Our species  has lived longest during the Paleolithic.  Our original home is the late Paleolithic

when the DNA of our species began to be stabilized

and our forebears had spread themselves across several continents

and the consciousness of our species began to show up in cave drawings in several parts of the world.

 

 

The so-called ‘Great God of Sefar’, a rock painting of a figure taller than any others. One among hundreds.  Sefar on the Tassili N’Ajjer plateau, Algerian Sahara.  Unknown date greater than 5000 BCE

 

 

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The poet Gary Snyder has these words about the values embedded during the Paleolithic in the  consciousness of our species.

 

As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the late Paleolithic;

the fertility of the soil,

the magic of animals,

the power-vision in solitude,

the terrifying initiation and rebirth;

the love and ecstasy of the dance,

the common work of the tribe.

 

Gary Snyder, American born 1930, in Earth House Hold, 1969

 

 

The rebirth to which the poet alludes is insight into why the ego must be mastered: a change from me me me in the center of the world to the multiple and unitary world in the center of me.  

 

This is insight central to all spiritual traditions; and not a monopoly of any of them (the ‘religion of no religion’)

 

operating both inside and outside of religious institutions

 

overlaid, camouflaged but never removed or removable by the many civilizational changes our species has evolved. 

 

The insight changes consciousness (‘altered consciousness’).

 

This may come, unheralded, with intense emotion, or the approach of life-threatening danger, or with a near-death experience. 

 

It may come with the ingestion of psychotropic agents as practiced during the rites of Demeter at Eleusis and in rituals to this day.  

 

It may come through the discipline of meditation, yoga, contemplative prayer, ecstatic dance, spirit possession, or any of our many spiritual practices.   

 

It can come by way of the discipline of a pilgrimage through a lansdcape to a site or event designated as sacred;

as with the Magi which culminated in the Epiphany which is an altered state of consciousness.

 

 

 

The Journey of the Magi, c.1433-35, tempera and gold on wood. 

Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni), c. 1400-1450), Italian, Siena, Cortona).  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY from whose website this photo

 

 

It may come in the ordinary course of a day’s  duties as when the mother of Lord Krishna, child, prising open his mouth to remove the soil he was eating, saw our immense, whirling universe in the cavity of his mouth and the passageway of his throat.

 

The insight, the epiphany, is a dead letter if not translated into action.

 

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A change of his consciousness came to the Christian St. Francis of Assisi after more than one encounter with the poverty on the street; and then through a disturbing vision.

 

 

These are paintings  describing some of the externally visible aspects of the journey undertaken by St. Francis.

 

Power-vision,

 

 

The Holy Family with Saints Francis and Anne and the Infant Saint John the Baptist, oil on canvas, early or mid-1630s. 

Peter Paul Rubens, 1577 – 1640, Flemish.  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

 

initiation,

 

 

St. Francis of Assisi (1181/2 – 1226) Receiving the Stigmata;

Jan Van Eyck (1395-1441); Netherlandish; painted 1430-32.  Oil on vellum on wood panel.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

 

St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, after Jan Van Eyck; etching, 1991

Peter Paone, American born 1936. On display in 2015 at Woodmere Museum of Art, Philadelphia

 

 

 

 St. Francis of Assisi (1181/2 -1226). Tempera and tooled gold on panel.

 

 

and the spiritual discipline he subsequently instituted as a way of service.

 

 

 

St. Francis – The Piazza, 1953, color lithograph

Benton Spruance, 1904 -1967, American.  Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia

 

 

 

St. Francis of Assisi  (1181/2 – 1226), 0il on panel.

Renouncing the World for the Cloister, c.1500. Netherlandish.

Artist not known.  Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

 

 

Pope Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Francis of Assisi (1181/2 – 1226). Tempera and tooled gold on panel. Originally part of a large altar.

Bartolome del Castro (died 1567), Spanish. Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

 

 

St. Francis; date unknown, woodcut

Edward Warwick, American, 1881 – 1973; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia

 

 

 

St. Francis of Assisi (1181/2 – 1226) with a Devotee.

Half of a diptych painted in Umbria, Italy, c. 1285.   Tempera and silver on panel.

Artist not known. Philadelphia Museum of Art