Discuss: The Sound of One Trickster Clapping

Where can i find the Mamas’ statement?

Wonderful article, thank you.  We all need to remember this.

Susanna, et al:

The BBC documentary was produced in 1990 and is available in VHS (From the Heart of the World) or paperback (The Elder Brothers’ Warning). The film can also be watched on-line from Google Video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-521537373096312859#

More on the Tairona (or Kogi) people is at http://www.crystalinks.com/kogi.html

The Elder Brothers’ Warning:

We work to take care of the world.

We respect the Mother Earth… We know that the land is our Mother Earth.

If we plant an orange tree or any type of tree and then dig it up by the roots it will die. Digging out the earth’s gold is the same thing. It could die. We’ve all heard many stories that the world is dying. Why is it dying? It is because they have robbed so many tombs. The world is like a person. Robbing tombs, stealing its gold, it will die. We don’t take out the earth’s gold. We know that it is there but we do not take it. We know from our divinations that the advice of the Mother is not to take the gold. We know where it is but we decide only to make offerings to it.

How is it that we are able to live? Without blood we cannot live and without bones we cannot walk. Here all the Mamas are in agreement about what it is we are going to say and how to speak. If I cut off my foot I cannot walk. When they dig into the earth and take it’s gold it is the same thing….Gold has it’s own thought and it can speak. It is a living being. They must stop stealing it.

If they take all the gold the world will end. The Mothers of banana trees, of all the trees and of all the birds, they have all been stolen. They are cutting off the flesh of the Mother’s body. They have taken everything. They have stolen the spirits of all things from the Mother. They are stealing the very spirit and thought of the Mother…

It is the mountains which make the waters, the rivers and the clouds. If the trees are felled they will not produce any more water. We do not cut down the trees that grow by rivers, we know that they protect the water. We do not cut down huge areas of forest like the Younger Brother does, we cut small clearings for our fields. The Mother told us not to cut down many trees, so we cut very few, tiny patches.

If the Younger Brother keeps cutting down all the trees, there will be fires because the sun will heat the earth…. We are the Elder Brothers so we have to think clearly….

Younger Brother, stop doing it. You have already taken so much. We need water to live. The Mother told us how to live properly and how to think well. We’re still here and we haven’t forgotten anything.

The earth is decaying, it is losing its strength because they have taken away much petrol, coal, many minerals. Younger Brother thinks, Yes! Here I am! I know much about the universe! But this knowing is learning to destroy the world, to destroy everything, all humanity…. The Mother is suffering. They have broken her teeth and taken out her eyes and ears. She vomits, she has diarrhea, she is ill.

If we cut off our arms, we can’t work, if we cut off our legs, we can’t walk. That is how it is with the Mother. The Mother is suffering. She has nothing.

Does the Younger Brother understand what he has done? Does he?

The world doesn’t have to end; it could go on, but unless we stop violating the earth and nature, depleting The Great Mother of her material energy, her organs, her vitality; unless people stop working against the Great Mother, the world will not last.

@Susanna

The Mamas’ statement referred to, as I understand it, is not the one from the documentary, but one from this past year. You can read it here:

http://tairona.myzen.co.uk/index.php/about/news/

In this room full of sombre elephants (“corporate peonage, systemic wrongs”) I’m always amazed at how many people let themselves be hypnotized with what’s cool, frilly, entertaining; and generally how they just let their attention be directed by those who have not shown themselves to be trustworthy or responsible.
Many who appreciate and get the double entendre of the jesters would already be counted among the choir members being “preached to”. Others who don’t get it need to have the hypnotic veils of invisibility removed from the elephants. The jesters have to team up with some straight men, too.

So most of us are attracted to the bright cloth and the glittering stone, if only for a moment, but I am curious -  how many of you think that the trickster furthers the cause of returning balance to the earth. Not mentioned here but coming to my mind is Greenpeace, the ultimate long standing tradition of tricksters. I am curious. I might glance at the bright cloth or shiny stone but am really attracted to the subtle hues and deep multilayered stones. Maybe we really need to spend less time trying to woo the media attention and more doing the deeper subtler work.

Sandy Olson suggested, “Maybe we really need to spend less time trying to woo the media attention and more doing the deeper subtler work.”

I couldn’t agree more. One cannot dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.

I don’t understand the Trickster’s role as “returning balance to the Earth”. But the Trickster, at its best, does slap us upside the head (like a Zen master or a Koan) when we get too far out of balance.

The media-as-trickster, however, has assumed the anti-Trickster role of keeping us misinformed and out of balance. No sense pandering to such an institution.

We suffer from a profound cultural, social, philosophical, political, economic, existential imbalance. The “deeper subtler work” that has to be undertaken is the re-enchantment of the Universe, the re-ensoulment of culture, and the re-spiritualization of life.

Our malaise, at root, is a spiritual one - and it will be only by a collective rite-of-passage into a new paradigm of human beingness within the Web-of-Life that has any possibility of restoring wholeness and balance.

Ok, I am not sure. I am at present studying environmental journalism. I amreading an account by Mark Dubois who tied himself to a rock above the Stanislaus River protesting the building of a dam. He had been trying for some time to call attention to the issue with news conferences and press releases, talking about the losses but when he tied himself to a rock and threatened to die for the river, then he got attention. On the other hand, The Hudson Riverkeepers have done much more in 40 years to save and revitalize the most threatened river in America with legal actions and negotiations then was saved with one news conference in California. I do like the riverkeepers.