The Spiritual Technology of Fairy Tales
On Becoming Fluent in Light Language
The following essay is inspired by The Hala, a four-part series on the transfiguration of consciousness and the human form through the properties of light, hosted by Keoni Hanalei of Pōhala Hawaiian Botanicals. At the bottom of the essay, you’ll find a list of the seven traditional properties recognized by science, and the nine properties identified by Keoni through his Mū lineage.
I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world
And all her train were hurl’d.
from “The World,” by Henry Vaughan
What is Light?
Some might say light is what creates the day,
a product of the sun’s rays.
Some might say light is the opposite of darkness,
or that light is the opposite of heavy.
Some might say light is positive energy, or that it’s illuminating.
Some might say, I see your light, meaning they see your radiant spirit.
Some might say you really light up when you talk about what you love.
Some might say lighten up when you talk about something you don’t.
These are all answers, but I don’t think any of them define a direct experience of the essence of light.
Light is not a noun like the kind of light we hear about in the beginning of Genesis; the “Let there be light” kind of light, nor is light an adjective you can use to define someone who lifts you up, or even someone who helps you see by illuminating some hidden aspect of yourself.
The closest thing on that list I wrote of the things that light might be, is the last line: lighten up.
Painters add white to colors to lighten them. White is a combination of all visible light frequencies and waves. Light is in motion. Light is motion.
Light is a verb. Light is a process.
To be specific, light is an initiation.
To be even more specific, light is initiation.
Colonization is First an Inside Job
If I were writing this in a ‘Olelo Hawai’i, Tzutujil Maya, or Gaeilge (Irish), I wouldn’t have to parse this out like I am here. The words would have these concepts coded in them, and the minds of the people who spoke them would be shaped by light as a process, not as a thing or a word used to describe a thing or state of being. English is tedious. It can also be really fun because there are so many combinations of nouns to play with. The Anglo-Saxons were masters of this were their kennings, calling the sea a whale-road, for instance. But ultimately English is a language created by colonized people that turns its speakers into colonizers just by speaking it.
In English, we define our relationship to a place with possessives. “My home. My country.” In Tzutujil Maya, we belong to a place.
As English speakers, the only way to open the door of the cage that imprisons us in this in our own minds and perpetuates the extractive abuse of nature, is to consider every word carefully. How is a word I use all the time without thinking in multiple contexts, a word like light, shaping the way I see?
And how is how I use a word, say light, affecting what I see?
These are not easy things to write about. Abstraction is a real danger. We can get lost in it and forget we have a body given to us by the Earth we delude ourselves into thinking we own.
I could just keep writing poetry, but hardly anyone reads it anymore, or if they do, don’t have the ability to be penetrated by anything but the simplest metaphors.
To communicate, with humans, is my kuleana, an act of service to my community and Earth. I have to at least keep trying to communicate with my brothers and sisters in a way they can understand as they are today, not as I want them to be. This is why I now write essays. (I still write poetry, too, but I don’t worry if it’s not received by human ears. I have taken Jesus’s advice to the disciples to heart: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” It takes the pressure off needing to be received by humans. Trees can hear, too.)
Anyway, part of my attempt to communicate my innerstanding of light as initiation in a practical way to modern people, has led me to create a path of spiritual inquiry based on the nine properties I call the Nine Currents. These are a series of questions based on the properties I offer to the people I mentor in The Coracle, a rites of passage mentorship I offer carried on myth and folk tales.
(There is information about the upcoming launch in May of my first group odyssey of The Coracle at the end of this essay. You can also just click on the green highlighted text above.)
As my relationship with the folk tales and myths of my genetic ancestry has deepened, my relationship with my lineage has also deepened, even through reading and listening to these stories in English. I saw how these old tales I’ve loved since childhood are a spiritual technology coded in stories that have kept the memory of how to be fluent in the language of light alive through waves of colonization that have been sweeping over Earth for millennia.
In today’s politically charged climate, we are accustomed to thinking of colonization as an external process, but like everything material, it begins in the unseen, the microscopic and internal. Unless you are living in a culture that has never had contact with the Western world (there are some people still in the Amazon who remain “uncontacted”), your mind, no matter what your ancestral lineage, has been colonized to some degree.
Although I want to launch into an exploration right now on why colonization keeps continuing, and how we could evolve beyond it through a willing collaboration with light as our initiator, that would be getting ahead, because I haven’t properly gone through each principle. Next essay!
And instead of describing each property in left-brain descriptions, I am going to tell you a story, a portion of which I shared last week when I was a guest speaker in Keoni’s Hala workshop.
The story is Iron John, a well known German fairy tale preserved as a written text by the Brother Grimm in the early 19th century. The story, however, is far older than that. It’s so old it could have appeared on Earth with light itself, or at least from a time when humans still knew that light was an initiatory process.
Let’s hear the story and experience how fairy tales, at least the ones dealing with initiation, are a spiritual technology founded on the properties of light, that acted, and still act, as ceremonial re-enactments of initiation every time we hear them.
In order for ease of following here’s a quick list of the nine properties. More expanded definitions can be found at the end of this essay, but see if you can understand them through reading the story before you skip to the end to look them up:
Revelation, Reflection, Refraction, Diffraction, Interference, Polarization, Dispersion, Scattering, and Completion.
I have labeled each section of the story with the principle as they appear.
Iron John
A Written Version by Jennifer Lighty
Revelation: The Golden Ball
Once there was a King who lived in a castle near an enormous forest. For years his hunters went in and out of the safely, bringing back game for the King’s table, but then things changed.
One day, a hunter didn’t return. The next day, the King sent in two hunters to look for him, but they didn’t come out either. On the third day, the King declared the entire forest would from then on be off limits.
For many years, no one knew what went on in that forest, except for the hawks that flew over the treetops.
One day, a hunter from somewhere else appeared before the King and said he would go into the forest.
The King refused his consent at first, but the hunter insisted. The King relented, and he set off into the woods with his hound.
Right away the hound smelled game and dashed off toward the smell with the hunter trailing. But before they’d gone even a few leaps into the forest, they were stopped by a deep pool. As they stood there wondering how they could get around it, a naked arm reached out of the water and pulled the hound under.
The hunter decided not to risk his chances and went back to report what he’d seen to the King, who assigned two other hunters to go back with him the next day to investigate.
The three men went back to the pool and decided to bail out the water. At the bottom, they discovered a hairy Wild Man with rust-colored skin. They hoisted him up, bound him, and brought him back to the castle. where the King decided to keep him on display, locked in an iron cage in the courtyard. He was not to be let out on pain of death. He gave the cage key to the Queen for safe-keeping.
The King had an eight-year old son who liked to play in the courtyard where the Wild Man was caged. His favorite toy was a golden ball. One morning, the ball slipped from his hands and rolled between the bars into the cage. The Wild Man picked the ball up.
“Please,” can I have my ball back? the King’s son asked.
“I’ll give you back your ball if you let me out of this cage,” the Wild Man replied.
“Oh, no! I can’t do that. It’s forbidden,” answered the King’s son.
“Well, I can’t help you then,” said the Wild Man.
The boy went back the second day and made the same request. “Can I have my ball back?”
The reply was the same, “I’ll give you back your ball if you free me from this cage.”
“No! No! It’s forbidden! Anyone that lets you out will be put to death.”
On the third day, the King’s son approached the cage and said, “Even if I could let you out, I couldn’t. I don’t have the key.”
“That’s not a problem,” said the Wild Man. “It’s under your mother’s pillow.”
Under my mother’s pillow! No! No! thought the boy. He couldn’t possibly steal it. He left the Wild Man and hurried back into the inner rooms of the castle, but he just could not stop thinking about his golden ball. He had to get it back.
That day, he snuck into his mother’s room and stole the key from under her pillow.
When the boy opened the door, he pinched his finger on a hinge. Ouch! The Wild Man stepped out of the cage and tossed him his golden ball, and started off toward the forest.
“Wait!” the boy yelled after him. “Don’t leave me! My parents will kill me if they found out I let you go!”
The Wild Man looked at the boy and said, “My name is Iron John. Because you helped me, I will help you. Climb on my shoulders.” The boy did, and they set off running toward the forest.
Reflection: The Golden Spring
When they were deep enough into the trees, the Wild Man took the boy off his shoulders and said, “You will never see your parents again, but I’ll keep you with me because you freed me. If you do what I tell you, all will be well. I have more gold and silver than anyone else in the world.”
The Wild Man brought him to a spring that was so clear and filled with light the water was gold. He made the boy a bed of moss and told him he had things to do, and would be back that night. The boy was to keep anything from falling into the spring to keep the water from being polluted.
“Remember,” the Wild Man said. “Don’t let anything fall into the spring. I’ll be back tonight to see if you obeyed my orders.”
As the boy sat on the bed of moss the Wild Man had made him, his injured finger began to throb. It hurt so much, before he knew it, he’d dipped it into the water to cool it off. Immediately, his finger turned gold.
That evening when Iron John returned, he asked the boy if anything happened that day at the spring.
“No, nothing happened,” the boy replied, holding his finger behind his back, but Iron John had eyes that could see what people were hiding, and called him out.
“I see you’ve dipped your finger in the spring,” he said. “It’s ok this one time, but don’t let it happen a second time.”
The next day, Iron John left again, telling the boy not to let anything fall in the water. As the boy sat there watching the ripples on the surface, his hurt finger started to throb again. He started to fidget. Playing with his hair, he loosened a strand that fell into the water. Immediately, the strand turned gold. The boy snatched it up and hid it in his pocket.
“Anything happen at the spring today?” Iron John asked when he returned that evening.
“No, nothing happened,” the boy answered, but again, Iron John knew the boy was lying and called him out. “I know you let a hair fall in the spring. I’ll let it pass one more time, but if it happens again tomorrow you won’t be able to stay with me anymore.”
On the third day, the boy was determined not to let anything fall in the water. Time passed slowly. The boy started to get sleepy. Eventually, it seemed like time itself had stilled. Without thinking, he started moving closer, mesmerized by his reflection. I can’t tell you exactly what he saw in that water, but it was golden. It wasn’t golden like an idol or a coin. It wasn’t the kind of gold that could be traded for food, or a castle, or even a humble cottage. It wasn’t currency. The gold he saw couldn’t buy anything and it couldn’t be sold. What he saw was his own beauty, independent of what anyone else thought. He saw the spark of his soul inside the flame of the world’s.
And this beauty was so mesmerizing, he just had to lean out even farther to take his fill of the truth of who he was. He needed a closer look so he’d never forget. Just a little further…
His long hair fell out of his cap and spilled into the water. In a flash, all his hair turned gold.
The boy did his best to stuff it under his cap, but Iron John saw what had happened as soon as he returned that dusk.
“You can’t say here with me any longer,” he told the boy, “If you’d passed the test, you could have had all my gold and silver. Now you’ll have to go out and experience poverty and try to make your way on your own.”
He took the boy away from the spring to the edge of the forest, pointing in the direction of the road. “Because you have a good heart, I’ll leave you with a gift. If ever you need me, come to the edge here and yell into the trees three times, “Iron John! Iron John! Iron John!”
Refraction and Diffraction: Walking and Working
The boy, formerly a King’s son, walked until he reached a city, but he couldn’t find work. He had no real skills and nobody wanted to hire him. Eventually, he came to the castle of another King and asked for work there. He still didn’t have any skills, but the people there liked him, so finally the cook took him into service. His job was to carry wood and water, and to sweep out the ashes from the great fireplace where the King’s meals were cooked.
The boy managed to keep his gold hair out of sight by hiding it under a kerchief, but one day the cook had to ask him to take food to the royal table because there were no other servants available. The King was indignant when he saw the boy with his head covered. “Take your kerchief off when you come to the royal table,” he reprimanded the boy.
“Your majesty, forgive me. I cannot. I have a sore on my head,” the boy answered.
The King was outraged and told the cook to dismiss the boy from the castle.
The cook took pity on the boy. He’d done a good job hauling wood and water. He’d diligently swept the hearth free of cinders. “I tell you what,” he told the boy. “I’ll swap you for the gardener’s boy.” So the boy went to work in the castle garden, where he learned to plant, hoe, and harvest, letting the wind and rain have their way with him.
Interference: A King’s Daughter & a Gimpy Horse
One hot summer day when he was working by himself, he pulled his kerchief down to cool off. When the sun touched his head, the light was so bright the beams reached all the way into the bedroom of the King’s daughter. She came to the window to see where this glorious light was coming from and saw the boy sitting on a hilltop gazing out at the flowers.
“Boy!” she yelled down. “Bring me a bouquet of flowers!”
The boy quickly covered his head and began picking wildflowers. As he started toward the castle, the gardener stopped him. “Why are you bringing the King’s daughter such ordinary flowers when we have all these exotic ones? Bring her a better bouquet than that.”
“No, she’ll like these better,” the boy said, and he started up the stairs to the King’s daughter’s chamber.
“Uncover your head,” the King’s daughter commanded when she saw him.
“Forgive me, I cannot,” the boy responded. “I have the mange.”
The King’s daughter was having none of that. She yanked his kerchief right off, and his golden hair fell to his shoulders. The boy panicked and started to run, but she grabbed him at the door and gave him a handful of gold coins.
“Thank you for the flowers,” she said.
The boy ran back to the garden and gave the gold coins to the gardener. “Give these coins to your kids,” he told his boss. “They can play with them.”
The next day the King’s daughter called down for him to bring up some more wildflowers. When he did, she tugged at his kerchief again to expose his hair, but this time he held onto it with both hands. The same thing happened as he was leaving. She gave him a handful of gold coins, that he gave to the gardeners’ kids.
On the third day, she tried again, but she couldn’t uncover his golden hair. He held on tight to the kerchief, and when she offered him some more gold coins, he refused.
One day, war came to the Kingdom. The enemy was stronger. The King, though he had a large army, was pretty sure he was going to lose the battle.
The boy saw everyone preparing to ride off to war and wanted to do his part. He went to the knights and told them he wanted to join them. “I am old enough to go to war now. If you give me a horse I will join you.”
The knights laughed at him, but agreed to leave a horse for him in the stable.
After they’d rode off, the boy went to the stable to get his horse. The horse they’d left him had a bad leg and was lame, but he got on it anyway, and rode after them.
Polarization: Blossoming in Battle
When he got to the edge of the forest he yelled into the trees three times, “Iron John! Iron John! Iron John!”
Just as he’d promised, the Wild Man appeared. “What do you need?”
“I need a strong horse so I can go to war,” the boy said.
Iron John went back into the forest, and not long after, out came a stable boy leading a mighty, snorting war horse, followed by a band of warriors clad in iron armor. The boy exchanged his lame nag for the war horse and rode out at the head of the band of warriors. By the time they got to the battlefield, almost all the King’s army had been killed. Defeat was imminent.
The boy and his iron band galloped into the fray and struck down every enemy. When the enemy began to flee, the boy rode after them and killed every last one. Instead of returning to the King to claim the glory he was due, he went back to the forest’s edge and yelled three times into the trees for Iron John.
“What now?” asked Iron John.
“Take your horse and men back,” the boy said, “and please give me back my lame nag.”
Iron John did as the boy asked. The boy returned to the castle and went back to work in the garden.
Dispersion: True Colors Revealed
When the King got home, his daughter ran to congratulate him. “It wasn’t me,” he told her. “We only won because of an unknown knight who arrived with a band of warriors clad in iron armor.”
“Who was this knight?” asked the King’s daughter.
“I wish I knew,” the King responded. “He galloped off in pursuit of the enemy and that was the last I saw of him.”
The King’s daughter couldn’t stop wondering who this unknown knight was. For some reason, she couldn’t get the image of the gardener’s boy’s golden hair out of her mind. She went to the gardener and inquired about him.
The gardener laughed. “He just got back from the battle. You should see the horse he tried to ride out on. A gimpy nag if I’ve ever seen one. Didn’t seem to bother him, though. When we asked him how the battle went, he told us he fought very well. Ha! He actually said, “Who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t been there?”
The King’s daughter left the gardener shaking his head and went to see her father. “Who could this knight be, Dad?” she asked.
“I’m curious, too,” he confessed. “Let’s hold a festival to celebrate our victory. Three days. We’ll tell everyone each day you’re going to throw out a golden apple. That should lure him out of hiding.”
When the boy heard, he rode to the forest edge and called out three times for Iron John.
“What do you need?” Iron John asked him.
“I want to catch the golden apple the King’s daughter is going to throw.”
“Good as done,” said the Wild Man. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll have everything you need ready.”
The next day the boy put on the red armor Iron John had given him and mounted the red horse, also a gift from the Wild Man. He rode onto the tournament field with the other knights, and when the King’s daughter threw the golden apple, caught it. Everyone expected him to lower his helmet and reveal himself, but the mystery knight turned his horse and rode away.
On the second day, Iron John had outfitted him with a suit of white armor and a white horse, and the boy rode in amongst the other knights, who again didn’t recognize him. Again, he caught the apple and rode away without revealing his identity.
The King was angry now. “This isn’t the way this is supposed to go. He’s supposed to ride over to me and reveal himself after he catches the apple so I can reward him with glory.”
“If he catches the apple today,” he told his men, “Ride after him. Strike him a blow with your sword if he refuses to return.”
On the third day of the festival, Iron John gave the boy a black horse and a suit of black armor. The boy, now a young man, caught the apple. But this time when he rode away, the King’s men followed. One of them got close enough to wound his thigh with a sword.
Scattering: Sharing the Gold
In one powerful leap of his horse, the knight escaped his pursuers, but the leap was so jarring it knocked off his helmet. His golden hair fell down around his shoulders. Everyone saw it trailing like a golden banner behind him as he galloped away on his black horse.
The next day, when the King’s daughter heard about the golden hair, she went to the gardener to ask about his boy. “He’s out back working. Lagging a bit, I’d say. He went to the festival yesterday and got back late last night. Says he won three gold apples. Showed ‘em to my kids.”
When she told the King what she’d learned, he summoned the gardener’s boy, who appeared, as usual, with his hair covered. The King’s daughter went right up to him and yanked off the kerchief.
No more excuses about sores and mange. He stood before them in his full radiance. His beauty was so great, everyone at court was struck with awe.
“Are you the knight who appeared each day on a different horse and caught the golden apples?” the King asked.
“I am,” and the young man presented the three golden apples to prove it. “I’m also the knight your men wounded in the thigh. I helped you defeat your enemy.”
The King looked at him. “You’re obviously no gardener’s boy. Who are your parents?”
“My father is a King, himself. I have a great deal of gold back at his castle.”
“Well, I am in your debt,” the King said. “What can I give you if you don’t need gold?”
The boy, now a young man, pushed his golden hair back from his forehead and spoke, “I would like to marry your daughter.”
The King laughed, refreshed by the boy’s directness. Fortunately, his daughter agreed. She’d been yearning for the gardener’s boy since he first brought her those wildflowers. “I’ve known you were to be mine since I first say your golden hair,” she said, kissing him.
Completion: Becoming the Gold
At the wedding feast, there was a booming on the gilt doors. Open they swung, and in walked another King, one who ruled all the Kingdoms of this land. He processed through the assembled courtiers and stood before the bridegroom. “I am Iron John,” he said, “who was turned into a Wild Man through an enchantment. You are the one that freed me. Because of that, all the gold I’ve ever possessed, is now yours.”
The Circuit: A Close Reading of the Properties of Light as Symbols in Iron John
(For those wanting to explore the scientific description of how the properties function, minus Revelation and Completion, which science does not acknowledge, there is plenty of information on the Internet that I won’t share here in the interest of keeping this essay focused on the symbolic, but I suggest you do some self-investigation on Google.)
Revelation/Disclosure/Alpha
In the first part of the story, we see a boy whose favorite toy is a golden ball. The golden ball is Revelation, light itself. The fact that the boy has a golden ball tells us that he is self-referential, in the sense that he has the potential to develop out of his own gravitational field, not from instructions he will receive from what others tell him as he grows up.
Reflection/Exposure
The boy sees the fullness of his own unique beauty, the radiance of his soul, when he sees his reflection in the golden water. He is exposed to himself.
Refraction/Momentum/Preference/Variation
The boy experiences Refraction when he “fails” to guard the spring. It’s not a failure because he saw there, for the first time, the depth and beauty of his soul, but seeing one’s beauty is just the first step on the road to being an initiated adult. He has to go out onto the road and wander to develop the capacity to hold the fullness of his soul in a human identity. This is what happens when Iron John takes him to the edge of the forest and sets him on the road. He starts to move on his own toward his full potential.
Diffraction/Flexibility/Tolerance
We know the boy has entered the influence of the property of Diffraction when we are told he finds work at the castle. As a King’s son, his life would have been pretty predictable. He never would have worked in a kitchen sweeping ashes out of a hearth, or hoed weeds in a field, if he’d stayed in his father’s castle. The fact that he does these jobs willingly and well, shows us that he has the capacity to roll with life’s changes. He’s flexible and tolerant.
Interference/Tension/How We Position Ourselves
When the King’s daughter yanks off the boy’s kerchief, she gives him the opportunity to define who he is. Is he a servant who will do whatever she wants, or will he stand up for himself as a sovereign being? Not only does he refuse to remove his head covering, he refuses the gold coins she gives him. This kind of friction is a necessary step to become a real, adult human being.
The boy also doesn’t let himself be defined by the mockery of the other knights, or the gimpy nag they gave him. He gets on the lame horse and rides off to battle. Outer circumstances do not define who he, who he can become, or how he responds to what life offers him.
Polarization/Convergence of Extremes
In Polarization, we are pushed through extremes, like leaves by sap, to blossom out of narrow branch tips. This happens when the boy charges into battle. In killing the King’s enemies, he shows us how light has passed through him as an initiatory force. He knows who he is from looking in the golden spring, he’s developed the wits and bravery of being tested on the road, the kitchen, and garden; he can stand up for himself and not let others define him, and now he can become a conscious collaborator of light instead of being passively moved by it, by charging into battle and defeating the King’s enemies. If the King is viewed as a transpersonal figure, we can say the boy, by killing the King’s enemies, models for us what it looks like toward becoming Kings ourselves, the rulers of our own interior world, informed by the revelations streaming from our own gravitational fields.
Dispersion/Splitting of Light into Color
As he enters Dispersion, the story the boy, now a young man, literally changes colors. We see him ride onto the tournament field on a red, white, and black horse. While those are traditional initiatory colors with roots in European alchemy, I am presenting them as evidence that the boy is ready to be witnessed so that he can move on to the next stage of initiation, Scattering. The fact that he catches the three golden apples shows us that he does not need to go through any more growth. All he needs now is to be perceived and witnessed by his community.
Scattering
It may seem unfair that the King sends his men out to attack our young man when he doesn’t take off his helmet, but the attack is what leads to all being witness to his full, radiant beauty when his helmet gets knocked off. His golden hair streams behind him as he escapes, but from then on there is no escaping who he is. He can’t hide because there is no one to hide from.
When the King’s daughter figures out who he is and has her father summon him, he doesn’t deny he has the gold apples in his pocket. He asks for what he really wants, marriage to the King’s daughter. who says yes, because he is meeting her in equal measure. (Although the story doesn’t tell us this, I am going to assume she has undergone her own initiation by light.) Through their marriage, Scattering occurs, the light begins to replicate into new forms when two become one.
Completion/Omega
Who is Iron John? At the end of the story he appears at the wedding feast and says he had been changed into a Wild Man by an enchantment. He is revealed as the greatest King in the land. But I can’t help thinking that the Wild Man is just as important part of his true identity as the Uber-King we see at the end of the story. The first thing we see of him is his hand emerging out of the black water, pulling in the hunter’s hound.
Iron is magnetic. Like a black hole. Could our first glimpse of him pulling the hound into the dark water be a clue as to his true identity as a gravitational field? Is that the meaning of what it means to be a Wild Man? We tend to think of wild as primitive, which Iron John is not. He may be naked and hairy, but he is always eloquent and fair. He is far from primitive. He’s the most advanced character in the story, and the wisest. He tells us he has more gold than anyone in the world, and though it does seem he does have a lot of coins to hand out at the wedding banquet, I think the gold he’s talking about is the inner gold of being truly sovereign, King of himself, not through rebellion or usurpation. He rules through being totally self-referential while connected to everything, everywhere, all at once. Which is what happens when we Hala.
The last thing Iron John does before he completes his transfiguration is give away all his gold.
May we all be blessed to have a Wild Man like him when we find ourselves afraid to unlock the cage.
May we all have someone with strong shoulders who will carry us off into the forest.
A Wild Man who makes us a bed of moss and gives us a couple of chances when we let something fall into the sacred water, and who knows when to put our feet on the road when it’s time to move on.
May we all be blessed to have someone who will come to us in our time of need when we yell their name three times into the forest. Someone with many-colored horses on hand, and suits of armor.
May we all be blessed to have the King of Kings show up at our weddings and give us his gold. All of it. Because he has moved on. Back to the place he came from. The black hole at the center of our Universe where he came from.
We can all still hear him if we follow the beat of our own black holes. Thump thump. Right inside our chest, protected by a rib cage. The key is in our hearts.
Journey With Me
I am thrilled to announce the first online group odyssey of The Coracle: Part One, The Journey of Safety and Belonging.
The Coracle is a rites of passage mentorship carried on myths and folktales, structured on Mū magic like you’ve been reading about here.
If you’d like to learn more, I’m available for a free discovery call which you can book on my website. You’ll also find a lot more details about what The Coracle offers, how it works, and how it might be of service in your life’s journey.
Please reach out if you have questions about The Coracle, or would like to share any reflections on this essay.
It’s an honor and privilege to have you as a reader of The Corpus Callosum Chronicles. Please do subscribe as a free or paid subscriber, if you have not. Thank you.
Thank you to Ke’oni Hanalei, my fellow guest speakers in the Hala, and all the participants in this series whose ideas and presence have contributed to this essay, my unique synthesis presented as an offering with an intent to honor and inspire all who read these words.
There is one more class left in this series. It may still be possible to join live, and there will be replay available to purchase on the Pōhala website.
Join
The Hala—The 9 Properties of Light, the Octopus Brains
Kō aloha lā ea
Concentrate on love by way of the light
What a story! Thank you for sharing Jennifer <3