You know, I've just clarified in my own mind my purpose as a poet, who is also a pagan. I was clued into this epiphany by a recent comment from Apocalyptic Blogger, who said that my "poems are the type of poem that contains a sharpened sense of thematic potency and strength; they lead to better understanding of the said poems' topics (such as human nature and the like.)".
And it struck me that the most common underlying thread in most of my work is an exploration of human nature. My own and by extension human nature as a whole. As below, so above. As in the microcosm, so in the macrocosm.
But if I had to clarify this down even further, to produce some kind of ghee from the churned butter that is my mental process, I could reduce my underlying message to a simple sound-byte:
Human Nature. Neither a curse, nor an oxymoron.
And that pretty much sums up my philosophy.
Human beings are part of nature. They are not separate from it, nor are they in any sense the ultimate expression of it. They are not the end of the food chain, nor do they represent the final step in an evolutionary theory that somehow miraculously went on for tens of millions of years and then, poof, stopped when as they say in most scriptures written by man, man appeared. They are subject to, and not exempt from, the laws of nature that govern EVERY other species on this planet. The fact that we deny our share of punity under this law is the reason why we are destroyers, not creators. Our myth of "Power Over" is not only killing off the stage upon which we enact that myth, but it's killing us off as well.
Yet human nature is not something to be overcome, to be denied, to feel is some kind of divine punishment. It is not something to "rise above" or "transcend". It is what it is. Human beings may have bigger brains, opposable thumbs, more complex thought patterns, the ability to empathize, and so on. Well, from whom much is given, much is expected. And who is doing the expecting? The rest of creation, that's who. They don't owe us, either their flesh, their territories, their ores, their energies. WE OWE THEM.
