The religion of the desert
While reading an interesting booklet on homo selvaticus I came across this phrase which particularly struck me and opened up a sea of questions: "...the cult of trees in places that were already sacred well before the advent of the new religion of the desert".
The new religion of the desert obviously refers to "our" Catholic and Christian religion, which had its origins in desert territories far away from us, with climates and landscapes very different from those we are used to. A new religion that, as much as we may not like it, has shaped and influenced our cultures and our mentalities for centuries and centuries.
For us Europeans, the landscape anciently consisted mainly of woods, mountains and swamps. A landscape therefore characterized by the presence of the forest element, by trees, by greenery in general.
If it is true that man is an integral part of the landscape in which he lives, if it is true that the landscape shapes the spirit and sensitivity of those who live in it, of those who were born and raised there, then it is legitimate to ask ourselves how different it could be, especially in ancient times, our sensitivity and spirituality compared to people born and raised in the desert, and therefore also how different and alien to our sensitivity that religion could be that came from so far away, born in a landscape so foreign and unknown to us.
Yet that foreign religion has "conquered" our populations, has supplanted ancient knowledge and ancient sensibilities. It is legitimate to ask ourselves why this necessity, why this need to supplant the native spirit of an entire continent with a new internal "sensitivity"?
Our planet is a living being, and has energy centers where it emanates well-being, strength and positivity. For the ancient natives of our landscapes these were sacred, precisely because they were more sensitive than us to these energies, living in symbiosis with the landscape, today we have been uprooted from our landscape, we have lost these sensitivities, for a host of reasons, including our lives in artificial environments and our culture and education that distorts our true essence. Today we almost no longer talk about nature, instead we talk a lot about the environment. Nature is a divinity, she is a great mother, a creative force, and this term can be annoying, while environment is a new and artificial word, which implies a landscape perceived as an object available to man, a purely economic resource to be exploited , to be modified at will, completely emptying the landscape of its profound spiritual and symbolic contents.
For our ancestors the woods were sacred, the trees were sacred, the clearings were sacred, the springs were sacred. Then came the new religion, the new God, and the woods were transformed into dark forests, dark and dangerous places where ferocious beasts lived, the bad wolf, and a thousand other insidious dangers. The new priests, however, did not neglect the ancient sacred places, knowing well the energies that dwelt there, they therefore built their temples, their churches, their cathedrals in places that were already sacred before, and their deceptive constructions are architecturally and dimensionally structure to capture and reproduce these energies. It's no secret that churches and cathedrals reproduce the sacred and emotional effect we feel when we enter a forest.
No place of power and no sacred building is built in a random place. Entering certain woods and forests, you often experience the intimate sensation of entering a cathedral, so much so do you perceive that aura of sacredness that hovers in these places, well this statement is wrong, it's not that entering a forest you experience the same feeling as when we enter a sacred building, in reality it is exactly the opposite, it is when we enter a sacred building that we should say "it feels like entering a forest", because this is precisely what it is about, a reversal of perspective: with the churches clergy have appropriated the sacred energies of the forest and trees, giving us the illusion that it is that buildings that guard this atmosphere of sacredness. In reality, that sacred energy was already there before the churches, and it was right in the woods.
Fairy: Anyash Muse
We don't need to enter a sacred building to enter into communion with the divine, it is enough to enter a forest, where we can dialogue with the divine one on one, without intermediaries. In front of a large tree we can pray, meditate, contemplate, receive, recharge, heal. But by doing so we would be autonomous and independent, and I think this is precisely the problem, the reason why they uprooted us from the woods and nature, to lock us up in the safety of our concrete walls. Even today, in our "modern times" there is an inexorable war against trees, hundreds of thousands of trees cut down with the most diverse excuses, ask yourself why.... I am on the side of the trees, always!
Deprived of a direct and sincere relationship with the sacred forces of the planet, we are lost and disoriented, easy prey of voracious devourers of souls.
I think that naturism, as a practice of reuniting with the spiritual forces of nature, without artificial barriers of any kind, can have great importance in this sense.
Regarding living in the woods and in harmony with nature, I cannot help but remember the ancient populations of Celtic origins who lived in our mountains, in our Apennines, in these same woods that we frequent, the Ligurians, very ancient and indomitable communities who have always given a hard time to the Roman invaders, the bringers of civilization, today we will call them democracy. To defend their territory, women also fought stubbornly, completely naked, with their skin covered in clay or white powder so as to take on a ghostly appearance, to instill a primordial terror, and they fought naked, moving on the treetops, waiting for ambushes and ambushes. from above, taking the disoriented and frightened enemy by surprise, the Roman soldiers were not used to fighting in the woods, and in this environment they were very vulnerable. These mythical Ligurians lived in symbiosis with the forest, and from the forest they drew what was enough for them to live as they wished, even in the middle of winter they covered themselves with just a few animal skins, and they never built stable buildings or stone villages. They proudly loved their lifestyle, and this is demonstrated by their stubborn refusal to adapt to the comfortable and sedentary life of the villages proposed by the civilizing Romans, they always refused compromises, they always defended their "being wild", being part of nature, it was their reason for living.
Regarding the relationships between the legends of the ancient Celts, the forest spirituality of the Druids and the new religion of the desert, I want to leave you with these words taken from the book "The Mystery of the Druids" by Jean Markale:
"Educated in a strictly Catholic way, respectful of the clergymen who I was expected to greet on the street even without knowing them, in contrast with the behavior of my maternal grandfather who croaked every time he met one, I asked myself a lot of questions about the afterlife. he described heaven as an immense space where little angels played musical instruments and where everyone was dressed in white. That image, instead of reassuring me, filled me with profound terror: I wondered what I would do in that singular place for eternity. A real sense of vertigo invaded me when I sank into those thoughts. Not that I had any doubts about the reality of an eternal paradise, but the idea of eternity, like that of infinity, was unbearable for the understanding of a sad and disoriented child. in any case convinced that that vertigo influenced my subsequent behavior and that it largely explains the path taken to arrive at a certain truth. [...]
At that time I also discovered medieval literature, I fantasized in the company of Tristan, Lancelot of the Lake and Perceval. I wish I had all the powers of Merlin to transform in one fell swoop the unhealthy world around me into a wonderful garden populated by young women. My image of paradise began to adopt elements that had nothing to do with the cohort of the blessed dressed in white, intent on singing the praises of the Lord in an unchanging eternity. I must admit that I liked the island of Avalon, with its trees always full of ripe fruit, with Morgana and her sisters locked in a crystal palace, better than the sad and monotonous Christian paradise that had made me so dizzy. In fact, in evoking Avalon, or the other islands of the Celtic tradition - Emain Ablach, Insula Pomorum, the land of the fairies, the island of promise - I didn't feel any vertigo. I felt protected from everything, even from anguish, reassured by the presence of those mysterious and beautiful women who offered potions of oblivion to the heartbroken navigators. Our Lady the Virgin had given way to Morgana, a queen of the night who would love to be loved with an absolute, eternal love: the vertigo would then come not from the duration but from the instant of the fleeting encounter with the queen of the fairies."
And how many churches, small churches, chapels, shrines dedicated to the Virgin are found scattered in our woods and along our paths? They are probably places of ancient spirituality, places where other energies, sylvan calls, manifested themselves or were perceived, and therefore the new religion that arrived from the arid deserts, from a sensitivity foreign to us, had to exorcise, usurp, make people fall into the oblivion of time, or even worse, demonize and persecute!
Those in power have no imagination, and always repeat the same eternal, monotonous and sad story: a long trail of blood and violence! Even today it is an attack, a siege, a daily assault not only on the life and freedom of men, but also of the forest and trees, therefore of our spiritual part, a relentless attack on the heart of our soul.
Yet the forest is so beautiful, it is so free and wild!
>>> The Aimless Traveler <<<
Free Wild Spirit - You will never have me - by Andrea Franchi - all rights reserved
