“Their holy places are the woods and groves, and they call by the name of God that hidden presence which is seen only by the eye of reverence…”—P. Cornelius Tacitus, Germania

  Tacitus was a Roman and around 98 AD he was writing of the Germans, those tribes inhabiting the Northern European regions mainly east and north of the Rhine and the Danube. They were the forebears of the nascent European culture and civilization which would begin to take shape almost a thousand years later and would eventually spread its ways and beliefs and technology across the entire world as we see and experience it today. 

  However, around Tacitus’ time while the northern forest revering Germans were multiplying Rome was beginning its long agonizing four hundred year decline and fall. With the decline and fall came corruption, despair and death and the average Roman citizen and slave sought consolation for their endless sorrows and a way out of the misery. They found it in a new faith, which was slowly taking shape as a new religion: Christianity. 

  Christianity offered consolation, teaching everything—nature included—outside of the church was tainted by ‘original sin’ and evil; and it offered a way out, into heaven’s delight at the end of one’s days. Just what the Roman psycho-spiritual doctor ordered!

  In time the multiplying forest revering Germans flooded over Europe and washed away most of what remained of the classical Roman civilization. I say most, because pockets of the old Roman ways and beliefs remained, namely the Christian monasteries, churches and schools. 

  And here’s the most important reality virtually no one comprehends or teaches concerning our Western Civilization and belief system: from those Christian pockets, the monasteries, churches, and schools, there spread a credo of consolation for and condemnation of Dame Nature over a burgeoning people with a deep reverence for all that was Natural. 

  That’s what Oswald Spengler and then Joseph Campbell termed a ‘pseudomorphosis.’ It’s actually the key to understanding the very roots of our Western Civilization, ourselves included, and much of the history of the last thousand years. 

  And no one that I know of beyond the Omphalos Cafe is teaching it. 

  Here again is Tacitus’ quote:   “Their holy places are the woods and groves, and they call by the name of God that hidden presence which is seen only by the eye of reverence…” 

  Do you see and hear the echoes of say Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings in it? Game of Thrones? 

  If you do it’s because it was always there! From the very beginning. 

  Viewed with the eye of reverence….

  Life is ALL there is…

  And it is Holy….