SPIRAL WITHIN ©
by Tira Brandon-Evans
"Abstract patterns are everywhere among the boulders [of Sheep Canyon, California]—grids, hatch marks, zigzags, curves, spirals. They’re trippy, doodley, devoid of any recognizable meaning. For years, archeological theories about these markings amounted to guesswork. Maps? Menstrual calendars? Solstice observatories? Forget about it. Let’s go dig up a hogan.
There is another place you can reliably see these images, and that is inside your head. In the 1960s, neuropsychologists began cataloging the visual imagery of altered states of consciousness. Subjects given lsd or mescaline would lie on mattresses, describing their visions into researchers’ tape recorders. The first stage of the hallucinogenic experience—whether brought on by drugs, sensory deprivation, fasting, or rhythmic movement—is characterized by recurring geometric patterns, known variously as phosphenes or entoptics. The seven most common categories strike a familiar chord: grids, parallel lines, dots, zigzags, nested curves, meanders, and spirals."
[Discover Magazine: Ancient Altered States by Mary Roach]
Some 77,000 years ago a small group of humans living in South Africa created the earliest know art. Archaeologists digging in Blombos Cave have uncovered a small piece of ochre engraved with a lattice pattern and, along with this engraving, they found many shell beads. Our dawn time ancestors found the delicate spiral nature inscribes on shells as pleasing as we do. We still wear shells. Often the shells we wear are crafted of silver or gold and the artisan has taken great care to duplicate the spiral of a natural shell. Just as often the spiral pattern has been divorced from the shell and stands alone, a pattern complete inself. In addition to being a beautiful ornamental form, the spiral is found at the heart of ancient human invention. Baskets are spirals woven of reed, grass, ossier, and other pliable, natural materials. The earliest pots were handbuilt of coiled clay.
Through the ages throughout the world the spiral appears again and again in our art. We find the spiral engraved on small ornaments and on megalithic stones. The Newgrange kerbstones are decorated with the spiral and spirals are found everywhere in Celtic art. One of the symbols of the Goddess Briget is the triple spiral. Why did ancient man surround himself with the spiral? There are many theories. Some say the spiral represents eternity. Others that the spirals carved into rocks are calendars. Some believe they are simply ornamental. We cannot, of course, be certain what the spiral meant to our ancestors and we may, if we wish, decide for ourselves what the spiral means to us.
It is not, however, surprising that our ancestors were fascinated with the spiral form. Spirals are all around us in nature and are writ large against the sky. Everyday the sun completes a clockwise orbit around our Planet Earth. If we follow the sun's progress from where it rises on the horizon at one Spring Equinox to the next we see it describes a spiral pattern across the heavens. The moon follows this same seasonal pattern in reverse. In the Northern Hemisphere, the sun rises at its southernmost point on the morning of the summer solstice and then begins to rise further and further north each day until, on the morning of the winter solstice, it rises at its most northerly point. The moon's most northerly rising is at the winter solstice and it rises at its most southern point at the summer solstice. So the sun and the moon annually perform a spiral dance together.
"Using infrared images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have discovered that the Milky Way's elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars."
We live on the Planet Earth, within the Solar System, located on an arm of the sprial galaxy we call the Milky Way. We inhabit a gigantic spiral and our very cells are patterned by the double spiral we call DNA.
If C.S. Lewis is correct in stating there are no secrets in the universe, the universe is constantly whispering all its secrets to those of us who will listen and it is no wonder the spiral holds our imaginations. The pattern at the heart of all things inspires our earliest artistic and inventive creations and continues to inspire us today. Somehow we understand this pattern at both the cellular and galactic level, the micro spiral and the macro spiral forever entwined within us and around us.
When we enter into the shamanic trance state this one of the universal patterns we enter in spirit. Spiralling up and down, in and out, we become one with our ancestors and one with the universe. We transcend both space and time and enter the state where ... "the tongues of flame are in-folded into the crowned knot of fire and the fire and rose are one."[*]
Tira Brandon-Evans is a Chartered Herbalist, the Founder and Moderator of the Society of Celtic Shamans, editor of Earthsongs: Journal of the Society of Celtic Shamans, and a Faery Shaman. Her books, The Green and Burning Tree: A Faery Shaman's Handbook, Portals of the Seasons: A Celtic Wheel of the Year, Through the Unremembered Gate: Journeys of Initiation, The Labyrinthine Way: Walking Ancient Paths in a Modern World, and Healing Waters, are all published by Elder Grove Press. She is presently writing a book about the Ogham. You may contact Tira by email at info@faeryshaman.org.
Spiral Within copyright © 2009 by Tira Brandon-Evans, all rights reserved. Used with permission. Top of Page
Earthsongs: International Journal of the Society of Celtic Shamans copyright © 2009 by Elder Grove Press and content providers. All rights reserved. International copyright laws prohibit reproduction of or distribution of this page by any means whatsoever, electronic or otherwise, without first obtaining the written permissions of the copyright holders. We retain legal counsel to protect our copyrights.
* T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding. [Return]