Shrine Shrine Post #2: Spider Woman and Tagore Shrines

First, I just want to apologize for being hugely behind on my blog reading/commenting this past week or so. I promise to do my best in catching up with everyone in the next few days…

Second, one of my fellow ALTs–Di–asked that I post some more photos of the shrines on the ranch, and so here is my Shrine Post #2. She had recounted the fabulous Weaving Ceremony she took part in to mark her wedding, and so I thought immediately of posting about the Spider Woman Shrine here at the ranch (”weaving” originates in the spider, and this is one of the Native American sites here) in her honor, and the Spider Woman shrine has its counterpart in the Rabindrinath Tagore shrine, which is my personal favorite site on the entire ranch. So, you’re getting two shrines for the price of one today…

The Spider Woman Shrine is on the western side of the hill at the top of our property. It has great morning light because the sun obviously shines on it then from the east, and its backdrop is the ancient volcano (appropriately named, Black Mountain) that looms above our property on state land. As you’re walking along the back loop of the hill trail (we call it the “Rim Trail”), you arrive at a fairly nondescript entrance, marked by three small rock steps up:

The shrine immediately opens up into a fairly flat, circular area, backed by a large monolith, which is the actual shrine:

When we first toured the ranch with the former owners, the woman yogi who lived here took us up to this rock and explained that it anatomically represented The Feminine. I’ll let your imaginations be the judge of that:

There is a Native American bowl at the altar site, its opening meant to represent The Center of the Earth, as Spider Woman represents she who creates from a central source. In northern Arizona, there is a magnificent space called Canyon de Chelly, believed to be the source of creation for the Navajos. The tallest free-standing rock spire in the world rises from the canyon floor, and it is known as Spider Rock, and the legend stands that Spider Woman, who brought the gift of weaving to the people, lives on the top of the rock. She is credited with weaving all of creation together, and thus is also known as

Someday, R. and I hope to renew our wedding vows at our Spider Woman shrine. We were originally a courthouse couple, so at some point, we’d like to do it up proper-like, and this particular spot would be perfect, I think, for a morning ceremony. Plus, it’s large enough to seat a dozen people or so. There is also a sundial at the opposite side of the shrine from the monolith, which doesn’t have a particular currency with Native American culture, but here it is:

“Fugit hora, ora” is Latin that means “The hour flies, pray.” It was made specifically for the ranch itself, its spire coordinated to the latitude and longitude of the property.

The other shrine I am profiling in this post is a natural counterpart–our counterpoint–to the Spider Woman Shrine because they share the feature of anatomical rock formations. The Tagore Shrine contains a boulder that for all intents and purposes resembles the male anatomy…but I digress. First, let me introduce you to the shrine itself…

The Tagore Shrine, named for Nobel-Prize-winning poet (1913) Radindranath Tagore, is my favorite spot on the entire ranch. I often come here, just to hang out. Here is the entrance to the Tagore shrine, which is the most hidden of any shrine on the entire property…we found it by accident. It is marked by a stone, but it is still hard to see:

You can see that it is positioned off the corner of the hill, the canyon is below us and the mountain is beyond. The little path loops around a boulder, and then you arrive at what is essentially a gate. How the 80-year-old Swami who built this place managed to build this gate of three immense stones is anybody’s guess:

Here is the gate from the other side, after you’ve crossed through it into the shrine…I guess that’s what you’d also call the exit!:

This shrine site has several different “rooms” or areas to it–you’re now standing in the first such “room” and the first “altar” (for lack of a better word) is in front of you:

The Swami left a very odd looking branch–with an intricate ‘knot’ in it–leaning up against the opening of this altar (you can barely make it out in this photo).

If you continue down a few stone steps, you arrive in the second “room,” which has a huge, flat boulder sitting in front of you:

This is my favorite place in the world to sit. I can spend hours sitting on top of this rock. It overlooks the canyon that is far below, although it is possible to hear the water falling over the dam from up here. I know it’s a cliche to say such things, but if I had an hour’s notice that the world was ending, this is where any survivors would find me. I would take the dogs and go and sit here, and that might be just enough. (Of course, I’d like to spend the end of the world with R., but I don’t presume to know whether he’d like it to end for him on this particular rock, so he’s only provisionally accounted for in my vision….) Here’s the cool thing about this rock…once you’re up on top of it, here is the view:

And now you can see why this shrine contains the counterpoint to the Spider Woman shrine–this is the ranch’s Phallic Rock. Here it is from down below, looking up:

(This second view is actually at another shrine–the one we named after the architect of this whole place, Swami Ramananda, the 80-year-old we bought the property from.) These photographs also give you a good sense of how the color of the boulders changes pretty dramatically, depending on the light.

Besides the sound of the running water far below, the other sound that it’s possible to hear at this shrine are the wind chimes hanging from the oak tree next to my favorite boulder:

The dogs love to come to this spot with me too–I think because it has such a great view, and they can survey their domain:

But that isn’t all there is to this shrine! Long after we discovered these main areas of the shrine, we one day noticed that a small path led on farther, beyond my favorite boulder:

There were even well-placed stone steps leading up to yet another “room” that is hidden behind a wall of boulders from the main area:

One you climb this short path, you reach a third altar-type place, with a beautiful blue “eye”:

Near this big blue marble, under the overhang of the rock, is a wooden box with a copper lining (I think it must have been an old cigar box?) that contains two volumes of Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry. So, it is possible to lollygag about, reading verse here all day long! He was the first Indian (Bengali) to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

One of the two books is Fireflies, which is Tagore’s volume of ephemeral (like lightening bugs!) verse. I like to play a game with myself when I visit this place by opening the book once to any random page, and concentrating on that particular verse for the rest of the day. Here is a sampling of stuff from Fireflies:

“The fireflies, twinkling among leaves, make the stars wonder.”

“When I stand before thee at the day’s end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.”

“What is Art? It is the response of man’s creative soul to the call of the Real.”

“We live in the world when we love it”

“I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door - or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.”

“Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.”

“Do not say, ‘It is morning,’ and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.”

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”

“The worm thinks it strange and foolish that man does not eat his books.”

“Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt at being told that it is a fragment awaiting perfection.”

“My offerings are not for the temple at the end of the road, but for the wayside shrines that surprise me at every bend.”

I often wonder whether the Swami who built all these shrines had that last verse in mind when he did so. It turns out that he actually KNEW Tagore, in India, back in the early 40s, when they were both hanging out with Gandhi. And the Swami took the name of his religious group from another of Tagore’s books, Sadhana, The Realization of Life. That’s also in the box.

This ranch has taught me a number of lessons (so far)–one of which is that I don’t really own it. For the first time in my life, I’m overwhelmed with the sense that I am NOT the owner despite what the papers might say, but rather a sort of steward. It’s too big (and I don’t mean in terms of acreage) and too old for me to claim it. That’s weird because every other place I’ve ever lived, I’ve felt–I’ve even revelled in the knowledge–that I owned that space. But this place has made me think differently. I know that I am only passing through, and that it will be there long after–LONG after–I am gone, still sitting under the same mountain, in the same sun’s light, visited by people that I can’t ever know.

Okay, so this is going to sound weird, I’m sure, but that sense of not-owning, not-possessing, has come together for me with my adoption. That I’m being given this gift of a child, who will be with me for a while–who will learn from me as I will learn from her–but whom I do not possess. It’s really alleviated that desperate thought I had for a time, ‘what if I never have a child.’ Well, yes, I am going to have a child, and I will attach to her, and I will love her as if the sun and moon rise and set on her, but she’s a gift, rather than a given. It’s hard to explain (without sounding mildly artificial or super religious) other than to say something like that. I think it’s the unexpected quality of adoption–the unlikelihood of it, the fact that it’s not primary in our culture–that makes me think of it as a gift not a given. This is also the message I sometimes wish I could convey to parents of bio children–that bio kids too really aren’t a given, even though they may have seemed to arrive that way to you.

The other unlikely lessons that this place has taught me don’t have to do with the usual suspects, like beauty or awesomeness or scenic wonder. It is all that, too, of course, but so is the Grand Canyon. And this place feels categorically different to me than the Grand Canyon, in all likelihood because I am allowed to live here. And so the lessons are more intimate. Lessons like generosity and hospitality and kindness. I know it sounds funny to equate generosity or kindness to a physical landscape, but that’s the only way I can explain it. Living here has made me value kindness (more than respect or trust or loyalty or any of the qualities I used to hold dearer than the rest), appreciate generosity (the little sister of kindness), more than I used to.

Because it isn’t just a space of natural beauty–it also has a human-made part, a human creator behind it. It is not just “What Is,” but it is also what was created out of what Is, it is also all about change, about possibility. The trails and the shrines and the steps are all a changed landscape, created out of natural material. I live in a transformed place that regularly reminds me of the possibilities for a transformed life.

Not to put too fine a point on it or anything.