bodo Winter, cognitive linguist at University of Birmingham, found that Sofia “consistently ranked highest due to its soft consonants, harmonious vowels and melodic sound.” (Pubity, 5/19/25)
New Moon
I am an expert on Darkness, Evil and the Shadow. I have studied them all my life. And that’s not hyperbole. I mean literally all my life, since I was a child. I didn’t study them in libraries or classrooms or labs either, I studied them in the field, LOL, in life itself.
This talk is a meditation on Darkness and the Shadow, an exploration of their numerous dimensions. In course of this talk, I will touch upon the nature of Evil, but only in passing. Evil is not synonymous with Darkness and Shadow. Not in the least.
What is a “Shadow” after all?
For there to be a shadow, first there must be a source of light, for example, the Sun, then there must be an object which blocks the rays of that light source -- a physical object, a dense form, a substantial thing, for example, the physical body of a human, let us say your physical body, or mine. The object which blocks the rays of light creates its own shadow, a space of darkness, the contour of which matches that of your physical body.Mysteriously, mystically, even though it only exists as a by-product of your interaction with the source of light behind you, the shadow leads you, yes, even though it only follows your movements, it goes on ahead of you. The shadow arrives where you are going before you do, and then, depending upon the geometry of circumstance, it may vanish, for a while, until you move on, interjecting yourself, once again, between the source of light behind you and the path ahead. Looking in the mirror, you see what there is to see; but looking into your shadow, you see what that you cannot see. The shadow has so much to teach us, it carries so much information, mysterious information about where we are going and maybe even why.
Yab-Yum
Om, Vairochana, indigo blue of the midnight sky, all pervading voidness, Samantrabhadra personified, in Vairochana, the Adi Buddha, the primordial, unborn, unshaped, unmodified Dharmakaya Om – Joe & Guin Miller, 5 Dhyana Buddhas, Songs to Live By
For those who don’t know, Vairochana is one of the five “Dhyana Buddhis” (i.e., “Meditation Buddhas”), also known as “Wisdom Buddhas” or “Medicine Buddhas.”
The legendary American sages Joe and Guin included a composition for each of these Medicine Buddhas in their “Songs to Live By.” This is one of them. (Chogyam Trungpa, BTW, called Joe and Guin’s “Songs to Live By” the “first American mantras.” You can listen to them, FOR FREE, via the “Miller Archive” at http://sftslodge.org)
The image I have chosen here is “Samantrabbahdra personified” in coitus with his significant other, Samantrabhadri (who is also considered, by some, to be the White Tara). Together, they are Yab-Yum ( “Father-Mother”).
Now if you look it up in Wikipedia, it will say Yab-Yum represents the “primordial union of wisdom and compassion,” if you look it up in the Britannica, it will say it represents “the mystical union of the active force, or method (upaya) with wisdom (prajna). And they are not wrong, all of that is part of the truth of Yab-Yum, but it is even more, voidness and plenum, time and space, form and formlessness, dark and light, and yes, “male” and “female” …
There are two stories, one from my early life, one from Joe’s early life, stories I’ve cherished for decades, I just never connected the dots between them until now.
From “Wyrds of Power” -
I was on Lake Titicaca, on the Altiplano, in Bolivia. When you are there, it is as if you are standing at the edge of the world. It was a vast wilderness. Nothing much there, except for a little town called Copacabana. So I was in my room. There was a cot and a table and chair. And I was sitting at the table, writing in my journal. And then the lights went out. And I thought, “Wow, a blackout.” So I went out to the office, and the hotel manager said, “No blackout, generator shuts down at 9 p.m. No electricity until morning.” Utter darkness. Terrifying darkness. Primordial darkness. I had never seen or felt such a depth of darkness before. After all, I was an urban dweller, I had grown up on the streets of Manhattan and the Bronx. I remembered the 62nd and 63rd techniques [of the Vijnanabhairava]: “In rain during a black night, enter that blackness as the form of forms.” “When a moonless raining night is not present, close eyes and find blackness before you. Opening eyes, see blackness. So faults disappear forever.” And my relationship with darkness changed on that night, and ever since then I have turned that statement in Gospel of John inside out, that one that reads, “The light was in the darkness but the darkness comprendeth it not.” (John, 1:5) I turn it around, “the darkness was in the light but the light comprehendeth not.”
From “Great Song” –
One night, when Joe was twelve years old, he went to the outhouse. Looking up at the dark sky, he saw what seemed to be two vast human figures outlined in the stars, a male and female in coitus. He felt he had seen something sacred and mysterious. Many years later, he understood the epiphany better when he came across the following footnote: Visualize the energizing aspect of the cosmos as being the divine father (Tib. Yab) and the intellectual aspect as the divine mother (Tib. Yum). Think of them as being in union and inseparably one. Realization of this divine at-one-ment is the goal, the Great Symbol. On one level, Joe's anecdote tells of a young boy's awakening sexuality. On another, it is the tale of a being, with many lifetimes of questing behind him, receiving a message. At the age of twelve, Joe had a vision in the outhouse. Half a century later, in his talks, the balancing of polarities was a profound and recurrent theme -- Yak/Yum, Siva/Shakti, Truth! Love, Heart/Mind, Form/Formlessness, Light/Darkness, Unity/Uniqueness.
So, both Joe and I had experienced deep, rich epiphanies concerning the nature of “the indigo blue of the midnight sky” and of the cosmic tantra of Yab-Yum, each in our own way, in our own circumstances, and long before we met, long before we would immerse ourselves in the texts and iconographies that would explain these experiences to us.
Om, Vairochana, indigo blue of the midnight sky, all pervading voidness, Samantrabhadra personified, in Vairochana, the Adi Buddha, the primordial, unborn, unshaped, unmodified Dharmakaya Om
Vanta Black
This is a photo of a substance called Vantablack.
This image just belongs here. In this presentation. Hard to explain. It just does.
Manufactured by humans, Vantablack “absorbs up to 99.965% of visible light.” When “applied to three-dimensional objects,” this substance “produces the appearance of a two-dimensional surface or void space.” It is used for “preventing stray light from entering telescopes.” (Wikipedia)
Something else that belongs here, although, like VantaBlack, it might not seem to, is the text of an “undated, handwritten” note from great Carl Sagan who was at the time he wrote it, a mere an undergraduate at the University of Chicago -
There is a wide yawning black infinity. In every direction the extension is endless, the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce. But most of all, there is very nearly nothing in the dark; except for little bits here and there, often associated with the light, this infinite receptacle is empty. This picture is strangely frightening. It should be familiar. It is our universe. Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are, as sand, as dust, or less than dust, in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing. Nothing! We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s Pensées and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.' – Carl Sagan (circa early 1950s)
Space is Consciousness and Consciousness is Space. This is not poetry. This is not metaphorical. This is a mystical truth, an occult truth, but a nonetheless literal truth.
BUT it is also true, plainly true, brutally true, scientifically true, as the young Sagan wrote, that “these stars, which seem so numerous, are, as sand, as dust, or less than dust, in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing.” The mystical realization that Consciousness is Space AND the “empathic terror” of the “great silent spaces between worlds” that Sagan evokes - BOTH are REAL, BOTH are DIMENSIONS of Darkness.
Currently, humanity has only Gaia, this planet, with her five sheaths of atmosphere.
All that we know, all that we love, all that we create, all of it, everything that constitutes our existence, all of it, is wrapped in just the innermost of these five sheaths, the Troposphere, and it stretches a mere 5-7 miles into the sky. Beyond that, exposed without a spacesuit, a human being will lose consciousness within 5 seconds and die within 90 seconds.
That’s how wondrous, how fragile, how dangerous all of this is ….
The Goddess Nyx
Just as Space is Consciousness and Consciousness is Space, the Void is the Plenum and the Plenum is the Void. Without embracing these huge, all-devouring paradoxes, we cannot approach the mysterious truths of life and the universe.
So now, re-focusing on the Plenum, dipping deep into myth, reaching far, far, far back in time, we explore NOT “the dawn of Creation,” but the NIGHT of Creation …
This is Nyx. Daughter of Chaos. Goddess of the Night.
THE Primordial Mother. She birthed powerful offspring: Sleep, Death, the Fates …
The Orphics say that black-winged Night, a goddess of whom even Zeus stands in awe, was courted by the Wind and laid a silver egg in the womb of Darkness; and that Eros … was hatched from this egg and set the Universe in motion. Eros was double-sexed and golden-winged and, having four heads, sometimes roared like a bull or a lion, sometimes hissed like a serpent or bleated like a ram. Night … lived in a cave with him, displaying herself in triad: Night, Order and Justice ... [Eros] created earth, sky, sun, and moon, but the triple-goddess ruled the universe … – Robert Graves, Greek Myths
The Creative Imagination has a lush atmosphere. Its soil is dark and fecund.
Welcome to the true Eden.
The Shadow Knows
When I was a small child, occasionally, with theatrical flourish, and imitating a deep baritone voice, I would declare -
“Who knows that evil lurks in the minds of men? The Shadow knows!”
I was quoting the opening lines of a very popular radio show, “The Shadow.” 18 seasons. 677 episodes. Starting off with the great Orson Well as the voice of The Shadow.
In 1994, Hollywood turned out an updated movie version, starring Alec Baldwin.
Here’s the plot line -
Following the First World War, Lamont Cranston sets himself up as a drug kingpin and warlord in Tibet. The Tulku, a holy man who exhibits otherworldly powers, abducts Cranston and offers him a chance to become a force for good. Cranston initially refuses and is attacked by the Tulku's Phurba, a mystical flying dagger. Ultimately, Cranston becomes the Tulku's student and learns how to hypnotize others and bend their perceptions so that he becomes invisible, save for his shadow. Cranston returns to New York City seven years later and resumes his former life as a wealthy playboy, while secretly operating as The Shadow—a vigilante who terrorizes the city's underworld. He recruits some of those he saves from criminals to act as his agents, providing him with information and specialist knowledge. His identity is largely unknown, especially to his Uncle Wainwright, who happens to be the Police Commissioner of New York, who he has to regularly hypnotize in order to keep the police from interfering with him. Cranston's secret identity is endangered upon meeting Margo Lane, a socialite who is also telepathic. - Wikipedia
There is mystery in all of this, a mystery concerning the radio version, the one that inspired me to burst into rooms bellowing, “Who knows that evil lurks in the minds of men? The Shadow knows!” Lol. Well, that show ran from 1931 to 1954. But I was born in 1953. So I was just one year old when the radio show ended its run.
I can only assume I heard it in reruns throughout the 1950s. I did have a transiter radio that was very important to me. I remember hearing Martin Luther King’s voice for the first time on that radio.
Jung’s Shadow
Jung’s body of work constitutes a staggering contribution to our understanding of psyche (individual and collective). And it is of profound importance to humanity’s forward movement. If you ever spent an afternoon with the “Collected Works,” or a late night with the “Red Book,” or a long flight with “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” you know this.
I invoke his presence in this talk because it is Jung who called forth the Shadow, naming it, entering it as an explorer, and leaving behind the coordinates for those who choose to see and know what had hitherto been cloaked in darkness.
Here are a few powerful observations from this true scientist and genuine mystic:
“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.” - C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
“The darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness.” – C.G. Jung, The Archetypes & the Collective Unconscious, Princeton University Press
"If you get rid of qualities you don't like by denying them, you become more and more unaware of what you are, you declare yourself more and more non-existent, and your devils will grow fatter and fatter." - Carl Jung, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930
“One cannot avoid the shadow unless one remains neurotic, and as long as one is neurotic one has omitted the shadow.” - Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546
“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.” – C.G. Jung, Letter to Kendig B. Cully, 25 September 1931; Letters vol. 1 (1973)
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc.” - Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 423
Yin-Yang
This Taoist symbol, the Yin-Yang, it’s called the “Taijitu” (pronounced “tai ji tu”), which translates into something like “diagram of the Supreme Ultimate.” I say that it is one of the three most important symbols for us to be working with here in the 21st Century.
The other two are the Sakti Yantra and the Three Spirals of the Triune Goddess.
In these four talks, we will touch on each of the three.
The Yin-Yang (the Taijitu) has taken on a life of its own, in our collective psyche. It is integral to what I refer to as the emerging global wisdom tradition.
So much of vital importance has been brought forth through the Yin-Yang - Taoism itself, Chinese Medicine, Yin Yoga, so much.
And yet, for many, its full power is constrained, blocked, due to what I call a “Spiritually Transmitted Disease” (or “STD”).
I wrote about all of this in “Secret Engine of the World,” but I will explain briefly here.
An STD isn’t a false teaching, it’s more like a virus that infects a real teaching, a true teaching, and weakens it, or warps it, or misdirects it somehow.
And the kind of analysis I am offering here is like an antibiotic to kill off the STD.
One of the most virulent strains I have identified what I call the “Table of Erroneous Correspondences.” This particular strain that infects many’s understand of Yin-Yang.
From “Secret Engine of the World” –
Tables of Erroneous Correspondences, i.e., false characterizations drawn from the misleading misapplication of provisional symbols. It’s a big problem. It’s in many worthwhile books of occult lore. It’s in many useful yoga teacher training (YTT) manuals. It’s in many of our minds. What do I mean by “Erroneous Correspondences”? For example: “Male / Sky / Sun / Yang / White / Active” and “Female / Moon / Earth / Yin / Black / Passive.”
And it can go on and on and on ... The Table of Erroneous Correspondences can get very long … the great Table of Erroneous Correspondences, in which energies, metaphors, forces of nature, gender, different dimensions are all sorted out, separated and wrongly categorized, and then knowledge of this table and its false correspondences supplants direct experience and eradicates wonder. Life, our beings, the universe, and its elements, it is all much more complex than this Table of Erroneous Correspondences implies. So this Table of Erroneous Correspondences has to be broken up, among other damaging side-effects, it serves to reinforce the perversion that is the patriarchal framework, this Table has to be left behind, all of its contents have to be allowed to redefine, regroup, realign, re-orientate themselves in our understanding, in our own explorations … if you do this you will see they will line up in new ways, different ways, very revealing ways, much more dynamic ways …
So really? “Male / Sky / Sun / Yang / White / Active”? “Female / Moon / Earth / Yin / Black / Passive.”? Seriously? This is the 21st Century! And the Yin-Yang has come to us from the Ancient Future! It is deserving of a deeper, richer, truer telling than the Table of Erroneous Correspondences offers. Sun as Male & Moon as Female? I suggest that the Sun should be seen a great bonfire (not male, genderless, or maybe gender-fluid), I suggest that all the planets and moons circling this bonfire are goddesses. Male as Active and Female as Passive? Really? Do I really have to break down what’s wrong in this? If you want to be kind, then you can say it’s tired, and limited, but to be blunt, I say it’s oppressive, and relic of the subjugation of women and disappearing of the Deep Feminine. Male as White and Female as Black? Are you seeing it now? The insipidness of it all? It lines up all too neatly with another false correspondence, i.e., White as Good and Black as Evil. Misogyny and Racism lurk in these false correspondences.
Throughout “Wyrds,” “Dragon” and “Secret Engine,” I speak on the paramount imperatives of our time, the spiritual (and existential) imperatives, altruism, sustainability, AND the ascendancy of the Feminine, the Deep Feminine.
The rise of women in all arenas, government, the sciences, business, all of it, all of it. We are about the dismantling of the patriarchy, it is a spiritual and existential imperative, a mystical, occult imperative, an evolutionary necessity.
#SMASHTHEPATRIARCHY (shout-out Taylor Swift)! LOL.
After all, “Wyrds of Power” is sub-titled “New Language for A New Reality.”
Let the Shadow sing. Let the Yin and Yang rap freely, for themselves. Listen. Explore.
Everything within the circle of the Taijitu is holy, the wave of Yin and the wave of Yang, and the dash of each at the center of the other. All holy. And dynamic. And beyond the binary. And there is no evil in any of it.
Evil
Which bring us to questions concerning Evil and where it fits in all of this.
This is a slide I used in talks from 2016-2020, I published it in “Secret Engine,” tragically it is even more timely here and now in 2025.
As with the three spiritual (and existential) imperatives just mentioned, I have addressed the nature of Evil extensively in the pages of “Wyrds,” “Dragon” and “Secret Engine,”
I see naming Evil, identifying it, calling it out not so much as a moral judgement, or a religious tenet, but rather as a psychological diagnosis, a medical diagnosis.
From “Wyrds of Power” -
Flavors of Dis and Despair: Ignorance, suffering, sin, karma, and evil. Each has its own flavor. Each has its own realm of experiences. But ignorance, suffering, sin and karma also have their own functions with the circle of life. Evil is of a different order. Evil does not have a function within the circle of life. If it did, creation itself would be evil, even if the supposed “function” of evil was extremely limited, creation would not be what it is, it would not have an essential beneficence, it would not be of the nature of divine love. Divine love, divine life does not (could not) tolerate evil, it does not allow for some “function” of evil within the circle of life. Nothing that is beneficence in its essence would find any acceptable role or function for evil. Any philosophy or religion or system of mysticism, esotericism or occultism that allows some functionality for evil within the circle of life is inherently flawed. Evil is outside the circle of life …
Ironic isn’t it that Evil so often garbs itself in white, while projecting itself on the black, and vilifying the black. But Evil has no color. It is neither black (Yin) nor white (Yang). It is colorless. It is not part of life. It is indeed as I said above anti-life.
The Scintillant Deep
The Shadow, the Darkness, is a lush, vibrant, fecund realm.
Yes, there are bad neighborhoods within the Shadow.
But there are also art colonies and witches’ covens thriving there. So much of our creativity arises from the Darkness, so much of our sexuality too, so much of what we experience as Beauty, so much of our aesthetics. Mystery itself has its nest in Shadow.
I call this Shadow region, the Scintillant Deep.
Consider this from the great Audre Lorde, self-proclaimed “black, Lesbian, mother, warrior poet,” -
“These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through that darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.” - Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Consider this from the great Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature -
“And talking about dark! You think dark is just one color, but it ain't. There're five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don't stay still, it moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow.” - Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
This talk is a reclaiming of vast swarths of Darkness and the Shadow, a reclaiming, a celebration, a restoration, a rebuttal to slander, a re-affirmation of the Shadow’s role as one of the verities of our being, an acknowledge of its true scope and function.
Your Edge
There is something else of vital importance to your well-being (both mental and physical), and to your very survival, resides with the Dark Hemisphere …
YOUR EDGE is there, waiting for you, in the Shadow.
This is a photo of Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther costume, from Marvel Studios’ “Captain America: Civil War” (2016). It is or on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C. A gift from Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company.
I say “was or is” because this blessed institution is currently fighting for its life. And I can’t really say more in the context of this talk. But you can google it.
You will need your edge, especially now. You need your edge and your “NO!”
Every strong yes needs a robust no to look out for it, or more colloquially, to cover its ass.
Most have heard of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” many (especially men in corporate kulchur) pretend to read and understand it, but very few have.
Well, I have, and I do.
And in “The Art of War,” the great Sun Tzu offers some profound insights on sharpening your edge and cultivating your “No!”
“Be extremely subtle even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.”
“The art of war is the art of deception.”
“Deep knowledge is to be aware of disturbance before disturbance, to be aware of danger before danger, to be aware of destruction before destruction, to be aware of calamity before calamity. Strong action is training the body without being burdened by the body, exercising the mind without being used by the mind, working in the world without being affected by the world, carrying out tasks without being obstructed by tasks.”
“Whether in an advantageous position or a disadvantageous one, the opposite state should be always present to your mind.”
“Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.”
“O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible, and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.”
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The Black Mamba is the one of the fastest snakes in the world.
The venom of the Black Mamba is one of the most powerful in the world.
The Black Mamba dwells in Sub-Saharan Africa. Black Mambas are actually dark brown or grey in color. The name refers to the interior of its mouth.
Fastest … Most venomous … A worthy symbol for your edge … A powerful totem … Just like the intelligent vibranium body armor of the Black Panther …
Matthew 10:16 KJV: Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves
Alternately. I often hear it internally as “innocent as doves.”
In one the sermons published in “Strength to Love” (1963), MLK preached on Matthew 10:16. The Reverend Doctor spoke of being “tough-minded and tender-hearted.”
“Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites. He knew that his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world, where they would confront the recalcitrance of political officials and the intransigence of the protectors of the old order. He knew that they would meet cold and arrogant men whose hearts had been hardened by the long winter of traditionalism. So he said to them, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the mist of wolves.” And he gave them a formula for action, “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” It is pretty difficult to imagine a single person having, simultaneously, the characteristics of the serpent and the dove, but this is what Jesus expects. We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind, and a tender heart.” - Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love
Of “Strength to Love,” Coretta Scott King said “best explains the central element of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s philosophy of nonviolence … His belief in a divine, loving presence that binds all life.”
Next time you’re at the Lodge, look on the mantlepiece in the main meeting room.
Tucked away amidst the holy statues, votive candles and photos of beloved beings, you’ll find a well-worn copy I donated to our library, the original paperback edition, with its price, “.50,” written in pencil on the title page.
21st Century Mythoi
There is myth, and then there is myth.
There is the kind of myth we rummage through in libraries and museums, looking for meaning, or perhaps more precisely, for some symbolic language, some storyline, some iconography, with which to articulate, or illustrate, some unrecognized or undervalued meaning, struggling to be seen, known, and felt.
But then there is living myth, contemporary myth, myth emerging and evolving before our very eyes and in our own hearts and minds.
And this is, after all, what all myth was at some in the distant past.
Something living, breathing, emerging, evolving.
We sat around the fire in our caves, and then in our yurts and our long houses, and now on electronic devices from iPhones and iPads to wall-mounted big screen HD TVs, immersing psyche in epic tales to comfort ourselves, to infuse our imaginations, to strengthen our resolve, to rekindle our hope, to give context regarding some grave danger.
That is what myth does, myth in its primal purity, it helps keep us sane while the world seems to spin out of control.
From Beowolf and the Iliad to Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter.
It has always been thus.
The human species is at a critical juncture in its evolution. I’ve written and spoken about all of this for the last 20 years. Either we adapt and align ourselves with Gaia herself and with our better selves or we slide deeper into madness.
That’s not hyperbole, its herstorical fact. I say herstorical not historical, but because the ascendancy of the Feminine, the Deep Dark Feminine is vital to our survival and forward movement, yes, the rise of the Deep Dark Feminine in culture, in government, in commerce, in all aspects of our civilization. Now the rise of the Deep Feminine and the embrace of the Shadow are intertwined, they are essential to each other, indeed you could not realize one without realizing the other.
The great myths of our time, of the 20th Century (post-WWII) and of the first two decades of 21st Century, are beginning to reflect both of these profound shifts.
I look at Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and yes Star Trek and the Marvel Multiverse too, as transitional. Bridges from one age to another. All were forged and framed in the last seventy-five years or so of the patriarchal age. But you see in each of them the labor pains of the new age which is in the process of being born (IF we can protect it and keep it alive). You can see this birthing in both the primordial power that Galadriel wields and in her rejection of the evil power of Sauron’s ring, in Arwen uttering the incantation that turns the current of the river into wild horses of water to turn back the Ringwraiths, you can see it in Eowyn of Rohan who slays the captain of the Nazgûl. You can see it the world of Harry Potter, all the magic is steeped in the deep feminine, even if unspoken, all the Patronus charms are beasts of Gaia, spirit animals, totems, you can see it in the power of the witches for both Good and Evil, you can see it in Hermine Granger. Sirius Black told her, “You really are, the smartest witch of your age.” (And he didn’t mean of her age group. She saves them all several times over.) You can see it in Bellatrix Lestrange, “I killed Sirius Black I killed Sirius …” you can see it in Moaning Myrtle, who haunted the second-floor girls bathroom, you can see it in Rowena Ravenclaw, founder of one of the four houses of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and of course, in Potter himself, the Chosen One, the only being to ever survive Voldemort’s death curse, infant Potter only survived the attack through the shielding of his mother’s love, Lilly Potter, a powerful witch, she gave her life saving him … In Star Wars, there is an evolution from Leia, a warrior princess who strangled Jabba the Hut, using the very chain with which he had enslaved her, to Padma, a queen and the mother of great Jedi Luke and Leia, Padma died in childhood after violent abuse at the hands of her toxic male husband Annakin who would become Darth Vader, and then, of course, full on deeper into the 21st Century with Rey the feral scavenger girl who takes on the mantle of Skywalker in the third Star Wars trilogy, you can see it in the Marvel multiverse, the ascendancy is moving even faster there, Wicked Wanda, the Amazons of Wakanda, the Black Widow, Captain Marvel herself, and then there are the fully 21st mythoi, break-throughs, for example Maleficent and “Wheel of Time” … Maleficent, “dark fairy,” “shapeshifter,” “Phoenix,” horned queen of the Moors, with a raven familiar … Moraine, the master spy in Wheel of Time, one of the Aes Sedai (Servants of All), women who work with the One Power. These myths are living, breathing, evolving before us and within us, which each iteration they advance, there is still patriarchal framing that has yet to fall away, but it is falling away, there are those two deeply embedded conditionings that have to be dismantled, as I mentioned “Male/Active Female/Passive” and “White/Good Dark/Evil” …
Well, what about Star Wars when talking about “the Dark Side of the Force”?
The point here in this talk is that the Shadow is a vast realm, one of the two hemispheres that define the circle of life, in the Star Wars legends, when Evil emerged it wrapped itself in the cloak of Darkness. But the Darkness as we have articulating in this talk is so much more. And after all, in Wheel of Time, Evil wraps itself in White, the “Children of the Light,” a military priesthood garbed all in white, hunting down witches, healers, seers, sorceresses, torturing them, and burning them at the stake …
I enjoy imagining a fourth Star Wars trilogy, which starts with Rey returns to the remote island where the Library of the Jedi had been (before Yoda burned down), and where Luke had lived in seclusion until Rey found her way to him in “The Force Awakens.”
And in this first movie of a fourth Star Wars trilogy, she finds a notebook he had hidden there, a notebook that delineates a new paradigm for living and working in, with and through the Force, a notebook in which he sorts it all out, what Light and Dark really are, what Evil really is, all of it, a new dispensation for a new age …
Meanwhile, you have to install your own inner filters and translators, in your viewing and sharing, but after all it’s a work in progress, this new age … the transition is well underway, the transformation is well under way …with each iteration the great myths refine themselves …. also, more are coming … they are already in the pipeline of our species’ creative imagination … and we are in dire need of inspiration, consolation, and hope …
Verities of Being - Takeaways
This series of four talks offer new perspective, new framing, new language, a new vision; I suggest to you that it is an artifact of the Ancient Future, one that contributes to what it means to be truly human in the 21st Century.
“Verities of Being” is meant to offer some insights on -
What you are
What you are part of
How you have been provisioned for this journey
What you are capable of
“Verities of Being” is an affirmation, a celebration of our Primal Reality.
In a very real sense, “Verities of Being” is just a jazz composition inspired by that great proclamation of the legendary American sage Joe Miller: “Just BE!”
That’s how he punctuated his teachings at every turn, “Just BE! Be who you really are. Just BE. Because I AM, I AM, I AM … from the depth of what you feel.”
“Verities of Being” also draws on another mainstay of the legendary American sage Joe Miller for inspiration, “As a thing is viewed, so it appears.” Joe took that from his friend Dr. W.Y. Evans-Wentz’ Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation.
“As a thing is viewed, so it appears.”
I spoken about the singularity, and written about it, for two decades now, what it is and what it is, either a great leap or devolution, even extinction
Our world has to change, the one that we built for better and worse, has resulted in a ecological crisis a planetary ecological crisis, a political crisis, economic crisis, a psychological crisis We are reorganizing, reorientating, recalibrating, realigning, our minds it means an overhaul of our languaging, on race, on gender, on our species itself, and its place in within this dark green goddess Gaia and within the vastness of the cosmos itself ... Of course this anger and frightens and annoys intimidates because it undermine the foundations of their reality or what they perceive to be reality, their world view, well if your world view your "reality" is predicated on false and toxic disinformation shouldn't you want to?
We need to lean forward into a green, feminist civilization that has fallen awake.
