Respecting Venomous Creatures and Bloody Goddesses

Ardhanarishwara (exoticindia.com)

There are two subjects which I keep hoping to get to in this space, but I seem to always be short on time these days, and other things of importance keep showing up. Since I started this mainly as a place to record my thoughts, feelings, and inspirations for perhaps someday being of interest to my few descendants, or to future prospective sangeet students (also, as well as just laying it all down for the record, sharing information on the progress of the accelerating implosion of 'civilization'), I intend to make a adequate record of my own personal process of the musical and spiritual journey that got me here. This 'journal' of remembrances will necessarily focus on my experiences with some, or all, of nine to twelve gurus - musical and spiritual (not necessarily separate), and also look at the nature of what is known as guru-shishya-parampara, or at least my experience of it as an aspiring traditional percussionist-in-training/sacred music practitioner. 

I am working up to begin posting this (in 5 or 6 parts) in the very near future (what there may be of it). Another reason for doing this is the major confusion and misunderstanding of the 'guru' concept in the West, something upon which I would hope to perhaps shed a bit of light, based purely on personal experience of self-submission in a dozen instances over my adult lifetime. 

There is another subject too, which I hope to get to, and that is a personal record of intimate relationships with companion and wild animals who have served also as teachers in this life, so far. We'll see how it works out. I'm not the writer that Derrick Jensen is, but there are some stories there...

While I work on these central subjects and issues of my life experience, today I'll have to just post some odd bits of pictorial and verbal images that came up in various meaningful and archetypal ways, mostly in the areas of our animal-nations friends. 

Three photos of this week's rattlesnake rescue and relocation in the high desert area here:

Got a call from a resident saying a rattler had been caught up entangled in "bird netting" - which should never be placed on the ground, helllooo! He/she was kind of distressed, having been immobilized for 24 hours when I reached there.

This is the "product":

 

 
The netting was wrapped 30-40 times around the snake's mid-section, which required holding down and carefully snipping away each thread against the scales...took about 1/2 hour.
Most likely a prairie rattler, the little one only rattled a few times at first, and when freed slowly crept off into the sage and scrub juniper.

Here's hoping s/he'll find the way home, and remember a moment of human kindness should we ever meet again on the trail. All beings deserve to live free and be spared a torturous, unnecessary fate.











Sadly, our neighbor lost one of the 4 beloved donkeys on Thursday. Crystal, RIP. Her donkey friends, as well as the 4 llamas, and 4 alpacas have all been sleeping on, and during the days, keeping vigil at her grave, even bringing their toys to place on the site. Quite stunning to see.

Navaratri/Durga-Puja, the Nine Nights of the Goddess, are beginning on Wednesday, Sept. 27, so it's that time of year again to throw down nine rice yantras, one each night, in the dhuni fire-pit, hold the space for the sisters to make puja with the hand-made murtis of the Devis, and speak the mantras and sing the hymns of all Her names.

The primary Shakti Devi being Bhoomi, our Mother Earth, all these names and manifestations are Her aspects and attributes (including Kali, Saraswati, Durga, and all the rest), present in and inclusive of all beings who walk, stand, crawl, swim, and fly within Her Matrix of Her Mani Dvipa - Island of Jewels, our Planet Earth. Mani Dvipa is the mystic vision granted Her devotees upon that total surrender of all that mind and self-importance crap that appears so hard to give up or remove oneself from. Turning it all over to Her, the natural mystic knows its all under control, and this world is not the source of error, an accursed place, nor a hell-realm needing a savior. It is Her body, the Beautiful Red Triple-dimension Creation, Shri Lalita Mahatripura Sundari, spontaneously arising from Her primal vibration AUM, visually represented by the Shri Yantra diagram seen at right.

I want to urge all who are able to view the film A Fall From Freedom, linked in the right margin, to do so. It is not terribly disturbing visually, but lays down the absurdity of sentient-being imprisonment-for-entertainment in no uncertain terms, exposing in the light of truth the money (natch) and the people running, and attempting to justify, this terrible business - intimately connected to all the destruction that's going on in our oceans.

What freedom looks like (screen capture from film)

On the gross side, here are some things you don't want to give to your kids: