There’s a state park where the folks, K and I often go to escape the attack droids and meager-minders.  The park is a little hard to find and get to.  It’s made up of a huge forest by the river with miles of paths.  A devoted group of volunteers maintain the consciousness level there.

The place is a labyrinth, because you can spend hours in the place and hardly see anyone.  As the sun goes down, the place turns otherworldly.  There are a few paths that can lead you into really spooky, scary areas of the woods.

When K and I go, we always take a daypack with plenty of water and snacks, along with a tasty lunch.  We take a first aid kit, a universal tool, emergency raingear, and a compass.  I’ve watched people get into trouble an hour from home, and experienced the outdoors beat down myself a few times.  Hypothermia and dehydration are two hard-core realities even in the land of expanding skyscraper false idols.

I bring this up because I’d been saving the park encounters as a topic for later, but now it looks like current events are pushing this ship front and center.  It occurs to me that while my hikes in the park have been a relaxing getaway from the demands of time and space, I’ve also been living an unconscious exploration.

017_labyrinth.jpg

The latest schematic from the opened Hek-mail shows a labyrinth between two trees between two critters.  The starship crew strains my brain trying to make sense of the symbolism.  After a while, I believe I have a functioning, conscious explanation.

The two critters are guardians keeping out the unprepared, pulling the wool over their eyes for their own protection so to speak.  The labyrinth between the two trees suggests a path between trees – like the park.  At the center of which is a tree.

As a symbol, a tree can represent several things:

  • A gallows.
  • The cross of the crucifixion.
  • An Xmas tree.

It can also be an informal reference to being “up a tree”, or treed.  I’ve been hearing the lines from a song in my head for weeks now, I’m up and down and all around, I’m up a bloody tree.  Going to have to find out the title of that song, but UFO Girl must have played it by unconscious request.

To be in a situation of confusion or embarrassment from which there is no retreat.  Yeah, that sounds like a whole lot of fun.  My experiences in the woods in that state of mind have not been safe.

Tree also has connotations of pledges, truth, and trust.  “Where one waits trustingly.”  Maybe I’m getting the external mixed up with the internal.  I haven’t seen any critters with glowing eyes or scary sharp teeth and claws, so maybe I’ve passed between them.  And the hikes have been a form of doing time in the labyrinth.

Where does the labyrinth lead?  Well, home of course.  At the end of the hike, we all get in the car and return to the struggle.

Which means the center ends up at my home, the haunted house.

Oh, great.

11-21-08 ETA: My aunt Duke says, “Trees appear on shields and are thought to symbolize antiquity and strength.  The fir tree stands for clarity, achievement and energy.  The yew – transference, passage, illusion.  And of course there is the tree of knowledge.  In Teutonic and Nordic culture there is the world tree – where the sacred enters the profane.

The other two symbols – I am going from my gut reaction to the images.  One I see as a phoenix which stands for resurrection, immortality, fire and divinity.  The other reminds me of either a river or a snake.  River according to Jung is water already in motion finding its own way through conditions of external danger to emerge intact and triumphant for union with the sea – implying the longest way around is the shortest and safest way to the sea.  Snakes were often guardians of sacred places.  The Celts believed that if you see a snake on a shamanic journey prepare to shed something in favor of something greater and better.”

Thanks for the info-pumpup, Duke.