~ Siduri ~ Part 2

The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Matrix of the Modern Western Psyche

[>Part 1 here<] [>Part 3 here<] [>Part 4 here<]

Perhaps Necessity, Perhaps Inspiration

Before reading the almost five thousand-year-old texts that gave rise to this story, I dreamt of Siduri several times. Although I didn't yet know her name, she lovingly rocked me back to life. These are dreams that I won't share, but they were the key to this eco-mythological framework of mourning and love.

Eco-anxiety has been my companion for decades, and it moves in waves of presence and oblivion. It rises and falls in anguished gasps of pain and loss, not for me in particular, but for Life.

The concept of the Anthropocene, which purports to designate the geological epoch "of man,"¹ is characterised by a massive collapse of ecosystems, mass extinction, rapid planetary warming and civilisational disintegration and the extinction of numerous life forms, including human beings. I don't want to think about it; it's a gigantic and threatening problem with too many emergencies and catastrophes. I would rather not face the consequences – "Mommy, am I going to live through everything I'm supposed to?" my eldest daughter, who was seven then, asked me.

And then there’s the "Baseline Shift Syndrome", representing the result of moving away from actual natural conditions, which creates a shift in the perception of ecological change that varies from generation to generation –like calling summer the "fire season" is now normal, which would have been frightening two decades ago. Floods, fires, extreme drought, hurricanes, mass migrations, increasingly deadly and violent conflicts and genocide, famine, and desertification. Destruction, loss and collective grief.

The denials and illusions of civilisational, technological and human exceptionalism (in the global north) exhaust me of how dangerous, illusory and immature they are.

As Vanessa Andreotti says: "What if we knew (in our skin, flesh and bones, not just in our heads) that a great social and ecological collapse is inevitably on the horizon and that, in 10 to 20 years (or less), what is familiar will no longer be viable because we have crossed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries? What if we could respond collectively today from a cultural space of emotional serenity, relational maturity, intellectual discernment and intergenerational responsibility?"

I often return to the abyss of ashes where the ground swallows and the heart rips apart, where everything is heavy and difficult. The immobilisation and the pain. But Siduri held my hand and brought me to an ecstatic, intermediate place in the psyche that embraces and validates, where I could cry, laugh and celebrate Life in resonance. I felt Life and energy emerging again. Siduri brought me back to the place of the body, in the flow of emotions, to rhythmically giggle through mourning and Life. She introduced me to the threshold, an eco-psychological and mythical landscape of love and grief in an immanent and natural cycle.

The Epic of Gilgamesh - Matrix of the Modern Western Psyche

Many authors have worked on this ancient epic as a story of psycho-ecological warning, a myth of tension between the domesticated and civilised in opposition to the wild and sacred, as valid 4700 years ago as it is today. It is a myth that, among many other things, helps us to uncover the roots of the arrogance of the modern psyche, in the hubris and separation between humanity and wild animal and ecological nature.