Yes, dear readers, I know that I promised this article
for the last issue, but wrote instead of faeries,
elementals, and nature spirits. But I did not
forget,
and everything in the faery realm is subject to capricious change for mysterious
reasons.So, three relevant questions, as most things come in threes.
What are Titans and Giants ?
Why should we bother with them ?
How might we relate to them ?
There is a complex interaction
between titans, giants, and other life forms, though
often we are
unconscious of it. This becomes clear, however,
as we
explore Questions 1 & 2. Some of the answers to Question 3 will be
proposed, in part, at the end of this article. I say in part, because the
answers require
doing,
rather than reading about. But first things first:
What are Titans and Giants ?
The roots of all answers are found in ancestral
mythic tradition. In traditions associated with
Titans and Giants we discover how stories of
their existence,
their role, developed. Worldwide, there are three classes of primal
story about such beings (of course!). This article
refers mainly to European
sources, as
working models for all such stories, in any culture, worldwide.
Titans and Giants are, essentially, spiritual beings.
Their bodies, however, are zones of the
planet or continents, or of the oceans,
mountains, volcanoes
and vast weather patterns. This is why tradition attributes tidal
waves, earthquakes, eruptions, and storms, to the actions of titans
or giants.
The
Three Classes of Myth concerning Titans or Giants
The first class is of creation
myths, in which bodies of vast beings are dismembered
or willingly
sacrificed to create the world
(1) See
Stewart,
R J, Elements
of Creation Myth, Element Books, 1991. Mir the ice giant
whose skull makes the
vault of the sky in Norse myth, the dismemberment of Ra in
Egyptian myth, and the ancient Kabbalistic tradition
of the Adam Kadmon
or universal primal
being,
are typical examples, each telling in different ways the same
story.
The second group describes mentoring. Mentoring
myths have been given less attention,
but are especially significant for
us today,
if we
seek to consciously
work with
Titans and Giants to redeem the damage done by humanity
to the living planet. In many cultural
and mythic traditions,
large beings
are
described as mentors
of humanity, teaching arts, science, mathematics, music,
agriculture and so forth. We often forget
that the ancestral cultures had
no separation between
arts and
magical arts, between sciences and magical or spiritual
sciences. All forms
of human endeavor had a spiritual and sacro-magical role.
A typical mentoring myth is the ancient Greek,
or pre-Greek, story of Atlas, the titan
who founds Atlantis, and whose
sons become
kings of
civilization.
Another is found in the Old Testament, and in the Book
of Enoch, wherein giants intermarry
with humans, and teach skills, arts, and magic. In Celtic
tradition certain immortal or semi-divine beings come
into the world
and teach humanity the
arts of civilization;
they are often described as being of giant size. Examples
include members of the Tuatha de Danaan in Irish legend,
and the Welsh
titan Bran, who,
(in the
legend of Branwen, daughter of Llyr in The Mabinogion)
wades the Irish sea, bridges the river
Liffy with his body , and “carries the poets and musicians upon
his back” . The father of Bran and Branwen is Llyr,
god of the Atlantic ocean, the Celtic Poseidon. Poseidon.
was the Greek god of earthquakes and tidal
waves, older than the Olympians…and traditionally the god of ancient
Atlantis. (2) For the Celtic stories see Stewart R J, Celtic Gods, Celtic
Goddesses, Blandford
Press, 1986
The third group is myths of destruction. These balance
the creation myths, with myths of mentoring in the
center, the
place of harmony.
Perhaps the
best known
examples are in Norse mythology, where the giants
seek to bring Ragnarok, and the winter that
ends the world,
toppling
the
gods and goddesses
of Asgard. This
theme is identical to Greek legends of the titans
who raise storms, earthquakes, tidal waves,
in their war
with the
Olympian deities,
whom they are said
to oppose. In a more obscure but no less significant
Celtic tradition, we find
warring and
destructive giants, who change the shape of the land,
in the Prophecies of Merlin, a 12th century text that
contains
a wealth
of Breton
and Welsh bardic
and druidic
imagery. (3) See Stewart, R J, Merlin: The Prophetic
Vision and Mystic Life, Penguin Arkana, 1986.
In the older Greek mythic
traditions, we find that the Titans were originally deities
of the 7 planets
(Moon,
Sun, Mercury,Venus,Mars,
, Jupiter,
Saturn). They descended into the body of the Earth,
and the Olympian deities took
their places. Robert Graves suggests (4)Graves,R,
Greek Myths, various
editions,
that the typifying of the titans as “bad guys” hostile
to the (sometimes) good deities such as Zeus, Hera,
Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, was
propaganda. We
find similar propaganda in other texts and myths,
whenever an old form of religion or spiritual tradition
is replaced by a more recent one. The stories
are not
fabricated, but well established myths are slowly
molded to a propagandist cause.
In Celtic tradition, the Gaels in Scotland and
Ireland told that the Faery races were angels
fallen out of
Heaven with
Lucifer,
and now embodied
in
the earth.
This is a Christianized retelling of an older
tradition, similar to that of the titans.
Such stories, and
many other similar
legends worldwide,
tell of
spiritual
forces that move between the planets of the
solar system, affecting life
here on earth. Some of this becomes clear when
we explore the role of titans and
giants in connection with the forces of volcanoes,
weather, and continental movement.
As modern science asserts, these large changes
are affected by our planetary orbit, and by
its relationship
to solar
and other
planetary
forces.
These all act upon, and interact with, our earth’s
oceans, plates, and the deep telluric or UnderWorld
fires, the star-stuff in the heart of Earth.
Thus the three groups of myths tell us much
about Titans and Giants, with interwoven
subtle implications
. Creation,
Development
(mentoring)
and
Destruction. The
creation and destruction are on a large scale,
usually planetary, sometimes cosmic; land
and planet are often
interchangeable
with cosmos in primal
myths. The development
or mentoring theme tells us of conscious
care and attention given to the relationship
between
differing
orders of
life, especially
through
the role
of humanity.
The myth of the titan Cronos is a good example,
from the writing of Hesiod, available
in many translations. In this
Greek legend
a vast
spiritual being
rules over
the Golden Age, in which all beings live
in harmony together.
Cronos is described as the mentor of humanity,
in a world of primal and
idyllic peace
. This is
not, by the way, Chronos who was castrated
by Zeus, as that is a dismemberment myth.
Both stories are about titans and creation,
but they describe different phases of
creation.
Back to Creation, Development, Destruction.
The Titans and Giants are forces shaping
the planet.
They are associated
with coming
into being,
with development
of life on Earth, and with the transformative
(to us destructive)
forces.
Far from being crude or ignorant stories
to “explain why we have earthquakes”,
myths of titans and giants are models of relationship.
They tell us about the large forces in our planet,
and, most important, they tell us that such
forces
also shape humanity.
But of course they do, for we live
within the land and planet, and
are indeed shaped,
developed,
and
transformed
by our
relationship with them.
Today we
are in an age of massive climate
changes which many scientists think
are the result
of human irresponsibility and greed.
This could be described by the Mythic
model:
we have lost
our living relationship
to the
land and
planet , embodied
on a large
scale by the titans and giants as
planetary organs, so their response is
transformation,
destruction,
rebalancing.
It only needs the weather patterns
to change a little more, and
the entire viability
of
human culture will
be threatened
or rendered
void. We have
triggered planetary
weather changes through pollution,
industrialization, and indifference
to long -term patterns
in favor of short -term
profits. It
only needs
the volcanic,
telluric,
patterns to become a little more
active to wipe out major centers
of population,
and
change
the
pattern of human
inhabitation. We have triggered
such activity
with our underground, undersea,
nuclear explosions.
So we are living in a time when
the relationship between humanity
and the
titans and giants
is changing, in
part due to human
folly. I say
in part,
because on
a mythic scale, our folly
results from the Mentoring described
earlier…we
take the wisdom of the titans, of the UnderWorld,
and misapply it for selfish unethical ends. So the
destructive phase is not merely a humano-centric problem,
it is part of a bigger picture.
As I mentioned earlier,
the answers to questions 1 and 2 are intertwined,
and
by exploring
who or what the titans
and giants
are, we have
also explored why
we might wish to have a better
relationship with them.
Why should we bother with
them?
Firstly, we are within
them all the time. Those
of us
who live
in California,
especially
on
the coasts on the
fault
lines,
know that
for sure. And
the whole human world
is within, and, like it or
not, utterly
ruledby, the
planetary
weather. Have you ever
thought of that, dear
reader? I am
thinking of it more
often nowadays.
We are all within, and
subject to,
the larger planetary
telluric forces which
give rise to weather, tidal
waves , earthquakes,
volcanoes. But
they also
give rise to life itself:
new organisms appear
in the ocean
depths where
the
UnderWorld
fires meet the deep
waters. Indeed, new life
forms are being discovered
down there by our biologists.
This is
the root
of creation, the
power of the titans
working to make life.
So to ignore them is
possible , but it
is not possible
to live without
them.
Can we
understand
their patterns
? Yes,
to a
certain extent
through our sciences.
But at a deeper level
we have to work
in meditation, vision,
and through altered
consciousness. As
we are already within
the titans
and giants,
for they are
the vast organs or
zones of
the
land and planet,
we must be able to interact
with
them consciously.
But how
? This brings us
to our third question:
How might we relate
to them?
Firstly through
a much needed
sense
of humility
and perspective.
The
grossly humano-centric
stance of
our modernist
culture is
destroying us
at no uncertain
pace. Diseases,
pollution,
indifference
and rapacious greed
are
wiping
us out…yet
we think we are going faster and faster, and getting
better and better.
Through the
weather
If we meditated
for 3
minutes each day
on the
weather, and how
the weather
binds
and
looses
all life,
including
us humans,
we
would
take
a small step towards
relating
to the
titans and giants.
Through
the
mountains
If
we meditated
upon the
mountains, as
our ancestors
did, we
would be
opening our
awareness to
the big
picture. What
are mountains,
after all
? Are
they just
an annoying
feature that
we have
to drive
through or
fly over,
or are
they the
spine, bones,
and core
of the
land?
Yes,
yes, I
know, no
one has
time to
travel to
the mountains.
We are
too busy
sitting in
traffic jams
or trying
get our
computers to
download so-called
time-saving free
music. But
if we
cannot travel
physically, we
can go
there in
vision and
meditation. Try
it…it works powerfully.
Through faery cousins
and allies
Now we are coming
to the more esoteric
and
specific
traditions.
Our faery
cousins and
allies, and
the spirit creatures
as co-walkers,
will help us build a living
relationship with
the titans
and giants. Acting
not only as go-betweens,
but
as part of an
organic network, in
the true
sense, being composed
of interrelated
organs of consciousness.
This technique
is featured
in many
of my
own workshops
and books (4 Stewart,
RJ ,Earthlight,
and
Power within
the Land,1991
reprinted Mercury Publishing, 1998)
In essence it consists
of meditating upon
the faery
allies, and requesting
them
to make contact
with
the larger beings,
the titans
and giants,
then participating
in that contact.
It brings
a stream
of consciousness
that
is non-verbal, not
limited by artificial
time, and deeply
regenerative.
In Conclusion
There is much to
think about
in the theme of
Titans and
Giants;
we have hardly touched
upon
it in this
short
article,
but I hope, at
least to
have offered
you some
inspiration, some new perspectives.
And, of
course, some hope
that we
can, and will, come into a
new and
harmonious
relationship
with our
living planet.
In the next
issue, I
expect to
write
about
Faery Healing,
but
may be
inspired
to do something
else instead.
You can find more material like
this at this web site, and you can contact
us