Chopping Wood and Fetching Water

There is a wonderful old vision - perhaps it originates in Japan, and may actually be seen in a woodcut by one of the Japanese Masters such as Hokusai. It show a burning building, with two rows of people between the fire and the river. One row is passing empty buckets from hand to hand en route to the river, the other, full buckets, en route to the fire.

This is a possible analogy of how we should be working together but it depends of course on whether the fire is near to a river, or any source of water, a well, or a tap. Another image, a sort of visionary image, that has always been imprinted on some back page of my brain, (and I am not sure which hemisphere) - is a image of a vast dam in the middle of a huge dessert. Here, the emphasis is on hydraulics. The water must be brought to the thirsty earth, to the spiritual aridity of humanity. Thus, engineering is necessary, canals, pipes, plumbing. Or if all fails spades to dig the watercourses. All this involves Work, and we are a lazy species. This could be called: social engineering . . .

Another image, comes from the beautiful and mystical novel ‘Mount Analogue’ by Rene Daumal. Here the analogy is Mountain Climbing. Those who have gone upwards, towards the Peak, or Goal, always prepare the Way for those Ascending from Beneath. They chop wood and leave fresh food for those ascending. As Above So Below. Basically, this should be the principle of any Fellowship. It has resonances with the Dream of Jacob, and the Angels going up and down the Ladder. On a mundane level, most people, when they ascend the social ladder, pull the ladder up behind them.

Unfortunately, there is still a greater reservoir of selfishness and greed - even among my personal friends and it has caused me great pain to see how the basics needs of the self have triumphed over any altruistic motives. But then this is an absolute indictment of our acceptance of competition and greed as the ground motivation of our society. People treat one another accoding to their position on the Food Chain. As such, we must accept the inevitable consequences of such behavior, in the Small Picture, and in the Big Picture, it will only lead to a ruination of the species, if this has not already become an irreversible process.

The world is dying, as one old matriarch said, from a lack of love. The world is burnt dry by the selfishness of humanity. There are great reservoirs of resources, of wealth - of plenty - which are held for the few - by the few. The New Visions which are arising at the moment, in the attempt to counteract this materialism, that may, or may not, destroy the planet - have manifested in countless forms, among many which we count as our own forms, the ones which we have spiritually, intellectual and culturally identified with. These forms, include social forms, religious forms or scientific forms to use a few labels. Among these, for example, I can make a list of all the subjects and their corresponding forms, or manifestations that have interested or involved me in action over the decades, e.g. Buddhism, the Tarot, Art, History, Archaeology, Jungian Psychology, Astrology, Literature, Theatre, Music, Ecology and so on. You can do the same. And mostly, we find there are wide areas of convergence that we share, that demonstrate our mutual friendship, our Fellowship, and hopefully, eventually, our commitment to Serving All Sentient Beings in whatever enlightened or suitable Form we find, or  Create.

Some Forms have Traditions - and some of these Traditions, for various reasons have been hidden and are in the process of re-emerging in the present time. Or, perhaps they have always been present in the ürgrund of Archetypes, and merely manifest in so-called New Forms, to satisfy the Needs of the Day.

One of these forms, and a Form of supreme importance is the Web. It has taken me a years of working on the Web – to digest what it has to offer as a tool, as a medium - and so on. A period of testing and trial. It is my idea of a Hermetic Heaven on Earth! But like all tools, it must be used according to its Inner Nature - which in this case, is definitely Mercurial, and therefore Hermetic. So this brings me back to the practical aspects of fires and buckets, and dams and sluice gates, and of Rest Houses, where those, whom we love, leave fresh milk and freshly baked bread - for those coming up the mountainside, whom we love…

So, let us continue with the work that needs to be done..

Samten de Wet: from the Archives: A Letter to a Friend, Turin, I Due Melograni, 14th October 1997.