Poverty of Words

In 1997, the film adaptation of Carl Sagan’s book, Contact, was released as a movie. It is the story of a woman, who from a young age is exposed to the wonders of the universe by frequently gazing at the stars through a telescope with her father. She grows up to be a SETI scientist. Ultimately, she is selected to voyage through a newly created machine received from a captured signal from space containing 63,000 pages of data. This machine is designed to transport a single occupant, where to, is not known. Turns out the machine takes her on a journey through a series of wormholes in which she is privileged to view other civilizations, highly developed…

At one point during this breathtaking odyssey , awestruck by what she is viewing, mouth quivering and eyes aglow, she declares “some celestial event, no words, no words, can describe it, they should have sent a poet, it’s so beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful, I had no idea, I had no idea…” It is an incredibly powerful scene. A reminder that there are so many things we experience for which mere words are incapable of capturing their essence.

The interesting takeaway from this realization is that words themselves are vibrational creations; just as is all of creation. Unfortunately, western rationalism has alienated this thought. In the watershed book “Cosmos and Psyche” by Richard Tarnas, he examines the stark difference between the primal world view and the modern world view. In describing the modern view problem, he writes:

“The world outside the human being lacks conscious intelligence, it lacks interiority, and it lacks intrinsic meaning and purpose. For these human realities, and the modern mind believes that to project what is human onto the non-human is a basic epistemological fallacy. The world is devoid of any meaning that does not derive ultimately from human consciousness. From the modern perspective, the primal person conflates and confuses inner and outer and thus lives in a state of continuous magical delusion, in an anthropomorphically distorted world, a world speciously filled with the human psyche’s own subjective meaning. For the modern mind, the only source of meaning in the universe is human consciousness.”

As a shaman and astrologer, I am more immersed into the primal world view than most. It is in this realm; I find answers that my rational mind finds elusive. I see no boundaries between us and the rest of creation. The primal world is teeming with intrinsic meaning and messages that are available to those who have the eyes and ears to perceive it. I do not see the primal view as being nothing other than fears, wishes, and projections. Rather, it speaks through symbolism, vibration, and breathtaking synchronicities.

In speaking to an understanding of the primal world view vs. the modern one, Tarnas further states:

“But to discern more impartially the difference between these two world views, we must grasp the stubborn fact that the primal cosmos was universally experienced, for countless millennia, as tangibly and self-evidently alive and awake---pervasively intentional and responsive, informed by ubiquitous spiritual presences, animated throughout by archetypal forces and intelligible meanings---in a manner that the modern perception does not and perhaps cannot recognize.”

And so, it is often that I find myself with a “poverty of words” to describe such phenomena. Mere words don’t do these instances justice. I have throughout my own spiritual journey found answers and messages through encounters with the animal and insect worlds. Through music, art, repeating numbers, and even in the sound of the rushing wind or crashing waves. And of course, as an astrologer, I have received wisdom and understanding through the positions of planets and stars, speaking symbolically about matters of the here and now, as well as things to come. This too, I wish for you, may you see and hear what all of creation has to say and benefit from the infinite wisdom it holds.