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| Baby Blue Eyes. San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area |
All photos taken February 21, 2015
“For thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever.”
While the rest of the country is blanketed by snow, the first spring flowers are flourishing on the hillsides of the Sierra Nevada Mountains due to the unseasonable warmth here in California. Yesterday as my wife and I drove to the San Joaquin River Gorge, I was secretly hoping to find at least one baby blue eye flower amidst the blazing fiddleneck and pure white popcorn flowers carpeting the hillsides: When I first encounter a baby blue eye in early spring, my soul thaws in a rush of awe and gratitude. The tape in my head switches off, and, facing a piece of sky on the ground, I take a deep breath, feeling a sense of the sublimity of being. No one can possibly measure the sweetness, the simplicity, the stunning delicacy of the flower. To our great joy, we found numerous baby blues eyes along the trail down to the San Joaquin River--an unusual phenomenon in mid-February. We drove home feeling refreshed, as if the baby blue eyes had cleansed us.
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| Fiddleneck. San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area |
On the way home, I mused about why I am so enthusiastic about the flower. One year, even though I am normally an extremely unsentimental man, I knelt before a baby blue eye and felt tears sliding down my cheeks. The flower immediately affects me on some subconscious level, an archetypal level, I concluded. It combines the freshest beauty with the severest simplicity in perfect proportion, a combination of two powerful aspects of the life-force, Venus and Mars.
As absurd as that may sound, it makes sense on more than one level. The flower has five petals. Geburah, “the Power” referenced at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, refers to the fifth sphere on the Tree of Life, which is associated with Mars and the number five. (Hence, the Pentagon as the nerve center of the military-industrial complex.) Another name for Geburah is “severity.” From the perspective of Mars, life is a severe test or trial, a crucible that can produce great beauty on the physical, emotional, moral, or spiritual levels.
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| San Joaquin River. San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area |
Lest you have forgotten, Venus and Mars are lovers. On the Tree of Life, a path runs from Geburah (the sphere of Mars) through Tiphareth, the center of equilibrium, down to Netzach (the sphere of Venus). The ancients realized that the power of the life force manifests in great beauty in the sphere of ethics as well as in the sphere of nature through a severe discipline. As Dion Fortune points out in The Mystical Qabalah, there is a righteousness in beauty as well as a beauty in righteousness.
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| Tree of Life |
(The glyph of the Tree of Life is, among other things, a flow chart of evolution, devised long before Darwin ever appeared on the scene.)
Following the Pillar of Severity on the Tree of Life from top to bottom, Saturn, representing the basis of form, is Mars on a higher arc, and Mercury, representing thought (also a type of form), is Mars on a lower arc. On the other side of the Tree of Life, the Pillar of Mildness represents expansive force. The Pillar of Severity limits force physically, ethically, and intellectually so that it can manifest appropriately in The Kingdom, the physical universe. Mars, despite his reputation as the God of War, is a God of Karma, of Justice, of Ethics who establishes balance and perfect proportion on all levels, but especially in social affairs.
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| Pounding Stone by River (center). San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area |
We want our doctors and lawmen and leaders to be in league with Mars. We want our doctors to have no sympathy for disease. We want our lawmen (who often wear five-pointed stars) to have no sympathy for people who harm others. We want our politicians to protect us from internal and external threats. As workers we respect the manager who has no sympathy for those who don’t do their jobs.
As a society we pretty much allow Mars free reign when it comes to matters of health, law, and business, yet in a strange but telling way we sometimes tremble when confronted by the archetype of Mars because the God forces us to come to terms with reality: Mars burns away denial of the truth, whether it takes five minutes or five hundred years. He uses the sword, and he is not at all delicate or subtle about solving problems or dealing with excess. The person who manifests Mars puts the fear of God into you. He is on the side of the underdog who fights for equality and justice and inspires you to do the right thing despite the personal risks involved.
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| Bush Lupine below Bluffs. San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area |
Recently, after many years of struggling with food allergies, I discovered that I have a full-blown case of celiac disease, which means that I experience heart palpitations and debilitating stomach problems when I eat a miniscule amount of gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. Because gluten has eroded my digestive system over the years, stimulants, including coffee, chocolate, and alcohol, also cause irregular heartbeats. The only cure is a gluten and stimulant-free diet. Mars provides the strength and discipline to live within these strict dietary limitations. Thanks to Mars, I have recently discovered that there is a beauty in health that manifests on more than just the physical level.
As human beings we have to live within the harsh limitations of the environment and society, which means partly that we cannot allow one person or industry to use up all the resources. Mars is a corrective to the expansiveness and the excesses of Jupiter, the God who represents Chesed, the sphere opposite Geburah. Mars is the corrective to Jupiter’s vices--gluttony, bigotry, tyranny, and hypocrisy, which, as I pointed out in a previous post, are the vices of the American Dream. As I mused about the baby blue eye on the way home, I realized that when I gaze at the flower, I am inspired to save public land like the San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area, where such flowers can be found in profusion. I cannot help being ravished by the beauty of Venus and also spurred by the power of Mars to fight an industry that is striving to bury the river gorge under hundreds of feet of water for its own benefit.
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| Fiddleneck by Campground. San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area |
In the San Joaquin Valley, the biggest crop is almonds, with grapes not far behind. As Mother Jones points out, it takes over a gallon of water to produce one almond. In order to continue growing these unsustainable crops in a drought within a semi-arid region, farmers are demanding that a large part of the recently passed $7.5 billion water bond be spent to build a dam at Temperance Flat, above Friant Dam. In other words, farmers, for their own commercial benefit, want the public to pay for the theft and destruction of public resources. This fills me with the spirit of Mars: It is this kind of excess, call it greed or gluttony, that must be nipped in the bud.
At the heart of the archetype of Mars is health and balance. As most parents will tell you, too much laxity results in spoiling the child. As any doctor will tell you, too much overindulgence results in disease. As any leader should be able to tell you, allowing systemic greed results in economic disaster and chaos. But also at the heart of the archetype of Mars is the sympathy that extends the beauty of righteousness into a desire to protect the righteousness of beauty.
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