“Look how much a weed in a crack
has influenced you,” she said.
The epigraph of this article derives from a recent blogpost I shared,
in which a Journey through dance I’d signed up for triggered an early childhood
memory of a miniscule, flowering weed, which had ‘spoken’ to me, saying it was
from the stars. William Blake, in his Auguries
of Innocence, confirms in the first four lines of the poem the inherent emotional
logic of such an experience:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
This article is not concerned, however, with the
similitude between the design of the cosmos and a single, earthly bloom, as perceived
by a three-year-old child. It is concerned with the concept and phenomenon of influence,
that is to say, with the experience that the flowering weed ‘spoke to me’ – in
such a way, moreover, as to have a profound and lasting effect.
The original meaning of the word, ‘influence’ – deriving
from the Latin influere, to flow in –
does not convey the image of water. Rather, ‘influence’ was used to describe
the power to produce an effect “in indirect or intangible ways”, “without the
apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command”, so we read in
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary.
My Shorter Oxford Dictionary highlights the use of the
term first and foremost in Astrology, where it denoted the “supposed flowing
from the stars of an ethereal fluid acting upon the character and destiny of
men, and affecting sublunary things generally.” It adds that in later times,
the term applied to the exercise of “occult power”. Subsequent usage shows that
the term continues, over the centuries, to be associated with the operation of
exertion that is “unseen” except in its effects; or the “capacity of producing
effects by insensible or invisible means.”
These definitions are borne out by the online etymology dictionary, which notes that
the use of the word in Middle English was limited to describing “any outflowing of energy
that produces effect, of fluid or vaporous substance as well as immaterial or
unobservable forces” – in other words, usage in this case referred only to the
elemental, and not the human, world. I am
interested here in particular in the phrase “any outflowing of energy that
produces effect”.
The
burgeoning literature and audio-visual material available on the power of human
thought have made the fact of the ‘invisible’ or ‘insensible’ influence of both
conscious and unconscious human thought one of the central concerns in
contemporary human culture – from mystic, religious, spiritual, psychic, psychological, artistic, literary,
philosophical, biological, neurological, chemical and, even, mathematical perspectives (i.e.
the attempt to find the numerical formula required to calculate the number of
human beings needed for a prayer in a specific situation to take effect.)
The
knowledge that we are, in the words of Dr Zach Bush, “columns of water”, and
the tremendously active focus on conscious breath-work amongst health-conscious and philosophically- or spiritually-oriented human beings across the globe in this day and age, includes us as a species,
arguably, yet easily, in the “fluid or vaporous substance[s]” from which energy
can flow out to produce an effect.
It's hardly a one-way street, however. Three years ago – despite skepticism – I had my
astrological birth chart mapped and interpreted for me. Ever since, I have
consulted the astrologer annually for what you could call a kind of check-in to the
year ahead. She offers ‘trends’ and ‘currents’,
which I have the choice to be aware of, if I should experience these in my
personal life. One of the most influential moments during these readings was at the
last one, when I revealed to her that I felt I suffered a
lifelong addiction to romance (love, magic and beauty) and that I was eager to
wean myself of this addiction. She informed me that the fact that my birth chart shows the
planet Venus in Taurus, in opposition to Neptune, would naturally render me prone to an
insatiable longing for oneness – oneness with love, with nature, with beauty,
with all that lives. She observed that this longing would likely be so vast
that it could not possibly be fulfilled by another living human being. It would
therefore be wise to channel it into nurturing a spiritual oneness with
nature and/ or my relationship with the Divine. Of course, my nature poems do (mostly)
exactly that, and my habit of communing with biological and elemental nature
alike, does indeed satisfy my need for being-at-one-with-all (the Divine as well as the Earthly) in a timeless, or
eternal, zone.
An astrological explanation of an innate tendency is, of course, only one perspective among a variety of possible ones, which could potentially provide a similar, or even an identical insight.
Depending on whether you inspect the phenomenon of a
flowering weed ‘speaking’ to a child about the stars from an artistic,
mystical, spiritual, religious, psychic, psychological, philosophical, biological, neurological, chemical, or mathematical
perspective, you will use your field-specific language and vocabulary to probe
this phenomenon; although I hazard that a mathematical induction would be the most
foundational. The chances are that none of those perspectives would cancel any
other. In concert, they might create a complex bouquet of new formulae – verbal, musical, visual or diagrammatic, as well as numerical – of insight into the power of the
human mind – not necessarily only as a driver, but, indeed, as a receptacle of
thought: as a direct result, for example, of the influence of a (not even
ingested) vegetable substance upon it. Whether such receptivity is affected by
the heavenly bodies whose energy streamed into that mind, at the moment of her
birth on the planet, offers a further, valid path of enquiry. There is, I
posit, a measurable give-and-take between our consciousness and our – both organic
as well as elemental – environment.
Certainly the sounds and rhythms used to explore these
notions with you, dear reader, by means of the English language, have been chosen with the intention of effecting the greatest possible curiosity, not to say
fascination, in you.
I trust that this article is a miniscule seed, gifted
by a miniscule weed, assisting in the birth of a radically new order of seeing
– a ‘miraculous’ order of infinitely various forms of influence. This order of seeing is, I think, already well under way.
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To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour. – William Blake
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