On the Emergence of Peacocks
I’ve recently spent a little time obsessed, one could say, with the myths and symbols associated with peacocks. Of course, the male is a peacock and the female is a peahen, but needless to say we tend to ignore this peafowl duality and blanket them both with the name of peacock. So, I’m going to go with the flow: peacocks it is. And what do they mean? And are you one? You might be.
Several months ago I was living in Texas and I went to a famous park with a friend, a painter. We got in the van he’d named Magic and headed across to the other side of Austin. We got out of the truck and there they were, some pedigreed, Southern gentility standing and strutting behind an open gate while tourists like me smiled and gawked. A few days later, I got on my bicycle and headed back over the hills, and found myself sitting with the peacocks on a late Tuesday morning. In between trying to get a good angle I found that the trail led to a creek. So, in between sitting in bushes, trying to catch the light and the feathers I also went and sat in the creek. So, Taylor Creek talked to me and I sat on its rocks, casually poking it’s gurgling sounds with my toes. I asked it some questions but the creek, continued only to gurgle. And in that I found a deep sense of quiet, the kind that opens up the deeper inside of the mind. I took out yet another camera, this one video, and I began to record all that I could of the passing clear liquid, and the things it reflected. Eventually, I got back up and visited the peacocks again. I sat down with better stillness but the secrets of catching the peacock on film still felt elusive. I realized that although the feathers themselves were majestically colored, lending themselves to the bearing of royalty, that these birds were still, just birds, like any others, and that in our minds, we had made them into something. Of course, there must be a root to it all, a kernel of reason as to how and why all these myths got started.
I snapped a few last shots and packed myself up. I biked back home and plugged into my other self, the one that taps at the keyboard. I went searching a little bit deeper not into the wisdom of the creek but into the sounds of the internet. Listening through technology and experiencing nature is generally how I find my best answers on these odd little questions. So what did I find?
I found ancient Buddhist prayers and teachings. I found myths about Juno. I learned about their diets, their mating and found more myths. For such a male showoff, this bird’s feather’s were split between masculine and feminine deities, functions and virtues. The vice and dark attributions, too, seemed to be somehow split into two. Eventually, as luck and perseverance would have it, two simple aspects of the peacock that I hadn’t imagined presented themselves not in myth, but in science. The information was there, just staring through the simplest of places, yes, there it was, not in some hidden internet cave, but in the front facing simplicity of a wiki.
First, came the feathers, the ones at the tail, the ones that reflect to us, the shape of an eye. What goes on when my eye looks into that eye? Well, two things I can’t fully comprehend nor totally explain, but the physics behind it can be summed up into two main components: reflections and interference. See, it’s starting to get good already, the mysteries of these funky feathers. The best I can understand regarding the reflection bit is that it comes out of something known as Bragg’s Law, and Bragg’s Diffraction, which was first introduced as a concept in 1913, and it makes me laugh that in fact two people, William Lawrence Bragg and William Henry Bragg, a father and son (no less) discovered this reality. The reason the two makes me giggle is because the law itself is one of interference, so for something to interfere with something else, either positively or negatively, well, that means there has to be two of them.
The law itself goes a little like this when it comes to the feathers: those colors on the peacock that we think we’re seeing, well, yes, we’re seeing them, but they’re not pigments inside the feathers. No. What we see is a type of frequency pattern that comes from the shape of the fibers, the barbules, at the tips of the feathers. It has a lot to do with their spacing. Sort of like notes in a composition are spaced to create a sound it seems the spacing on the tips of these feathers, creates certain colors. The feathers, they’re kind of a visual symphony display. They’re kind of an exploration of reciprocity, too. Which is a key word when it comes to compassion. So, the very words of the science can give a deep sense of what it’s really all about, that is, if you’re open to it.
There’s a second part of the feathers that has to do with reflections between the inner and outer boundaries of the feather fibers Fabry–Pérot interference is its name. What I love about this part is that filters based on this principle are used widely in modern telecommunications. Sounds like the peacock really does have relevance in our modern world! Another thing I really like is that the filters are made using two highly reflective mirrors. Sounds like two people in love in a way…two transparent plates staring each into the other. Are you with me? Is it too much? And where are you in all this? Here you are…
The peacock colors are not projections of static existence, they are reflections of intermingling, of openness.
So, that, was some months ago that the peacock and I began to understand each other better. And along the way more prayers, myths and ideas have accumulated around the power of this symbolic bird and what it means for us now as we fashion a shift in paradigm. The final tooth of the key though is in the ancient belief that some types of peacock are the earthly manifestation of the Phoenix. So, here is this bird that can eat poisonous leaves and thrive while doing it, hence part of its lure to the Buddhists. And here it is, too, a symbol…of the Phoenix…hmmm…so this is when magical thinking comes back into play, because right now, is what I am calling our Phoenix Moment. As a society of global peoples we are facing a world that seems to be falling apart. Just as the Phoenix of myth takes on the sins and the sadness of others until finally it can take no more and burns itself out and rises from ashes, so are we challenged and charged with rising from the ashes of our present accumulation of problems. If “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, ” I take it a step further and believe that in fact, we must be willing to accept where we are. The earth is a hard place right now. The children being born are walking into a world rife with radiation and toxicity and shortage. There’s no easy way out of this. The wars and revolutions, the earthquakes and tsunami, they’re only the beginning. The accumulation of imbalance has created a projected world that is, finding its end. And this is the most beautiful opportunity of all to express our purpose. This really is our Phoenix Moment!
The way I look at Change-Agents, Minimalists, Digitalists, Gurus and Permaculturists right now, is that these groups are emerging peacock clusters. These people, rising in Awareness, rising in compassion, rising in creativity; these are the peacocks. These are the people who make up the Collective Phoenix Experience. They don’t wear black sneakers and wait for spaceships or burn books or worry about the apocalypse. They are doers, the dreamers and the dancers of this current Potential.
I know when I see them these days. At first I was slow to get it, but now I’m beginning to see it more and more. See, many birds, not just the peacock, share the iridescent science of Bragg’s law and Fabry–Pérot interference. In fact, it’s probably more common than most of us realize. So, in a way, that means that so many more of us have this potential hiding and latent, covered up a little by our other feathers, our defenses. The reason the peacock might exist as it does, is not proclaim to be the only one, but to show us that these mysteries hide inside all of us. The peacocks are simply the ones who are here to show, to guide. They are the ones who are open. They’re human and imperfect and lots of times they’re goofy in some way. Just like a psychedelic turkey might be. Take anything regal and look at it for a long time and I think what you see is that the nobility is not based on a title or a word. It’s based on the experience of how it makes you feel. Stand in the room with a ballerina, who has worked her body into a tool of grace, stand next to a Kabuki performer and see how your head might move. Now, imagine how your spirit reacts if it gets to meet its guru, or maybe its very source. That’s the physics of the soul, at least to some level.
So, when I see someone whose style I like, I check for my own personalized, tell-tale signs. I see it maybe in a mismatched scarf that works really well. I see it in their eyes or the way they hug a stranger. I see it in the way they choose what to eat or how to consume. I see it in their artwork or maybe in their children. Sometimes they surround me in groups. And when they do I smile and say whatever comes to mind. Peacocks are accepting and tolerant.
Here are some examples: I have worked with a young peacock who now helps me find clients because she believes that I could serve my purpose better with more abundance. I listened to one last night, giving a free performance to help out some friends. Her voice was shocking and honest. Another peacock, he’s in a home that has been shaking for over a month, his wife scared to have children now that they’re living in a nuclear fall-out zone. But he’s making music and he’s channeling his anger into something constructive. There are peacocks farming heirloom seeds and using solar and I’m thankful for them as well. The peacocks are absorbing it all, taking it in as they have for ages and right now, they are burning up each day. Ai Weiwei, I think he’s one, too, although I haven’t met him. You, if you’re actually reading this now, I think you might be one, too. In fact, I think the key to survival, is to believe that in each person lies the hidden peacock. You are a Phoenix. For a bird which has no plural form (at least not in English), this is also, a bit of poetic, philosophical, perfection. Imagine, if I am you and you are me, then if I am the Phoenix, so are you. At least, that’s where it could go. We don’t have to be scared. We only have to be open, compassionate and creative. We just need to be our iridescent selves. Instead of fighting it, we need to simply trust in this moment.
The mystery of the peacock is is one of many . So, even if you feel more inclined to attack the peacock for its showy style or feel burdened by the weight of its mythic mission, it’s OK, be a different kind of bird. When the transparent part of your being lets loose from its shell, it’s going to be flying then, for sure. Some people think it goes up, some people think it goes down, others think it heads into a wheel of return. It doesn’t really matter, since in the end we all fly into something new. What we do in the meantime is try to light the way for ourselves and when we do it together, we travel in magic. ~in rainbows, mariette
If love were real
the peacock calling my name would show me his feathers white
rising ashes
radiance purified
subtle wings
twinned in my radio eyes
blind people pass with their canessampling the ground for cardinal points
intersections of lawn, concrete and asphalt
Imagine light as a miracleyour skin a kaleidoscope
groping fingers slipping on triangulated mysteries
along your geography
metaphors fumble across the windowfall in the leaves and lurk in the mantis on the okra
dumb
doesn’t mean stupid
it means I am mute
locked in a subtle journey that connects the esoteric lightness
of peafowl geometry to more than cones and rods
dharma is in the gatheringsmore than in protests
consciousness is a lighting of the mind
anger is the wick
useful as beginning
tragic as daily ending
folk music is a treeits roots spreading underneath
tendrils of information in cellular growth
rooms made of frequencies
symbols clear space in a carousel of distinction
the same materials to make the root make the person
star people slam their fists forgetting their naturenothing here is exact and everyone is equal
you and me
peacock and eye
~excerpt from “Letters for Flying”
