Neptune's Dolphins

 

Nothing is lost but stored in the memory of the earth. Wendell Berry, the American poet, wrote, “The earth under the grass dreams of a young forest, and under the pavement, the earth dreams of grass.” In wandering, people move into spiral time (and experience) and then into deep time. (Note 2.) Valters Paintner writes, “we allow ourselves to arrive fully in a sacred place both body and soul, and ask permission to be and receive the gifts offered.”

 

Fabiana Fondevila in “Where Wonder Lives” lays out a mythical landscape with landmarks for people to wander in. She plots a route for a journey from “The Jungle” to “The Ocean,” recapturing an element of wonder at each stop. Each place has a theme to focus on. Following her route will aid a person to let go of their rational mind and embrace wonder.

 

The Route and Focus:

 

The Jungle: Re-wild Yourself

The Garden: Awaken Your Senses

The River: Let Your Imagination Flow

The Mountain Top: Tell a New Story

The Swamp: Embrace Your Shadow

The Village: Deepen Your Relationships

The Fire: Reclaim Your Rites

The Lighthouse: Focus Your Mind

The Ocean: Open Your Heart

Wandering in this mythic landscape will restore a person’s place in the Spiritual Ecosystem. (Note 3.) At The Jungle, you go outside into nature to experience it in its fulness. While there, learn the names of birds, clouds, and trees. At The Garden, among the flourishing flowers and vegetables, you safely experience Nature with all of your senses. The Jungian psychologist James Hillman noted “we have lost the heart’s response to what the senses bring to us.” The Gardens is where you find it again.

 

At The River, you free your artistic impulses and create. The Mountain Top is where the ancient myths come alive. Embracing the mythic vision, you find your own story. The Swamp is a necessary step because your shadow lives there. The Swamp may be dank and dark but it is fertile and life creating.

 

After reuniting with your shadow, you enter The Village. Now, your whole self can be a part of the Web of Life. At The Village, you form relationships with others. Outside The Village, lies The Fire where you enter sacred time and space to meet the Gods.

 

The Lighthouse governs the mind. Fondevila writes, ‘the guiding light of consciousness returns you to the only that is truly safe: the present moment, in which life happens.” At The Ocean, you become anchored in “the deep and abiding power of love.” Arriving at journey’s end, you start over with a renewed sense of wonder.

 

At this moment, Valters Paintner suggests “statio,” “the practice of stopping one thing before beginning another. It is the acknowledgement that in the space of transition and the threshold is a sacred dimension, a holy pause full of possibility.” Prepared, we then can enter into what comes next.

 

Notes:

Note 1. Peregrinatio (peregrination) is the “leaving of one’s homeland behind and wandering for the love of God.” First practiced by St. Augustine of Hippo, it later became a part of Celtic Christianity. By wandering the landscape, the person returns home changed, and connected deeper to God. For Polytheists, it can be a practice to deepen their relations with the Gods.

 

Note 2. Deep time is the unfathomable immensity of the past and future, as defined by Valters Paintner. I experienced deep time at Great Falls Park, Maryland where the Potomac (an ancient river) speeds over the narrow Mather Gorge. The roaring sounds of the river over the falls put me into a trance where I viewed a scene from the Cretaceous Period.

 

Note 3. The Spiritual Ecosystem consists of the interactions and exchanges between of the Gods, Ancestors, Humans, Other Beings (Lars, etc.), Plants and Animals. It includes the visible and invisible worlds.

 

Jonathan David Whitcomb, who is considered the expert on “Living Pterosaurs” claims that people have been trained not to see. He explains in “The Girl Who Saw a Flying Dinosaur,” “refuse to believe in something and you will not be able to see it. In other words, if a thing is never looked for, it might never be found.”

 

People in modern western societies are inheritors of two main streams of thought. The Industrial Revolution spawned Marxism and Positivism. Steeped in economic materialism, Marxism stated that this would end the mastery of humans over their environment. Meanwhile Positivism applied the scientific method to studying society. Both movements lack a transcendental basis of truth. Moreover, they stripped the world of its inner and divine mysteries.

 

The noted occult writer, John Michael Greer offers his perspective in “Monsters.” He says that industrial society deliberately made no room for monsters. The reason for this was that monsters reveal the reality of the impossible. (Note 2.) Greer continues, “These entities have and still have, a reality that goes beyond the limits of human imagination and human psychology. For most people nowadays, such ideas would be terrifying.” By embracing rational materialism, the experience of mystery and otherness is rejected.

 

People’s actual experiences of “winged unknown beings” run counter to the world of scientific thought. (Note 3.) In reviewing people’s experiences, Lon Strickler in “Winged Cryptids” noted that people first felt fear. Furthermore, their experiences with these entities had pushed them to the edge of their capacity as humans. One witness told Strickler, “Accepting this was not easy as it negated all that I previously thought I knew.” Strickler, who maintains the “Phantoms & Monsters” blog, believed that these beings come from two worlds colliding in interdimensional reality. As evidence, he cites how people often complain of jet lag after their encounters.

 

The collection of experiences that Strickler details describes the same phenomena that Polytheists experience when encountering the Gods. The winged entities are attracted to certain persons or appear at certain times and places. Moreover, they look deeply into people’s souls. One witness reported, “And I’ll never forget the eyes. They were piercing and felt as if they looked right into my soul. It was an extremely very deep feeling.”

 

Cryptozoologists Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman wrote in “Creatures of the Outer Edge,” “Elusiveness and ambiguity seem implicit in the manifestations. They refuse to be understood.” The authors continue, “Borderland phenomena do not recognize boundaries. If we insist upon containing them, defining their territory, we are only fooling ourselves.” (This could be said of Atheists who insist that the Gods are other than what They are.) What Clark and Coleman are describing are liminal places.

 

Whitcomb reports in “Live Pterosaurs in America” about a woman in George who saw a “Living Pterosaur.” She said, “The world is now totally different. I feel blessed that God has allowed me to see this creature that should not be here.” For her, the world is now filled with wonder.

 

My experiences with “Living Pterosaurs” left me filled with awe and fear. I did feel in the presence of something otherworldly. Even though, I was young, I still ponder my experience. It remains a mystery for me to keep.

 

Notes:

Note 1. “Living Pterosaur” is put into scare quotes because the creature is not supposed to exist.

 

Note 2. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, said, “When you eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

 

Note 3. Doyle also noted “Our ideas must be as broad of Nature if they are to interpret Nature.”