EARTH AND SPIRIT
VOLUME 6 NUMBER 1
Spring 1981

The world-navel stands, as it were, at the midpoint of another symbol, the cosmic axis, the pole that pierces the three worlds and has as its prototypes pillars, obelisks, minarets, spires, and ziggurats. The Milky Way is also held to be a pillar. And also a path to be taken. In old British maps one finds Watling Street, still one of the thoroughfares of London, continuing all the way through Europe and ending up in the sky. No break, in fact, between Earth and Heaven. Step off a pavement in the city and you're en route for Orion. Whether you get there is another matter. And the cosmic axis can be assimilated to the World Tree, for me the most central of all. Think of the Norse Yggdrasil, on which, having parted with his right eye in exchange for the gifts of memory and premonition, the god Odin hung suspended, making himself fruit. "Nine days I hung on the windy tree, Offering myself to myself." With such a phrase humming within us, can we say that the Gods are dead? --from "What the Bees Know" by P. L. Travers

ARTICLES
NATIVE EARTH Peter Matthiessen
Seeing what is really there.

THE ENCANTADOS David Guss
Spirit people of the Venezuelan jungle.

PARABLE OF THE TREES AND THE STARS Victor Perera
The last of the Lacandon Maya.

CONNECTION  Peter Nabokov
The cave of hands.

A RAMAGE FOR WAKING THE HERMIT Robert Bly
A poem.

EARTH AND SPIRIT Paul Caponigro
Photographs.

WHAT THE BEES KNOW P. L. Travers
The primary wisdom of myth.

A FORM EMERGING
Eskimo nature poetry selected and introduced by John Kastan.

BRIDGE OF FIRE Carol and Philip Zaleski
An interview with Dastur Dr. Firoze M. Kotwal, Zoroastrian high priest.

THE PHOENIX D. M. Dooling
An earthquake in Peru: destruction and renewal.

THE AGONY OF NATURE Peter Heinegg
The function of the hero.

MYTH AND PROPHECY Thomas Buckley
Origins and ends.

OUR MOTHER EARTH Oren Lyons
A challenge from the keepers of the land.

TANGENTS: Reviews
RAVEN AND FIRST MEN Robin Ridington
A contemporary sculptor follows his tradition.

THE INFERNAL METHOD George Quasha
William Blake--artist as transformer.

EPICYCLES: Traditional Stories from around the World
THE KILLING OF THE SMOTHERS-FIRE WITIGO Cree (Native American)
Told by Joseph Badfoot Michael; translated by Howard Norman

THE CREATION OF THE WORLD Ugandan

THIS IS WANDJINA Australian
Told by Albert Barunga

WHY ANT HAS A SMALL WAIST Taos Pueblo (Native American)
Retold by Terry Tafoya

LEMMINKAINEN Finnish
Retold by Padraic Colum