Back in the old days that are still alive with us now …

The Celtic Alps, over Lac Neuchâtel

… people came from the East with the treasure of life …

The Gundestrup Cauldron (Feast Dish)

This large silver celtic dish, found in a Danish bog, originated in Assyria. The celtic figures on it are Assyrian. This, silver and shining, is the moon.

… and transformation…

The Staghorned God, the Stag, and other Transformations (Gundestrup Cauldron)

The image of Buddha sitting under a tree to receive wisdom differs not one bit. Here also are Jonah and the Whale (also Merlin and the Salmon), the Tree and the Serpent, and a snake that is simultaneously male and female. These images take many forms in and of themselves. They have an ancient source.

… and this energy changed again and again. It appears in the correlation between testes and grapes in this Greek statue of Dionysus, the rising god …

…and in this vineyard church in Assmannshausen am Rhein, where the Celts grew grapes long before the romans, and then the Germans, came.

Assmannshausen, Looking North

The Rhine was a celtic serpent winding to the north long before it became a German one.

This ancient story …Hauterive, Lac Neuchâtel

… of new life springing from the dead land …

Vernon, Lake Okanagan

… blooming …

… ripening …

Pinot Noir (Black Pine), Meyer Vineyard, Okanagan Falls

… and waiting for the god to come …

Chopaka Gewürztraminir , 1995

Seven Stones Winery makes wine from these grapes now.

…who is God …

Marienthal

… Dionysos …

… and the Celtic grapes before them, which were themselves the god …

Wild Celtic Grapes and their Industrial Children

Kaiserstuhl, Breisgau

… lives on in all of us, while the snake, or the vine, winds on…

… and on …

The Rhine in the Sacred Celtic Woods of Its Middle Flow

… and on …

The Celtic Snake of the Siebenfelsen Sacrificial Site

Yach, Black Forest

This is the boundary between life …

Birth Channel, Siebenfelsen

… and death …

… and life again, that springs up out of the earth…

Phallus, Siebenfelsen

The earth has been shaped here into a hermaphroditic structure. Here at the base of the goddess’s torso that is the hill (her naval has a wild boar, in a copse of hazels), the phallus rises directly adjacent to the vagina. The snake curls around in behind, in the company of a horse. The age of this structure is unknown. It predates German colonization.

…and that is worshipped by human hands bringing its story forward into another year, and shaping that yearly round in its image, by working with these powers of the earth, and with none other.

Western Bluebird in a Celtic Sacred Apple Tree

Psychologically, it is the story of transformation of human selves in the presence of the god …

Daphne Flees Apollos Advances of Reason and Becomes a Laurel Tree (Apollo and Daphne, by Antoni del Pollaiolo)

Note the snake (river) that Apollo has just tamed below. 

… into the living things of the world, which gives life:

Mary and Jesus, Marienthal

It is the work of every farmer who works by hand. The world becomes a farmer’s mind.

Bachus (the Roman Dionysus)

The god pulls his thoughts from the ground (he is, after all, inhabiting stone) and gives them to others (and himself) as nourishment, in many different ways.

In this conception, the self is the location of metamorphosis and transformation, the point where one force becomes another and in so doing is one with it. It can look like this …

The Kiss, Rodin

… or like this …

Vineyards, Lorelei

…or take other sophisticated forms, but in it, always, body and earth, life and death, living and dying are united in inseparable combination, always in physical and earthly form undergoing a continual process of transformation. This is the old knowledge of the people of the earth from India to Ireland, who are at home on it. It is never present, never a set physical force, but what comes, suddenly, and with a force that changes you into something you were just the hint of before.

Troll, Iceland

When I found that troll, I knew I was home. Look at the skulls it has spat out. Look at the water. To drink, one must go to him. Look at his one blind eye. This is Oðinn, the god. This is how the earth and the mind can become one. One thinks by planting and nurturing. In this way of presence, creativity is an act of participating, of helping, of nurturing, of bringing to life. This is my life.

The View From Goethe’s Forest House

Ilmenau

I was trained in these traditions of poetry, art and identity from birth, and likely long before that. This is what I know. This green technology, green landscaping and green psychology is not what you can find in books. We should go walking some day, I think. We have much to talk about.

~

Next, I’ll be integrating these discussions on creativity to cast a clear lens on the issues around creativity, identity and environment today, one footstep at a time. Thank you for being here.