An Eagle For Your Mind-Fire

“And it is written: ‘first the stone, then the plant, then the animal,
And then the man.’

But before the stone, I am the FIRE
Distributed equally in space,
Nowhere absent, filling all
And before the Fire, hidden within it,
I am the pure KNOWING
Whence all forms flow forth.”

From the Book of Tokens by Paul Foster Case

Akin to the molten rivers that will form rock beds, a fluid, pre-verbal, non-dual, flow of mind-fire can be seen to predate a thought, an image, and a desire. How much of the truth of this FIRE can then be allowed by the thought, the image or the desire? Is this not the test of the philosopher, the real poet and the true lover?

It is in the multiple iridescences of this FIRE that we can see clearly that the Mirror (art as reflection) and the Lamp (art as illumination) are eventually one and the same: the truest reflection is itself an illumination and burning brightly one’s innermost spark is as a candle flame to the sun of reality…

How we apply this FIRE then becomes the Promethean question of our times, indeed of our lives. Within the context of this question, that could exist personally, socio-logically, environmentally etc, and yet remaining within the imaginal realm, I ask what was Zeus’ Eagle a punishment for?

The man who gave us fire (warmth, sustenance, survival), the man who brought FIRE (the illumination of the human spirit, the reflection of the pure knowing) is chained to a rock and his liver is eaten out by a massive eagle each day only to re-grow and for the whole process to begin again the following day. Though horrible on a literal level this punishment as for example the fate of Tantalus or Sisyphus in hell is an emblematic instruction, it points to something…

Prometheus is chained to the mountaintop; he is shackled to the high-point, the peak, and the airy plateaus of spirit. The eagle that destroys him daily was a living symbol of spirit for many Native American cultures who often symbolized the attainment of wisdom with the reception of an eagles’ feather. So Prometheus is broken by spirit, shattered by the peak experience…he is then healed through the night just to be broken again.

I don’t know about you but I have felt like that. I mean I am not saying every day and I am not claiming the vast hubris that my personal experience is always a living myth (but I have my moments…) but I have felt like that. I felt like it once on LSD and I felt like it on retreat. If you touch the cold clear hand of spirit you must be prepared to winter in your Soul for certain periods for the truth of the FIRE is actually quite cold for other gardens in one’s Soul.

Maybe Prometheus is a warning, I will not say that he is not (certainly in the inflation of the archetype, possession by the mythological could damage any one of us) but Prometheus is also a symbol of painful hope, more like a Christ or the ideal of the Boddhisatva intention in Mahayana Buddhism than a simple admonition.

I do not hear his story and think ‘lets not waste our time giving to others’. I do not hear his story and conclude that humanity is worthless, that Prometheus is rightly punished for giving this childish race fire when surely it will only burn itself. Although humanity may very well burn itself… O Shit! – I see a complex image about the nature of reality and the difficulty of the human nervous system and psyche encountering the underlying rubedo of existence, the true nature of our mind.

Mark Jones

IMAGES: Prometheus Bound (1868) by Gustave Moreau, Zuni Dancers perform the Eagle Dance (2006) from the Utah San Juan County Centennial Celebration of the 1906 Antiquities Act on June 10, 2006.