Recommending Emergence Magazine

Illustration by Jia Sung

To meet a global need

By Moristotle

Thank our colleague Bob Boldt for sending me the text of Emergence Magazine’s op-ed “Finnegas” by Paul Kingsnorth, a writer living in rural Ireland. Mr. Kingsnorth opens with the statement, “I would like to tell you a few things about this virus and the lessons it should teach us, all the things we should be learning. I would like to add my voice to the crowd and be heard above it.” As you can see, the op-ed is timely.
    We have inserted a few links into the excerpt, for your convenience. And, following the excerpt, we provide some information about the Kalliopeia Foundation and Emergence Magazine.

Finnegas (an excerpt)

By Paul Kingsnorth

In the time of this great, strange plague, Paul Kingsnorth returns to the Celtic tale of Finnegas, the woodland hermit who devoted his life to catching and eating the salmon that contained the wisdom of the world.
...
I am squatting in the sun on this day of the spring equinox, it is a cold sun, I am down by the pond with my children, we are watching the tadpoles squirm free of their jelly under the leafing poplars. The world is turning.
    Today is the day when shafts of dawn sunlight illuminate the passages of the old Neolithic tombs at Carrowkeel, at Loughcrew, at Newgrange. Today at Stonehenge, at Wayland’s Smithy, at West Kennet, all across these Atlantic islands – today is the day the light of Sky pierces the darkness of Earth. Today is the day that aérios meets chthón.
    Neolithic : we think we know what this word means, but it is just another one of our categories. When we say Neolithic, we mean: forgotten people, unknown people, the first farmers. When we say Neolithic, we mean: who were they and what was their world and how was it so different from ours under this same sky?
    Their world, the world of those people long supplanted, was a world of tombs; a world of great barrows raised on high downs, barrows that became the pregnant belly of Earth, barrows into which, each equinox, a shaft of sunlight would pierce, enter the womb of the Mother, seed new life each spring.
    I am writing this on the day of the equinox in the time of the great, strange plague.
    I would like to say, as if I could tell you: This was what they knew. That each spring, Sky must meet Earth, that there is no life without both Sky and Earth, without both chthón and aérios. That if you live without one or the other, you will build a world that is bent on its axis, and that world may seem whole but will be only half-made, and one day it will fall over and you will fall with it.
    I would like to say: well, we had it coming.
    The Irish writer John Moriarty wrote a lot about chthón. His life’s search was for ways to re-embed us in what we have lost, to take us around and down again, to correct the Western Error. In his autobiography, Nostos [2001], he writes:

Chthón is the old Greek word for the Earth in its secret, dark depths, and if there was any one word that could be said to distinguish ancient Greeks from modern Europeans, that word chthón, that would be it. Greeks had the word, we haven’t. Greeks had the pieties and beliefs that go with the word, we haven’t. Greeks had the wisdom that goes with the word, we haven’t. Greeks had the sense of spiritual indwelling that goes with the word, we haven’t. In the hope that they might continue in the goodwill of its dark but potentially beneficent powers, Greeks poured libations of wine, of honey, or barley-water sweetened with mint down into this realm, we don’t.

    I would like to say that we forgot all about chthón, we with our space stations and our stellar minds, our progress and our clean boots, our hand sanitizers and our aircon units, our concrete vaults and our embalming fluid; that for a short period we escaped into aérios, or thought we had, and now we are going to have to go underground again, and you can be sure we will be dragged there by the Hag against our will, and we will fight and fight as the sun comes down the shaft and we see again what is carved on the stones down there.
    You can forget about chthón, but chthón won’t forget about you.

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Jia Sung painting at
the Hudson River Museum

“Finnegas” is illustrated by Jia Sung, an artist and educator based in Brooklyn. Her work deserves a look.
    To read all of “Finnegas,” here’s the link.
    The “about” page of Emergence Magazine’s website describes the magazine as “an editorially independent initiative of Kalliopeia Foundation.” And according to Kalliopeia’s own “about” page, the foundation “is responding to a global need…emerging across cultures: to take spiritual as well as physical responsibility for our common home. / Our programs and those we support are rooted in the understanding that ecological, cultural, and spiritual renewal are interdependent. We partner with individuals and organizations who create and hold a space where pressing, contemporary issues can be engaged through this holistic lens. In doing so, we envision a future that is built upon compassion, respect, dignity, reverence for nature, and care for each other and the Earth.”
    Subscriptions to the online magazine are free of charge.

Moristotle is pleased to recommend Emergence Magazine.