The energies of the recent solar eclipse and the archetype of Lakshmi
Photo: Barbie Robinson
April 20 2023 was the day of a significant solar eclipse that holds wisdom about the archetypal energies of these times and the times to come. When we invoke dance as Body-led intelligence, it excavates archetypal wisdom, very much like astrology. Indeed, my sense is that the knowledge of astrology was sourced from dance in ancient times.
And so it is that Goddess Lakshmi emerges as the focus archetype for my dance contemplation courses in this period. As I have been considering the astrological constellations, it became clear that Lakshmi holds the complex and multi-dimensional archetypal energies of this time in Her cosmos. Here, I will share a theme which is relevant in this context.
The theme is the dance between rationality and sensuality. This was highlighted by astrologer Adam Elenbaas who offers astrological wisdom from the archetypal perspective.
Lakshmi is a worldly energy. She rises from the dark waters of mystery and sensation and blooms in the world. The lotus symbol which is associated with Her captures this movement. Lakshmi is of the world in its fundamental units of home, family, and work. Her domain, unlike the energies of Kundalini rising, is not sourced in ascetic withdrawal, rather it is manifested in the ordinary domains of our lives. This is the rational dimension of Lakshmi’s invocation.
Situated in family, kin, home and workplaces, Lakshmi asks us to attend to the resources we need to sustain life in this material Reality. She brings ritual and ceremony to the everyday tasks. We cannot escape from the mundane into caves or mountains. Lakshmi invites us to find beauty, magic and poetry in the kitchen, garden and in our workplaces. This invitation is more potent than it appears at first sight.
We consider spiritual inquiry as a heroic undertaking. We love the drama of renunciation, and the martyrdom of asceticism. However, Lakshmi situates spiritual inquiry in the necessary domains of a material existence- homes, kitchens, income earning work, and families. This seemingly simple invitation is sometimes more fraught than a dramatic escape into a forest. Transforming the everyday, especially as it forms part of entrenched ways of being that we have inherited from centuries of mind-dominated values, is a formidable inquiry. Finding poetry amidst the rational and banal requires not just imagination, but also incredible courage to alchemise from within. And this courage is often unrecognised, and uncelebrated.
Many images and even modern paintings of Lakshmi seem to sense a depth to Her which belies the often simplistic label of Goddess of wealth. Lakshmi has an inscrutability, a demeanor that does not seek to please, and an intimation of deep strength that may not always spill over in spectacular ways. There may not be spears and lolling tongues, but Lakshmi’s quiet fortitude is the weighted strength of the elephant (which is also associated with her) that stands its ground even as the earth may quake beneath. And the earth will quake when we alchemise from within!
Rationality in Lakshmi co-exists with sensuality. Lakshmi is the quintessential Body, the archetypal experience of Body as Earth. The invitation to attend to the home is also the attending to Body. Body here is not the outcome of our narratives, rather it is the Body of anubhava or experience, the Rasa manifestation, or the sensorial Body. In one of the most ancient invocations of Lakshmi as Shri, Her Body is the aroused moistness of Earth, resplendent with creativity (fertility), of the nature of mystery (moon), and abundant in an alliance with all other dimensions of Reality. This means that the Body unites us in friendship with all other life. This is the foundation of friendship- the seamless continuum of consciousness that has no hierarchy or exclusions. When this friendship is broken, we are sick (Alakshmi).
Experiencing and honouring Body as a sensorial intelligence is vital to balance the energies of rationality. Rationality without the poetry of sensuality is brutal, and poetry without the humility and grounding intelligence of rationality is deluded (maya). Body is the synthesizing intelligence, as we can see it does in most of its functions. The intelligence of the Body to manifest its multi-dimensional cosmos of mind, breath, pulse, digestion, removal, creation, mobility, senses, craft, and dance, is ample evidence of this synthesizing intelligence. However, in our valuing of rationality or mind-dominated intelligence, we have overlooked this incredible constellation intelligence that is Body.
Lakshmi manifests an emergent and alchemical consciousness that is the dance of rationality and sensuality. Her appearance in these times invites a paradigmatic shift in how we perceive the material. For long spiritual traditions have denigrated the material as irrelevant and separate to spirit. At the same time, we have also celebrated a Body-less and homeless rationality. Rationality uprooted from Body and the intimate cosmos of sensations, feelings, home, kitchen, and family has often manifested in brutal ways. The valuing of “performance” paradigms of our times, render mystery and modesty invisible. Body requires deep attending, not the noisiness of “likes” or the spectacles of stadium shows.
I find that when I attend to a wise image of Goddess Lakshmi, something of Her freedom from pleasing and performance seeps into me. I sense the spaciousness of domesticity, by which I also mean the “domesticity” of Body. In attending to Body, I attend to Earth and the vastness of abundance as possibilities. There are a hundred Lakshmis because our Body is manifold in its abundance. And this experience of abundance unites matter and spirit, and the rational and sensual, in one glorious rising of the lotus from the dark waters to bloom in our homes.