| Marking and Making the
(Earth’s) Body:
on Ritual, Relationship, Place and Pedagogy
Alison Pryer
Independent Scholar, Vancouver, B.C.
Rituals belong to us, and we to them, as surely as do
our language and culture. The human choice is not whether
to ritualize but when, how, where, and why.
—Driver 1998, 6
“Our grandmother tongue”
Our lives are full of rituals. Of course, the word “ritual”
immediately conjures up thoughts of grand events such as
weddings, funerals, christenings, bar mitzvahs, retirement
parties, and graduations. But countless tiny rituals fill
our days and nights. These rituals are so small we may hardly
notice their existence, and barely see their significance:
the first morning coffee, the bedtime story, the daily walk
home from work, the long soak in a bubble bath, the good
night kiss, the phone call to distant family members on
Sunday. When we ritualize, we engage in ludic labour and
purposeful play, investing all of life with meaning.
The discourse of ritualistic practice is sensual, somatic,
tacit, and nonverbal. It melds thought, feeling, imagination,
dream, and intuition with the concrete movements and actions
of material bodies within a particular environment. It serves
to awaken awareness, and to focus intention through sharpened
attention to one’s own body and the body of the earth.
The performance of ritual is the “unity of doing and
observing” (81). Thus, in ritual, “the body that
does is of no less importance than the mind that knows”
(Driver 1998, 81). Indeed, one could say that the body that
does, is the body that knows.
In the following narrative I meditate on the knowing body
and the “unity of doing and observing” during
the performance of a winter ritual.
Winter labyrinth
Last Winter Solstice, a Vancouver community group
performed several public ceremonies to celebrate the return
of the light after the darkest day of the year. The group
created a candlelit labyrinth in the gymnasium of a downtown
community centre. So intense was the desire to ritualize
through communal ceremony that members of the public queued
for up to two hours for the privilege of walking it. The
line of people snaked all through the hallway and almost
out of the building.
When my husband and I finally came to the head of the line,
we were admitted into a dark, cavernous, enchanted space.
As we entered I gasped at the magical atmosphere, so different
from the linoleum floors, fluorescent lighting, and detergent
smells of the community centre’s hallway. The only
light in the huge space came from the hundreds of candles
that were placed on the floor to mark the edges of the path
through the labyrinth. They cast a gentle, soft glow that
was just sufficient to see one’s route, and the forms
of the dozens of people who were walking the serpentine
path all at the same time, each one hushed, and deeply engrossed
in their own personal journey.
We waited until we were beckoned to the mouth of the labyrinth.
I went ahead of my husband, focussing my concentration inward
for the coming journey. Although a hypnotic Gregorian chant
was playing, my heart was beating fast. I had walked a labyrinth
before, and was aware of the tremendous waves of energy
that could be generated simply by putting one foot in front
of the other. I held my breath and was swallowed whole by
the labyrinth. Following the path of candlelight, I took
each step slowly, carefully, and soon found myself spiralling
to the opposite end of the room, and then back around again,
this time the other way. On one circling of the labyrinth
I was at the outermost edge of the spiral, and then on the
next I was close to the centremost space. It was impossible
to tell which way the labyrinth would take me, and I was
carried along as if in the arms of the bubbling white rapids
of a mountain river. I became aware that I was praying.
As I moved, I prayed. As I prayed, I moved.
Time slowed. Eventually I entered the heart space of the
labyrinth and stopped for a while by the pink firelight
ball of a luminous paper lantern. As people circled and
swirled all around me in the dark, I wanted to stay forever
in the labyrinth’s embrace. But I moved with the flow
of people out of the rosy centre, following the dizzying
route step by step outwards and around, a single bird flying
amidst a flock of one hundred. As I left the labyrinth,
awakening once again to the outer world, like Jonah spat
out of the whale’s mouth, I became aware of the dozens
of people who had been sitting around the edges of the room,
watching the peaceful movements of the walkers, meditating
in silent reverence on the flowing aliveness of our bodies
through the dark Solstice night.
By walking the labyrinth I came to understand in an
embodied way that ritual is our primary form of communication.
Tom Driver (1998) believes that, “[r]itualizing is
our first language, not our ‘mother’ but our ‘grandmother’
tongue, and as such it is something we do not outgrow”
(13).
Certain things can only be expressed in ritual. Ritual is
without equivalents or even alternatives…that which
can be expressed only in ritual is not trivial. It is, I
think, crucial, and because of it I take ritual to be the
basic social act. (Rappaport, cited by LaChapelle 1992,
147)
Thus, the play-work of ritual is central to human life,
as it is to all animal life.
Ritual carries phenomenal power. It is a catalyst for processes
of innovation and creativity, and is thus generative of
new knowledge. The knowledge generated by engagement with
ritual permits change in the participant’s consciousness,
thereby enabling the participant to co-create new ways of
being with the world. Driver (1998) calls ritual
a “technology of transformation” (47) in that
it works to establish social order, deepen communal life,
and change relationships with humans and with the wider
community of living things, including the earth.
Ritual is “world-making” (Driver 1998, 149). As
a truly holistic form of communication, ritual incorporates
and unites the material human body, the physical earth,
and the non-tangible realms of emotion, intuition, spirit,
rational thought, and socio-political and cultural values.
The ritual processes re-order and re-balance the energy
between and within all these diverse elements.
The performance of ritual is also an antidote to feelings
of isolation. In the world of ritual, one is reminded that
the self does not, and can never, exist in isolation, but
is always in community. The self is merely a single weak
fibre spun into the hardy strands that comprise life. The
silken webs of sacred meaning, spun through the constant
processes of ritual, connect us intimately to the self and,
at the same time, to the Other. This sense of connection
is particularly heightened in nature rituals (LaChapelle,
1988). One is always in the company of an Other: the sky,
the sun, the moon, the wind, the rain, clouds, fire, trees,
plants, and animals. To think otherwise is to be condemned
to a mechanistic view of the universe, and a deadening,
dualistic way of thinking.
In the following passage I explore the experience of a personal
ritual in which my connection to the earth was especially
heightened.
The tree on White Mountain
I was so far away from my mother when she was dying
that we had no chance to say goodbye. After the funeral
in London, I returned to my job in Japan with my new husband.
But, overcome by grief and guilt, I could think only of
times past and of how much I wanted to be with her. I seemed
to have forgotten about life as a newly wed, and began to
suffer from headaches and dizziness. My doctor in Japan
diagnosed low blood pressure, and gave me a prescription
for some little white pills, which I didn’t take.
After the funeral I happened to see a book on my mother’s
bookshelf, which had been written by my regular physician
in London. This doctor, Christine Page (1992), wrote that
in traditional systems of medicine, it was believed that
breaking primal relationships with the earth leads to sickness,
which in turn manifests itself as mental or physical illness,
and that making a reconnection with the natural world is
a healing act. She wrote that in Tibet, traditional healers
often prescribed walks in the forest as a cure for depression.
For illnesses such as low blood pressure that were traditionally
believed to be caused by soul loss, it was advised to find
a tree and to physically connect with the energy that flowed
from the earth, up through the roots and into the trunk.
I decided to try this traditional cure for low blood pressure.
After all what did I have to lose? I made sure not to tell
anyone about my plans, though. So I slipped away secretly,
and took a walk in the forest on Shiroyama, the White Mountain,
which lay just five minutes from where I lived, in search
of the right tree.
As a child growing up in Scotland I seemed to know every
tree and rock and hollow and stream within a mile’s
radius of our house. But, like most grown ups in our fast
paced world, I had lost this kind of intimate connection
with my own habitat. I climbed the mountain slowly looking
for the perfect tree, a tree that seemed to be inviting.
All of the trees on the mountain seemed unfamiliar to me,
even though I had climbed this route many times before.
The forest backed an ancient Shinto temple, and was also
the famed setting of an adventurous escape by a local warrior
who had evaded an entire enemy army. The local people had
cherished this forest for generations, so none of these
trees had ever been cut down for commercial use. Most of
the trees on the mountain were many hundreds of years old.
I climbed on and on searching for a tree. Just when I thought
that I would have to look elsewhere, there it was, some
ways away from the stony path. A huge, ancient cedar.
It looked like the oldest tree on the mountain. The root
system was colossal. The main trunk was dark and dead, and
the bare branches reached way up into the sky. Perhaps the
tree had been hit by lightening? The old trunk was completely
hollow. I’m sure I could have crawled in and then have
stood up completely to my full height. But I was too scared
of the bats and snakes and spiders that might have called
the hollow home. From the base of this lifeless central
body, however, sprang another giant, living trunk —a
whole new tree. One of the strong branches from this new
trunk swung down in a low arc. It was quite easy to climb
up onto this low branch. Broad and smooth, it was the perfect
place to sit. Reclining was even more comfortable, and as
I lay back against the branch, looking up at the light dappling
through the swaying green canopy, it seemed as if the tree
were cradling me. I felt welcome here.
One of my earliest memories was of a time when my mother
took me to a London park near our home. Lying in my stroller,
I looked up at sunlight playing on the leaves of an old
elm. Now, lying back like a baby on this cedar branch, I
dreamed of nothing in particular, letting thoughts simply
come and go, relishing my solitude, soothed by the sounds
of the mountain forest. As I relaxed into its bark skin,
the energy of the welcoming tree branch flowed along my
spine, revitalizing my whole body.
I came up to my secret forest cradle every day. One day,
at a hairpin turn in the crooked path, almost a third of
the way up the mountain, a snow-white cat stepped out in
front of me and stretched its tail upwards as if in greeting.
“Hello cat,” I said, a little afraid of the feral
feline. The sleek, muscular cat meowed quietly and then
rubbed its body against my shins. I gingerly stepped over
the cat, and set off for my special tree. The cat followed.
When I stopped, she stopped. It was clear that the cat wanted
to walk with me. Again, I set off, and the cat accompanied
me up the mountain until the tree was in sight. Then she
disappeared into the undergrowth. Each day after that the
cat, whom I called Shiro (which means “White”
in Japanese), would magically appear at the same spot on
the trail, as if she had been expecting my arrival, and
I would be escorted by my familiar companion, the white
feline spirit, up the twisting mountain path to within sight
of my healing tree.
A week after I had begun my daily walks up the mountain
with the gentle Shiro to rest in the cradling branch of
my tree, my blood pressure had returned to normal. I was
still grieving for my mother, but I felt as if I were again
in the land of the living. Although a Western doctor might
believe that my cure was a happy coincidence, perhaps a
doctor who practiced a traditional, earth-based medicine
would say that, with the assistance of the spirit of the
wild white cat, my mountain guide, I had been able to tap
into the life energy that was flowing through the ancient
tree. Even though I was feeling well, I still continued
to climb the mountain regularly, accompanied by Shiro, to
visit my tree. I got to know both Shiro and the tree pretty
well. And, when I left Japan eighteen months later, I missed
the tree, and Shiro, more than most of my human friends.
Sacred connection: Marking and making the (earth’s)
body
What sparked my desire to perform this healing ritual, to
make the daily journey to sit with the tree? According to
Driver (1998), the strong desire to perform ritual stems
from a “prolonged or acute absence of moral guidance”
(44). In my particular case, I did not know how to live
after the death of someone I had loved so much. The symptoms
of my grief gave physical expression to this lack of knowledge,
and did not diminish until I turned myself over fully to
the practice of the ritual.
In order to immerse myself in the flow of this special ritual,
I had to find a place that was in some way set apart from
my daily life as a teacher, wife, sister, daughter and friend,
a place in which my social status and professional roles
were not important. This in itself is a healing act. As
Joseph Campbell (cited in Whyte, 2001) writes:
You must have a place to which you can go, in your
heart, your mind, or your house, almost every day, where
you do not know what you owe anyone, or anyone owes you.
You must have a place you can go to where you do not know
what your work is or who you work for, where you do not
know who you are married to or who your children are. (157)
|
© 1997-2004
original work by Andrew Campbell & Marysa de Veer
© all rights reserved |
Such a place is a liminal space, a subjective space in which
we are not defined by familiar social boundaries or expectations.
The place of ritual may be set apart from the mundane world
either spatially or temporally, or both (Driver, 1998).
For reasons of privacy, I chose a tree that was secluded,
very nearly at the top of a mountain, just back a little
from the stony path, and reserved a small part of each afternoon
after school to spend time there. It was my intention
to ritualize that made the walk up the mountain and the
daily meditation with the old tree a ritualized rather than
a mundane act. For the healing to work, I had to respect
an imaginary, but crucial, threshold between the workaday
world and the world of ritual.
Although I did not at first consciously realize the significance
of my chosen ritual space, I was fortunate to begin my search
for my healing tree on a mountain. In many spiritual traditions
across the world, mountains, in all their magnificent wildness,
have been recognized as places of vision. Indeed, in ancient
Japan the name yamabushi, which literally means “those
who sleep in the mountains,” was given to Buddhist
pilgrims of the Shingon sect who wandered mountains in search
of enlightenment (LaChapelle, 1988). In the Shinto religion,
many mountains were revered as sacred places, especially
volcanoes. Shiroyama, where I took my daily walk, was a
mountain that was flung up on the edge of a caldera after
the volcano Sakurajima had exploded. Located on the edge
of a tectonic fault line, a site of great power, the mountain
intuitively felt like the obvious place to begin my search
for a suitable tree.
When I lived in Japan, I marvelled at the beauty of the
venerated trees that surround Shinto shrines. In Shinto,
trees may either be the dwelling place of kami (Gods),
or they may be recognized as sacred in their own right.
As LaChapelle (1988) points out, in the West we would imagine
that sacred shrines are provided with trees, but in Japan
such sacred trees are often furnished with shrines. Since
leaving Japan, I have learnt that many other cultures have
also recognized the sacred qualities of trees: Christian
mystics, Zen practitioners, the ancient Celts, and many
First Nations peoples have valued the powers of trees, and
have sought out particular trees to enhance the practice
of meditation, to provide deep psychic and physical healing,
to take away labour pains when giving birth, to mediate
between the upper and lower worlds, as well as to aid in
divination (Brussat & Brussat, 1996; LaChapelle, 2001;
Pennick, 1996).
In Japan, it is not unusual to pass sacred trees, or rocks,
or other sacred places beside waterfalls, or on riverbanks
as one goes about everyday life. Local people bring offerings—a
cheap jar of sake, a few cigarettes, a Satsuma orange, flowers
in a plastic cup, or a couple of sweet rice cakes. These
places of devotion are sometimes located at busy city intersections,
or even in the middle of shopping malls. No matter: the
shrine, whether large or small, provides the necessary spatial
threshold that is required to demarcate the sacred place
from the surrounding hubbub.
A sacred place may seem elusive, but it is instantly recognizable
to those who are attuned to its moods, and have striven
to develop a personal relationship with that small corner
of the earth upon which he or she lives. If one moves through
a place with attention, one may recognize such power points
(LaChapelle, 1988). The sacred place is found whenever mystery
breaks through into our consciousness, and is recognized
and accepted. To a large extent, this requires a leap of
imagination.
Starting from the premise, commonly held by many traditional
cultures, that the earth is alive and infused by a vital
spirit, which manifests itself through the material, Pennick
(1996) describes how a person may bring the soul of a place
into being.
[T]he landscape is filled with places where spirit is present.
Every time we experience it, this presence encourages us
to make an imaginative act that personifies the place to
us. Then we perceive its qualities as a personality. This
is the anima loci, the place-soul. When this is acknowledged
and honoured, ensouled sacred places come into being. Our
actions enshrine the anima loci, bringing the unseen
into physical presence…Traditionally, it is viewed
as a presence or being that exists beyond the everyday realms
of human cognizance, perhaps possessing its own consciousness
and personality. (13)
Ritual is inherently interactive and social, a practice
that assumes a sense of self that is expanded and communal,
and that invites the energies of the anima loci to
congregate and unite. Thus, to practice ritual is to give
physical expression to the belief of community and mutuality
with the earth.
The knowledge—that the earth is alive and that all
is in balance and relationship—is central to any understanding
of the sacred. In perceiving the vitality, intelligence,
and personality of a particular place, one may begin to
come into intimate relationship with that place. We humans
can easily recognize the cyclical flow of cosmic energy
in the patterns and movements of the earth: we see it in
the movement from night to day, in the ebb and flow of tides,
in the waxing and waning of the moon, and in the death and
rebirth of plants and animals in the ever-changing seasons.
During ritual our awareness of these cyclical flows of energy
sharpens.
Despite a general awareness of the earth’s cyclical
flow of energy, I was still overcome by feelings of guilt,
grief, and anger after my mother’s death; I was unable
to let my mother go, incapable of accepting her death, the
inevitability of change, and my season of loss. It was only
through actually doing the healing ritual that I
was able to understand these concepts in a fully embodied
way. By meditating, feeling the flow of energy through the
ancient, knowing, half-dead, half-live cedar tree, I once
again became acquainted with and accepting of the cyclical
nature of life and death, and felt myself once again reenergized
and in friendship with the earth.
Such powerful transformation is possible when the anima
loci is invited to gather together with human energy
through the performance of the ritual, multiplying their
powers “by fusion,” as it were (Driver 1998, 156).
The ritual, in the midst of performance, takes on a momentum,
direction, and will of its own. Taking place in liminal
space-time, at the margins of the everyday, at what the
ancient Celts called “thin places,” the processes
of ritual have a somewhat anarchic, chaotic quality. To
an extent, the outcome of the ritual is beyond the participant’s
control. The unexpected is likely to happen. A tree might
beckon to you with the whispering of its needles. A snow-white
cat could magically appear. The participant is invited to
respond playfully: “Hello cat!”…
Although rituals are used to transmit old cultural knowledge,
by their very nature, they cannot be performed the same
way twice. Erickson (cited by LaChapelle, 1988) recognizes
the perpetual uniqueness of ritual:
Ritualization is grounded [in the life of those involved]
and yet permeated with the spontaneity of surprise; it is
an unexpected renewal of a recognizable order in potential
chaos…It minds instinctual energy into a pattern of
mutuality, which bestows convincing simplicity on dangerously
complex matters…Thus, the decay or perversion of ritual
does not create an indifferent emptiness, but a void with
explosive possibilities. (151)
Given the awesome potential power of rituals, it is no wonder
that so many are kept secret. We often keep secret that
which is most precious to us, that which we desire most
in the world, but which might be damaged by too much public
scrutiny (Whyte, 2001). Choosing to guard the energies of
my own healing ritual, I told no one of my daily meditation
in the arms of the cedar tree.
In the final instance, what did I learn from the practice
of this particular ritual? Looking back, it can best be
summed up by a line from “The Great Treatise”
of the I Ching (cited by LaChapelle, 1988): The greatest
virtue between heaven and earth is to live (116). Through
the practice of sitting cradled in my healing tree, I also
came to know that ritualized acts provide a rhythm and shape
to the unseen powers that sustain life itself. Each ritualized
act adds a further layer of meaning to the diverse narratives
of our lives. If one pays sufficient attention to the everyday,
one may come to invest every mundane act with sacred meaning,
becoming acquainted with the sacral. The sacral may be defined
as the “ritualizing of all things—small and large—that
are invested with life’s essential meaning” (Lerner,
in Brussat & Brussat (Eds.) 1996, 398). Through the
regular practice of ritual, one begins to know the mystery
of the sacral, opening to its daily lessons, whatever one
is doing.
Ritual/relationship/place/pedagogy
“Learning and teaching…are the very intersubjective
core relations of everyday life. They exist beyond the classroom,”
writes Carmen Luke (1996, 8). Pedagogy takes place in diverse
sites, not only in kindergartens, schools, and universities.
Thus, I define pedagogy broadly as that which acts upon
and acts with human beings in such a way as to transform
their embodied consciousness, thereby producing meaning
in the process.
As the mind is embodied, the body itself may be considered
a primary educational locus. It is at once a site of struggle,
pleasure, desire, control, fear, shame, and pain. The embodied
self simultaneously constitutes and is constituted by the
discursive environment, becoming inscribed with discursive
practices in so doing. Indeed, the pedagogical act is a
“material series of processes, where power actively
marks or brands bodies as social, and inscribes them, as
an effect of this, with differentiated attributes of subjectivity”
(Grosz, cited by Kamler 1997, 371).
Clearly, the knowing self can only exist in relationship
with others. Ted Aoki’s (1997) marvellous description
of “the educated person” underscores the importance
of working towards further understandings of the relational
and embodied nature of knowledge and pedagogy, and reminds
me that such work is at heart a deeply ethical practice.
He writes:
The educated person…knows that an authentic person
is no mere individual, an island unto himself or herself,
but a being-in-relation with others, and hence, at core
an ethical being…the educated person, thus, not only
guards against disembodied forms of knowing, thinking, and
doing that reduce self and others to things, but also strives,
guided by the authority of the good in pedagogical situations
for embodied thoughtfulness that makes possible living as
human beings. (1)
Ritual may be consciously employed to deepen such embodied
thoughtfulness.
Rituals are not merely passive reflections of political
and ethical practice; they are political and ethical
practice, simultaneously celebrating that which they constitute
in the very act of performance. Those rituals, which are
directed towards ethical transformation, are liberating
and increase individual and collective freedom (Driver,
1998). However, the transformative power of ritual may also
be used to do harm, decreasing individual and communal harmony
and peace. Through the performance of ritual, it is possible
to create and maintain structures of violent power. This
is achieved by channelling aggression to establish and fuel
ruling classes, and by harnessing the awesome processes
of brutality and colonization to conquer, dominate, domesticate,
and devour the Other, whether that Other be a culture, an
ethnic group, a social minority, or a single human being.
The practice of ritual can loosen our grip on an atomistic
notion of self, and open us to the sensuous richness and
mystery of the everyday world. It is an embodied pedagogy
where we may learn and re-learn our kinship with the earth.
Ritualization allows the already permeable human body to
extend itself and become part of the earth’s body.
As we grow to know a particular place through the intimate
connection of ritual, so does the place begin to know us.
The ritual place invites us into its living presence, as
we ritualize and invite its living spirit into our presence.
We know and are known. In ritual, we mark and make the earth—the
blue-green body of which we humans are a part—and the
earth marks and makes us. The mutual reciprocity of such
exchange may be called medicine, or it may be called pedagogy.
It is a living pedagogy, a living poetry.
The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum
upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by
geologists and antiquarians chiefly, but living poetry like
the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit—not
a fossil earth, but a living earth. (Thoreau, cited by Hayden,
1996, 17)
Through the practice of ritual we rekindle the embodied
knowledge that we are grounded in the material reality of
the earth and of the everyday: This profoundly transformative
pedagogy acts directly upon our embodied minds. It is an
alchemical process, one where visions and dreams arise in
our consciousness, giving birth to new ways of being and
living.
References
Aoki, T. (1997). Identity/identification: Questioning
“individualism” and “multiculturalism”
in discourses of “self and other.” Unpublished
manuscript.
Brussat, F., & Brussat, M. (Eds.). (1996). Spiritual
literacy: Reading the sacred in everyday life. New York:
Touchstone.
Driver, T. (1998). Liberating rites: Understanding the
transformative power of ritual. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Hayden, T. (1996). The lost gospel of the earth: A call
for renewing nature, spirit, and politics. San Francisco:
Sierra Book Club.
Kamler, B. (1997). Text as body, body as text. Discourse:
Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 18, 3,
369-387.
LaChapelle, D. (1988). Sacred land: Sacred sex: Rapture
of the deep: Concerning deep ecology and celebrating life.
Durango, CO: Kivaki.
Luke, C. (1996). Introduction. In C. Luke (Ed.), Feminisms
and pedagogies of everyday life (1-27). New York: State
University of New York Press.
Page, C. (1992). Frontiers of health: From healing to
wholeness. Saffron Walden, U.K.: C. W. Daniel.
Pennick, N. (1996). Celtic sacred landscapes. London:
Thames & Hudson.
Whyte, D. (2001). Crossing the unknown sea: Work as a
pilgrimage of identity. New York: Riverhead.
|
