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I truly believe that today is a new day
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2. |
Intro
01:27
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Hello there, my very dear friends and fellow intrepid voyagers! My name is Zack Kouns and for the foreseeable future I am going to be your host and guide as we travel together through an entirely new world. On this journey we will brave encounters with wild, savage creatures who bare their teeth and bristle their fur, we will encounter the natives of the dark continents inside ourselves who live lives that startle us with beauty and who speak dazzling new languages and most importantly we will begin to see the realities that we've convinced ourselves of as illusory and so discover that life stripped of concepts is playful, creative, vital, meaningful and throbbing with joy and ecstasy. I'm very excited to accompany you my friends, so let's make haste to begin our travels.
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3. |
Phalanx Estridius
02:44
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Where do we search for Divinity, my friends? In Boreal woods hidden in a grove of Spruce and Firs? Admiring the endlessness of the sea on a solitary coastline? Let’s examine and marvel at the slender, earthen loveliness of the Phalanx Estridius in full bloom before we answer this question, I urge you. From the ovate leaves that call to mind sacred and sensual feminine curves to the long, thin biting teeth of the dusky petals we can surely admire a living creature crafted by the unerring hands of Divinity. Because it so longingly and lovingly arches toward the bluest summer skies, it is often called “Himeros’ Attendant” by lovesick teenagers overwhelmed by the first blooming flush of desire creeping into their trembling, vulnerable hearts. And where does this exquisite wildflower call its home? Clothed in the impenetrable darkness of a grotto in the woods somewhere? On the curving shoreline of a solitary river winding its way toward the sea? No sir. The Estridius climbs toward the heavens in the disturbed soil of waste grounds. Fire burns, railroad shoulders, vacant lots and roadsides are where this delicate creature germinates. We can learn a lot from where the Estridius chooses to reside, I think. We do well to not judge anything or any place ugly or unseemly in this world, my friends. We can never know what ingredients are necessary to nourish the tender seed that sprouts to become a graceful, finite expression of Infinity.
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4. |
Clorvoran Lingamus
01:51
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Wowee, would you look at this? What a rare and marvelous find we’ve stumbled upon! The winged creature perched with such noble bearing on the branch of an ancient elm tree is none other than the Clorvoran lingamus, more commonly referred to as the Cupidian Westbill. The most fascinating characteristic that this scarce avian being possesses is its highly unique and complex mating ritual. The male of the species carves a Yoni, an ancient Sanskrit symbol that represents sacred feminine energy, into the bark of a tree to attract a lively mate. What follows is a ritual that nearly perfectly models the Yonilinga mudra, a tantric hand gesture meant to portray a sacred union of the two genital organs that have united to attain a higher knowledge of ultimate reality. To achieve this profoundly intricate pose, the mates are required to dislocate tiny bones in their wings so that they can enfold one another more perfectly and draw ever closer to their lover. Ultimately they become indistinguishable one from the other in their ballet of lithesome rutting and call to mind a passage from William Everson: “The vast flush possesses them. The Many are no more. This, the great Cloud, erasing distinction.” If we split the wood and find Divinity everywhere, as Christ suggests in the Gospel of Thomas, what does this lovely ritual tell us about how to approach our own sexuality, I wonder?
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Hidden somewhere deep in a Slavic birch forest, living in a hut made of chicken legs, with no windows and a door with a keyhole of sharp, gnashing teeth there is a dangerous and wise old woman who can either roast you alive and devour your flesh or help you on your difficult sojourn through this painful world, depending on her mood. She rides on a pestle through the black midnight sky with a broom sweeping away her tracks through the virgin snow and is gloriously unjust and merciless. Perhaps it is so that she has many names, but let’s intone the name of one of her many incarnations and let us turn our backs to the forest and our front to her for a moment so we can learn her secrets and have a draught of her terrifying sagacity. O Baba Yaga come to us in our secret fever dreams. Teach us about the robust, cruel delicacy of the natural world and how necessary it is to approach the Spirit realm with the proper awe and esteem. Speak to us of the paradoxes of ambiguous morality and help us to learn that being kind is not always the proper implement and that sometimes savagery is the proper reply. Tattoo on our lost, wayward hearts how essential cruelty and ferocity are and give us clear headed discernment when we should arm ourselves with these requisite tools to upend and disarrange the absurd order that plagues our world. On this mysterious earth, your savagery is sometimes the only proper antiphon for the deranged prayer that is ceaselessly mouthed by the callous destroyers of this earth. There’s always one skull missing from the human bones that make up the fencepost that guards your cabin. We trust that in your wisdom, you will always know which disembodied head to put there.
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Grief is the last gift the people we love and lose offer us. It can soften us, make us more vulnerable, help us to more deeply treasure this one wild sacred life that has been given to us as a Gift. It can remind us of the urgency and brevity of our own lives and remind us to forgive, to be merciful, to be generous, to heal ourselves and to extend that healing out into our broken, pathless, floundering world. It has the capacity to teach us to thank the ones who leave us for the little wound that we will always carry with us that help remind us of how unspeakably special and vibrant and irreplaceable all of us are. Let us feel our grief so deeply that we never forget how precious and rare this life is. Let us not seek to be comforted. Let us not seek to be wise. Let us sit silently in the sackcloth and the ashes of our broken hearts and rummage through till we find something worth saving and leave the rest for the moths and the rust. The earth is the right place for love. I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
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7. |
New Earth
01:15
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8. |
Cantharidic Quartz
04:39
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Can a mineral experience eros? Can so called inorganic life experience pleasure? What a wild question, huh friends? It sometimes seems to me that all matter is Divinity’s way of experiencing the wordless Beauty of Its own Essence and if all matter is composed of Divinity, which it certainly seems to be, then it stands to reason that all matter can know its own loveliness. Let’s examine together a specific member of the quartz family called Cantharidic Quartz. Now, as I’m sure you know, a cantharidin is the active chemical substance in cantharides, a scientific name for what is commonly referred to as Spanish fly. As we examine the properties of this playful little mineral closer, we can surely see how it got its aphrodisiacal moniker. Firstly, just studying the smooth, curved conchoidal fracture and otherworldly light yellow hue, we can already tell we’re dealing with a very esoteric beast. The gravity is also very unusual for Quartz whose general density is between two and a half and three on scale with other minerals. Cantharidic Quartz is remarkably light, averaging between 1.4 and 1.7, making it nearly as light, or in some cases lighter than Borax. When we begin examining its chemical properties even closer, we get to the really fascinating facets of the mineral. The compound that it’s composed of is remarkably similar to the steroid sexual hormones that human beings manufacture in the glands of the endocrine system and gives the appearance of being very much alive when observed closely by trained specialists. There are a number of tales in ancient erotic handbooks about young men putting the Cantharidic Quartz in their mouths and keeping it in during their first sexual experience. It was thought that this would align them with the purpose of the experience and banish their fears of impotence or clumsiness. Considering the high concentration of androgen like material, this seems to be less a silly superstition by backwards, archaic civilizations and more a highly intelligent ritual enacted by a people who were very sensitive and attuned to the natural rhythms and processes of our earth. So let’s return to the original question, shall we? Can a mineral experience ecstasy? Thomas Aquinas says aptly: “Every love causes ecstasy. To suffer ecstasy means to be placed outside oneself.” This suggests that the mineral which is partially responsible for the ecstasy in the amorous youths must experience at least a rudimentary ecstasy itself, because in giving forth freely of what it has been endowed with, it transcends itself! The principle is much the same, I find, with the human phenomenon. When we are absolutely open and liberally dispense our remarkable gifts to others, our very state of consciousness shifts from scarcity to abundance and ecstasy becomes our common state.
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9. |
The Karana Lizard
03:27
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Let’s get our hands a little dirty, shall we? Let’s dig in the rich, fertile earth to discover the roots of a very remarkable creature, because to truly know a being requires an insatiable curiosity about their hidden, thirsting core that works tirelessly in silence to draw nourishment from an unknown Source. The creature we’ll investigate today has sensationally unique properties as it bridges the gap between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Meet the Karana Lizard! At first glance, it is not radically distinct from other lizards. The beady, equal sized scales, 4 stubby legs and their egg laying reproduction method all tie them quite neatly into their species type. What makes them so singular is that their tail is rooted in the earth and they draw their sustenance from the soil. What this means for this wondrous critter is that once it has chosen its base, it must stay there for the rest of its life. Let’s investigate this process a little further. Firstly, the Karana Lizards, like many divine beings from age old myths, reproduce by parthenogenesis, i.e. virgin birth. In a myth orally circulated amongst Pawnee Indian tribes, the storyteller speculated that a beast who made its home entirely underground was sent by the great Father in the sky to inseminate the Karana. The beast carried out the celestial instructions to ensure the continuity of the species because all creatures on the face of the earth or under it have a great destiny to fulfill, the great Father explained. The Karana lizards are all born female, the only reptile to display this feature. The mother lays an egg and guards it with an eternal wakefulness until her daughter emerges by softly chewing through the membrane of the egg and crawls out into the material world. With no ceremony and no apparent deliberation, the tiny Karana daughter leaves her mother immediately and ventures out in search of a place to bury her tiny tail. This hunt usually lasts 3-4 weeks and a really astounding fact is that the Karana is absolutely sightless and doesn’t start developing her sight until she finds the hospitable spot to sink her tail into the ground. The Karana doesn’t consume the flesh of insects, plants or other animals and so where this creature derives her nourishment from is an
absolute mystery that baffles even the experts! Once she discovers the place that she will make her earthly abode, she burrows her scaly corkscrew tail into the ground. The expression on her face must mirror the adept as they achieve a state of Samadhi, so serene and blissful she becomes as she merges with the earth. What do we have to learn from the Karana, friends? Is there some secret root Organ in all of us that knows, like the Karana knows, where to draw the Life giving nectar from the Invisible and changeless world beyond the world?
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10. |
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In late Summer a flower appears that turns the green fields to gold. There are over 100 species of this hearty plant in North America and it’s latin genus name is Solidago but it is colloquially referred to as Goldenrod. Solidago means “to make whole” and this inexpressibly lovely herb lives up to that graceful designation and then some. The 20th Century Naturalist and Mystic John Muir extolled the incalculable virtues of Goldenrod by writing: “The fragrance, color and form of the whole spiritual expression of Goldenrod are hopeful and strength giving beyond any others I know. A single spike is sufficient to heal unbelief and melancholy.” In the middle ages it was believed that if you were to carry or wear a spike of goldenrod for an entire day, you would cross paths with your true love the next. Then you would make a pot of goldenrod tea to make that love last through the ages. But young lovers, please mind drinking that tea before you hop into the hay with your paramour, because it’s a diuretic. After the colonists dumped their prized tea into the Boston Harbor, they found themselves bereft of their favorite beverage. They soon found that they could make an excellent drink with the roots of goldenrod and so they named it Liberty Tea. It’s a harbinger of the Fall season and it gently but firmly reminds us to bear witness and honor the cyclical nature of Creation. It also has a lesson to teach us about how important it is to get to know our plant friends intimately, because it is commonly believed to cause allergies. In fact, the culprit is it’s common neighbor Ragweed, who also has yellowish blossoms. We here at Team Capra encourage you to go out into the fields and humbly introduce yourself to this marvelous flower. To sit with it silently and to contemplate its loveliness. When we listen to wildflowers we become a little more wild at heart and a little less savage and that is a remarkable aim for our wayward lives, wouldn’t you agree friends?
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11. |
Delight
03:35
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The entire cosmos is shivering with joy. It’s our inheritance. You were made for joy, my friends! Illusion and conditioning are the fallen trees obscuring our path. The names of things. What must stay concealed when we name? Delight. Delight celebrates the shuddering beauty of everything that is. Delight revels in exaltation! Delight does not need to possess or harness or profit or name. Delight is our true estate. I want to introduce you to a new expression of life. There is no name for this. It has no features. It does not belong to the animal, vegetable or mineral kingdom. There are no available concepts for you to attach to this being. It was created just this moment and it is dripping with the freshness of a newborn universe. I invite you to admire this being with me, to delight in its incomprehensible symmetry. Always, new lands to explore, new languages to be spoken to express the inexpressible. Silence seems to be the closest approximate, so I’ll grow as quiet as an old growth forest and we can wonder together, transfixed in wordless reverie.
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In a Celtic Monastery on the banks of the Rhine River in 12th Century Germany a gifted theologian, naturalist, composer, poet, visionary painter, geologist, botanist, linguist and mystic lived and was a Prioress for a group of Benedictine nuns. Her name was Hildegard of Bingen. She was a revolutionary figure in the medieval church, railing tirelessly against the corruption and nepotism that plagued it. She composed some of the most striking monophonic chants, created her own language, wrote books about rocks and herbalism, had paintings from her visions with accompanying texts collected and published and wrote the first Passion Play. Perhaps, the earliest Naturalist she wrote in one of the texts that accompanied her dazzling paintings: “There is no creation that does not have radiance. Be it greenness or seed, blossom or beauty. It could not be creation without it” She steadfastly believed that mercy was more important than law and this led to an incident that barred her canonization for centuries. She tussled with the clergy of Mainz about whether a buried man who had been excommunicated from the church should be exhumed from sacred ground and moved, because she insisted that he had reconciled and made peace with Divinity at the time of his death. The 20th Century Theosophist Rudolph Steiner believed that Vladimir Solvyev, whose Sophianic visions nearly perfectly mirrored hers was her reincarnated Spirit returning to the earth but I say that she is born again in every child that protects and fiercely loves our beautiful, broken world.
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13. |
Outro
08:26
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The 15th century mathematician, scientist and mystic Nicholas of Cusa had this to say about the nature of our interaction with reality: “It is therefore clear that all we know of truth is that the Absolute Truth, as it is, is beyond our grasp. The more mindfully we learn this lesson of ignorance, the closer we draw to truth itself.” The profundity of this maxim liberates us from seeing the miraculous phenomena of our world as facts and figures to be measured on diagrams by how much pleasure or use they provide us. It allows us, as William Blake puts it, to “see Heaven in a wildflower and eternity in a grain of sand.” My very dear friends, as we part today, let’s resolve to allow everything that we experience a freshness, as though it has just been created and you are the one discovering it, because you are and everything is in flux and a continual state of newness. Let’s agree to be curious and playful and to see the spark of Divinity that all living creatures possess. Thank you for allowing us into your homes and hearts and minds. We look forward to experimenting by your side again, until then may you thrive and wonder.
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Kouns & Weaver Columbus, Ohio
What can I say? Kouns & Weaver are nothing but two old pros in the jungle room
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