Buried Treasure
"Love . . . is like nature, but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight, and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls." ~ Edna O'Brien
What lies buried inside your soul? What has gone deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it? What is lost from sight in your life?
Some of you may want to stop reading right here. This may not resonate with you and you may not want to examine the contents of your soul. After all, you hid whatever you placed there for a reason. You didn't want it to be seen. You no longer wanted it to be part of life on the surface, but deep down it's still there. Will you die with that secret buried inside your soul?
It was actually my soul that drew me back to Sweden. If it hadn't been for my soul I would not be here now. I would have sold this house and bought a house in California, where I had been living for 20 years, and where my three grown children live now. This house was about to go on the market and I was already calculating what it might be worth and what I might buy in California, when I did what my Swedish cousin Håkan called a "lappkast." I guess you could translate it as a U-turn, but in Swedish it's a skiing term that means to turn first one ski then the other 180 degrees in the tracks and proceed in the opposite direction. The word "lapp" by the way, refers to the indigenous population of the Nordic regions, the Sami people, who had to be expert skiers and presumably needed to make the "lappkast" maneuver from time to time while out herding reindeer. Another Swedish term for doing this about turn is "kovändning" which literally translated means "cow-turn," to suddenly take the opposite direction or perspective.
According to astrologers, now is a time when we all have the opportunity to re-examine what lies buried inside our souls and doing so may cause us to suddenly make a "lappkast," hence the resistance many of us may have to doing so. We tend to favor the status-quo. In my previous blog post I wrote about our general resistance to growth and its accompanying pain occasioned by letting go of the old and familiar.
The planet Pluto is currently in the sign of Capricorn and the mythological symbolism of both Pluto and Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn, is fascinating. Pluto was only discovered in 1930, a time by the way of enormous upheaval and change in the world. It is made primarily of ice and rock. For astrologers and in mythology Pluto has deep significance. It is the Lord of the Underworld. Add to this that Capricorn, ruled by the planet Saturn, is the Lord of Time, and it begins to sound like a powerful combination. Underworld and Time get together. Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008 and leaves in 2023. In this time period, according to astrologers, we will experience a deep transformation of our reality. I can certainly relate to that, can you? Look back at what's happened in the world and in your life between 2008 and now. For me this time period started with a divorce after 19 years of marriage and has encompassed another very difficult intimate relationship that ended in 2016, a Ph.D. between 2012 and 2019, and a move to Sweden in 2018.
Sometime before I moved here, years before I moved here in fact, I had a dream. At least I think it was a dream. It is connected with my Aunt Bittan, who was a very caring and life-affirming figure in my childhood. She seemed to understand and encourage my imaginative, artistic tendencies, where other family members reacted with incomprehension, suspicion and even criticism. I am with Aunt Bittan in my dream and I am here in this house beside the deep waters of Slätbaken, a Bay of the Baltic Sea, reputed to be up to 45 meters deep in places. I take a huge dive from the deck of the house and plunge headfirst into the deep waters. I am not scared and it feels wonderful to be under the water. But I do not know what I find there, or what happens next.
Maybe this dream prompted me to come back and spend a longer time beside these waters and to dive deep into my own soul, represented in the dream by Slätbaken. The word "Slät" means flat or straight and comes from the observation that the waters here can be as still and calm as the glass of a mirror. This surface perception is however more than slightly deceptive as, like all bodies of water, once the wind gets up, Slätbaken can be stormy and rough. The second part of the name means back. The back of an animal perhaps. I sometimes visualize Slätbaken as a giant sleeping sea-creature that lies peacefully most of the time but when its feathers are ruffled can be awoken to fury. Perhaps diving into Slätbaken in my dream is a metaphor for diving into my soul and seeing what I find there. Old roots and shipwrecks, sunken treasure, the legendary silver apostles from Poland that were reputedly lost in these waters during the time of Sigismund I, King of Sweden and Poland.
As well as treasure, we may find stinking, rotting material that is in the process of decomposition in our souls. This is what it is like before undergoing the alchemical transformation to new life and new love. Love that in its turn fruits, then flowers, then seems to wither and go deep, deep down into its burrow, where no-one sees it, where it is lost from sight.
Some secrets perhaps need to die with us, future generations can unearth them and benefit from knowing about them. I guess I, like most of us, will die with secrets buried inside my soul, but writing feels therapeutic and healing, conducive to the process of metamorphosis that is inherent in all healthy life.
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