Part of the Story

Regarding the big question--what are we doing here on the planet at this time, and how did we get to this point-- I had kind of an eye-opening experience in the Art History Museum here in Vienna a few years ago. So much of the art depicted humans killing animals--hunting scenes and such things. Or killing creatures which were half-human and half-animal, like a huge sculpture of Herakles clubbing a centaur to death. Art of this type seemed to depict an epoch in human evolution where we were asserting our superiority over animals; but more than that--it seemed we were transforming their energy into our energy, diverting biomass and resources to ourselves. Conquering wild lands. Driving back or harnessing the animal powers. For instance, Gilgamesh killed Humbaba, the monstrous guardian of the cedar forests. St. George killed the dragon. St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. Theseus killed Medusa, Oedipus the Sphinx. You have to do things like this if you are going to grow a human population. You have to kill off whatever might harm the humans. Humans have to gain access to that cedar forest to cut down trees to build things. The first thing the Secoyas did when they moved upriver on the Aguarico in 1973 was to kill all the caymans. I'm only talking about the part of the story that makes sense to me. Or that I've heard of. This business about the desacralization of nature being the cause of environmental destruction--it's really exactly why I headed for the shamans--I had such a need to resacralize it. To reassert mythological thought; to speak to the non-human beings as an equal. I still feel this way, but I don't romanticize the past as I once did. The Celts practiced human sacrifice. Probably, as in Mesoamerican human sacrifice, it was all done for very positive reasons: you had to feed the gods so they could make life! We don't believe in that any more. Human sacrifice is mentioned in the (monotheist, patriarchal, anti-earth) Hebrew Bible as an obscenity that pagan Caananite neighbors practiced. As per the Book of Kings (1), the priests of Baal cut themselves while they prayed, like the Mayas. In 1990, the Huaorani shaman Mengatohue told an acquaintance of mine, "The great spirit is putting a lot of power into white people." No explanation as to why; that's just how he saw it. Recently I've been thinking of it this way: the earth is like a company with many departments. One of the departments has become very successful, and resources are diverted from the others to support it. A lot of responsibility has now fallen on the employees in this department to do good to the company--a lot of pressure. Just a thought.