The Therianthrope

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In a faraway place, a million miles from no-where but within touching distance of the sky, where the mantis has meaning and the call of a jackal still speaks, a lowering moon looks down upon a group of little/San bushmen around a glowing fire, and into the empty night are carried the sounds of clapping and singing as an old man rises and begins to slowly circle the fire, his dance echoing the passage of the planets and the stars as they too circle the sun in the complexity of the never ending galaxy far above his head.

It all starts from a slow rhythmical pulse that blends the past, the present and the future into a single moment, the voices building and the movement speeding till, in a powerful shaking crescendo, the old man falls forward into a thousand year journey of trance to fetch the power of the mighty eland, for it shall heal his people, and return balance to his world.

And in the swirling smoke of the dawn, the gathered ashes are mixed with the blood of the eland and the spirit of the wind, to make a mark upon the rocks that still speaks to us from across time.

Out of this was born the Therianthrope

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But what can this mean to us as we live our lives untouched by the heated dust of the Kalahari sands or the swirling smoke of the dawn, what relevance does it have as we rush to work in our air-conditioned cars, or feast/laugh with others around a table of plenty?

What has this dance got to do with us?

In our age of everything, it is the Therianthrope which invites us to pause and consider that, between the cosmic dance of the San and the hum of the Hadron collider, we might have lost something along the way, that our rush towards tomorrow has forced a lightening of the load, a shallowing of experience, and a forgetting

For the universal form of the half-man half-animal found in ancient cultures was central to our understanding of the world, but now lost in a deafening silence under a galaxy of unseen stars, leaving an emptiness, it is as if all the leaves of the tree of life have been stripped bare, and the stories, mythologies and purpose that gave our lives context and our journey meaning have been cast aside upon the winds of change, for now we live in a monochrome world yet our eyes still see in colour. And our hearts, although lonely, still seek the truth.

What the Therianthrope reminds us is that we are complex, multi-dimensional beings, and that below the transience and shallowness of our modern world can be found our true unique selves, it helps us see that within each of us lies extra-ordinary hidden potential, a pathway to lives of meaning and joy, and a quiet place of knowing and calm to which we can always return that helps us navigate our lives through/during the turbulence of modern times.

For within the turbulence we seek clarity, and this is reached when we acknowledge that we are the sum of many parts, visible and invisible, social and solitary, conscious and unconscious and much in-between, we are our spark and shadow, our father and mother, we are our past and our dreams for the future, and so much more. If in a balanced and resolved calm we embrace our complexity, it becomes a quiet foundation, here is a harmony of being which enables us to see with greater clarity, allowing us to focus on the important aspects of which will enable us to become who we are. / nature and nurture/ our duality becomes expressed

But the Therianthrope has a warning for us as well, for to live one-dimensionally whilst functioning invisibly as multi-dimensional people, we open ourselves up to the unseen forces of the wind within us, and the possibility that, if we do not walk the world awake, imbalance and disquiet will rob us of the chance to live our lives as an expression of our fullest potential. It is here that the forces of pain, confusion and hurt are unleashed into a vacuum of disquiet, and only by reconnecting with our true deeper selves can our balance be reclaimed.

The Therianthrope invites us back on a journey of remembering

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