Honey and Devastation

Ifá is a faith that venerates the morning dew – because the dew is soft and invisible and in secret ways fertilizes the greenwood with the elixirs of night, because it is in the night Onile (the spirit of Earth)seeks her rejuvenation and brings forth all possibility under the rays of the Sun.

Ifá sees the world as a marketplace, a place where transactions occur, where all possibility gathers into opportunity taken or lost. The marketplace is made up of the 256 cosmic vibrations called odu – or more correctly, omo odu – which are manifested fractals of light in meeting with darkness. These vibrations give identity and substance to all things that are and can possibly become.

Ifá speaks of the beauty of diversity and the possibility of harmonious gatherings – but in this we also have the possibility of feud, war and misunderstandings. A feud occurs when one substance experiences a collision with another substance – in this lies a failure to see landscape and horizon and in this make the pieces to fit – so a gathering of harmony can take place.

Our soul is like flocks of birds, nesting, defending, courting… the fuel of the soul is passions and burning blood and like the birds we act and react with passion in the limited space we define as out self and its unfolding. The birds of all the passions can bring ecstasy, joy, debauchery, feud, enmity and confusion – but it is also here harmony and understanding is first felt and then embraced by ori, our mindfulness.

Ifá is a faith that is anchored in iwá pélé, good character – good character in the view of Ifá is about being peaceful, about retaining optimism and happiness in the belief that we all are born good and blessed – and that we can stay that way.

However, good character is a daily work upon self because temptations all abound, to give up ones calm and positive disposition confronted with anger, envy, pride and so forth – obstacles on the path of destiny.  These obstacles are either instigated by yourself or by people around you who have not understood their truthful centre, or how to establish it. They turn into soldier ants who wages war on all things that they perceive as being in their way – and devastation of whatever is sweet.  

Ifá constantly uses the terms ‘dew’ and ‘honey’ to describe the nature of possessing a good character but Ifá is also mindful of the need to protect ones good fortune and good character. There is an odu speaking of the time when the denizens of heaven and the humans lived in peace, but the urges and passions to possess infested mankind so much that the denizens of heaven that lives on in the spirit of Ifá felt the need to guard themselves against the aggression. The odu Ìretè’sá says the following:

Enití r’ótè sá kò s’ojo

Oyin se tán, fáfárá dé’lé

Eerùn se tán, f’àgàn dé’lé

A dífá aráyé a bu fún ará òrun

Nígbàtí wón ´ngbógun si ara won

In Karenga’s beautiful translation:

One who guards against treachery is not

Overly fearful

After all, when honey bees are finished,

They leave a honeycomb in the house

But when soldier ants are finished,

They leave devastation.

This was the teaching of Ifa for the people of

Earth and the inhabitants of heaven

When they were warring with each other

Ifá points out in this odu that we need to be mindful of the passions that motivate us and also how our nature can be put to use. Ifá also speaks about our conduct and what we leave behind, it speaks about how soldier ants can besiege a beehive and drain it all to quench their own needs with the excuse of this being in their nature – but ifá says that no matter how the mixture of light and darkness is at essence in each and every one we can still walk the earth like dew drenched in honey and do our destiny. The soldier ant is simply a symbol of someone overtaken by matter and infused with fire that wages war upon all that provokes its error – and for such people, like the soldier ant, honey is surely the worst kind of enemy.

Greed/Avaritia: The Seven Sins – part VII of VII

“Desires and greeds will leave you

The moment you are dead

Your beloved will not be with you

Even for a moment.

Destiny will take you

To your grave

Insects will come to you

In darkness.

Your wealth and fames

Will leave you in a second

When you are dead

All will forget you finally. “

Devil Poet

Greed or avarice was together with envy and pride considered most grave of the cardinal sins in Dante’s The Divine Comedy, where he in canto VII in ‘Inferno’ sees the greedy ones as turbulent waves of desire and longing that remains unfulfilled and in a state of constant frustration.

Dante saw this sin as particularly bad because of the inclination within and the consequences of greed. The inclination is one solely focused upon the temporal and the wealth possible to accumulate in the restricted material realm. For Dante this would be a beastly being, a being with no connection with mind/nous – someone who had cultivated the downward inclinations of one’s soul, those that seek to quench appetites – and in this case storing up wealth, denying others of their part.

Robbery, treason and disloyalty are natural consequences of this quality and naturally we find priests, popes and nuns in this circle of Inferno who have used what is holy to become thieves and secure material wealth. Not only this, but greed can also touch upon the spiritual and from this we find spiritual conmen and merchants of magic. There are several people who possessed great knowledge and make a living from their work as a spiritual doctor. And there is nothing wrong in this. But if one hold as sole income a spiritual work one can experience in this profession as in all other that bills are piling up – leading to abuse of whoever knocks on the door and in this an exploitation by fear, threat and dread – the machinery of misery when she searches wealth... can kick in. What once was a rushing river turns into a muddy stream of opportunitism where one feeds upon the misery of others to covet one’s own misery. Naturally a doctor of the soul should be compensated for his or hers time, work and effort, like any other doctor or professional – it is about moderation and awareness. It is not about the ways of the Holy Roman Church that by portraying the image of the meek and selfless monk made itself fat, beautiful and wealthy on donations, legislations and fraud.

It is about not growing big greedy eyes on the worldly that is certainly a ruin in the end, where one need to keep up a fictional appearance and feed lies to ones fellow beings – in return of money. It is about a rejection of the spiritual work to turn into robbery instigated by putrid manipulations or simply said; trickery, which is the tool of a thief.

I believe he who is satisfied is rich – he who always desires for more should watch out for the spirit of greed. Satisfaction is therefore a measure of need and want if one approach the measure in honest self reflection. If we are satisfied we will also search for the satisfaction of others and we will reach out in the spirit of mutual reward and betterment. This is not greed, but the lovely spirit of abundance entering the dance of life.

Greed is not about being rich, it is about our attitude towards worldly goods and riches and the appetite swirling beneath its accumulation. Greet is a desire to hoard wealth – so it is in the greed we find the power that makes luxuria (lust) into a sin – it is not the desire for the realm of Venus, but the desire to besiege it… hence the forgotten term of ‘cupidity’ to lust for material wealth and to possess things and people, ultimately leading to violence, simony, nepotism and political manipulations for self serving ends. Greed is a vice that affects everyone in the circle of the greedy, either by robbery of their goods or by favoring others with more than what they truly need. At times people use the word ‘luck’ for the possession of wealth that was manipulated towards their possession – but ‘luck’ is really a spirit of divine design. Luck is what The Golden Legend tells in regard the Bishop of Myrna, St. Nicholas who was made aware the troubles of his neighbor, a nobleman falling ill of wealth and saw no solution to his despair than selling his three daughters to a bordello. Upon hearing this St. Nicholas threw three nights in a row three hands of gold into the house of the neighbor so he could set his business straight and marry his three daughters of in a good manner, as was the custom of the time (5^th Century AC).

Greed can also take the shape of over spending, and is today seen as an addiction, speaking of shopaholics and those who devastate their own income in an illusory generosity with others. Greed is the sister of pride and the brother of envy, a triad a perpetual ruin and spiritual blindness, or as in the words of Victor Marie Hugo:     

Envy And Avarice

Envy and Avarice, one summer day,

Sauntering abroad

In quest of the abode

Of some poor wretch or fool who lived that way--

You--or myself, perhaps--I cannot say--

Along the road, scarce heeding where it tended,

Their way in sullen, sulky silence wended;

For, though twin sisters, these two charming creatures,

Rivals in hideousness of form and features,

Wasted no love between them as they went.

Pale Avarice,

With gloating eyes,

And back and shoulders almost double bent,

Was hugging close that fatal box

For which she's ever on the watch

Some glance to catch

Suspiciously directed to its locks;

And Envy, too, no doubt with silent winking

At her green, greedy orbs, no single minute

Withdrawn from it, was hard a-thinking

Of all the shining dollars in it.

The only words that Avarice could utter,

Her constant doom, in a low, frightened mutter,

'There's not enough, enough, yet in my store!'

While Envy, as she scanned the glittering sight,

Groaned as she gnashed her yellow teeth with spite,

'She's more than me, more, still forever more!'

Thus, each in her own fashion, as they wandered,

Upon the coffer's precious contents pondered,

When suddenly, to their surprise,

The God Desire stood before their eyes.

Desire, that courteous deity who grants

All wishes, prayers, and wants;

Said he to the two sisters: 'Beauteous ladies,

As I'm a gentleman, my task and trade is

To be the slave of your behest--

Choose therefore at your own sweet will and pleasure,

Honors or treasure!

Or in one word, whatever you'd like best.

But, let us understand each other--she

Who speaks the first, her prayer shall certainly

Receive--the other, the same boon _redoubled!_'

Imagine how our amiable pair,

At this proposal, all so frank and fair,

Were mutually troubled!

Misers and enviers, of our human race,

Say, what would you have done in such a case?

Each of the sisters murmured, sad and low

'What boots it, oh, Desire, to me to have

Crowns, treasures, all the goods that heart can crave,

Or power divine bestow,

Since still another must have always more?'

So each, lest she should speak before

The other, hesitating slow and long

Till the god lost all patience, held her tongue.

He was enraged, in such a way,

To be kept waiting there all day,

With two such beauties in the public road;

Scarce able to be civil even,

He wished them both--well, not in heaven.

Envy at last the silence broke,

And smiling, with malignant sneer,

Upon her sister dear,

Who stood in expectation by,

Ever implacable and cruel, spoke

'I would be blinded of _one_ eye!' 

Sloth/Socordia/Accidia: The Seven Sins – part VI of VII

“The soul, being created prone to Love,

is drawn at once to all that pleases it,

as soon as pleasure summons it to move.

From that which really is, your apprehension

extracts a form which unfolds within you;

that form thereby attracts the mind’s attention,

Then if the mind, so drawn, is drawn to it,

that summoning force is Love; and thus within you,

through pleasure, a new natural bond is knit”

- Purg, XVIII Ciardi, 16-270

Sloth is recognized by a failure to utilize ones gifts and talents, it is about forcing others to do ones own work and to reduce oneself to mere existence where one turns into a burden for all – even for one self. It is a sad condition where disbelief has entered the person’s life and generates carelessness and fits of despair. Laziness has generated the illusion of being a captive in an impossible complication. But there is no such thing as impossible complications, just situations scaled in degrees of difficulty.  

The sluggish one is someone who has given up on life, on friends, on Fate and on himself. The sluggish one is negativity in person and contaminate all with its hopelessness and sulking amidst gluttony (gula) and lust (luxuria) that hives off the natural kakodaimonos of the sluggish escapist. Sloth has turned into absolute selfishness where one become a burden to ones surroundings where one’s own misery and hopelessness becomes the ominous worth of one’s sorry excuse for a life. A life where one feeds upon others goodwill and favors, where one expect the world to listen to one’s putrid lament while one is not giving anything to anyone – not even to oneself. Sloth can work as a darkened scale where one pleases others because one has renounced ones centre or that one like a beast of pestilence demands the world to attend to the suffering void of one´s painful existence. In both cases one has sacrificed ones soul to the realm of Hypnos and has taken greedily the chalice of Lethe’s waters of forgetfulness to mend ones pain and self-inflicted soul-sores. This is true sloth; a denial of love both its coming and going...    

Sloth is said to be the spirit of the daimonic gatekeeper Aergia, child of Aether and Earth, who watched the gates of Hypnos in the realm of Pluto and fell sway to his powers and fell into accidia, or ‘being consumed by sleep’.  

The parenthood is interesting, because according to Hyginus several of the most grave sins were bon from Aether comingling with Earth, such as Wrath (Ira) and Pride (Superbia), but also the spirit of Incest (Incestum), Lies (Mendacium) and Fear (Timor) were brothers and sisters of Aergia, the spirit of sloth.

Sloth could be understand more as a form of indulgence than mere laziness, we are speaking of a station beyond laziness, where one’s sluggish ways has led to a reluctance towards life and one is simply giving up and just comply with whatever whims and commands someone expresses, one turn into a stupefied pleaser of the world renouncing ones will and soul to the crowds.

But we are at the core speaking of sleep, portal for dreams; the realm of Hypnos. 

  

Hypnos was the daimon of sleep and his realm was found in the darkest recesses of the night or Nyx – his mother. He was brother of Thanatos (death, but peaceful) and Oneiro (dreams). His form was that of a winged young man, similar to an angel, holding a horn of poppies and a torch turned towards the ground.  

Dreams comes in a variety of manifestations ranging from the divine dream that hungers for manifestation to the dull day dream of someone who finds himself locked down in a situation of dislike and disgrace that one seek to escape by living in fantasy and illusion rather than the magical dream of possibility. The sin of sloth is to renounce the divine dream in favor of escapism. Sloth is to drink so hardly from the cornucopia of opium that one gulps down Lethe’s water and forgets Self and purpose in a dreadful dross of existence awaiting to become dirt and earth… So Hypnos, great daimon can give you Thanatos or Oneiro, death or dream… in the words of Edgar Allen Poe:

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Gula/Gluttony: The Seven Sins – part V of VII

“Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange,

Through his wide threefold throat, barks as a dog

Over the multitude immersed beneath.

His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard,

His belly large, and claw'd the hands, with which

He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs

Piecemeal disports.”

-       Dante; Circle 3 Canto 6

Gluttony is the opposite of temperance and is a vice caused by an affliction of Venus and Moon that take the form of overindulgence and selfishness. Commonly it refers to excess of food and drink leading to another sin, sloth or laziness that in turn opens for a general neglect of soul, body and mind that is replaced by an insatiable and constant hunger. This is why Dante places Cerberus here, the guardian of the circles that lead to more grave sins, a gluttonous monster, representing the beastly nature of black appetites.  It is a warning that one might risk to lose ones divine mind and succumb ones soul to the realm of the beastly.

Gluttony was seen by the Carmelite St. John of the Cross as a great impediment to reach satisfaction and grace because it would eradicate the sight for destiny and purpose and replace it with a desire for the worldly alone, where our prayers would be of personal and material gain and not for serenity and purpose. This form of spiritual gluttony is also showing itself in the erratic appetite some have for searching spiritual authority through the desire for gaining initiations for the sole purpose of status and recognition. The spiritual gluttony has turned into avarice and any satisfaction is getting lost in imbalanced appetites that lead one further away from the guidance of one’s daimons.

Temperance is the virtue that keeps gluttony in check. Temperance is not about denial of the good life and the pleasures of flesh and food, but about recognition of balance and in this a desire to realize ones station in life and in the world. Temperance is the spirit of sharing and caring, to enjoy the gifts of life and the world in conformity with need and pleasure – but with mindful consideration.

The vice of Gluttony is seen in the people who always want more because their axis is rooted in their belly, the abode of appetites and hunger, dislocated from the passion of the heart and the serenity of the mind. Rather it strikes downward and takes the shape of a selfish desire for quenching ones hunger without remorse or reflection.  The gluttonous takes not only his own fill of food and feast - but happily the fill and satisfaction of others... Gluttony is not only about food and drink, it touches upon all areas of human activity where appetites are in motion and the hunger for power and status is perhaps a greater and more blinding vice than the mere overeating or over drinking...or.... allow me to close these musings with a poem by Lonnie Hicks   

Gluttony and I

I have Gluttony's appetite! 
my calories intoxicate. 
Food plumps my mental wit; 
eating slight dulls merriment. 
Fill my tankard now! 
Let Gluttony abound! 

Heave comestibles round my plate! 
Obscure my seat mates stick-thin bags of bones. 
I vowed at 35 to then forsake 
the premature death self-denial brings. 

At death, in a coffin large, perhaps, 
no one will shame or condemn me 
simply because I ate my fill 
and bedded down with Gluttony. 

No one will say at my Wake 
'My he looks beautifully thin' 
rather I fully expect 
they'll ignore the matter of weight 
and comment 'Humm. he looks real good dead.' 

So I ask why should I restrict 
my draught and food intake? 

I hear the cat-calls 
and pleas all around 
'Keep eating that way and you will put your health at 
risk' 
Maybe, but, we will all someday, 
in life, check out through double doors on high 
I for one want to order first 
a burger and some fries! 

Put there, too, in stone 
my final epithet; 
'He had a good time- 
Ate Everything In Sight.' 

PS. While others at the funeral 
debate the yang and ying 
slip over by my coffin top 
won't you 
some spicy chicken wings! 

When they bury me, 
ignore those munching sounds 
you hear 
below the coffin closed. 
Some caviar, an aperitif 
at work, I suspect 
the happy traveler! 

Remember this: 

'Misunderstood he was 
and, too, dear friend Gluttony.' 

So Gluttony smuttony. 
Who gives a care? 
Pass me friend the large ladle 
and an hour from now 
all of this 
will go to the wind! 
Gluttony, Gluttony 
friend to the end!

Lonnie Hicks