The Brown Lady returns

“The most powerful rituals happen when we simply create an opening and an atmosphere of receptivity ...”

Starhawk, The Earth Path

Hundreds of people are on a slow, deliberate pilgrimage along the Yarra River. From its silty confluence with Port Phillip Bay, they wind their way to the river’s source in the ranges east of Melbourne.

It occurs once every two years in autumn, when the rains begin to soak the land parched after summer. In groups, each of a particular locality along its length or ordered according to profession or other kind of interest, they uproot weeds and plant native trees along the Yarra’s banks.

Wandering creeper, hawthorn and blackberry bushes that choke the side of the river make way for tussock grass, tree violet, banksia and red gums. Fences are put up or mended to keep people and feral animals out of some areas; fox and rabbit holes are filled in.

Towards the end of each day the Brown Lady appears. She is carried by a couple of willing souls on a platform, an effigy of a woman regally clothed in brown. She is a symbol of the river, its distinctive colour made by the movement of clay soil. When she appears, a person from each group approaches and attaches an item to her that represents the group’s work that day: a blackwood twig, the shell of a cicada, a chain of chicken wire or a piece of paper with words of some kind. There is joy and delight with the appearance of the Brown Lady and welcome at the end of a day’s work. In a little while she will join with others that have appeared in other places along the river, all of them coming together at a central place before the main and largest Lady. Here all the people gather to share food, sing and dance, rejoicing in the life of the river and the great bounty she brings to all who depend on her.

I had a vision of this planting/weeding pilgrimage and the Brown Lady while walking along a part of the Yarra in suburban Melbourne. In this area there is a lot of wandering creeper that seems to be strangling the life out of the floodplain. Starhawk says in The Earth Path that the seasonal rituals she and her neighbours perform in northern California are what “the land told us to do”. Perhaps something of the openness and sensitivity required to listen to the land was with me when the pilgrimage idea arrived – a human dreaming meeting the dreaming of the land.

Paganism may sound like something bizarre out of the past, but I believe it holds important lessons for our culture. A look at the history of Western civilisation shows that periods of cultural renewal and flowering occur when there is a revitalisation of the past in the service of new ideas and vision. Classical civilisation grew on the fertile soil of the Greek mythological heritage. The Renaissance was inspired by a rediscovery of Plato and classical ideals. More recently, the social movements that catalysed dynamic change in the 1960s were influenced by the romanticism and utopian socialism/anarchism of the 18th and 19th centuries. The past is drawn upon to propel new life.

Reverence for all life is the heritage that paganism brings. It places humans within a web of connections and in appropriate relationship to all other species on Earth; not as the masters of everything but as a humble and important link in the chain of life. And it is one way to give sacrament to this relationship, to provide a spiritual container for it.

I think we are in sore need of sacrament, of life-giving and nurturing ritual that affirms our communion with all life. The importance of ritual lies in its translation of spiritual energy – the bubbling cauldron of the psyche – into form. The channelled, purposeful release of such energy to further life can be immensely powerful and liberating: the Brown Lady pilgrimage could be of this order if it actually occurred.  

In the meantime our secular culture denies and suppresses the voices of spirit. It’s possible that some day this pent-up energy will burst forth in a general way into the world – uncontrolled, undisciplined, unmediated by wisdom or tradition, spiritual energy is a grave danger. That’s why there is a pressing need now for life-affirming ritual, for appropriate channels and forms, for learning from older religious traditions, for the imagination tuned to the vibrant humming of the earth.

Science and spirit

I’m fascinated by the English physicist Brian Cox. In his popular TV shows that examine the dynamics of our universe, he conveys a joy and wonder that I find infectious.

In the first episode of Wonders of the Solar System, Cox and his crew are in the holy Indian city of Varanasi, waiting on the bank of the river Ganges to observe a solar eclipse. Thousands of Hindu worshippers are all around, preparing for what to them will be a sacred moment. Speaking to the camera, Cox says scientists can predict the date and duration of future eclipses for hundreds of years to come. Science is based on provable facts, he adds, and not faith. When the eclipse occurs, Cox seems as awe-struck as the Hindus around him.

If faith is defined as adherence to a particular system of knowledge, then it seems to me that science is as much reliant on faith as any religion. More so if it claims to be the only or superior system. Though its achievements are prodigious and it has radically changed and enlightened the world in many ways, Western science has its limits. Mechanistic Newtonian science – where everything runs like clockwork according to eternal laws – still reigns in the popular mind, but has given way for many scientists to more complex and nuanced understandings of the universe. Science is as bound by change as any other system of knowledge.

And by limiting itself to the study of the material universe, it can’t truly be comprehensive. Without delving into the transcendent or numinous qualities of existence, the realm of spirit, there is a crucial gap in knowledge and in human life. Science either denies spirit outright or leaves it out of its field of interest.

To incorporate spirit into a world view is to live in a purposeful or meaningful universe, not one governed by chance. It is also to recognise metaphysical forces beyond humanity that help to shape our lives. I recently read an interview in which the late American psychologist James Hillman talked about the soul of each person carrying an image that was their calling or purpose in life. Hillman pointed out that the myth of each individual being born with a particular destiny was common to many cultures. I think this is an excellent example where non- or pre-scientific thinking is important, even vital. To contemplate the soul-image that you or I was born with is fascinating and can be immensely fruitful to add meaning and depth to our lives. It can point us in the direction of a career or towards a particular type of person for a relationship, potentially allowing hidden layers of ourselves to come to consciousness. There is a truth here that is foreign to the world view of positivistic Western science. It is a truth from the world of metaphor, from the depths of the psyche, and no less real because of it. In this kind of truth there is no separation between that which is revealed by the senses and unseen reality – the two are one.

As part of the process of healing our planet, I think humanity needs to re-engage with this spiritual level of truth, which accords with traditional mythical ways of seeing the world. In this regard there is much to be learnt from the wisdom of Indigenous cultures. We are, I believe, sorely in need of new myths that speak to the current condition of our lives and the Earth and that reconnect humanity within the bigger pulse of life. Essentially, we need a new cosmology – one that recognises and values diversity while acknowledging that all is ultimately one. I believe we are on that path.

Meanwhile, the Earth groans under the ravages of human greed and ignorance. Such wholesale changes that need to be made to rein in humanity within ecological boundaries include a radical transformation of science. Indeed, science is indispensable as we move towards a more enlightened way of being, just not the kind of science that we have been used to.