This time, section 5 of
the seven-part poem,
Solutions for the End of the World.
Section 1 can be found here.
Section 2 can be found here.
Section 4 can be found here.
In this section Maria formulates her famous
Axiom of Maria: “One becomes two, and two becomes three,
and out of the third comes the one that is the fourth.”
Oh, those cryptic alchemical recipes. Seeming
nonsense.
While I have some issues with
Jungian Psychology, I find Jung’s interpretation of this Axiom compelling:
One is seen as unconscious
wholeness (think about an infant’s experience – where the self is
undifferentiated from everything else).
Two is the conflict of opposites: Rising
out of the chaos of unconsciousness, into the world of duality. Me, you. This,
that. Good, bad.
Three is something that will
enable the resolution of those opposites.
The fourth is the transformed
state of consciousness that has come from working through the tension of
opposites, when the tension between the unconscious and consciousness
result in something new.
So, the journey in this axiom is
from undifferentiated unconsciousness (wholeness) to individual consciousness
(wholeness).
 |
| Remedios Varo/To Be Reborn |
I found this axiom interesting in
relation to the journey of my (and many others’) internal mirroring the
external chaos of climate catastrophe. How do we process it, how do we keep
processing it, work with the reality of it?
I think this has a lot to do with
Extinction Rebellion’s way of looking at the crisis:
“Our world is in crisis. Life
itself is under threat. Yet every crisis contains the possibility of
transformation.”
***********************************
5.
The Feathered Eel Gives Maria Prophetissa
The Idea
for the First Alchemical Formula
Maria
the Prophet bends down,
touches
the flank of a fish, shriveled in sand.
She
stares into the empty socket where the eye used to be.
Less than 30 vaquita remain in the wild.
Sand
lice like stars spin inside the body,
between
delicate rib bones, cradle of emptiness, the emptiness
from which everything comes –
the
one.
Less than 25 vaquita remain in the wild.
She
breaks off a rib bone, raises it, closes her eyes.
Bone
against sun, stone against water, fishermen against gulls,
sea-shadow against sea, the furious
conflict of opposites –
and so, two.
Less than 20 vaquita remain in the wild.
She
sees the fishbone merge with the sun –
and the great Eel emerges out of the sea, shadow across sky.
She
watches it eat scour the city.
Egyptian,
Greek, Roman,
filtered through savage teeth. The Eel
eats the wounds, the scars,
the dead, devouring
children and so the children’s children…
She
sees. Accepts. Says:
“It’s going to devour the world, it’s going to
devour the wounds.
It’s going to devour the world, it’s going to
devour the wounds.
The world, the wounds; the
wounds, the world…”
The Eel plunges back into the sea,
dissolves into a gull cry.
“Silence,” Goya says.
And she knows
the Eel is the three –
the union of opposites. And in this union,
four is achieved.
Wholeness.
Less than 15 vaquita
remain in the wild.
"One becomes two," she says
“and two becomes three…
and out of the third comes the
one that is the fourth.”
Words spoken into the sun, into the
mouth of a dead fish,
into the sky, into the furious eye
of the Eel, maw open.
Her solution.
“Silence!” Goya shouts.
Less
than 10 vaquita remain.
************************************************
Vaquita – Spanish
for “little cow.” It is an endangered porpoise and the world’s smallest
cetacean. It is found only in the shallow waters of the northern Gulf of
California, Mexico. It is the most endangered marine mammal on earth.
About the Vaquita:
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