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haptalaonSpiritual thought for the day:
I'm gearing up to write another gods post on the Fisher, and the phrase that keeps jumping to mind is "ambiguous grandmotherliness". The Ambiguous Grandmotherliness of baba yaga and the calleach and witches in the woods in fairy tales. its a striking experience, of both comfort and danger; and perhaps interlinks with Bob Fisher's evocation of the haunted generation, to be a child and both cosy and afraid.
but then it occurs to me that the Landmother, as I experience her, is nothing if not ambiguous motherliness - this is not the Goddess as Mother, it's uncertainty and placation, coldness, and a desire for motherliness which will not always be fulfilled. And then I contemplate the Sun King, and i think about the things he represents - law and order, religious institutions, nation states and monarchies - and how those are forms of ambiguous fatherlinesses, our childlike desire to be protected by something (be it our father or our priest or our police) and our inability to rely upon these things, no matter how deep the desire or urgent the need.
It occurs to me that I might have some family trauma to work through.
but this is, perhaps, a good thing all in all. A key theme in Fencraft is how vulnerable we are before the world - before the power of nature and the immensity of whirling stars and the strangeness of ancient, wordless gods - and there's always been a human response to this, to set up structures like the nuclear family, or the army, or the king, as comfort-blankets against the dark. Under the Solar, we embrace it (we cannot live by nihilism; we have to make up stories of support and have hope in them, and build to make what we imagined real). In leaving the village, we reject and fight against it to create something better - we recognise the flaws within these things, but believe that change is possible. And under the Stellar, we submit to the infinite and comprehend the smallness of all things.
And the nuclear family, no more or less than other things, can be an illusion or a danger. I think it's revealing of how I see both people and the divine, something more in me than in others: an uncertainty about how far they can be relied upon. But when i see the flooding in the valley and fairy laughter in the forest, this is not an untrue way of relating.
Oh God, watch over me - for your sea is so big, and my boat so small.
I'm gearing up to write another gods post on the Fisher, and the phrase that keeps jumping to mind is "ambiguous grandmotherliness". The Ambiguous Grandmotherliness of baba yaga and the calleach and witches in the woods in fairy tales. its a striking experience, of both comfort and danger; and perhaps interlinks with Bob Fisher's evocation of the haunted generation, to be a child and both cosy and afraid.
but then it occurs to me that the Landmother, as I experience her, is nothing if not ambiguous motherliness - this is not the Goddess as Mother, it's uncertainty and placation, coldness, and a desire for motherliness which will not always be fulfilled. And then I contemplate the Sun King, and i think about the things he represents - law and order, religious institutions, nation states and monarchies - and how those are forms of ambiguous fatherlinesses, our childlike desire to be protected by something (be it our father or our priest or our police) and our inability to rely upon these things, no matter how deep the desire or urgent the need.
It occurs to me that I might have some family trauma to work through.
but this is, perhaps, a good thing all in all. A key theme in Fencraft is how vulnerable we are before the world - before the power of nature and the immensity of whirling stars and the strangeness of ancient, wordless gods - and there's always been a human response to this, to set up structures like the nuclear family, or the army, or the king, as comfort-blankets against the dark. Under the Solar, we embrace it (we cannot live by nihilism; we have to make up stories of support and have hope in them, and build to make what we imagined real). In leaving the village, we reject and fight against it to create something better - we recognise the flaws within these things, but believe that change is possible. And under the Stellar, we submit to the infinite and comprehend the smallness of all things.
And the nuclear family, no more or less than other things, can be an illusion or a danger. I think it's revealing of how I see both people and the divine, something more in me than in others: an uncertainty about how far they can be relied upon. But when i see the flooding in the valley and fairy laughter in the forest, this is not an untrue way of relating.
Oh God, watch over me - for your sea is so big, and my boat so small.
