Wednesday 30 April 2014

The Mystic Spiral and the Green Fuse

'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower' -  Dylan Thomas 

At this time of year, every year without fail, I become obsessed by spirals.  I see them everywhere, although this year I have discovered they are mostly impossible for me to capture on my camera, being in many cases more esoteric than physical. 


To my eye, the year unfurls in spirals.



Slowly unwinding from winter's sleep the rampant upthrust of surging green heralding the rampage of leaf and life.  The year uncoils .



I suddenly notice spirals where there have been spirals all along, quietly waiting out the cold and the wet, appearing to my eyes as magnificent heralds of the years turning.  If this fellow hadn't already been eaten by a toad he'd have come out and laughed at me.


Like this one did when I interrupted his breakfast.  


Spirals speak to me of the path towards gnosis: The winding outwards of experience that becomes a winding inward of self knowledge, ultimately arriving at the place of stillness.  And then we begin all over again, taking the next step - just as the winding outwards of spring towards summer before the winding back of autumn towards winter loops lemniscatically round year after year.  


Spring seems to be coming very slowly this year,  the occasional warm days keep falling back into the arms of the mists, replacing all that budding green with a veil of mazey white.


Even so, underneath the uncertainties of whether I should put the washing out, whether the blackbird should lay an egg today or wait,  a coat or not a coat,  the land is thrumbing with the bursting abundance of multiplying green and my soul is fizzing with questions and that quest towards knowing that thrusts its way up through the layers of last years loam, shakes off the last threads of winter's dreaming and demands to be noticed.  The green fuse, the life force, the divine spark requires that growth occur in all of us.









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