The river between the stars.

 "Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light..."

The river of stars, Eridanus, flows fast and true. Once the Sacred river of Eridu, it ran through the marshy lands of that Great city, sacred to Enki, God of the Great Abyss, of the life-sustaining fresh waters, the Absu. 

In Greek mythology, the river Eridanus marks the terrible path of the Sun, burnt into the Earth below. For the sun once rolled out of control, scorching and freezing the Earth, bringing death and disaster. Phaethon had taken the chariot that carries the sun, from his father Helios, and had not the power or experience to control it. And so Zeus destroyed him with lighting. His charred and smouldering body falling, falling down into the waters of Eridanus. His sisters become black poplar trees, who weep amber tears for their lost brother. Virgil writes that Phaethon's lover, Cygnus mourned for him well into his old age, and his white hair became the swan's white feathers. Cygnus, the musician was placed amongst the stars by Apollo. 

And so this story also describes the origin of the swan song.

So many thoughts...resonances. 

For me the Eridanus is the river carved deep and most cruelly through the lives of the people I talk to, a gauged out wound, now filled with powerful emotions. It sweeps them into catastrophic whirlpools of panic attacks, clashes with social services or school, and more and more is swallowed up by the rush and flood; divorce, flashback, despair. 

The power of the Sun, careening wildly off course, is a metaphor for primal life giving and life taking emotions. They can never be controlled and navigated through the darkness of the Heavens by weak compelling explanations. 

The heat, power and danger of the primal emotions require and deserve explanations a lot stronger than appeals to order, rectitude and good behaviour. And to destroy Phaethon with the lightning bolt, is horrific and brutal. Images of ECT come into my mind and I want to weep, rooted to the spot, unable to stop this...

I believe that to carry the Sun requires wisdom; courage, fortitude, exploration that is linked to observation, to experience, and experiment. It demands honesty and humility.

A reason why the article by GG MBACP left me feeling sick, gutted, nauseous, is that I had needed therapy to be my locus of decompression. A place to unpack the power of the Sun - I mean it is in the word itself! No wonder I'm drawn to the metaphor. 

The title of my other blog, the one that charts the crazy chariot ride through my son's psychosis is rings around the moon - true crazy is when the sun goes around the moon...

Right now I think that the Babylonian story is more fitting for this blog. 

The metaphor of immersion in the healing depths, the black and primal waters of White Springs was in my mind before I met Kit. And perhaps metaphorically what I first hoped for when I began therapy was to talk with someone wiser, stronger than myself. Enki is indeed a god of wisdom. So yes when we first began talking via Zoom - and before he called me a minx - I had imagined that our first face to face would be the teetotal equivalent of us drinking beer through a straw together - as if I was with Enki in his beautiful underwater house. 

But...we know how that story goes!

He let Inana into the abzu and Eridug.

When Inana had entered the abzu and Eridug,

she got butter cake to eat.

They poured cool refreshing water for her,

and they gave her beer to drink, in front of the Lions Gate.

He made her feel as if she was in her girlfriend's house, 

and made her ...... as a colleague. 

He welcomed holy Inana at the holy table, at the table of An. [*]

Ah, that would indeed have been so nice. 

In the end Inana drinks Enki under the table, and gets him to promise her all the Me, the skills. 

This part is closer to the truth.

As she is leaving, he sobers up and regrets being so generous.

Inana is already in The Boat of Heaven, and Enki now angry, sends various demons after her. Inana is of course just as outraged, and she and her friend fight off each challenge.

So it is that Inana brings the Holy Me to her city...