Welcome to A Wild Green Heart - I'm so glad to be able to receive you into this space. I wish you rich blessings for this time of spring equinox, which was on Friday, and a joyous entry into the light half of the year.
I'll talk about my equinox ritual shortly, but I need to go via my Omen Birds for March. (If you've not come across the Omen Days or my specific practice of observing them before, you can find out more here).
I was rather surprised that two birds revealed themselves as my omen for March: cormorant and swan. This was a unique event at the time; before then I had sensed it was important to accept only one bird as the omen for a month. But these two were equally insistent.
I spotted them together in Magic Pool at Pomona, and other than the ever-present geese and gulls, they were the only two birds I spotted that day: a both/and omen of black cormorant and white swan. They were accompanied by an unseen song thrush, who was providing a constant backing track that, on that cold, quiet day, sounded both cheerful and mournful in equal amounts.
When I enquired of swan and cormorant in my meditation the next morning, this was their message:
“A necessary balance of soul and spirit with which to approach the equinox.”
This was accompanied by a short passage from Bill Plotkin’s excellent book, Soulcraft, which I had been listening to that morning:
The upward and downward journeys support one another. Although distinct, even opposite, they are the two halves of a single path towards fulfillment and wholeness. While either journey alone is better than neither, the two together constitute a more complete spirituality. Although opposite in one sense, soul and spirit are not in any way opposed to one another.
The upward journey here is the work of spirit, which I associated with swan, and the downward journey that of soul, which I saw cormorant as representing. Before going any further, I think it's helpful to dig a little into the definitions of soul and spirit, as they are often confused and conflated. I think Plotkin, in this chapter, defines them as well as anyone, so here are a few more portions from it. He describes soul as:
The vital, mysterious, and wild core of our individual selves; an essence unique to each person. Qualities found in layers of the self much deeper than our personalities.
And spirit as:
The single, great, and eternal mystery that permeates and animates everything in the universe, and yet transcends all.
Transcendent Swan
In a nutshell, the distinction between them is that:
Soul embraces and calls us towards what is most unique in us. Spirit encompasses and draws us towards what is most universal and shared.
Both paths are vital to what makes us human, but their journeys take us in opposite directions:
The movement towards spirit is a journey of ascent, a journey of transcendence, while the movement towards your soul is a journey of descent, or what Thomas Berry calls 'inscendence' - a journey that deepens.
Thus the importance of acknowledging them as “the two halves of a single path towards fulfillment and wholeness.” So, the mandate to ensure they are working together and in balance - particularly at that moment of universal seasonal balance, the equinox - seemed a very helpful one.
However, I have found that discerning between the work of soul and of spirit in my day to day life has been less straightforward than I imagined! So this month I've also been seeking to learn from observing swans and cormorants as and when I've encountered them. Their lessons, too, have been confusing at times!
For one thing, although cormorants are thoroughly skilful divers, navigating the dark depths of bodies of water to hunt for fish with ease, this month I've seen them just as often in high places, like this one in the impossibly slender topmost branches of a tree in a nearby park:
Or these three, happily hanging out at the top of a pylon at a water park:
And when it comes to swans, though we usually associate them with grace and elegance, when it comes to mating season (ie now!) they're some of the most violently territorial birds I've seen! A couple of years ago at Pomona, I genuinely thought one male was going to kill another, weaker one that happened to be encroaching on his mating territory. This month, in a local lake, I watched another brutal encounter. I had forgotten how much aggressive swans sound just like I imagine dinosaurs did. It's pretty terrifying! Check out the photo of these two apparently trying to consume one another mid-fight. Just imagine if they had teeth - though I imagine those serrated beak-edges are still fairly damaging on occasion.
I had naturally assumed the cormorant represented soul and the swan spirit, but for a while I began wondering if I'd got their symbolism the wrong way round! However, I recalled that cormorant had also been a bird omen for me last year, so I revisited their meaning. Last year cormorant had represented purpose: “a guiding force that drives our actions or gives us meaning.” You can read more here. That definitely sounds like the role of soul. Their other messages resonated equally with a soulish energy:
• Be willing to plunge into your own depths. • Your path doesn't need to be visible to be right: it's enough to know why you dive and to trust what waits below. And, with reference to the short wingspan of these birds: • Our perceived limitations often serve a greater purpose.
Ultimately, though, I suppose it doesn't even matter which is which. The invitation of these two water birds was to find balance between the work of soul and of spirit. In this regard, it is Plotkin’s clear distinction between them that is most helpful. Once again, that is:
Soul embraces and calls us towards what is most unique in us. Spirit encompasses and draws us towards what is most universal and shared.
So: a balance between the finding and acting on my own unique, specific call and gift; and the deepening awareness of the reality that we are all totally interconnected, a part of the Greater Body of Earth and of the cosmos. The further I dig into all this, the more apparent it is that they are thoroughly entangled. My practice at Pomona is certainly one of both ascent and descent, spirit and soul.
Spending quality, attentive time there has helped me to observe the interconnectedness of all beings, and to experience my own entanglement with everything. I have sensed a deep participation in cosmological union there, as I encounter and relate to all kinds of other beings. Pomona, to me, is and always has been a microcosm of everything and everywhere. And yet my uniqueness is also thoroughly woven into it all.
I primarily work with words, and my gift to the earth, as far as I can fathom, centres on storytelling. It is through ongoing relationship, ritual, and reciprocity that Pomona has shared her stories with me, which I frequently tell back to her, as well as to human friends. The increasing creaturely encounters in response to these stories being told encourages me that they are alive and communicating with place as well as people. Listening for, learning, and telling stories of place is the work of my soul.
I should not be surprised by all this crossover between soul and spirit. They clearly have the same destination in mind, albeit by very different paths. That aim, as I understand it, is Wholeness, or becoming a fully formed human - a subject I intend to return to again and again, from different angles, in this space. Plotkin affirms this in the same chapter I've been quoting, “Ultimately, each soul exists as an agent for spirit." The role of soul’s unique gift is, ultimately, to serve the greater Earth community.
That reality reminds me of a beloved poem, so I'm going to pause my train of thought and share it. It is taken from what is probably my favourite book of poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours - Love Poems to God. I've been among these poems again over the past six months as part of a wonderful group of humans, convened by the marvellous Ellie Robins, the Word Swallowers Memory Club.
At Memory Club we've been learning all about memory and techniques for learning texts by heart. Most importantly, we've been exploring the fact that, until the enlightenment and the subsequent western cultural primacy of individualism above community and ancestry, memory and imagination were so closely related as to be seen as the same thing.
Human originality was once hailed as an impressive act of memory, of drawing on the collective human imagination. Nowadays we view originality as an act of genius or personal imagination. But Ellie argues that memory and imagination are essentially the same thing, and for most of human history were understood as such. I heartily encourage you to read or listen to her series of essays on the matter, starting here.
As a central part of this group, we've each committed to learning some prose or poetry by heart - which we will be performing to one another the same day that this piece is being published! Memorising poems is something I've long wanted to do, but have never given it the requisite time and attention. I'm always delighted when someone else can produce a full poem or song or suchlike from within themselves, viewing this ability as a rich gift to whoever is gathered with them, and I, too, have wished to have more stored creativity to gift to other humans. So, with the help of group accountability, I gladly committed to learning half a dozen poems from Rilke's Book of Hours. Of the six, this is possibly the one I love most:
All will come again into its strength: the fields undivided, the waters undammed, the trees towering and the walls built low. And in the valleys, people as strong and varied as the land. And no churches where God is imprisoned and lamented like a trapped and wounded animal. The houses welcoming all who knock and a sense of boundless offering in all relations, and in you and me. No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond, no belittling of death, but only longing for what belongs to us and serving earth, lest we remain unused.
I love how this poem speaks to my ongoing work and creative practice at Pomona. I truly have a sense of primarily serving earth in it all, of being useful to the greater earth community somehow, through these practices; and it is a joy to be of such service.
Which brings me nicely back to the equinox and to my ritual at Pomona on Friday. Much of this was more or less the same as I do at Pomona every week, though on this occasion my prayers centred on asking that the work of my spirit and the work of my soul might be in balance with one another. To represent this, and to mark the balance that is found in the equal length day and night of the equinox, I made this at the Heart of Pomona:
The leaves were all gathered from Pomona on the day: those on the left are white poplar, those on the right are black poplar. I pass the white poplar saplings regularly, but there's just one black poplar present, which I only came across and identified within the last year.
After the creative part of the ritual, as I wandered around Pomona on Friday, I was pleased to encounter just a single swan on the river:
And, at Magic Pool, a single cormorant, drying their wings. I was particularly charmed by the mid-afternoon sunlight illuminating their dark feathers from behind.
I don't really have a neat conclusion to all of this. Both the path of my soul and my journey with spirit are works in progress. They overlap and interrelate. I have practices that support one or the other, and I believe I'm as accepting of the gifts of dark, underworld journeys as I am of those transcendent moments of spiritual joy. But it seems I can't always tell them apart, or read the signs and symbols clearly. Perhaps this will encourage you, or perhaps it will frustrate you. I guess, like with life’s ups and downs, it's entirely up to you how you receive it.
Surely though, following soul and following spirit are both, ultimately, the work of a lifetime.
I'm going to leave it at that, as I'll be back in a week with another post - my monthly report from Pomona in March. I was in two minds about whether to simply incorporate this equinox piece into that, but I felt it was better to put it into the world while we're still near the equinox, and to make two shorter posts rather than one long one.
I'd love to hear from you in the comments - about what you've taken from this post, or about your own experiences and practice of the equinox. Wild Green Blessings on you, friend!
