You have to go read all of Cauldron Born today. It's even a readable length, this time.
Here are a few of my favorite bits:
I am the womb of every holt,
I am the blaze on every hill,
I am the queen of every hive,
I am the shield for every head,
I am the tomb of every hope.
Final verses of "The Song of Amergin"
and
The loss of wisdom among human beings has emptied more than the houses of bees. It has emptied the houses of men and women. Could the Great Mother have called herself "the Mother of Every Family"? Certainly. Today, in Iraq, many houses sit burned out and empty, where once mothers raised children- they are dead now, dead because wicked human beings sent bombs and bullets into their sacred living places. What really sent those bombs flying? Greed, the very antithesis of Wisdom.
I think the notion of greed as the antithesis of wisdom is brilliant, and far too little appreciated today.
The "cure" for the bees is the same as the cure for unjust wars- be a fair and noble sovereign over your own life. Honor yourself and the Land, and by extension, you will honor all life on the Land. Do not tolerate greed and blindness to our duties in this vast web of life that we are all a part of. If you can create a harmony inside yourself, and between yourself and the Land, this will create a healing power which will echo out into the world.
You, like Amergin, are, deep down, the Queen of Every Hive. Her spirit lives through you. Your intentions and actions are sacred, and have power, if you would only become conscious of that fact. One thing is certain- your [remaining] unconsciousness of this fact doesn't stop the great connection you have with all things from being a reality, and it hurts the world when you act unconsciously and unwisely. Open yourself.
Hecate,
ReplyDeleteI had been meaning to stop lurking long enough to post about bees (Colony Collapse Disorder) on your blog, and now that Cuan Maqq Beli has addressed the issue again (of CCD), I must follow through.
For several reasons, this is an emotional issue to me: I kept bees as a teenager; To me, bees have always been symbolic of the health of the land, when I was young bees were my real connection with the land; Now, on reflection, I realize that that they are much more than that. In a very real sense they feed us.
A few days ago, I smugly thought that I had figured it all out. CCD, I thought, is a classic case of "monoculture" gone wrong. The Great Potato Famine of Ireland was such; each potato plant was so genetically similar to every other potato plant, that a pest which developed a way to attack one plant was thus equipped to attack all the rest of the plants, and they would all perish.
In principle, the cure is simple: You just make sure that you aren't engaging in monoculture -- you make sure that your crops or livestock have genetic diversity, then they won't all be consumed like a burning powdertrain. Commercial honeybees tend to have very inbred bloodlines, because most honeybees (Apis mellifera) are born from nearly identical queens purchased from at best, several dozen bee farms in North America.
My yard has had a plentiful presence of feral honeybees (also Apis mellifera), which tend to be smaller and not golden at all like commercial bees. They are clearly diverse, at least from the commercial bees. Today, however, I noticed that the flowers are almost empty of bees. I hope that this is just temporary.
I'm worried. It almost makes me glad I'm old.
HiveMind in California.