Visiting the Mystic Beast in 2010

Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.

The "Mystic Beast", from the rear of the building.

What I call the "Mystic Beast is a Northwest coast Nimpkish wood sculpture of a human figure, made around 1893.

Since last May, I've been living on the campus of the University of British Columbia. One of my "neighbours" is the Museum of Anthropology, with its world famous display of artwork by indigenous people from the coastal area of British Columbia.

It was back in the early 1990s that I discovered, at the MOA, a sculpture I called the "Mystic Beast," and in 1997 published a book of poems with this title.

Living on campus has been an extraordinary and moving experience. I have never failed to be impressed by what I have seen, the people I have met, and just walking on the campus, which I do every day, is a wonderful experience.

The other day I was out in the morning and took these photographs at the Museum of Anthropology. I had planned to visit the Museum as it has been renovated, new exhibits put on display, and so on. It had been suggested to me that perhaps the Mystic Beast would no longer be on display, but there, in the window at the rear of the building, was the Mystic Beast.

I don't identify with the Mystic Beast as much as I once did, but there is still a part of my soul, my inner being, that resonates to what I see in this sculpture. He is not a "fun guy," but someone resolute in surviving this life, someone who has had to find strategies for survival and live "undercover," someone for whom understanding the shadow aspect of the psyche has been essential. You can change, you can even be "reborn," you can meditate and do Tai Chi, you can have your satori or your highs however induced, you can put in your years of therapy, but some of the essential aspects of the personality stay the same. You can revision your past and I suggest this is not a bad thing to do for some people. You might even look back at the old self, one day, and wonder how you could have been that person. But at the end of the day there is still a part of us, the part we have struggled with for so many years, that remains the same.

Two Poems from The Compass

The Clothes of the Dead

I have worn the clothes of the dead

a second cousin's sweater,

already frayed when he died, I wore it

another dozen years;

my stepfather's scarves--

blue wool from Scotland,

white silk, and a yellow

Viella shirt. These were their

second skins I pulled on

inhabiting the shape of their

old clothes for years before

the clothes wore out;

days governed by clothes

unfolded and worn,

then thrown into a laundry hamper

or balled and kicked across

the floor. Now those clothes

are gone—eaten by moths,

torn into holes and rips

not even good as rags. I wore

my own clothes

like the clothes of the dead:

brown corduroy trousers, a sweater

shapeless and small even when new;

I pulled it over my head and assumed

the facial expressions of an old man--

these clothes aged me

into someone twice my age

sexless and afraid of life thinking

of retirement and paying off a mortgage;

the penalty of a marriage of lies

held together by threads,

thread-bare of love

a wardrobe

of secrets and despair.

Today I burned six shirts,

two sweaters and trousers:

I burn the past out of my

life, return to living

from dying, take what

I have been,

clothes that made me

someone I didn't want to be

or someone I was but never liked,

clothes that are days and months and years

of a life I gave up

to fear and despair.

Now those clothes are gone:

ashes of clothes

ashes of former selves

ashes of time and space

ashes of words and notebooks

ashes of thoughts

and flesh and blood

ashes of one who surrendered.

Two Tales

1. The Well

She wakened the sleeping giant,

now he struggled to escape

the bottom of a well

where once he lay curled and fetal,

half-submerged in mud.

He could see her above gesturing to him,

holding her forefinger and thumb

together in a circle, then

her hand opened revealing

a message only he could see

written on her palm. He climbed

the cold stone wall of the well,

back pressed against the opposite

wall; gradually he

mounted the well

stopping only to groan

and scratch words on the stones

with his finger nails.

She held out her hand;

oh, she had helped him

all along this journey. Now he

was climbing over the lip

of the well, afraid

of what he might find above.

He remembered the long

fall below him, the

seemingly bottomless well,

the circle of black water so far

below that should he fall

his bones and spirit

would be broken, he would

disappear into the nothingness

of the well's great darkness.

2. The Amphora 

Retrieved from sea-bottom,

caught in a fisherman's net,

two ancient amphoras

containing honey, still liquid

and golden after night's darkness.

Decorating one amphora are images

of men and women in positions of love:

fondling breasts, couplings

of various fashions, the man

between the woman's legs,

the woman eased on top

of the man, the man

from behind thrusting with

hands beside her hips or on

her buttocks. Still other

images of perfection on

the second amphora:

the bee-keeper at the hive,

the farmer in his field

standing in full sunlight

admiring the season's crops;

not far away

lovers transform themselves

into God and Goddess, lose

the illusion of separateness

and return us wholly

to ourselves awakened to love.

The Compass

Here's the poem referred to at CNNGO. 

 ________________________________________ 

The Compass 

On the four corners of the bed 

the body becomes a compass 

describing the direction of passion. 

Months of desire arrive at this destination, 

rocking on a single almost silent wave 

we are sheltered by darkness. 

The body is a compass needle; 

you turned me from east to west 

awoke a sleeping giant that moves 

between your mouth and breasts and legs; 

the room illuminated by static electricity 

thrown off by our bodies. 

How many decades did I sleep 

waiting only for you; 

I lust after you in all 

the directions of space. 

Meeting at the airport 

your foot touching my leg 

beneath the restaurant table, 

we secretly entered an empty 

banquet hall where the caterers 

chattered and poured drinks behind 

a wall partition then quickly leaving 

we found a deserted hallway of open 

office doors where we embraced. 

All the others in my life fell away, 

I was ready to abandon my old life 

for you, for the touch of your hand and mouth, 

the apple red and delicious cut in half that I eat. 

Tied to the four corners of love 

as to a bed which becomes a compass, 

I find you on your stomach, on your back, 

in the morning lying pressed against me. 

It is not possible to return to sleep now, 

it is not possible to forsake your touch 

and love, black lace, fingers, wetness, 

your mouth, words. The compass needle 

turns finding north switched to east 

and west to south, night becomes morning; 

nothing remains as it was. You pointed my life 

in a new direction, towards a corner of the world 

only dreamt of before. Outside the sun is red 

descending behind a row of trees, 

shadows fade into the other unexplored 

regions of night. 

 (Published in The Compass, Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1993)

The Compass in Hong Kong

You never know where your work will show up in our still "new" internet age. Someone in Hong Kong found my poem, "The Compass," the title poem of my book The Compass (1993) and inscribed it on a real compass. Someone else wrote this article on finding a compass with my compass poem on it, and this article was published by CNNGO, located Hong Kong, an affiliate of CNN News. The complete article is below:

-------------------------



An unlikely object of desire found at the Cat Street Market

An engraving on an antique compass spawns a search for answers. Thankfully, a reader comes to the rescue

We saw a beautiful antique compass at the Cat Street Market, which we got for HK$19, thinking it would make a great Christmas gift for a relative. However when we looked inside the cover of the compass and read the long engraving, we thought otherwise.

We've typed out part of the engraving here as we thought you might enjoy it:

“On the four corners of the bed the body becomes a compass describing the direction of passion. Months of desire arrive at this destination, rocking on a single almost silent wave we are sheltered by darkness.

"The body is a compass needle; you turned me from east to west awoke a sleeping giant that moves between your mouth and breasts and legs; the room illuminated by static electricity thrown off by our bodies.

How many decades did I sleep waiting only for you; I lust after you in all the directions of space. Meeting at the airport your foot touching my leg beneath the restaurant table, we secretly entered an empty banquet hall where the caterers chattered and poured drinks behind a wall partition then quickly leaving we found a deserted hallway of open office doors where we embraced. All the others in my life fell away."

We were left wondering. How on earth could this have ended up on Cat Street and what kind of romantic souls with a penchant for bondage play could have possibly owned it? A pair of star-crossed lovers forced to live in separate continents, perhaps? Or an epic extra-marital affair between a poet and his muse? Something mundane like a member of the Cathay Pacific mile high club and a mistress from Lockhart Road.

Thankfully, CNNGo reader rgucci came to the rescue, pointing out to us that the engraving is actually from a poem by Stephen Morrissey, aptly titled "The Compass." We feel a wee bit silly that our literary knowledge didn't extend that far. If you want to read the full poem, or any other of Morrissey's works, click here.

We wonder now whether the author is happy his poem has made it to the new antiques of Hong Kong's Cat Street.

The eclectic market sells everything from Mao memorabilia to sex compasses. The Cat Street Market is located on Upper Lascar Row in Sheung Wan. It is between Lok Ku Road and Hollywood Road.

The street is also called 'mo lo gaai' (with 'gaai' pronounced as 'guy') in Cantonese by residents in the neighborhood and is how it should be referred to when asking for directions to the market.

First Meeting the Mystic Beast, 1994

SM and the Mystic Beast.

Museum of Anthropology,

University 0f British Columbia,

Vancouver, BC.

Notes on The Mystic Beast (1997)

The Mystic Beast, 1997

I first discovered the sculpture that I call “The Mystic Beast” (The Mystic Beast, Empyreal Press, Montreal 1997) around 1994 at Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology, a museum that is largely dedicated to the art of First Nations people in British Columbia. He (the sculpture) was in a room just after the main hall as one enters the museum, placed off to one side near a window, so he is easily missed. In fact, the sculpture is a Northwest coast Nimpkish wood sculpture of a human figure, made around 1893. When I first saw him, I felt as though I had met my doppleganger; however, instead of a human double, it was an inanimate object.

I think CZ and I both immediately recognized the facial similarity that I shared with the Mystic Beast, but it was more than the expression on the face, it was also spiritual. I knew the meaning of his expression—so indicative of how I felt in life—for it showed my inner being: it was the face of an introvert trapped in a room full of extroverts; it was the face of one who is more at home being alone than with other people. It is a curious and rare experience to find a visual expression of one’s inner being, of one’s identity as a human being; he did not represent my persona, but the private face of the condition of my soul, he was the face of my Shadow.

The “Shadow” contains the aspects of our psychology that we reject, deny having, are afraid to face, and so on. They may be parts of our psychology too hurtful for us to deal with, that we would prefer to forget, or it might consist of taboo behaviour, or other aspects of ourselves that we consider too dark and disturbing to acknowledge. What we forget is that the Shadow is full of energy, think of the energy we’ve all used to deny or hide our Shadow; we sometimes project what we don’t like about ourselves onto other people and demonize them; we may go to great lengths and spend many years avoiding the Shadow; we may adopt a new persona (for instance, one that is light and lively) to hide behind, rather than investigate our own inner darkness. I am reminded of the phrase, “the bigger the sun, the bigger the darkness” and how this so often gives an accurate insight into some of the people we meet. However, there is gold in the Underworld; there is light in the darkness; there is redemption from our past; there is a voice of witness reminding us what we need to remember; there is poetry in life’s journey. So, it was epiphanous to find a sculpture, in a museum in Vancouver, representing my inner being, and I associated my Shadow with the sculpture.

                                

At the time when I visited the Museum of Anthropology, I was working on a manuscript of poems entitled The Mystic Beast, the final book in my Shadow Trilogy, and I thought of the sculpture as my twin Mystic Beast. I thought of him as having a similar psychology as myself and there he was, staring at me, or staring off into space. He is physically larger than life size, in fact much larger than he appears in most photographs, and the artist who made him caught perfectly an expression of psychological depth that, I feel, is rare in art found anywhere. When The Mystic Beast was published in 1997, the cover art was by Ed Varney who made an incredible drawing of the face of this sculpture, as can be seen above. A French translation by Élizabeth Robert, entitled La bete mystique (Editions Triptyque, Montreal, 2004) has an equally remarkable cover image, but it is not of the Mystic Beast in Vancouver. (You can see a photograph of The Mystic Beast on the home page of my poetry website, as well as elsewhere in this blog.)

In the prologue to The Mystic Beast, I refer to Edvard Munch’s famous painting “The Scream,” which is a work of art of depth and profound anguish, and iconic, but different than the Mystic Beast. On one hand, Munch’s painting is a scream of life denial emanating from the human soul in the darkness of a world that seems to lack redemption and grace. On the other hand, the Mystic Beast is more of a subversive presence, one that is apparently resigned to the way things are but is also aware that there is epiphany and grace, and life affirmation, in the very midst of a society and life gone wrong:

Here is darkness,

here the place

where waves are black

and the wind howling

through trees is a cry:

one thinks of Edward Munch,

the soul become a sheet

in the wind; have I left

a pile of skulls,

a dying heart

where it lies in my chest

as in a desert, tormented

by the sun and wind?

Here is title poem of the collection:

The Mystic Beast

1. The Invention of the Mirror


How could this be me

what I see as myself,

meeting what is

not me

but someone else:

a doppleganger passing

in the street, a twin

I was separated from

at birth, a part

of me divided

and gone,

as though

I lost my shadow

and must stay indoors

to avoid the sun.

The mirrored image

of my right hand

as I raise it

seems to be

my right hand,

but in the mirror

if my right hand is holding a book

the words are reversed—

who we are,

we never see

what we’ve become—

unless a mirror

in which nothing

could be invented

is reversed, words

read as words,

then we could see

for the first time

in human history

our true selves;

meeting ourselves

as others see us

not reversed or backwards.




2. The Mystic Beast

Arriving on the west coast,

I find the perfect image

of myself, a wooden

statue staring

at nothingness

in a museum:

he is the mystic

beast—not reversed

in a mirror,

not divided by life—

but the single

essence of who

I am. This image

is not reversed

by fortune or glass,

silver or animation,

but the inner being

so long separated:

my own face

and body frozen

in time and regret.

It is the unreconstructed

self found at last,

like finding a cousin

or brother, the true

brother of light

and camaraderie

who holds

my arm and announces

the birth of poetry,

the beginning of light,

the conclusion of silence.

It is my self

I find, my lost twin,

the inner being

I was and am,

who escaped

long ago and

disappeared,

a face encountered

in a mirror without

distortion by depression

or a concave in which

I slip into silence;

not the face seen

reflected in store

windows, the one

caught in peripheral

vision looking afraid

and alone, but an image

of one born in Heaven,

who fell to earth

from the clouds

and landed among

strangers. I searched

almost half a century

until now

when I meet myself,

I finally step out

of the mirror

as out of my body

my skin like clothes,

my face a mask,

my shadow

disappearing in light,

my true self

before and after

my birth and death.


(Stephen Morrissey, The Mystic Beast, Empyreal Press, Montreal 1997;


ISBN 0-921852-16-9; The Shadow Trilogy, including The Compass (1993) and The Yoni Rocks (1995), was published by Empyreal Press in Montreal.)

Notes on The Yoni Rocks (1995)

The Yoni Rocks, 1995

Ed Varney’s cover art for The Yoni Rocks (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1995) is an image of the Venus of Willendorf, a small sculpture of a round shaped woman with big breasts and braided hair that is approximately 25,000 years old; this artifact from our prehistoric past has become famous since it was discovered in Austria early in the 20^th Century. The quotation at the beginning of The Yoni Rocks, taken from H.I. Austen’s fascinating book, The Heart of the Goddess, will better help to define the meaning of Yoni: “In Sanskrit, Yoni means ‘womb, vulva, place of birth source, origin, abode, home, nest; family, race, caste.’ It derives from a root word which means ‘to join together.’... For how can we love life if we do not love the yoni, the doorway through which all life passes?”

The Yoni Rocks has two sections, “The Yoni Rocks” and “The Heart of the Goddess.” These poems are concerned with the anima, the feminine part of the male psyche. The whole book is a hymn to the feminine, to the Yoni, to the unifying aspect of life. The title comes from a photograph in which some rock formations became a natural visual representation of the Yoni, so there was also the juxtaposition of something hard and ancient, rock, with something living, giving birth to life, and sexuality, the Yoni.

The Yoni Rocks begins with the funeral of one of my aunts, and then moves to memories of my paternal grandmother and her home, and the many things “home” represents: the feminine, nurturing, comfort, and so on. This is the divine feminine, but the feminine can also be dark, constrictive, and destructive; just read some poets’ work on their mothers. There is also the river, and the metaphorical qualities of rivers, that the same river cannot be stepped into twice, and so on. The second section of the book deals almost exclusively with romantic and sexual love, the meeting and relationship of the two sexes. Romantic love is, indeed, one of the most profound experiences that humans can have, whether it is ultimately positive or negative, for we abnegate our ego when it happens.

Another poem in The Yoni Rocks is about my paternal grandmother who will always have a special place in my heart and psyche. I often visit my grandmother’s home—on Girouard Avenue in Montreal, where she lived for forty years—in dreams or drive passed on my way to work. When I was a child my family lived for two years at Grandmother’s Girouard Avenue flat because my father was not well. Later, I had many happy days when I would visit my grandmother and her two old sisters, my great aunts Essie and Edna. Her home is the psychic center of my imagination and she, herself, is someone I loved dearly. For me, Girouard Avenue is the home of the Grand Mother, a place of ancestors, love and kindness, and the beginning of my journey in life.

As well, and of enormous importance in my life, has been my relationship with CZ who returned me to life, who animated me, after years of not being fully alive. The Yoni Rocks is dedicated to “the three important women in my life: my grandmother, my mother, and my wife.” Whether for good or otherwise, knowing these three women has made my life the journey that it has been and still is. Knowing CZ, my wife, is something that doesn’t need to be discussed here but is celebrated in the following poem, also in The Yoni Rocks:

Reincarnation

1.

We meet again, again flesh

and blood, again bone, tendon

and memory. Events of old lives,

clothes divested as I divested

the past in meeting you,

in meeting you again

and again and again

into infinity.

Forty years of waiting for you,

a dark delirium of the soul;

we met apparently for the first time

but home is where we are together

in this room, this house,

the two square feet we occupy

in a single embrace. The embrace

of memory, bred in muscle, eating

or favouring one side in sleep,

falling asleep in your arms.

The arms of many births,

deaths, incarnations of

gods and goddesses,

Bardic voices, Druid's potion.

Listen, we share the sounds and sights

of a summer's evening, fireflies

across a field seeming

distant but as close as

a hand before your eyes,

breath on the back of your neck,

or is it the darkened field

and firefly lights

repeating their journey

between this life and that?

With you I have

returned home, not a place

walls enclosing silence,

but soul meeting soul

in the ancient movement of time.

I lie asleep on the floor

ear pressed to the darkness

and hear the hum of earth,

the generations of families, priests,

and existence of all living things

like listening, ear to a pregnant

woman's belly, baby's rapid

heart beat; shadows fall hundreds

of feet, listen into the soul

of man preparing for its journey

of final sleep, we came

from here and return, forgetful

of our origins, or of the

father and mother who created us.

Here is the title poem of The Yoni Rocks:

The Yoni Rocks

Who would deny us the Yoni rocks,

who would keep us from

hearing Mother's voice?

Who would deny us death,

the rocks that are tombstones:

father's grave lies bare,

a rectangle of grass where

soil separates us; it is more

than soil, but time,

sorrow, and grief.

The men I never knew, Father,

stepfather, my father's father,

the others distant.

So now I return to mother,

returning home, the hidden dream

of home. It is from the mother

that we come, to the earth

that we return. Cleft-divided,

rocks in the hot sunlight

by the ocean, where the iguana

are motionless.

I am drawn to her presence, to

a hymn to woman,

birth, death, the goddess

coming from the earth

and moon, held captive

in moonlight, a perfect

roundness of completion.

She is my seed and bone, my

entrance into life; age four

I lay between my parents,

Father asleep, and Mother,

smiling, said "kiss your

father." Later I slept

with Grandmother and Aunt Mable

at their country home,

lay between them, my head

at their feet making room

for three in one bed. We are three,

a trinity of man, woman,

and child.

Vulva shaped rocks,

the Yoni Rocks, shells,

clams moving on the river's

sandy floor leaving

a trail twisting, straight,

or circular in the sand;

the sun entering the sky

from beneath trees

on the horizon. Mother

is the most beautiful

woman I remember thinking,

long brunette hair, as I lay

in a pram on Girouard Avenue

just a hundred feet

from Grandmothers's flat,

living there when Father

was ill. Mother

was the most beautiful woman

to the child who lay

staring at her as though

only we existed, no other existed

in that enclosure of mother, father

and child. So now I seek to lie

beside you, fear losing you,

as I have been left before.

Now the Yoni Rocks

are a doorway

to the inner life,

as before conception

and birth, before emerging into life

in blood and salt and air;

always fearing the return,

dissolution into nothingness

and fear.

2.

Our ship did not break like waves

on these rocks, rocks that gave us

life; these rocks were stars,

meteors fallen in the night

waiting to cool from their

entry to our world, we saw

them lie almost invisible

half buried in sand and water

cooling in the summer night.

White caps are an old

woman's white hair, twisted

and tied into a bun, faces

seen in clouds when a child,

a horse pulling a milk wagon

on Oxford Avenue in 1957,

Archibald Lampman's:

Tonight the very horses springing by

Toss gold from whitened nostrils,

moved by these lines age sixteen.

Who would deny us the Yoni rocks,

who would deny us poetry, the intimate

square feet we inhabit,

a rectangle of grass, a triangle

of birth, the brown mouse

and codfish, separation

and reunion, sky and earth,

northern lights in July when sailing

at 2 a.m., fireflies on a June evening

when out for a walk with you?

We return to ourselves, to the

woman a man is always beside, or

the man the woman is beside.

Who would deny us hearing Mother's

voice, your touch, or the silent

presence of Grandmother

always with me, always close

with her white hair, cotton

print dress and black shoes,

not a farewell

but this presence ending grief.

(Stephen Morrissey, The Yoni Rocks, Empyreal Press, Montreal 1995; ISBN 0-921852-07-X; The Shadow Trilogy, including The Compass (1993) and The Mystic Beast (1997), was published by Empyreal Press in Montreal.)

Notes on The Compass (1993)

The Compass (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1993) is the first book of the Shadow Trilogy, books I wrote between 1989 and 1997. I had several titles before I decided on The Compass, which is also the title poem of the book. It is possible that I considered "The Home Front," because of the irony that it can refer to both a war between countries being fought on the home country’s border and to “home” with its suggestion of the promise of love, comfort, and happiness; I think, as well, of the title of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, of World War One, and of the unhappily married caught in a War of the Roses scenario. However, now I wonder if this was one of my working titles, or was it for a book that was either never written or for a possible title for a previous book, Family Album? I don’t remember

    Just today, I reread the poems in The Compass and the book is not quite as I remembered it. If anything, it is much more affirmative and positive than I had thought. It is divided into three sections: “The Whip,” “Hades,” and “The Compass.” “The Whip” is a continuation of Family Album (Caitlin Press, Vancouver, 1989), my book immediately preceding The Compass. The poems in “The Whip” are poems of family life, memory, observation; they are a continuation and development of the poems in Family Album. “Hades,” the second section, is made up of post-divorce poems, the outcome of the emotional and psychological experience of the divorce-- which was an emotional journey to Hades--and it is this section that is "confessional." The final section, “The Compass,” celebrates rebirth, sexuality, marriage, and romantic love.

    I would like to explain the psychology that leads one to write three books on the human Shadow, the Jungian archetype encompassing the psychology of shame, projection, taboos, and self-loathing. I was always intrigued by Shadow content of consciousness; I always wrote with the intention of what C.G. Jung called individuation even before I had heard of Jung, that was always my concern in my writing, from when I began writing in 1965. I knew for many years that the way I was living was not right, but I was incapable of changing myself or the circumstances of my life. Fortunately, the soul will not allow stasis, we can not escape for long the demand of the soul for an authentic life. Thus it was, that after many years of avoiding life, events conspired to do for me what I could not do for myself, as will be explained below. I wrote about the avoidance of transformation in the following excerpt from a poem in The Mystic Beast (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1997):

            Lines From Magritte:

        The Forbidden Universe (or Olympia)

A man refused

transformation—"not

yet" he argued "too busy

with family, job, mother,

no time"—always he held

back, remained in

a chrysalis state,

like putrefied matter, undigested

food, or a giant tumour

in his body

clogging all arteries

that lead cosmic

energy into the central

nervous system.

For forty years

a giant organic blockage

grew in the middle

of his body

until he bulged

at the waist;

it was a tumour

on his soul

or the soul

itself expanding

disproportionate

and constricted

by its cage of ribs

and internal organs.

He was sick

with undiagnosable

illnesses, his face anguished,

even walking across

a room became difficult.

In my experience big changes in the soul do not happen because of a series of insights and epiphanies; nor do they happen in a linear progression, or build to a final perfection. The soul does not care about time and space, or even about talking and discussing; change is not an evolution, not even a convoluted evolution, but something that happens to us, something that is beyond our conscious insistence, or desire, that we change into something that is unknown to us and of which we have no experience. I am not referring to the kind of insights we all have with some regularity, but to “the development of the soul,” to the kind of profound change that seems to seldom happen and can’t be made to happen.

    The ways in which we attempt change are hit and miss: years of prayer result in nothing; years of meditating in a cave result in nothing; years of therapy result in nothing. These activities have a nobility to them, perhaps they lay a foundation for change, but there is no causal guarantee that they will result in the desired change. Indeed, I am not saying that these methods for changing the soul are without value or always fail to effect change, only that in my experience the kind of change that I am talking about comes, as it did for me, through what might be called “Divine intervention,” through fate or Providence, or something that comes to us without invitation and by its own volition.

    Around 1986-1987, I was beginning a Pluto transit over my ascendant, which is when my marriage began to unravel and finally collapsed in the winter-spring of 1989. There were other terrible events around the same time, but they must wait for another discussion. A Pluto transit over the ascendant devastates and wipes out one’s life; this was my experience. It was a time when my old life was wiped away so that a new life could be created.

    I, myself, soon came to affirm what had happened to me; I soon affirmed the annihilation of my old life as I knew it; it was the only way that I could embrace life and grow into the person I was meant to be. I felt that my old life was like a giant tumour growing in my body and I was unable to do anything about it, I was unable to cut it out myself, and it was not possible for someone else to remove it, it was the tumour of a psychological complex. I know what an unrealized life is like, I know what it is like when the compass that guides our life does not read accurately the direction in which we must make our journey if we are to find spiritual and psychological wholeness.

    Change and transformation is also possible when we are loved by another, when the other focuses their love and attention on us and we reciprocate with love for the other. Love can move us closer to wholeness, change, and creativity. For many of us, what love means is to be animated, or brought to life, by another. This is a gift that must motivate us, who have been loved, to return to life the blessings of love that we have received.

Here’s the title poem from The Compass:

        The Compass

On the four corners of the bed

the body becomes a compass

describing the direction

of desire and passion. Months of desire

arrive at this destination,

rocking on a single almost silent

wave we are sheltered

by darkness. The body

is a compass needle;

you turned me from east to west,

awoke a sleeping giant

that moves between your mouth and breasts and legs;

the room illuminated by static electricity

thrown off by our bodies.

How many decades did I sleep

waiting for only you;

I lust after you in all the directions of space.

Meeting at the airport

your foot touching my leg

beneath the restaurant table,

we secretly entered an empty banquet

hall where the caterers chattered and

poured drinks behind a wall partition

then quickly leaving

finding a deserted hallway of

open office doors

where we embraced.

All the others in my life

fell away, I was ready

to abandon my old life for you,

for the touch of your hand

and mouth, the apple red and delicious

cut in half that I eat.

Tied to the four corners of love

as to a bed which becomes a compass,

I find you on your stomach,

on your back, in the morning

lying pressed against me.

It is not possible to return

to sleep now, it is not possible

to forsake your touch and love,

black lace, fingers, wetness,

your mouth, words. The compass's

needle turns finding north switched

to east and west to south, night

becomes morning; nothing remains

as it was. You pointed my life

in a new direction, towards a corner

of the world only dreamt of before.

Outside the sun is red

descending behind a row of trees,

shadows fade into the other

unexplored regions of night.

(Stephen Morrissey, The Compass, Empyreal Press, Montreal 1993; ISBN 0-921852-04-5; The Shadow Trilogy, including The Mystic Beast (1997) and The Yoni Rocks (1995), was published by Empyreal Press in Montreal.)