“Ritual is a powerful tool to confront the grief and anger we feel as well as celebrating the good that remains.”
Editorial,
October 2017
The World at Totality: A Season of Anger, Devastation, and Mourning
Lezlie Kinyon, Ph.D. Editor in Chief, Coreopsis Journal of Myth and Theatre
Where Do We Go From Here?
This has been a terrible summer of fires, devastating storms, and in the face of rising fascism, violence in our streets. Then, just as we took a deep breath, the terrible shootings in Las Vegas filled our newsfeeds. It seems that we have entered a time of pain, horror, anger, and mourning. We’ve lost heroes and mourn them. We weep for the people of Puerto Rico and the Islands of the Caribbean, we watch in horror as acre after acre, mile after mile of the West burns in wildfire.
As I write 20,000 acres are burning in the North Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area and the northern counties. This is the nightmare scenario of an urban wildfire, thousands of people are fleeing their homes in Yuba, Mendocino, Sonoma, and Napa counties. The sky over the hills in Berkeley, where I write, are covered in heavy smoke, and we are under an Extreme Fire Alert throughout the region. There have been high winds and more are expected later today.
The busy 101 corridor is closed through the city of Santa Rosa. While the full picture of the burn area won’t be available for many days, yet, it is clear that many protected areas, including national monuments, state parks with ancient stands of old growth redwood, trails that wind lazily through oak covered hills, suburban neighborhoods, the award winning wineries, the beautiful Old California neighborhoods and small towns, iconic places such as the Luther Burbank Center and huge swaths of the old Silverado Trail that stretches from Healdsburg, past Calistoga into the Mayacmas Mountains and the Coastal Range are all gone or burning as I write. Places that have made this part of northern California such a beautiful, welcoming place to live. I have family in Mendocino county. As I write we are waiting to hear from them and if their home is safe. The Redwood Complex fire has all but destroyed several neighborhoods around Ukiah and Redwood Valley, the flames rushing so fast through towns and reservation land that residents fled with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.
It’s hard to write about the events of this summer and focus on the art and beauty of creating ritual under these conditions. It is doubly hard to speak of hope.
And, yet, ritual is a powerful tool to confront the grief and anger we feel as well as celebrating the good that remains. We meet, in community, small groups, or alone and renew connections of human to human as we face an uncertain future together. It does not matter what gods or spirits we evoke, or the actions taken within that sacred, ritual space. The touching of human heart to human heart is, as the Wiccans say, a moment of “perfect love and perfect trust”. We know in that moment that we have survived, and will survive, remaining ourselves and facing what comes next.
There has been hope in all of this, an event that touched deeply, a sign if you will, that the great cycles of the Earth remain, and will continue. It was just a small reminder that all is well in the universe; if not here where I live. It gave me strength to walk forward, to keep fighting for what is right for our Earth’s health and the survival of her peoples: human and all of our furred, feathered and scaled cousins.
I don’t know where we go from here. Within the ritual circle, we can view Totality is a mythic metaphor; we enter the darkness, the dragon eats the sun whole, and we stand in awe, and in wonder, as the bright ring of hope emerges.
The World at Totality
On August 21st, I traveled with my partner to a lake high in the mountains near the Oregon border with Idaho. We had been invited by a friend to join in with his family to witness and celebrate what we thought would a once in a lifetime chance to experience a total eclipse. It was a long drive through the smoky northern California mountains and the arid desert of Eastern Oregon. The wildfires that have burned so fiercely all summer from San Diego to Anchorage cast a nearly apocalyptic pall over our journey north from the Bay Area.
I had witnessed partial and annular eclipses. I knew what to expect and understood the mechanics of an eclipse. Nothing truly prepared me for the experience of totality. It brought me to my feet and, breathless, the sky filled with stars, the horizon showed sunset colors, and the sun’s heart was covered by the moon. The quality of light at that moment is nearly impossible to describe. While I don’t have the camera or the lenses to truly capture the experience, still, I took the photos featured on this page trying to capture it as the darkness of totality fell around us. As the light faded into the almost-twilight of totality, the world grew still, the birds sang their evensong, and fell silent. The lake’s surface stilled and lake trout leaped into the air seeking flying insect prey. Small night flying insects swirled at the tops of the tall grasses all around us. Through the special glasses, I could see the mountains of the moon, and, as the moon fully obscured the sun, the world seemed to stop. The sun’s corona emerged in a sudden burst of beauty, as if feathers of light swayed and flowed in infinite slowness. I felt that I could not breathe with the wonder and awe that engulfed me. What ever else that goes on on this earth: this is what is real, this is the sheer wonder of where we live on this tiny corner of the vastness of the universe beyond. Our moon, her relation to the earth and the sun is unique to us, here. Nowhere else would the exact size, shape and distances of the sun, moon and earth would reveal itself in exactly this way. I am privileged to be alive here, now and to have witnessed this event.
Even writing this, now, over a month later, I cannot fully describe this experience. The universe was revealed in the sky, and it was the most awesome experience that I have witnessed, bar none.
Returning home, I wrote a poem that was on the back of a grocery receipt. Unfortunately, during a clean up, the slip of paper was lost.
Some weeks later, I found it and was transported back to that lake in August:
Solar Eclipse (1)
After a kiss of darkness
reveals all
a bright ring of hope
Manifests
An owl flies
across shimmering summer water
stilled by the moon’s shadow passing
Day comes a second time
as we journey home
— L. Kinyon, 2017
(When I wrote this I was thinking about the music of JoJo Razor, so I am going to dedicate the first iteration to her)
Some time later, this poem emerged, which I will call The World at Totality.
The World at Totality
Darkness beyond light
From Darkness
Beyond darkness
Words flee
Kissing the sky
We returned forgetting to breathe.
— L. Kinyon, 2017
As the light returned and the “diamond ring” emerged, the world also emerged from the twilight gloom, and I could, once again, breathe. As the sun re-emerged, an owl flew from the wooded hill across the lake from where were were standing into the trees behind us. I could almost hear it complaining that it was not time to be awake.
We plan to travel to another place in the world where an eclipse can be seen. There are many opportunities over the next several decades from the Andes to Antarctica. There is a page, here, where you can find out more concerning where, when and how to safely observe an eclipse.
Other people with better cameras than I have have posted photos and videos of the August eclipse, I found this posted on a Facebook page dedicated to solar eclipses.
I plan to acquire a better camera and some lenses to photograph the event.
And … From here…
Each time an event in the larger cycle of Earth and Sky visits us with awe and wonder: the change of seasons, the awe of a winter storm, the tidal cycles of the world’s oceans, a natural disaster or an eclipse of the sun or moon we are reminded of the place and time we live within. The small things: the sound of water flowing over stone, the blooming of a rare flower, the silence of the forest at that moment before dawn. These are the things that remind us of what it means to be human, awake, and aware in this earth at this time and place. This is where the ritual arts live and bring us succor in challenging times when all seems on the edge of being lost.
We at Coreopsis Journal hold all of you in our hearts and in our thoughts and make this small offering of this Autumn Issue: for hope, for life, for the return of joy in being alive.
We especially thank our cover artist, Valerianna Claff and, also, Hasse Froberg, Jamie Glaser, Jojo Razor, and Greg Spawton for sharing their music of hope…and, magic… with us and our readers this issue. Special thanks goes to Jojo Razor for the design of this issue.
After trotting the globe, Our Web Mistress, Tatyanna Wilkinson, will return from her adventures next issue. Happy Travels, Tatyanna!
You are wonderful! Thank you!
Reference:
The Science: Mechanics of Solar Eclipses
http://moonblink.info/Eclipse/why/solar
CalFire, Redwood Complex fire “Redwood Complex Fire: CalFire crews look ahead as fire grows to ….” 10 Oct. 2017, http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/general-news/20171010/redwood-complex-fire-calfire-crews-look-ahead-as-fire-grows-to-19000-acres. Accessed 10 Oct. 2017.
Lezlie A. Kinyon holds a Ph.D. In Human Science form Saybrook University, San Francisco, CA. She is the current President of the Society for Ritual Arts, an active member of the International Society for the Systems Sciences and a poet and a working artist in multi-media fiber arts. A bit more about her can be found here.