The Poetic History of the World

The Poetic History of the World
When the tradition of story and poetry is broken, so is the record of truth

The poetic history of the world is in many ways the opposite of what we are taught as history in the White Man’s world, which is a list of battles from the cold detached outsiders view or the even colder view of the conquerors. Sometimes, as in Ireland, where a tradition of the bard has survived, it is almost a lament for all that has been lost. In that same tradition which does not balk at grief there is a warning of all that is in danger of disappearing or even what already has.

This deeper history is not poetic in that it has flowery words, but because it speaks to the soul of the world, and in order to speak of the soul of the world we need the language of the heart. A language with connection, fondness and love. A language always describing with care what men have tried to do, what women have loved, what precious values and traditions married them to each other and to the land.

The language of the heart speaks of our love affair with life, including the mountains and the waters, the forests and the clouds and the little secret places of our love making or lonely walks, or where the children tumble and play and grow to be the next generation of lovers in a song so dear to the heart that only the finest prized words can begin to hold it, to keep it safe and guarded – as Story.

There’s a story they didn’t tell us in school. The loss of individual valour, of pride in true speaking, in living our personal vision from our own unique perspective which the Roman & Germanic empires wiped from the face of Europe… After which we all had to conform to a job description. A description not about who we are or what our personal gift is or our grace or medicine, but about how well we can conform to the needs of the job. Soldier, scribe, servant, general, even politician. Jobs that will continue regardless of any individual who has sacrificed their nature to play the role.

Where is the moving emotional history of the bards of our souls? The losses through wars, persecutions, homeless fleeing and lost valleys, mountains, villages, songs, languages, foods, animals, saddles and cradles?

As a wise man once said, ‘If you want the true history of the Briton, don’t listen to the list of battles and Kings and Queens, listen to the folk songs.’ There we find over and over again the stories of little villages, the glades where courting happened, the love affairs, the children, the losses from near or far distant wars, evictions, power struggles, land grabs, all seen from the eyes of people living the lives of people.

What happened to Europe when the Romans conquered it with their dominance? What happened when that dominance collapsed? What happened when the Vikings burned the holy and learned books of Ireland? What happened when the church instigated hundreds of years of persecution against the pagan female tradition? We know some facts and figures undoubtedly, but the record of the damage to the heart of the people, to the land and the language is lost.

When the tradition of story and poetry is broken, so is the record of truth.

In Ireland long ago, several attempts were made to record all that had happened before it was lost – for it was foreseen that it would be – that soon the old order would be nothing but a distant memory and the honour of Ireland, the soul of the land, would fall into a sickness that could not be cured. This record was needed from the time of the first fields. Before that we were wild, embedded in Her (Mother Nature) cycles, with a sense of eternal time that could be said was before history. The need for a way of remembering suddenly became much more urgent once we began to manipulate nature. All at once, a new way came over the earth.

Then the story of our relationship to land became essential. And so it is. A praising of human endeavour matched with a respect for the wild. The oldest of stories, Gilgamesh, has this in balance. Praise for the values of the city, in love with it’s own newness and brash creativity, contrasted with the energy, innocence, strength and beauty of the wild world beyond the walls.

Even now these tales can bring us back to alignment as an ecstatic understanding of what is involved in the great movements of human story. We are all inheritors of the entire story, as Krishnamurti pointed out. All of it walks in the door with us. It behoves us well to know what happened to our most intimate selves in ancient times.

Far beyond just the name of the last Assyrian King or richest Roman general, we must know what happened to us, to know how we arrived here in this wreckage.

Amongst the facts, dates, numbers, and titles, so much of our history is about power – the battle for it and who won. And in our culture we often have an unconscious presumption that the most powerful was the superior culture. All this has to be questioned. The superior culture did not come about by merely being dominant but through a series of tragedies that struck incurable blows to the soul of the world.

This is not human nature. Human nature needs nurture and that nurture needs story.
True story doesn’t need facts as much as it needs soul.
And if the word ‘soul’ isn’t clear enough a word, then call it love.

There we would have it: A History of the Love of the World. A history of our love affair with the world. Or even a history of what people as tribes or individuals or whole civilizations have loved.

A new history must emerge, which, like so much else, might seem to simply be a remembering of a former, ancient, more natural, instinctive, spontaneous, human way to remember how to live and to be on earth. At least knowing this other history puts us in the picture, but it’s more than that, much more.

The art of telling or remembering this history has to be the language of the soul, so that the telling gives rise to the authentic and deep emotional intelligence of the soul. The heart of our humanity must be touched and kept alive. Tears where there should be tears; silences, rejoicing; a heroic recall of nobility has its place. A trust in the integrity of our ancestors. A telling of virtuous action, rather than a dreary list of conquerors, weaponry, administration and business. That is also part of the picture, but we were taught to see it as progress and inevitable, and thus that we should simply get with the program in spite or aside from our grief.

Only a hundred years ago emerged an assumption that people with roofs made of leaves, bone jewellery, and forests to hunt in were an inferior race, inferior to the conquerors and slaves; lower types of humans. Yet the white man must remember and tell this story over and over again; speak of how he lost his soul, his reverence for the earth, and how he became homeless and a perpetrator of homelessness. Step up to this with bravery and humility and dare to speak a story not of textbooks but of truth.

What human nature does have, to offer a sense of ease and lightness, is endless playfulness. We will bring that playfulness to bear on this awful and awesome human task. Although lately it may have fossilized or have become dormant, we all have the capacity to feel, so we can weep and trash and moan our way out of this, all the way back to a new hopefulness that can be shared. In that is the ingredient we can’t resist – ecstasy; doing what we love and what is in our nature to do.

The fact is no one is happy in this new order. The modern story of our culture is too dead in itself. We need a life giving story, an older, deeper, truer one, one of enchantment and wonder, so that we are no longer lost or thrown away, and less than as a result. Tell it, speak it, weep it. Be ecstatic with it. Remember it!

Generations from now, if humanity survives, people will look back at our barbarism and at the myths we believed. That with our technology we would find happiness, that technology gives the gift of superiority or human development. They will see that the collapse of our religions was not new supremacy of rationalism or science but because we had become numb to really living, because we have killed the old religion of reverence to the source… Nature Herself.

What story do we need? The old stories had a way of prophecy and are as true now as ever they were. What history do we need? The history of men and women living and loving on earth, breathing the mystery and mirroring the majesty of it in their humble ordinary lives. The stories of people totally at home where they are, without the need to conquer, convert, control, or improve.

The real story has no attention to any of the centuries rolling past.
The real story is always happening in all time.
An Invitation:
To awaken this within, the stories embedded in our bones, the voice of heart which is yearning to speak the words of love, of life, of soul; bathe in nature, pray, be humble. To receive guidance, join us at Spirit Horse for Beautiful Speech. Come any time in fact. Here it is seen what poetry looks like outside of words, how buildings can emerge of heart, to invite the lonely and the loved to celebrate together in the great mysterious majesty of Being.

The invite is there to anyone who is reading. And there is a welcome for support, too. The ceremonial village of Spirit Horse, a place where the stories of heart are told, revered, and witnessed, is longing to reach further stages of completion, for this generation and the next, to gather and reconnect to this lost reverence, this lost nature, amongst the wildness of Nature herself.

We are running a Crowdfunding Campaign to support us; your sharing, your comments, your donations are all well respected and will be wholly received with gratitude. If the heart calls, play your part and plant the seed for this energy to be involved in the recreation of story, the grief and praise of all forgotten, and the love for life itself.

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Beautiful Speech: The Poetic History of the World is taught by Shivam O’Brien, poet, storyteller and Chief of Spirit Horse community.
The workshop happens once per year, in and amongst the wild, ecstatic, ceremonial village of Spirit Horse, a valley of waterfalls, yurts, temples and two hundred acres of returning forest; where the ancient soul has a seat by the fire.
This is our invitation.

Written by Shivam O’Brien

Edited by Annabelle Buck

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