A Branch from the Lightning Tree

by Martin Shaw

  Inner royalty explained in these terms is an affirmation of the vibrancy and richness available in life. It says yes to a kind of grandeur, and understands when Nede in an old Irish text was asked who he was, replied:

  Entitle me Fire’s flame, name me Fire of Word, or Noise of Knowingness, or Fountain of Riches or Sword of Canticles, or Ardent Verity of Genius15

  That’s not vanity, but tongue magic. That is an inner knowing leaping through feathery word-houses into the stunned lap of the enquirer (who was actually a Bard himself, but that’s another story …). Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. What we see right now is Anga, heading up the mountain, the weather against him, night drawing in.

  BEAR MAGIC, KING MAGIC, FATHER MAGIC

  The Japanese have a phrase for those men who head up to remote, mountainous regions with religious intent. They call them Yamabushi, which translates as “One who sleeps in the mountain” or “Hidden in the mountain.” Unknowingly perhaps, Anga is stepping into their terrain. In fact the High King he discovers is indeed asleep, hidden in the mountain.

  Myth is awash with sleeping Kings, Queens, and Princesses. Sometimes sedated by a pin or a thorn, the very central figure of the kingdom is somehow asleep. As Anga steps into the deep heart of our story, he finds instead of obvious conflict a kind of unearthly quiet. The great being that abides in the center of the psyche is somewhat like Sleeping Beauty, and requires something from Anga now, a further step. So far, youthful courage has been the initiator of the journey, and canniness has defeated Simoon the Serpent. What is the final step that is needed? Compassion. At great personal risk, Anga pulls the splinter from the paw, bringing the King Bear to Consciousness. It’s a very beautiful touch, a chivalrous touch in fact. Entering the radiance of the King requires of us some openness. There is something so profoundly archetypal about this scene that we feel that, had Anga responded in any other way he would have been annihilated on the spot.

  Bears can carry god status in Siberia, particularly with the Nanai tribe. The bear’s office of presiding over a landscape is confirmed when we realize that the name Arctic derives from the Greek Arktos, meaning “bear.” The whole Arctic terrain carries a sky bear overhead in The Great Bear star constellation. In earliest folklore, bears were thought of as humans clad in the furs of Bear, shape-shifters or magicians. Never hunted intensively due to their sparse numbers, bears nonetheless were the animal that hunters regarded as Lord of the Forest, the deity that all emanated from, the slow heartbeat of the tundra.

  Bear as forest king inspired dialogue to be sought with him, libation poured. Bear cults grew all around Asia, even amongst the Ainu, on the islands of Japan. Until recently the Ainu would capture a small cub, raise it for several years, it’s rumored, on breast milk and fine food before chaining it to a pole in the center of the village and ritually killing it. After drinking its blood and cooking the body to eat, the Ainu would rewrap the skull in its fur and place it on a spear. Echoing veneration of the Sun King, this participation mystique was an attempt to draw closer to the symbiotic dance between nourishment, awe, and sympathetic magic. Negotiators of Bear dialogue were always male, strict rules applying for female interaction with even the corpse of a bear. A woman could prepare meat, or even offer breast milk, but could never sit on a bear skin or attend the hunt.

  We can sense that Anga, as he makes his way down the tunnel, is entering a kind of second, masculine womb. Up until this point he has survived well on his mother’s insight, learned a Yaga-like canniness, transmuted hard energies into swifter, calmer ones. But in order to locate the very thing the shaman says Anga’s mother needs, he has to enter the womb-like cave of the High Bear King. Like a hundred thousand young men being pulled from their mother’s arms by disguised and masked uncles and elders during their tribal Initiation rites, Anga is journeying into the Father’s world now. This strange and terrifying journey has led him to the court of the High King. As he looks down, he sees the wound, the bleeding paw. From one perspective, this is his own wound, bleeding for the loss of his own absent father, and only the inititiatory road he’s on can heal it. Anga is healing himself. As when the Ainu drink from the slain bear’s blood, with this act terrific force passes between the two of them.

  In an attempt to walk the healing road for his mother, Anga is in fact healing himself by entering new depths of his own masculinity, there to find the missing aspect or teacher.

  AWAKE, AWAKE!

  As in the story of the Fisher King, a wound indicates a fragmented or incomplete kingdom or psyche. If the center point is adrift, hypnotized, enchanted, or asleep, then the kingdom is vulnerable to attack or neglect. As decades pass, a sleeping king can become a distant figure, a legend at best, rather than a guiding energy. When we look at our own lives, can we find the moment we fell into a dreamless slumber?

  I have seen both men and boys arrive at base camp with a memory of something golden in their lives but a kind of lethargy as how to activate it in themselves, how to find their way back to the High King’s lair. Many have done hard yards in the therapist’s room, the yoga center, and in relationships. They have awareness of Simoon’s heat, and are holding the coolness of Ogloma’s skin, but feel reluctant to make this next step. Women as well have come to the mountains and begun to dream of a Great She Bear, often before their time in the woods has started (and many years before I started telling this story). Their time out there is often spent seeking a trail of forgotten honey that leads to the great, warm cave where she sleeps.

  Too much wealth, or too many hard knocks, or being far away from rocks, ocean, and swaying grass can sedate us. The idea of career can pull us into a trance-like spell that causes us to gradually, piece by slow piece, lose contact with the moments that first opened our heart.

  THE SHAGGY MAINED OTHER

  Another important aspect of our story is that this isn’t a human king, it’s a bear. Human kings in myth are not always as interesting as the intrigues of court around them. They can become so archetypal that they are almost wooden. As soon as the Arthurian (Artus, meaning bear) stories were picked up in the Norman courts, the emphasis shifted from Arthur to his Knights, and specifically the search for the Holy Grail. In the twelfth century stories, Arthur himself is almost impersonal amidst the anguish, love affairs, and questing going on around him. But this center, this Bear, is from the realm of the animal powers. It is an ancient force that has been sensed and adored by men forever.

  Anga’s father perished at the hands of a tiger, the other revered animal of the Nanai, and it is from the animal kingdom that healing must occur. “That which dealt the wound must heal the wound,” is a cry we hear from many Scottish Selkie stories (stories concerning men and women that can be both seal and human: If injured by a fisherman, the fisherman will have to descend to the depths to heal the seal or risk his own misfortune). Some principle of the wild, pouring through the river of initiation, has the capacity to provide another kind of fathering and centering for Anga. His mother’s afflictions and the shaman’s journey were catalysts for Anga to take the wild route to the Father of the Forest and experience this awakening. In the absence of a physical father, that thread is picked up again in the trials and process Anga has experienced. It’s not as simple as saying, “It made a man of him”; this is an interior, complex and intensely mystical process.

  I have seen many boys from fatherless tents come back from their fast with eyes that spoke of the High Bear King. It’s as though wilderness itself can sometimes produce a kind of tone, either masculine or feminine, that reaches right into the startled hearts of the initiates. And as with Anga, it’s in a moment of high vulnerability that the meeting takes place. Weak with hunger, cried-out, and cloaked by Ogloma with a skin to be reborn in, somewhere in the slow hours of the last night of the fast we find ourselves in his cave. Even a moment spent with this energy can take us into an experience of the masculine beyond the imagined rights and wrongs of our own, all too human, fathers. It can even cr
eate the capacity for forgiveness.

  We sense that the image of the thorn is hugely powerful, whether felt in your own life or the life of a family member or loved one. Just to have achieved a conscious perspective of it is a huge event. As we remember, Bly suggests that grief is an appropriate response to the discovery of the thorn. The King cannot instantly spring to life when you have only just found his cave.

  Thorns are often inherited spells, handed down through the mercury of blood. When the true King and Queen are weak or absent in the wider psyche of a family, the chance is strong that it will stay just out of reach, or cloaked in invisibility. A house of depression, a house of violence, a house of blandness, a house of no boundaries, a house of too much rigidity—all these contain thorns of tremendous potency.

  When we start to tug at such a thorn, the house begins to shake and the addiction hidden in the spell will start to arise: Who is this that dares awaken me?

  The complexity of the web the thorn has cast means that your loved ones would often rather you fell back into a fitful sleep than shone a candle in the cobwebbed dungeon. Awakening a Bear King can arouse a huge roar when the thorn comes out. Gather prayers, strong friends, and all the soul gold you can find when you start to tug.

  TEARS ON THE HEROES’ WINGTIPS

  There is a contemporary dimension to this story, in that it doesn’t fit an idealized procession of obvious mentoring figures. No Arthur or Finn, just a series of baffling and probably fatal challenges. We are left wishing for a character on the road with whom he may share a meal or a small dog to travel by his side. The initiators are from the animal powers themselves, called to push him into maturation. This hints at some magical process beyond the human community that guides us through such an experience.

  When I was seventeen years of age I had the smallpox. I was left alone in a lodge, helpless, weak, and my eyes nearly closed. A bear came in and walked up to where I was lying. He sat down with his back pressed against me, and began to scratch his breast with his fore paws. By and by he got up and walked out of the lodge. Was I dreaming or had it really happened? While I was thinking it over the bear returned, and while I trembled for fear, went through the same motions again, and then went off, leaving me unharmed. I thought surely the bear has had mercy on me. When my father came again we talked it over and agreed that the bear had pitied me. After that I worshipped the bear, and in the dance I wore anklets of bears teeth.

  Poor Wolf16

  This is a different style of mentoring, one that creates a pathway to and from both the masculine and animal realms that can be traveled totemically. We all need physical individuals in the world to inspire, shout at, and recognize us, but initiation is designed to carve out an internal road that is tempered and awake. Once the High Bear King is awakened, he willingly gives his fur to Anga, and the healing of the mother is almost complete. Anga reenters the tent with health for the feminine, found through his own journey into deep masculinity.

  Whenever faced with education authorities trying to decide whether to release their at-risk youth into the initiatory process, I warn them: don’t expect model citizens, evangelists, AA counselors, or Outward Bound instructors to necessarily return in their place. They can be even angrier, more opinionated, and trouble-making when they return. But, as Michael Meade says, “They’re looking for the right kind of trouble.” An audience with wilderness/serpent/bear consciousness is heavy meat, a real meal.

  The forces aroused through Initiation have claws and fur, and we’d be ridiculous to expect anything else. It is apprenticeship to a Lightning bolt.

  Initiation means taking the raw fuel of Simoon, through the spiritual passage of Ogloma, to the integrated centre of the High Bear King.

  Grief comes with that territory, especially for young people, and tears become the liquid that moistens the Heroes’ wingtips. Many need to sit and grieve after such an experience, so terrible has been its absence. The challenge afterward is to make a clear track from the tent to the mountain, attend Simoon’s ashes, plant a hundred different seeds in the scorched earth, and sing hard to bring the World Tree back to health again.

  So we find the qualities of courage, canniness, and compassion in this story. We see that to survive its challenges, different elements were required at different times, just as in our lives: the recklessness of starting out in the first place, the wiliness of gathering resin and moss, the transformative encounter with the serpents, and finally the compassionate removal of the splinter. This is the shape-leaper’s road.

  CHAPTER 5

  CROSSROADS, TEMPLES, AND WILD INTELLIGENCE

  The dark eagles, sleep and death,

  Rustle all night around my head:

  The golden statue of man

  May be swallowed by the icy comber

  of eternity

  Georg Trakl1

  By now we should be getting some sense of mythological thinking. We’ve just witnessed the movement of youth as they attempt to stride into the rapids of adolescence to swim to adulthood. We have witnessed the complexity of this attempt and the need for open, visibly moved adults to be waiting on the other bank. We have also looked at the hard space that opens when there is no welcome committee.

  So this chapter is concerned with the business of what we can call eldership, and certain unusual perspectives on how it could emerge. Any use of the word “leadership” is as a contribution to this emergence within an individual. We will strike out on two roads of pursuit that lead to a seemingly contrary crossroads, where relationship to the Trickster is the glue that holds us in its tension. We will trace his paw prints between language and writing, and also in the vitality of metaphor.

  HATCHLINGS TO HAWKS

  In chapter two we witnessed a disarming process mapped out for Ivan: to become the fully rounded character his fate required, he had to lose glamor, climb down a dark hole, trick a witch, experience abandonment, and finally emerge with the Yaga’s medicine—knowledge of the scaly underbelly of life. Can you imagine the sophistication of a community that encouraged that uncertain assage? How subtle would your thinking have to be?

  Talk of Leadership can be off-putting. There is something zealous, clear-eyed, and healthy about the phrase. We suspect that large, hidden parts of the leader are hidden just out of view, like an iceberg, waiting to sink our fragile boat. Where can find something that feels true?

  SHRINKING VISTAS

  When a society has flattened its cultural references as acutely as ours has, it requires two dimensional characters to affirm its progress. A continual lust for healthy bones, clean nails, and sound bites flushes much complexity out into marginal psychic suburbs, which then filter back in as confused dreams.

  When we look at initiation, we recognize that the decades of our lives pull on very different energies. To remain fixated on the flush of youth stultifies the movement of the imagination as we age, and creates a reluctance to trust the slower, deeper currents that we sense pulling on our legs. It’s as though we’re being trained by the media to shorten the tempos of our creative life into tinier and tinier spans because we have only a whisker of time to be relevant, to feel deeply. If the arches of imagination are getting daily smaller, then the kind of leaps Taliesin made appear impossible. So the prospect of expansion is retracted from the living world down into computer software, and the threads of connection only refer to the immediate landscape of the individual.

  No longer in Lethean foliage caught

  Begin the preparation for your death

  And from the fortieth winter by that thought

  Test every work of intellect or faith,

  And everything that your own hands have wrought,

  And call those works extravagance of breath

  That are not suited for such men as come

  Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb

  W. B. Yeats, “Vacillation”2

  PROUD, OPEN-EYED, AND LAUGHING

  Yeats is calling a grandiose tune with a touch of dark
ness at the end: we should become explorers, and in fact heighten our game as we age. No gentle falling-off after forty, but rather a narrowing and amplifying of our pursuits. That word he uses, “tomb,” is terrifying; its finality puts our emphasis back on life rather than ideas of the beyond. Initiatory process, as we have discovered, has partially to do with drawing closer to death in order to live more fully. If you have not engaged with that truth, then anyone over the age of sixty is a creaky reminder of something you haven’t even begun to face. The things we grab onto, like life rafts, are rosy glows, full blooms, and houses that are only painted white. There appears to be a willful resistance to the reality of elders because it means looking at another set of values and, beyond that—death.

  The religious propensity for gazing backwards at an imagined Eden has transformed into a lust for an imagined luminous, technological future, one where aging is associated with being “behind the times.” Either one of these perspectives is out of balance if it detracts from the reality of the present moment. Where once was the tragedy of a lost golden age, we now have the supposed triumph of the “nearly here” future.