NEPTUNE / POSEIDON
[In the Order of Appearance]
They say you are: H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) From, “Sea Gods.”
alchemical colors: The basic colors of alchemical stages are black, white, yellow and red. (nigredo, albedo, citrinitas and rubedo). "Later, about the fifteenth or sixteenth century, the colors were reduced to three, and the...citrinitas gradually fell into disuse or was seldom mentioned..." C.G. Jung, The Collected Works, 12: Psychology and Alchemy. London, 1953. With leaves, of course, not black but yellow is a stage of dying.
for instance: P. Ball, “Physics of Life: The Dawn of Quantum Biology.” Nature. 15 June 2011.Whatever is here: From, Katha Upanishad. Quoted in U. Ko's Preface to his Himalaya Poems. Kobenhavn, DK, 2011.
without getting wet: "The Kawaiisu myth (A Visit to the Underworld) contains an interesting illustration of these portals between worlds. The story tells of a man who entered an opening in a rock to find himself in another world where the spirits of deer killed in the hunt go after death. The story, as reported by Zigmond, says, 'the man saw water that was like a window. He could see the mountains through it. But it wasn’t water. He passed through it and did not get wet. When he was outside, he looked back and saw the water again.'" M.L. Zigmond, Kawaiisu Mythology: An Oral Tradition of South-Central California. Anthropological Papers No. 18. Menlo Park CA, 1980. Quoted in, G. R Varner. Caves, Rocks & Mountains: Portals to the Otherworld. New York, 2004.
congregation of boulders: “Engagements with rocks, rock art and the wider landscape (filled with nonhumans) may involve other-then-human people dialoguing with humans, rather than a straightforward (one way) inscription of meaning in which rock art is a passive ‘cultural marker’ and landscape an inert tabula rasa.” R. J. Wallis, “Re-enchanting Rock Art Landscapes: Animic Ontologies, Nonhuman Agency and Rhizomic Personhood.” Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture. March 2009.
brain's maritime channels: "Emerging evidence suggests that aquaporin (AQP) 4 water channels play an important role in water homeostasis in the brain. These water channels are most abundant in the cell membrane of astrocytes, but are also present within ependymal cell membranes and in osmosensory areas of the hypothalamus." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22250904
how heaven pulls earth: L. Mueller. From, "Monet Refuses the Operation."
blue light: Both Neptune and Earth appear blue to human eyes. The source of Neptune's blue from is red being absorbed by methane in the planet's upper atmosphere. Earth, on the other hand, appears blue because its water, which covers most of the planet, doesn't absorb blue. Psychologist James Hillman wrote of "the 'blues' that sing of sadness and pull the soul down into the body's longings and mournings..." J. Hillman, "The Azure Vault." In, Alchemical Psychology. Putnam CT, 2010.digging deeper: J. N. Wilford, "Cave studio of earliest painters found." International Herald Tribune, October 15 2011.
Night is loud: J. Weishaus, "Night At Sea."a language disappears: It's estimated that by the end of the 21st century, nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth today will have disappeared.
"All over the world / the disappeared cry out / to you and me. / Buried or drowned,/ their voices rise / out of the ground, / out of the stones." M.E. Elenbass. From, "The Disappeared."
where the seawind: "Even in the Aeneid, Neptune pays more attention to the winds, which have issued from the cave of Aiolos, than to the water of the sea; the latter divinity carries little or no responsibility for the havoc wrought by the storm." E.G. Suhr, Before Olympos. New York, 1967.
the headland: R. Jeffers. From, "Rock and Hawk."
a symbol: Ibid.
that year: 1923.
a kind of representation: C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York, 1963.the great dark spot: http://space-facts.com/neptune/
He had entered: J. Wilbert, “Yupa Folktales.” UCLA Latin American Studies. Vol 24. 1974.Poseidon: The God of Confusion: "An illuminating example of the gods frustrating emperical precision is the well-known statue found at the bottom of the seabed near Cape Artemision in 1926. In fact, typical of the gods, the arm was found in 1926 and the rest of it in 1928. Even in visual images the gods refuse to be found all at once; we must pick up a piece here and a piece there." D. Russ, "Poseidon: The God of Confusion." In, J. H. Stroud, Editor, The Olympians. New York, 1996.
My fear is that: L. Vogel, "A personal History of Dirt." In, C. Chalquist, ed., Conversations with a World Ensouled. Walnut Creek, CA., 2010.
dinosaurs: "If you're hunting for dinosaurs, you couldn't pick a better place than the North American deserts. Here in the arid regions of the Southwest, a sequence of geologic and climatic conditions have preserved, and then unearthed the remains of many fantastic reptiles from our ancient past." http://www.desertusa.com/animals/dinosafari.html
mammoths: "Until about 11,000 years ago, mammoths, giant beavers, and other massive mammals roamed North America. Many researchers have blamed their demise on incoming Paleoindians, the first Americans, who allegedly hunted them to extinction. But a new study fingers climate and environmental changes instead." M. Blater, "What Killed the Great Beasts of North America?" http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/01/what-killed-great-beasts-north-america
the River God poured forth: Enipeus, a river-god, was loved by Tyro. Poseidon, who was in love with her, assumed the appearance of Enipeus and impregnated Tryo as she poured his waters upon her lap.creek: "'Poseidon, then, belongs to fresh water.' It is fresh water in general because the waters, scattered in a thousand springs over the country, all have 'their fetishes.' In his first generalization,
Poseidon is consequently a god who generalizes the gods of springs and rivers. By associating him with the sea, people only continued this generalization." G. Bachelard, Water and Dreams. Dallas, 2006. He is quoting, C. Ploix, La Nature des dieux. Paris, 1888.
last night's dream: “In his own words, (Samuel) Coleridge only ever ‘seem’d’ a poet; what he was was a sort of Sandman, a weaver of elusive ‘Day-Dreams,’‘Sorts of Dreams,’‘Reveries,’‘Visions in Dream,’and ‘Fragments from the life of Dreams.’ What he might have been was one of the earliest dream analysts.” K. Toor, "Dream Weaver: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the prefiguring of Jungian Dream Theory." The Coleridge Bulletin, New Series 24. Winter 2004.Wind-blown: Poseidon is the personification of "the motion of wind that contain(s) the sustaining life of the cosmos...Wind, like water, contain(s) a certain amount of pneuma, which is another way of saying it ha(s) a fertilizing effect." E.G. Suhr, Before Olympos. New York, 1967. Indeed, Poseidon was originally a vegatation god.
Pegasus: Winged horse who is the offspring of Poseidon and Demeter in their equine form.
A world traveler: "We know of these deep sexual associations with the power of the steed, this bestial and spirited presence in the loins of civilization. And we remember the transcendent aspiring of the human spirit which binds each of us to the flight of Pegasus. But (Charles) Seltman (in, The Twelve Olympians. New York, 1962) suggests to us that in the gift and presence of Poseidon we find a resource to reflect our Wanderlust...It is this desire to know life's surge and fluidity on a massive scale, this locomotivation that is the gift of Poseidon. And it is dangerous to the stability of civilization." D. Russ, "Poseidon: The God of Confusion." J. H. Stroud, Editor, The Olympians. New York, 1996.
one is bound: C. Ronwanièn:Te Jocks, "Spirituality For Sale: Sacred Knowledge in the Consumer Age." American Indian Quarterly. Summer/Fall 1996. Vol. 20 Issue 3/4
Poseidon's arrival...tranquil sea: The Paredrae are fundamental aspects, or powers, that accoompany a god. Veniliais is the tranquil sea, or water under control; while Salacia generates lustful waves, perhaps a tsunami.unfathomable breezes: "The activity of the wind and its influence of water and land explains, to a certain extent, Poseidon's indirect control of the sea, which was more or less reversed in Homeric times, and why he was worshopped vy inland people remote from the shoreline." E.G. Suhr, Before Olympos. New York, 1967.
butterfly: A small butterfly named Psyche, Leptosia nina, is found in Southeast Asia and India. In Jungian Psychology,too, the butterfy is a symbol for the psyche.
develop an awful lot: D.C. Dennett,"The Normal Well-Tempered Mind." A Conversation with Daniel C. Dennett." http://www.edge.org/conversation/normal-well-tempered-mind
mushroom: "It seems that the primordial Greek gods had a habit of getting drunk on 'honey,' which...was a metaphor for Soma among the Vedic Aryans (of India)." Soma is believed to be fly agaric, Amanita muscaria, an hallucinogenic mushroom. "One day Zeus, Poseidon, and Hermes were drinking huge amounts of this 'honey' and had to urinate. They formed the hide of a sacrificed bull into a container and urinated into it. The hide was then buried, and after ten months the earth-born giant Orion arose from it." C. Heinrich, Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy. Rochester VT, 2002.Poseidon's bull: "The bull antedates the horse as a symbol of the wind...We may assume, as others have, that the bull was the god himself before the god took on an anthropomorphic guise." E.G. Suhr, Before Olympos. New York, 1967.
winds to moan: "Neptune's winds can reach up to 1,500 miles per hour (2,400 kilometers per hour), the fastest planetary winds detected yet in the solar system." https://www.google.com/#q=wind+on+Neptune
glistening horses: "Prior to the descent of Poseidon and his horse to the sea, there were two prominent symbols for the wind: the horse and the bull." Ibid.
gray cumulonimbus beings: “Haze, clouds, and fog will then be primitive concepts of Neptunian psychology. Now it is precisely these objects, which are endlessly contemplated by hydrous reverie, that squeeze out the hidden water in the sky.” G.Bachelard, Water and Dreams. Dallas, 1983.Voyager 2: http://space-facts.com/neptune/
icy arms: Neptune has an average temperature of -353 Fahrenheit (-214 Celsius). The planet's atmosphere is about 80% hydrogen, 19% helium, with trace amounts of other kinds of ice.an oracle: Poseidon was responsible for the oracular breath which inspired the Pythian priestess at Delphi.
supernatural beings: (atiswin, Chumash) D. Robinson, “The Mirror of the Sun: Surface, Mineral Applications, and Interface in California Rock Art.." In N. Boivin and M.A.Owoc , editors, Soils, Stones and Symbols: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on the Mineral World. London, UK, 2002.a vessel sunk: "It was Poseidon who sent to Odysseus “A great wave (that) drove at him with toppling crest / spinning him round, in one tremendous blow, / and he went plunging overboard, the oar-haft / wrenched from his grip. A gust came on howling / at the same instant broke his mast in two, / hurling his yard and sail far out to leeward." Homer, The Odyssey. Book 5. R. Fitzgerald, Translator. New York, 1963.
my old friend: John Kielty Bell. British artist (1937-2016).
between worlds: "On its vertical axis, the sea is also an intermediary between the worlds of the living, the dead, and the gods. Indeed, the bottom of the sea houses the palace of Poseidon." M-C. Beaulieu, The Sea in the Greek Imagination. Philadelphia, 2016.
nature never really: U.K. Heise, Imagining Extinction. Chicago, 2016. She is addressing "how much indigenous peoples had transformed (the environment) long before Europeans' arrival."
shrouded in mist: Homer, The Odyssey. Book 11.blue-green: Blue-green algae is a diverse group of simple plant-like organisms found in both fresh salt water environments. It has various medicinal uses. “Different languages will [categorize colors] differently, so some languages will put all the greens and blues in one category and have one label for that, whereas in English, obviously, we have separate words,” N. Davis, "The Vision Thing: How Babies Colour in the World." The Guardian. 11 April 2017.
black bird: " Flying in a green light, / Even the bawds of euphony / Would cry out sharply." W. Stevens. From, "Thirteen Ways if Looking at a Blackbird."trident: The trident "is a symbolical allusion to the natural phenomena that characterises Poseidon’s qualities. It is with the trident that Poseidon shakes the earth, although he also opens the earth with the trident in order to let water springs gush out, and this because Poseidon is the ultimate source for water." A. A. Di Castro, "Hestia, a Tabula Iliaca and Poseidon’s trident: Symbols’ adaptations of some Bactrian and Gandharan divinities." Original paper presented at The Australasian Society for Classic Studies Conference, 2012. The symbol of the trident may stem back to the Indian god Shiva. However, unlike Poseidon, who adopted the trident, using it to create springs, Shiva is not a water god, and is more akin to three as symbolizing "spiritual synthesis, and is the formula for the creation of each of the worlds." J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols. London, UK, 1971.
universe whose roots: "In the many-worlds interpretation espoused by the American physicist Hugh Everett, the authority of the wave function and its governing Schrodinger equation was taken as absolute. Measurements didn't suspend the equation or collapse the wave function, they merely made the Universe split off into many (perhaps infinite) parallel versions of itself. Thus, for every experimentalist who measures an electron over here, a parallel universe is created in which her parallel copy finds the electron over there. The many worlds Interpretation is one that many materialists favor, but it comes with a steep price." A. Frank, “Minding Matter.” https://aeon.co/essays/materialism-alone-cannot-explain-the-riddle-of-consciousness.continents slide: Poseidon is the god of sea and earthquakes. We can now add to this, the god of rising seas."Sea level has been rising over the past century, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In 2017, global mean sea level was 3 inches (77 millimeters) above the 1993 average—the highest annual average in the satellite record (1993-present). It was the sixth consecutive year, and the 22nd out of the last 24 years in which global mean sea level increased relative to the previous year." R. Lindsey, "Climate Change: Global Sea Level." NOAA Climate. Gov. August 1, 2018. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level
a human person: "The Ojibwe's (Ojibwe, Ojibwa, or Chippewa) preferred self-definition, Anishinaabeg, identifies them as 'human persons' and they speak of a widew range of 'other-than-human persons,' including tree persons, stone persons, bird persons, and fish persons." R.J. Wallis, "Re-enchanting Rock Art Landscapes: Animic Ontologies, Nonhuman Agency and Rhizomic Personhood." Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture. March 2009.