A mythic plunge over a waterfall marks the beginning of an intense physical and psychological initiation for the character Jake Sulley in the 2009 science fiction film Avatar, written and directed by James Cameron. Jake is part of a military guard for a mining corporation which is harvesting a prized mineral on a distant planet. The colonisers have named this place Pandora and there are many dangers for humans including wild beasts and poisonous air.
On his first mission into the rainforest Jake gets separated from a scouting party when he is chased by a giant, predatory, panther-like creature. Running for his life, he ends up half falling, half jumping over a huge and thundering waterfall.
Surviving his descent into the deep plunge pool, he surfaces to find himself alone and lost in a mysterious and hostile jungle. Night is fast approaching. Jake’s experiences from this point in the story onwards gradually break down all his pre-conceived ideas about nature, survival and relationships. This sets him on a path where eventually, he finds himself to be a sacred part of the Great Mother’s web.
Watery surfaces are often the places where worlds meet in mythology and in our own lives. The legendary Ffynone Waterfall in Pembrokeshire in Wales is known to be a doorway to Annwn, an ethereal parallel world of constant delights. Water blurs the boundaries between seen and unseen realms by softening the hard edges of the material world. It magnetises us to stay and be enchanted, stilling our constantly moving thoughts and enabling us to enter more fluid and relational states. As we let go into this mesmerising, right-brain state, we may sense the more subtle elements of the spirit world around us.
These are some stages of the waterfall’s pull on our soul’s yearnings. Firstly, we are in the stream of life but becoming aware that there is an ending up ahead. If we follow this stream, we will find the flow ends suddenly with a cataclysmic plunge into the unknown. From this fall, there is a descent of the soul from which there will be no chance of return to what life was before. When following the flow of life, there may be quiet, backwater times but this is a hiatus moment. We are on a one-way ticket by this point, whether we like it or not.
Within the calm at the head of the falls we are magnetised to continue moving with the flow, inevitably, destined now to go. We reach the point where we let go or are compelled to. We leave all we know behind and are at the mercy of the water’s gravity. We are off the chartered map and free-falling. This point is pure and absolute surrender. Like the point of death. Falling now, at the mercy of gravity we have become the flow. Shedding old skins, our sense of self has gone too. Our atoms are consumed by the water.
This too then comes to an end. Our fall is stopped by water. We enter the deep pool of forgetting. A new immersion in a womb-like space that is shaped by the power of the relentless water pouring down. Bubbles, brightness, the presence of the cascading water is immense. A pounding rhythm thrums through body and soul. Such a downwards pull. The descent into a new power is palpable.
Now, rising free of the tugging whirlpool, an endless destructive vortex circling, we are breathing new air, lung-fuls of it to calm the shock. As we look around we find we have fallen into another world.
The waterfall has changed us and we cannot go back. There has been an ending to old ways of experiencing, now a new chapter begins. Initiation brings a new type of power, strength and awareness. The gifts bestowed on us will be called upon. We must pick ourselves up and go on.
It can be valuable to return to the wisdom of fairy tales that teach us how to break out of “trances” and conditioning that prevent us from living true and harmonious lives. We may become conditioned into thinking we are powerless to change our fate or the ways of the world. We may lose track of our inner compass and not notice how our responses to life have become ensnared in false beliefs and fears over the years.
Yet help is at hand once we seek the keys to revitalise our true potential as empowered human beings with consciousness, heart and a role to play in the world. We come into the world with gifts to share and lessons to learn that create flow and generate goodness in the world. Once we recall that we are adventurers living out stories together, we can learn from our embodied experience in this cosmic play of life.
But how do we break free when our minds have become entranced and things are out of alignment? Across Europe, the Middle East and Asia there is a legend about a brave young woman who takes on the task of undoing the cruel work her stepmother has woven in the family.
This tale has been told for centuries, with various shifts in nuance and detail. About twenty years ago I read it in a book that I know longer have and I do not remember the title unfortunately, but the images stayed in my memory. It came into my mind and heart as I felt winter’s chill seeping into the air this morning and watched the clouds. It may be familiar to you.
There were once six brothers who were princes in a beautiful kingdom ruled by a wise king and queen. The princes loved their younger sister who was the crowning joy and light in the family. Happiness sadly, was not to last. The next long, cold winter, the queen grew ill and died. The family drew ever closer and supported each other in their grief.
The following year the king was duped into a union with a heartless, manipulative woman, whom he married. The princes were hated by their step-mother. Their sister was tolerated, but only because the new queen wished to turn her into a shadow-woman like herself. The princes tried to protect their sister, so the broiling step-mother made jackets of feathers for them and threw them over them whilst they were sleeping. At once they awoke, transformed into wild swans and flew through the bedroom window, never to return.
The princess was heart-broken and refused to learn her stepmother’s sorcery. She went to the king, her father and accused the new queen of casting dark magic on her brothers. The king was under the thrall of his new wife. He threw his daughter out of the castle.
Wandering along in the forest, the princess began to search for her brothers. There were many hunters in the kingdom so she feared that her swan-kin may already be dead. She tracked the pathways the clouds made in the sky and slept in nests of reeds by the marshes at night. Six weeks passed.
Then one evening in the mist by the lakes, the fairy queen came to her in a dream. She was told to pick nettles for string and with the string, weave six shirts for her brothers. If she could throw the shirts over them, the birds would transform back into humans once more. There was a further condition: to protect the magic of the task, she must be remain silent until it was complete.
When she awoke the young princess eagerly began picking nettles wherever she could find them. She wandered far from the castle grounds picking armfuls of the stinging plants, then she would sit down under the shade of the nearest tree, tear them into fibre and weave part of a shirt with her fingers. Her hands grew blistered, scratched and sore from the nettles but she worked on, wandering the forest margins, picking wild berries and nuts to eat, drinking from streams and weaving the shirts.
After six months she had travelled far from her homeland, still intent upon her task. By now she had strayed into a neighbouring kingdom. By now she was a ragged, heart-broken woman, far from the royal princess she had been in her childhood. Whilst walking the edge-lands and picking nettles, patrolling soldiers found her and took her to their king. The king asked her to explain her actions, but the young woman had vowed silence to protect her brothers and the one chance she had to save them.
Despite her refusal to speak, the king sensed her goodness and allowed her to live in the castle. She continued her daily walks searching for nettles and wove day and night to finish her task. Six years had now passed since she had begun her long and arduous quest. Yet she did not give up hope of being able to help her brothers and hold them once more. One dusk she was picking nettles near some old graves. A group of villagers observed her and began to gossip that she must be a black witch summoning evil spirits. They called out to her and accused her of this. She looked at them but could not reply.
Later that night soldiers came to her room in the castle and arrested her for a witch-craft trial. She could say nothing to explain herself, out of loyalty to save her brothers. The king sadly condemned her to burn at the stake the following day at dawn. That night she continued her weaving, desperate to complete the task before death took her. All but the last shirt were complete as she fell into an exhausted and fitful sleep. At dawn the guards came and unbolted the door. She awoke and quickly folded the shirts into the apron tied at her waist. She was led to the castle courtyard where a firewood pyre and a jeering crowd awaited her.
As she was tied to the stake, a flock of six swans glided down from the sky and circled the young woman’s head. The villagers saw this as a heavenly miracle but it was too late to stop the executioner lighting the sticks around her. Quickly she threw the shirts over the swans and they transformed into human men. “Sister!” they cried and hugged her tightly. The youngest brother always remained with one swan wing for an arm, as she had not had time to complete the final shirt.
As the family were reunited, the spell broke and the fire surrounding them burst into a thousand flowers. At last the young woman was able to explain herself to the court and the king. Admiring her bravery and devotion, the king invited her to be his queen. Needless to say they lived very happily in the castle, along with her six older brothers.
The swans are a symbol of purity, harnessing spirit in the body, aligning personal truth and actions, embodying strength and grace. Mute swans (Cygnus olor) live for twenty to thirty years and generally mate for life.
The choice of nettle in the story is interesting as English folklore depicts the plant as a healing cure for fever, kidney stones and rheumatism, as well as being useful for treating ailing plants, averting thunderstorms, protecting people and animals and brewing up a spring tonic good for the nerves (Baker, p.106-7). This is a wayside plant of potential danger and pain that the young woman must learn to handle with courage and care, in order to unlock the magic.
Other metaphorical gems in the story are the power of clothing to create illusion or restore true appearance, holding to the good task until it is done, even if ridiculed, shunned or attacked by others in the community and the reassurance that there is help available in the darkest times, in the form of the wild goddess, here represented by the fairy-queen who takes pity on the exiled girl and sets up an initiation to harness her inner healing power.
Committing to a vow of silence indicates a devotional sacrifice to something greater than personal desires. It also represents conscious mastery over the senses and a commitment to strengthening the inner life by deep listening to earth, self and guidance. Making a vow or pledge can cultivate the inner strength needed to break free from trances and addictive patterns. It establishes a new way of being, being seen and interacting in the world that can transform your experience of life.
Sacred Ground Healing 