WISDOM OF LIFE “CROSSED”

When one reflects about this fact more carefully one can discern, in the “ideal life” described, two poles wisdom of life. In a manner analogous to the well–known idea that sees, in the Christian sign of the cross, a horizontal and a vertical axis, one could say that wisdom also has a horizontal and a vertical axis, very clearly distinct and yet inseparably bound.
On the horizontal plane, one could place the immanence of human existence. In wisdom of life, one indisputably sees in it a clear understanding of human contingency and imperfection. Vertically, on the other hand, this interest is crossed by an attentiveness to transcendence, namely, to the divine reality that transcends the human.

Fulco and the end of an Illusion

Triptychs of a western pilgrim

Who is Fulco?:

Fulco is a name related to Folk and folklore: the great proportion of the members of a people that determines the group character and that tends to preserve its characteristic form of civilization and its customs, arts and crafts, legends, traditions, and superstitions from generation to generation. It has the same origin as George ( St George) . The word begins and ends with the root Ge. This is one of the oldest words known, occurring in Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek and Indo-European languages. It means Earth. Everyday words still in common use such as Ge-ology or Ge-ography show how persistent this root has been over at least the last six thousand years.

The etymology of George thus appears to show that he may originally have been an Earth-God connected with fertility, whose widespread worship in the ancient world was absorbed by Constantine’s attempts to make early Christianity into an all-inclusive religion that would become a vehicle for Roman bureaucracy. To reinforce this view the Greek translation of the name means ‘Earth-worker’ or ‘Tiller of the soil’.

The path from I to i: Beheading the ego:

Beheading

The I ( ego) lose its head in the stars of existence to become a i a pelgrim , trying to recover the spiritual Greeness of the Heart anchered in the Reality of Eternity.

Triptychs of a western pelgrim:

Mirrors ( read here)

The Green Man and the Wild Man or the beheaded man and the headless man

The Wild and the Green Man in yourself

This may seem like a strange conclusion to all of today’s idealization of nature. But wild nature is only too dangerous and whoever wanted to survive had to make the transition to adulthood and control his nature. But who really controls that does not oppress. In times of celebration or struggle he shows his wildness, his wild hair and his masculinity. He shows that in his time he can show, control and, if desired, store his wild energy. That is the sign of a grown man who knows how to handle his treats and that’s why he wins his wife in the party and overcomes his opponent in the fight.

The Green Man has not disappeared either through the transformation. He lives in every man who every now and then releases his inner child and absorbs his feeling and action and enjoys it so that the green heart energy flows! But the Green Man can only survive in his pure enjoying form by first dying in ritual. See The the Story of Sir Gawain and the Green Man

look also at Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Coomaraswamy

Holly King and Oak King

The Holly King and Oak King are personifications of the winter and summer in various folklore and mythological traditions. The two kings engage in endless “battle” reflecting the seasonal cycles of the year: not only solar light and dark, but also crop renewal and growth. During warm days of Midsummer the Oak King is at the height of his strength; the Holly King regains power at the Autumn equinox, then his strength peaks during Midwinter, at which point the Oak King is reborn, regaining power at the Spring equinox, and perpetuating the succession.

see:The Legend of the Holly King and the Oak King

and The Tale of the Holly King and the Oak King

NON POTEST HOC CORPUS DECOLLARI: BEHEADING AND THE IMPOSSIBLEThe human being arrives at the threshold: there he must throw himself headlong [vivant] into that which has no foundation and has no head.

Beheading is impossible. What does this mean? To understand these words is to grasp the truth of speaking them despite the fact, or more precisely through the fact, that beheading not only happens all the time, but constitutes a kind of happening that appears to continue happening, a phenomenon whose aesthetic structure, via its extreme and perfect fĳinality, is ordered toward the perpetual. To say beheading is impossible is to talk with the beheaded, to speak like a severed head, with words for which one has no voice. It means trying to say about beheading what is impossible to say, what only the severed head could say and always does say in some secret way to the heads that see it, calling them to consider beheading and articulate what it cannot tell. In other words, to say beheading is impossible is to indicate the signifĳicance of beheading as the attempt to speak beheading, to voice what beheading is in its most intense actuality, from the impossible, real, and thus inevitable perspective of the beheaded.

This is not to ignore or deny that “the deliberate separation of a head from its body is exclusively cultural,” that “beheading always signifĳies,” and “always signifĳies diffferently within specifĳic codes supplied by culture.”3 Rather it is to seek the poietic space wherein beheading becomes and stays sign, to address beheading as an original signifĳicance, as a meaning that happens in phenomenal proximity to its origin or coming-to-be. This will mean, however, playing fast and loose with specifĳic historical and cultural contexts, just as the ancient class of monsters to which the Green Knight belongs do with their heads. And like the Green Knight, who is “Herre þen ani in þe hous by þe hede and more” [higher than any in the house by a head or more], so will this reading of beheading, in the interest of grasping its impossible logic, necessarily exceed what is culturally demonstrable and so risk inviting its own decapitation—precisely the risk that any attempt to understand beheading requires.5 Yet to say beheading is impossible is not simply to speak poetically or to use language in a manner that makes language embody and represent its object. The statement is not merely a witty way of saying what the severed head, as the abstraction of all the individual heads that have been, are being, and will be severed, says in whatever words do or do not make it through its mouth, namely, I am beheaded, therefore I am not (or something like that). To say beheading is impossible is also to assert, more practically and prosaically, that the signifĳicance of beheading is fundamentally attached to the experience of having a head. Beheading virtually beheads its witness.

Decapitation is a mirroring spectacle wherein one experiences without experiencing one’s own decapitation. It is the specular meeting-place or bladelike zone of intersection where the one with a head encounters, even to the point of touching, the one without. The impossibility of beheading, the point beyond which our experience of it at once does and cannot go, is a moment when the survival of its witness crosses paths and shares place with its victim’s escape, the instant of a specifĳically heady saturation or plenitude of the sensory simultaneity of oneself being here and the beheaded being there. Beheading thus holds open experiences of headlessness, exposes us to the palpable possibility that our heads are illusory, to the reality that head itself is impossible. So beheading’s impossibility is also its inevitability, both practically and theoretically. The sense of beheading is impossible, its signifĳicatio, is the unseeable thing from which beheading is always already present as potentiality (Offf with her head!), the something on account of which decapitation becomes discourse and the severed head is taken up as a theme.6 As intimated by the universal motif of the speaking severed head, already critiqued by Aristotle as “impossible,” beheading and speaking share a common ground, a place into which speaking of beheading leads.

Fana in Sufism:

Fanaa (Arabic: فناء‎ fanāʾ ) in Sufism is the “passing away” or “annihilation” (of the self).^[1] Fana means “to die before one dies”, a concept highlighted by famous notable Muslim saints such as Rumi and later by Sultan Bahoo.^[2] Fana represents a breaking down of the individual ego and a recognition of the fundamental unity of God, creation, and the individual self.^[1] Persons having entered this enlightened state obtain awareness of the intrinsic unity (Tawhid) between Allah and all that exists, including the individual’s mind. It is coupled conceptually with baqaa, subsistence, which is the state of pure consciousness of and abidance in God.^[3]

Muslim scholars insist, that similar to other Sufi doctrines, Fana also based purely on the Islamic teachings. The Quran says:

“All things in creation suffer annihilation and there remains the face of the Lord in its majesty and bounty.” Surat-L-Rehman 26-27 ^[4]

The state of Fana is represented by Rumi in Book Six of the Mathnawi where he writes:

When the Shaykh (Halláj) said ‘I am God’ and carried it through (to the end), he throttled (vanquished) all the blind (sceptics).

When a man’s ‘I’ is negated (and eliminated) from existence, then what remains? Consider, O denier.^[5]

In his book, Ain-ul-Faqr, Sultan Bahoo talks about spiritual levels of which Fana is one:

Initially I was four, then became three, afterwards two and when I got out of Doi (being two), I became one with Allah.

The words reveal the journey of Oneness where ‘four’ means he, his Murshid, Rasool and Allah. When he annihilates in his Murshid, he remains ‘three’. Then he annihilates in Rasool and he remains ‘two’. Finally when he annihilates in Allah, he becomes ‘One’. Hence, his journey of Fana(annihilation) completes and he becomes the Universal Man.^[6]

Stages of Fana

This explains that there are in fact three basic stages of Fana.^[7]

Fana fi Shaikh

This is the first level of Fana where the seeker annihilates in the being of his Murshid. This is only possible through Ishq-e-Murshid.

by an aid authority a trusted Murshid / Spiritual Guid, the heart will be tied to HIS magnificence on a path of truth By taking (Bayyah) or pledging allegiance one becomes tied to the rope of spirituality that will show you the path. Allowing the inner journey to begin and witnessing the ocean of knowledge, the knowledge that you start acquiring is that of inner spirituality and the outer existence is mirrored from what you have perceived. through the trusted representative that the heart’s light has identified through HIS grace. a true spiritual guide that one’s heart desires to be in the company of, as the heart has yearning for. the Murshid has touched your heart and started purifying it bringing light into the heart and allowing your soul to traverse.

The love and respect for the Murshid here becomes a state of Fana, Your actions, Your Seeing, your Speaking are not your owns but that of your Peer / Murshid.

Fana fi Rasool

This is the second level of Fana where the seeker annihilates in the being of Rasool. This is only possible through Ishq-e-Rasool.

Fana Fillah

This is the third and final stage of Fana where the seeker annihilates in the essence of Allah attained only through Ishq-e-Haqeeqi.

We need to be sincere with our selves , to be “upright” strictly honourable and honest, as the symbol of the Maypole is. Together we can initiate and erect a maypole as various European folk festivals do, in respect of the safely coming of Spring. But as many Folklores in Europe did, to keep it more permantly, we can plant a Lime Tree in the center of the village of on squares in the city, to keep the remenbering of “uprightness”,of sincerity in our mind, in our heart and in our allday lives. In this way,as in many folklores of Europe, they recognize their dependance to Nature and their submission to something Higher than themselves. And happy they danced under the Lime Tree on important opportunities. Man has always be in need of a symbol, but certainly a symbol for communality and fraternity.

As the Spring Rejuvenation ritual of the Carnaval of Binche in Belgium, the Gilles of Binche becomes for one day the hero and symbol of Fraternity.

The Forum for Ethics, Honesty and “Uprightness” can become again a beautiful symbol of Fraternity, and also draw strength together to face the future and a place of remembering, sharing and of coming together. Than Maybe, this message from the Past can help us to be able to rediscover the meaning of the Eternal Spring. Or as Hildegard of Bingen call it The Greenness ( Viriditas) of our soul. See more about the Lime Tree of Wisdom project and theForum for Ethics, Honesty and “Uprightness”.