Saturday, January 12, 2013

Going round in circles

The most popular entry on this blog is the one about the Circle. This is a subject that i find myself returning to over and over again in my meditations and it seems that the subject is truly inexhaustible. I have had another synchronicity this week; I was looking at some films on ubuweb by Guy Debord, and found that one of them is called In girum imus nocte. Well, we know how go in circles by night, that'll be witches, right? It wasn't a phrase I'd come across so I googled it. This is what wikipedia has to say about it:

Another Latin palindrome, "In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni" ("We go wandering at night and are consumed by fire", in which "In girum ire" is translated as "go wandering" instead of the literal "go in a circle", cf. Italian "andare in giro", "go strolling or wandering around"), was said to describe the behavior of moths. It is likely that this palindrome is from medieval rather than ancient times. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindrome)


Perhaps we have some kind of biological imperative to go in circles, after all there are no straight lines in nature, when we walk without anything to prompt us in a particular direction we end up going in a circle. Perhaps the difference between us and moths in that you can see the light they are circling round: perhaps ours is the invisible dark light of the mother.
I was also intrigued to discover that circumambulation (perhaps best known to us as the jargon phrase for a circling of something in ritual magic) is a rite of many world religions, with the notable exception of Christianity. In Buddhism there is actually a sort of meditation that is done going round in circles, which has the endearing name of kinhin. And the point of all this for the witch? If you don't know where you are going, don't strain because that would be trying too hard. Try going round in circles, i.e. of necessity returning to where you are, because after all she is attained at the end of desire.

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments are moderated before publication