I am complete.
transition over|negredo to albedo|the dream-pelican|saved me|pulled me from the sea|pierced her own breast|fed me with her own blood|then became a dragon|and carried me to shore|
(which, it turned out, was never far away at all)
All the birds|hung in the air|silent and still|waiting|watching the miracle unfold.
I'm complete!
Amazing symbolism here. I was just reading this afternoon about the symbolism of dragons in relation to the Goddess religions/traditions and how they often appear in myths/poems etc when the lunar religions are in transition into the solar ones.
ReplyDeleteIs this poem suggesting a moving out of the self imprisonment that mothering is sometimes and into the solar 'I' self?? Or am I just a crazy person?? (thinking of the shift that my friens says occurs from the sun sign into the moon sign at the birth and early mothering of a child, and then back into the sun self again as the childre get older, less needy and we feel the overwhelming desire to reconnect with our evolved 'me' again?)
No, you aren't a crazy person!! (Unless I am too)
ReplyDeleteyes, it is about a transition - pretty much as you've described, although this 'negredo' has been a stage entered into in order to get pregnant, so the work of mothering is the 'washing and grinding' of the Work that I needed to 'turn it white' (albedo, the next stage of the work).
oh, hope that makes sense!
I'm glad that I got the sense of the poem ... probably more from knowing about you, than knowing anything about poetry, with a dash of synchronicity in there.
ReplyDeleteI learn more and more from you every day ... and I'm never afraid, or feel stupid to ask questions of you too (which is big for me who wont ask for fear of being thought dumb or useless!) What is the origin of negredo and albedo? It's only in your work, your wisdom sharing and writing that I have come across these 'concepts'?
you do ask good questions!
ReplyDeleteNegredo, Albedo and Rubedo are the names of the phases of the Work of alchemy (sometimes there is a Citron or something like it in there too)... they are descriptive terms, as the matter really does turn these colours with the actions being performed on them. I'll drag out my notebooks and tell you exactly what these actions are named (there are some I can name offhand, putrefaction is part of the Negredo, calcification is part of Albedo, sublimation etc. they all have corresponding zodiac signs and symbols and elements).
so, negredo is the dark phase - working on the base matter, the 'prima materia' (or as Jung would have it, the contents of the unconscious), albedo is the 'whitening' phase - the parts are processed further - and Rubedo is the 'red' completion of The Work (the philosopher's stone)... I think that's right, I've not kept up my reading these past eight months or so.