Friday 11 January 2008

The Cosmic Vortex

The Egyptians, according to Iamblicus who wrote his famous 'Mysteries' in the early Christian era, believed in cosmic vortex forces they generically called 'gods' and which would arise in human situations inexplicably bending the universe surrounding us. The example he gave was of the pregnant woman and the swirling vortices of godlike forces attracting into her all of the rare and obscure materials now needed for the assembly of a new human being. Our culture only comically acknowledges the 'cravings' but as anyone who has been through it knows, there is much more to the story than just a merciless request for midnight pickles and ice cream. It is a force of nature.

Alan Watts tells us that the flower doesn't bloom. The flower cannot exist without the plant, the soil, the meadow and all of the insect and plant inhabitants who, together, form the unified ecological unit of being that is the meadow, and that this particular flower could not exist were it not for the environment that supports and is supported by it. And so it is that it is not the flower but the meadow which blooms.

We knew we'd be unlocking cosmic forces :)

This all started nearly a year ago, an unprecedented freak bonus from work paid for the legal process that took almost year to settle; that brought us to the run-up to Christmas, so everything just coasted for that month and a week up until Little Christmas when we first could start the first steps.

No, we haven't a clue what we're doing.

The first of those steps had floated up from the news-readers here on the computer over that limbo-year of 2007, something about a new position in the local governments that allows what we used to call "justice of the peace" to break out of the town offices and go out wherever you want, and the story I'd read took place in Bruce County and featured one such officiant who took the job seriously and liked doing the stuff a little different. So I did a hunt, and eventually found a new keyword, "Marriage Commissioner" and that lead us by a round about to Donna Andrew, our nearly-nextdoor neighbour, and it was her website that introduced us to the beautiful anachronism of the hand-fast.

All this as it turns out, was also a process impossible until only recently when our friend, fan and local MPP Bill Murdoch had pushed through the legislation ... specifically to make dreams like ours possible. The Murdoch Bill was a response by religious and non-religious officiants to the cutbacks that left far too few officials to do an ever increasing number of outside-the-lines ceremonies.

the future does indeed cause the past.

We had already chosen June 20th. there was the practical reason of needing to save up for all this and time enough to get everything done and ready, but also, May loves Earth Day and there are two possible solutions to that, the april date and the Midsummer. June beyond black-fly season too, but early enough so as to be a reasonable shot any out of towners could find room at the Sauble Inns.

I dug out the ephemerides and discovered a discrepancy between 'scientific' (epoch-2000) mid-summer and 'physical' (max solar declination) mid-summer -- the spread would span precisely the hours from 3:38pm to 11pm, a perfect time-slot for a party. Serendipity strikes again, and double points on that when Wai Chi and family announced they were looking for a summertime vacation destination :)

So we, ah, spent our property-tax savings to book Donna for that day (shhh now, don't tell the town office!)

And that was it, we had locked down a date, point of no return.

So ... we started telling folks here and there to keep that date open, and, well, like I said, seems we have unleashed the Cosmic Vortex. I don't know half of it, its all going by really fast but I hear tales of volunteer caterers, volunteer bakers, artists and artisans, Mother Nature (Dee) wants to know "our colours" and its all swirling in for that midsummer's dreaming.

I'll keep you posted.