Charming the wild Anima

{bone-marrow cosmic elixir}

From far away, I heard the melody that invoked me.

It pulled and enchanted me.

My large, moving body snaked slowly towards it.

~

Out there in the wilderness, I listened to the stories.

The hymns and the whispers.

My immense, undulating body slowly covered its tracks.

~

Despite the long distance, I could sense the ripe, juicy fruit.

I could smell the honey and milk as they were poured out to call me.

My vast, rippling body crawled slowly in its wake.

~

From afar, I felt the pain and rawness of the world.

I was carrying an ancient hunger.

I was thirsty inside.

Even blinded, my huge hybrid body, soft and vulnerable, throbbed voraciously.

~

Licked the traces.

Touched the glimpses.

Picked up the crumbs.

From the memories of the future.

The power of the vast body, driven by the primordial elixir of the cosmos.

~

After aeons dormant, I awoke.

Climbed out of the grave.

Scratched the stones.

Shed my skin.

My wide body furrowed the ground.

I'm on my way. Do you hear the earth roaring?

Anima’s Power

R. B. Onians, in his book The Origins of European Thought About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate, which was recommended to me by Fabrice DuBosc, says that Anima can be conceived of as a serpent —Petronius speaks of the return of sexual potency as the return of Anima. The Soul appeared as an ophidian, since it was particularly identified with the spinal cord and the latter resembles a serpent. The idea of Genii, which is equivalent to what survives death, is also associated with the serpent form and the unconscious.

The fact that it emerges again from its old skin is one reason why the form of a serpent seems appropriate for the immortal soul. Dwelling in the earth is also a characteristic that is not peculiar to snakes. It was believed that the deer, which loses its antlers, renews its life by swallowing the snake and then the water, in other words, receiving a new life-soul and a new vital fluid.

According to the Greeks, this vital fluid is also personified in Okeanus, which is the meandering river that surrounds the earth —like a loop that surrounds the earth. Serpent-shaped, the primordial river or water was conceived as a serpent with a human head and horns. The procreative element in any person appeared in the form of a serpent. There was an imagined primordial cosmic elixir or procreative power, liquid and serpentine —the name seems to have been borrowed from the Semites and Phoenicians and means "circular". Long before, the Sumerians referred to Hubur as the current of salt water that surrounds the world, which gave birth to the Viper, the Furious Serpent.

The belief outlined is similar to the Babylonian one; the earth was surrounded by the male element, Apsu, a serpent identified with or in the water. With him was another serpent, Tiamat, "mother of them all". The river Euphrates, considered a serpent, was 'the soul of the earth'. The oldest Greek conception of the structure of the universe, attributed to Epicurus, says that "the whole was from the beginning like an egg, the serpent around the egg was then a tight band like a crown or belt around the universe". In the Gnostic Pistis Sophia, the outer darkness was a serpent enveloping the entire world, with its tail in its mouth.

This Serpent that surrounds the cosmos, whose usual meaning is "Time", can be related to the procreative vital fluid with which the spinal cord is identified. It was believed to take the form of a serpent, but it also came to mean "time of life", "period of time", and therefore "eternity". The serpent is also linked to the mythical and eternal Phoenix, and it seems to be the seed of new life in the myth of the Phoenix. Before death, it builds a "nest" and dies on it. Then, from its bones and marrow, it is first born as if it were a worm (cf. the old English and German use of "worm" for "serpent"), and only then does it become the mythical bird once again.

May we charm back the arcane Soul, the wild and ecological Anima.

The one that consecrates the waters and the ground.

The one who brings the strength of the ground and of renewal.

May the fluid and fruitful monster of time envelop us as we sing stories, offering us memories.

May the primal Soul, arcane cosmic elixir and procreative power, liquid and meandering, claim us back.