Who is Orpheus?
The story of Orpheus is a story that has travelled to us throuth the time sands of ancient Thrace.
The mythical singer was the child of the river god Eager and the muse of epic poetry Calliope, and the mountains and rivers of this day still remember his songs, poems and the sound of his lyre.
It is told that he sang and recited his words with such perfection and glee that he was putting nymphs, plants, rocks, even wild beasts under his spell. He fell in love with the beautiful nymph Eurydice. She loved him back and they got married. yet their happiness didn't last long. The day after their wedding, Eurydice was bitten by a poisonous snake, a viper they say. She died and her spirit descended in the realm of the dead. The grieving Orpheus, struck with grief forgot all about his songs and hymns of celebration and hauled in front of the gates of the Underworld untill he was allowed to enter it as a living being and search for his lost beloved.
Orpheus sang his saddest songs and played so profoundly heartbreaking on his lyre that the gods' hearts were touched and they decided to return Eurydice to him, but on one condition - Orpheus should not look back at her until they reached the light of the Middle world. Orpheus left, followed by the shadow of Eurydice. See, she was not yet a being of flesh. She was still a spirit. And as they walked the stairs up and up to the light of the day, Orpheus was hearing the footsteps of his bride behind him, longing to turn around and take her in his arms...Shortly before they reached the light, he heard Eurydice stumbling behind him. Quick to come to her rescue, he turned ...and all he saw was her thin shadow disolving back into the shadows of the Underworld, never to return.
Orpheus' grief was inconsolable. For days he wept and screamed and hauled, completely overcome by his grief, wandering, looking, crying and mourning and wherever his tears fell, a beautiful flower, called the Orpheus flower, sprouted. The flower is still to be found on the slopes of Rhodopi mountains, remembering and carriyng Orpheus' grief through the aeons..
His life ended being torn apart by the vengeful meanads, when he refused to sing and play anymore, swallowed by his grief.
We all have loved and lost. One way or another gief has already touched us. We can't grieve something we have never loved. As Love blooms and opens her petals in our hearts, when we meet a new lover, as we fall in love with a landscape, when we count our babies little toes...grief steps in there too, silently waiting, for she knows her time will come- the two sides of the same coin.
There is a beautiful poem by Yehuda HaLevi (1075 – 1141), called To Love What Death Can Touch and it is one of the softest, heart-opening stream of words I've ever read!
To Love What Death Can Touch
‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.
If we take Orpheus' myth in even wider context, like Sophie Strand did in her book The Flowering Wand, rewilding the sacred masculinity, Eurydice is the name of every love we've lost, every landscape or a homeland that we'll never see again, every extinct animal species, every cut tree...and Orpheus is everyone singing for the lost other. He is the longing for something that will never be again.
"Each death opens up a wound and a song." Strand writes. A song that longs to be shared.
We do not grieve in communities anymore. We do not grieve as part of Nature and with the Earth. and oh! how our souls yearn to be held by warm loving hands and witnessed by compassionate eyes.
Orpheus' journey into the Underworld is a profound alchemical Initiation into the mysteries of Life and Death and how we humans navigate those in our everyday life. In the course of our lives we pass through many initiations as the thresholds of new beginnings. And all beginnings and endings implicit a change from one state of being into another- birth, communion, puberty, marriage, giving birth, loss of friendships or a job, break up and divorce, death, ecogrief... It is part of Life itself.
We are bitten by the Snake, the great revealer of illusions and we are no longer the person we were. We are transformed. Lit ablaze and purified by the holy waters of grief and the sacred fire of our suffering.
The theme of suffering as divine Grace is not a popular one. In Buddhism there is the concept of suffering, but according to tradition, the Buddha has said: "I have taught one thing and one thing only, dukkha (suffering) and the cessation of dukkha." Also "Life is suffering".
Life is beautiful and joyful and messy, and there is so much heartbreak. Richard Rudd, the author of the Gene Keys, calls it "the sweetness of our suffering" and Carl Jung says: "Embrace your grief, for there your soul will grow."
It is embeded in the teachings of Christ and the stream of consciusness he represents- that even at the cross of our own pain and suffering there is Grace at the bottom of this well.. That in our darkest hour, we are held by Grace. We are reminded of our own mortality and yet through Grace we tap into our divinity.
So human and so divine.
With the words of Rumi- Light enters our heart through the wound, through the heartbreak.
There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.
There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.
Rashani
On Sacred Activism
“A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history.
On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness and rooted in divine truth, wisdom, and compassion will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions.
When, however, the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic, and social institutions, a holy force – the power of wisdom and love in action – is born.
This force I define as Sacred Activism.”
by Andrew Harvey
I think in nawadays society we all need an Orpheus inside us. The art of witnessing the grief and pain of the world, crying for what's been lost and continues to crumble- the environment, with the continiuos disappearing of animal and plant species falling one after another as domino plates. Warfare and genocide, hatred, racism, violence....We witness the heartbreak of so many nations worldwide right now (Palestine, Congo, Sudan to name just a few humanitarian catastrophes).
How can we rise up to the challenges of our time, without being consumed and paralyzed by grief and sadness, like Orpheus was? How can we turn our sacred heartache into a balm for others? Or an action to protect what we most care about? We have reached the Underworld, the Purgatory in Dante's words, where the old needs to die and decompose and give its nutrients to another way of being. It is not Death for the sake of Death, it is Death for the sake of Life. It is time to sing our heart's songs, as we wait for the rebirth of our species.
For once I don't think everyone is meant to march tete-a-tete into a battle with the corparations. Not everyone is a lawyer as not everyone is a farmer or a poet. Some folks are eloquent with their words, others with their visual art, music and craft. Nature is divergent, weid, queer, colorful and abundant in her ways of being and so are we humans.
Unity is the comming together of seemingly opposing forces into oneness, in cohesion, in harmony. In time where so much is out of balance and harmony in the world around us, it is up to us as collective to restore it and to step once again into a right relation with what is sacred for us, with God/Love, with self and others.
The practices that are helping me the most during this times
spending time in nature- go for walks, walk barefoot, allow yourself to be in space where other being just are. Nature is restorative and harmonizing.
finding other like minded poeple and sharing your heart with them- it is soul nourishing to come together with people sharing the same interests and values.
going to therapy or other responsibly held container- where you can recognize, feel and move overwhelming emotions and break old neurological pathways of thinking and doing.
praying- prayer is a beautiful, grounding, heart-opening practice of commitment and devotion. Prayer purifies the heart and clears the mind, it sets us in a right relation with the Spirit. Whatever is your way of praying and communicating with the Creator, go for it.
debunk the myth that art is only what hangs in galleries and looks "good". Art is the authentic expression of your creative soul and only truthfullness matters.
grieve- as it's in the title of this essay grief is not a popular one, but grieving next to prayer are the most powerful practices I know of to acknowledge, accept and transform our reality. Grieving is coming in full contact with our pain and alllowing it to take its righteous space inside of us, so it can be seen, felt and released. We cannot move on with our lives, individually and collectively unless we grieve our losses. With avoiding our suffering, we end up creating more of it. Pain is inbuilt in Life, every human being carries a grain of the Sacred Wound of being a human. And yet prolonged suffering, based on avoidance of this pain is optional.
The book "The Wild Edge of Sorrow" is a beautiful guide in this terrain. A keening well, a grief shrine can change your life. I know how both of them helped me.
In conclusion: Orpheus' end of life bears a great lesson- if we cave in with our grief and sorrow, if we retreat and forsake our Gifts and Medicine for this world, instead of offering them to the whole.....we will end up torn apart by the mad meanads inside of us. And the world will loose yet another beautiful Song.
Thank you for being here
In Love and Reverence
Hrissi
