“I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim”
David Bowie
Heroes
The name branded his kind for my generation. On Sunday evenings he was the messenger of a vast fluid world of possibility. His theme song capped our oceanic sabbath, sitting in front of the television.
They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning,
No one you see, is smarter than he,
And we know Flipper, lives in a world full of wonder,
Flying there under, under the sea!
As a little boy I thought he was one beautiful TV star. Now I know his part was played by six individuals — Kathy, Susie, Patty, Scotty, Squirt, and Clown — all captured and trained to entertain viewers like me. Kathy carried most of the load, so Flipper was really a she. The man who worked with her had a come-to-Jesus moment when she died in his arms, so he rededicated his life to freeing her kind from human cruelty.
“She was really depressed,” said Ric O’Barry during a 2010 Earth Day interview. “You have to understand dolphins and whales are not [involuntary] air breathers like we are. Every breath they take is a conscious effort. They can end their life whenever. She swam into my arms and looked me right in the eye, took a breath and didn’t take another one. I let her go and she sank straight down on her belly to the bottom of the tank.”
Dolphins have received special attention from humans for millennia. They are our elders. Fossil records suggests they’ve been living on earth for millions of years longer than us.
In fact, one of the most important cultural centers in the ancient world was founded by Flipper. According to a Homeric Hymn, a dolphin jumped aboard a ship sailing from Crete and commanded the mariners to build a sanctuary at Delphi. The animal was said to be a manifestation of the Greek god Apollo. Apollo Delphinios.
My chiropractor – who’s as brainy as a bottlenose and a scholar of Hellenic culture — says most of what we know about that cradle of human civilization comes from invaders. He says earlier indigenous people were more peaceful than the colonizers who enslaved them. The natives adapted in order to survive.
Such behavior is common among our species. Might makes right, in the minds of victorious warlords. History is re-written by conquerors. So it’s reasonable to assume most of the stories about Delphi were manipulated by overseers.
Still, we might learn a few things by diving deeper into the letters and images. “Dolphin” and “Delphi” are both rooted in the word for “womb.” These marine mammals who carry their babies to term probably prompted respect among indigenous people who revered women and birth. Perhaps that’s why images of dolphins cover the walls of the Queen’s room at the palace of Knossos.
Minoan fresco in palace at Knossos, Crete
This reverence for womanhood is clear from archaeological evidence. Last time I visited Greece, in 2011, I could read about it on interpretive panels displayed at the airport. It was also conveyed in the knowing smile of an elder woman in the Athens marketplace who sold replicas of ancient figurines with stretch marks. My beloved, who works as a midwife, often wears earrings with these figurines when she visits with clients.
Cycladic female figurine from 3rd millenary B.C.
Long before the arrival of Apollo’s clergy, Delphi was already a place of spiritual significance. The omphalos was located there, the navel of the Earth. It was said to be protected by a dragon appointed by Gaea herself. Presumably this creature also safeguarded priestesses who served as Gaea’s prophets, her oracles.
Apollo slew the dragon, preempting the legend of Saint George by quite some time. Then the god’s devotees hosted seasonal festivals, presumably to ward off hard feelings among the natives. Nailing the dragon provided Apollo’s priests with direct access to everything the creature had been guarding. Occupying males assumed the position of wise advisers and erected their hierarchy at the center of the world.
Most of the written accounts that these dudes left us call the dragon Python, a word guys are big on, even to this day. The oracles were said to prophesy by inhaling fumes that arose from fissures in the ground, supposedly from Python’s decaying corpse. No geological evidence of any subterranean vapors has ever been found. More likely, the women were subjected to intoxicants that left them exhausted after the priests translated their murmurings. Visitors paid handsomely for the ritual, and sometimes the oracles were abused in other ways too.
Priestess of Delphi (1891) by John Collier
I’d be a putz if I didn’t think something very different was happening at Delphi before all this Python rot came to town. The stories have been changed, no doubt, but we can use our imagination. Another moniker in the record offers a clue to the culture that rocked the human cradle before the baby was kidnapped by occupying brutes.
The dragon of the founding myth was actually a female called Delphyne, a name that points directly to dolphins, especially since Apollo took the form of a dolphin at Delphi. And here’s more fish-food for thought: the Greek word for dragon means sea serpent, a creature some researchers say were cetaceans (the biological order that includes dolphins and whales).
Sea serpent reported by the Bishop of Greenland in 1734.
Go ahead, giggle. Dolphins don’t seem powerful to those of us raised on images of Flipper. But maybe these small cetaceans were once thought to be the emissaries of immense power. Check out this old coat of arms that harkens back to much older imagery. Note the toothy snarls and serpentine tails.
Arms of the Dauphin of France (1604) by Jean de Beaugrand
We hominids are weaned on monstrous pop icons of dragons rendered in stained glass, in comic books, at the movies. But I suspect the most horrifying thing about the womb-guard of Delphi wasn’t her appearance. It was her creative intelligence. To invading patriarchs, Delphyne challenged their exploitation of nature and messed with their egos in a primal way. To them she was inhuman, ungodly, an abomination.
Queen of the deep I’ll call her, with poetic humility. The heady breath she spouted must have flooded their minds with fire. Probably scared the holy crap out of them.
And maybe her spirit is now rising from the depths. Are we ready?
My beloved is often smarter than me. She seldom reacts the same way I do when the hero comes back and obliterates the bad guys in a firestorm of righteous anger. The heavy metal drone of vengeance rarely distracts her from a kinder nature.
Few of us are prepared for that kind of wisdom. Some are trying, though.
I see it in a friend who communicates with animals yet is mocked by many in our village. The boys at the pub speak of her in ways that probably replay the male-bonding of priests who chuckled at the oracles. I suspect churchgoers dismiss her for communing with beasts rather than submitting to religious authorities. One buddy of mine rolled his eyes after reading her post about messages from whales; describing it as “weird” (meaning “incredulous”), even though he’s open to the idea of aliens, bigfoot, and a sea monster that allegedly swims near Vancouver Island.
This morning the message was for us. For humans. The ones who need to wake up. Their society long out-dates ours. “We teach our young the world of the whales, as you teach your young the message of being human. But you have lost your way. It’s not too late, you can each clear the Mother and make her whole again. Simply by feeling love in your heart space and passing it on.”
I believe my friend is telling the truth as she understands it. Part of the reason why I think so is because I’ve seen how her contact with animals has changed her. Years ago she was one the most downcast people I knew. Then one day she was glowing like a star. Said she’d just returned from a swim with the dolphins. The transformative power of the experience was beyond question.
Our society could learn a lot by listening deeply to animals. Children, too. Recently at breakfast I thanked our daughters for teaching me to be a better man. I said I’d learned more about what it means to be human while speaking with them than I would have if I’d spent the same time conversing with adults.
I told them this because I felt a little heartbroken about something that happened the night before. A young person had registered at the Upper Left Edge website, and within a short period of time she had posted ten comments and three poems. This rare show of enthusiasm for the site was gratifying. But when I discovered her age, I had to remove her words. As a protective measure, all registrants must be at least 13 years old.
I sent the girl an email saying I’d be honored to post her work in a few years. I also recommended two online publishing venues that cater exclusively to children. She wrote me back with an eloquent apology.
Still, I woke up in the wee hours thinking about those big bold words on our masthead, adapted from a quote from our founding publisher. “The Upper Left Edge is the place on the page where we start writing.” It pains me to keep the voice of a young author secret. So I put aside my other projects to compose this post, inspired by a girl who wrote “I LOVE DOLPHINS!”
Thanks for your thoughts and the history lesson. I enjoyed them both. as always.
Thank YOU for reading and commenting!
Great article. Love the new, punchier voice. Makes me wish I had you as a teacher. But what’s with the mistreatment of the word ‘weird ‘ by casting it in a deragotory light? Isnt weird wonderful? Arent we all weird? Arent you indefensibly, unarguably, weird? Well, then don’t pour ashes on those folks who believe in aliens and things that go bump in the night. I’m glad they’re weird. And, for the record, I’m glad you’re weird, too. Is that weird?
Thanks Rick. We’re blessed to know eachother as weird teachers.
There’s weird, and then there’s weird. Thirty-some years ago I loved quoting gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” I’m grateful for Thompson’s writing, but I don’t recommend him as a role model.
Usually when we ask if what we say is weird, we’re checking in to see if our words are in the ballpark of reasonable thinking. Folks who celebrate weirdness can feel marginalized, I think, and sometimes our language may project that feeling onto others.
Did a healthy relationship ever exist at Delphi between Apollo’s priests and Gaea’s oracles? I like to think their prophetic professions were mutually advanced by bucking oppressive norms. But at some point, apparently, it got weird.
Your words remind me that female dolphins (like elephants and bats and humans) midwife each other. Trusted sisters or aunts will accompany the mom and new baby from the depths where the birth occurs up to the surface so the baby can take its first breath. As a midwife I am grateful for that kinship.
And I’m so grateful to be your life parter! Here’s to midwife husbandry!
I’ve seen that fresco in the Palace of Knossos. It also has the labyrinth where the half-bull half-man Minotar monster allegedly lived and was eventually slain by Theseus, so the male was the demon and hero concurrently there. There are also graceful deep red stone columns, huge beautifully-proportioned hand-built clay pots 3 meters high which I can’t imagine the work involved in making and I’m an ol’ clay-hawg (potter) myself. Many-colored colorful frescoes and leafy passages AND an amazing ancient drainage and sewer system still functional after thousands of years, all a short bus trip or longish, dusty by tree-lined walk from Heraklion, the main city of Crete.
It’s a remarkable place as is Crete itself. The very landscape has an air of myth about it as even on the sunniest days, the mountains go straight up from just a little way inland (if you can indeed use that term in describing an island) into a perpetual misty cloud cover from which one can easily imagine some deity booming out it’s declamations to the lesser beings below. It reeks of antiquity and is best experienced and contemplated solo in a quiet time to get even a smidgeon of the sense of the age of the place. This is all enhanced by the surrounding Agean Sea, which is the bluest of pure, pigmented blue of any ocean I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen most of them.
Indeed Dolphins are a part of what many indigenous peoples, especially the Pacific Islanders refer to as “The great unknowable” or mystery in their many languages but shared reverence of the Earth Mother.
In the Celtic cultures we also had a great maternal goddess belief and leaders like Bodicea until the Christianization from which much of Europe is still trying to purge itself.
A favorite tribute to Dolphins is paid, not quite as tongue-in-cheek as the rest of the series, in one of Richard Adam’s brilliant epic series “Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, one of the books being entitled “So Long and Thanks for all the Fish” where it is revealed that Dolphins were the most intelligent beings on Earth and had left anticipating the planet’s destruction by the appalling Vogons, followed by mice, with humans a distant third.
The longer I’m here the more I tend to give this theory more credibility as we plow on with the extractive rape and pollution of our only home for short term greed.
BTW, I pointedly ignore “Valentines Day” -in my ‘umble opinion, just another silly annual excuse to sell the punters who are opiated by their flick’rin’ screens, more disposable but mostly non-recyclable crap they don’t need but are told they “must have”. I love and am deeply grateful for my wife and soul-mate every minute of every hour of every day and never tire of telling her and proving it as best I can.
The rest is quiet palpable love without the pink artifice. ‘Nuff said.
Gawd, I DO go on a bit, dunni!?
Thanks for giving us a little guided tour through the palace. Some day I hope to visit Knossos. A good friend who spent some time there told me that in order to get to the King folks had to go through the Queen.
Of course the subversion of female authority took place long before Christianity came on the scene. The Jesus I love was quite a feminist in his day; but I understand what you’re saying. Great to have a Scotsman aboard to offer some Celtic perspective.
My daughters are big fans of Hitchhiker’s Guide and often sing the dolphin song. It’s kind of sobering to me, though, given the testimony of Kathy/Flipper’s trainer. Here’s a Youtube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojydNb3Lrrs
I REALLY enjoyed reading this one, Watt.
Monkeys midwife each other too. I’m always feeling we are surrounded by equals in the company of all creatures that most people think we are superior to. I like your heart. I didn’t know that bats do though, Jennifer. I hope you write a piece about that sometime.
Watt, sometime I would love to read something the girl under 13 wrote, minus her name maybe? Somehow?
Vicky
Glad you enjoyed it, Vicky!
I’m wrestling with our age restriction, which we adopted after looking at other similar sites. It’s not just a matter of screening out personal information. I think it’s also about how we cultivate our audience without doing something that attracts pre-teens to a PG-13 site. I’ll keep wrestling.
Nice article Watt. But you did not bring up what Ric O’Barry is doing now. He and a group of volunteers sit high above “The Cove” in Taiji Japan. This is where the slaughter of thousands of dolphins happens each year between Sept-March. The Japanese fishermen herd the dolphin pods with fishing boats. Some young dolphins are sold to Sea World (and its equivalent) all over the world. They are forced to endure 17 hour truck rides to their new trainers. The rest are slaughtered for food. But Ric O’Barrry is getting the word out to more humans. There is very little doubt that dolphins are smarter than humans. So why do the dolphin allow themselves to be tricked into the cove?
I’d tell you but unbelievably, after 15 years of being a professional animal communicator, some here still think what I do is “odd” or “weird”. I’ve helped many humans and animals in this area and beyond. I’ve helped many free of charge since my intention is to bring animals and humans together.
Thank you Lisa — for commenting, and for contributing more information about Ric’s work. I’m gearing up to watch his award-winning documentary. Other readers may want to check out this link to the movie trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KRD8e20fBo.
I know what it’s like to be an activist, to swim against the current and feel hurt by the social clubbers. Know that your insights are always welcome here. I revived the Upper Left Edge to strengthen communication among animals like us. If we band together, our community can grow. Who knows, our presence might become as formidable as a super mega-pod of dolphins
.
Thank you for this wonderful article, Watt!
Among a myriad of things, it got me thinking about my initial reaction when someone introduces him/herself as an animal communicator, channel, or related spiritual role. Because I’ve had my own communications with the non-human world, I’ve surprised myself with the skepticism that makes its ugly appearance in my thoughts–and yet I didn’t respond this way when hearing similar spirit-world language during my studies of Qigong and Chinese medicine–so I had to ask myself what was going on.
Two things arose: the first, the prevalence of otherworldly New Age discourse in a society where people don’t have much everyday interaction with the natural world, and the second, money.
When I was studying Chinese medicine, I learned that the same sages who talked about feeling Qi through the pulse were grounded in the everyday activities of agriculture. Although they spoke of recondite matters, they weren’t unmoored from the physical world. Indeed, their powerful cosmology arose from the physical world. On the other hand, many New Age people seem ungrounded from their bodies and from the literal “ground”: soil, trees, vegetables, etc. Thus, it became all too easy for me to dismiss some good insights because the vehicle seemed “spacy.”
I wrestle with the issue of financial reimbursement for spiritual services. I understand that energetic work is work, just as laying bricks and rebuilding cars is work, and should be compensated justly. However, sometimes the compensation seems steep. Years ago, a teacher of a “Grove Energy” workshop encouraged me to attend. I told her that I lived in the woods and could go out there and learn for free (rather than paying $100 for an indoor presentation). She dismissed that alternative, saying, “This is better than a real grove–it’s the primordial Ur-Energy of the Ideal Grove” or something like that. Perhaps $100 is a cheap price to get in touch with the One True Grove, but it felt steep to me when I could just go out and talk to a tree…which I think I’ll go do.
Thanks again for a stimulating piece! (And Seth loved being compared with a bottlenose…)
Comments like this are what make this medium so compelling to me, so worthy of attention. Your words energize thinking, without which I would derive little value from groceries.
This post posits a communication break down between humans and creation. I wrote it while imagining an early societal shift from female/birth-oriented pacifism to male/reaper-oriented conquest. Your wrestling here reminds me that empire could arise from either regime. Both priestess and priest are bound by the same impulse to acquire and secure resources. I pray people can learn to balance that impulse with the needs of community.
In that spirit, sister, I thank you for sharing some of your conversation with the forest.
Absolutely right on.
I’ve been deeply involved with American Indians (“The human beings” as they put it) including being inducted as an honorary member of AIM -not trying to be a “Scottish Indian” as oft-accused but because I admire their spiritual strength after all the attempts of the “Wasicus” (Lakota for “Outsiders, especially white) to exterminate or assimilate them into a death, winner-take-all subculture totally incomprehensible to them, and as I also come from an oppressed people and have participated in many sweat lodge ceremonies and pow-wows.
Their UNIVERSAL declaration on false gurus, healers and spirit guides is “If you have to pay, stay away!” A gift of sage, or indian tobacco, or payote, or whatever is tribally appropriate, is viewed as a gesture of sharing, respect and acceptance of the “medicine”; money is pollutive and seen as bribery.
Anyway, they have an expression (again Lakota) “Metakuye Oyasin” which roughly translates into “All my relations” or “We are all related”, four-legged, two-legged, feathered, finned, age-inanimate and material-rotation including the oceans, mountains and all things in the great circle of life.
This includes other indigenous peoples in other parts of the world I’ve been with (or been tolerated by as is more likely), who view the Earth as mother and the great universal creative force as the “Great Unknowable”.
It’s very simple to begin to comprehend spirit as expressed by those people who choose to stay tuned in to the rhythms and forces of the planet and what universal patterns influence them, than to become a part of an organized, exploitative and domineering religion. My vote and ‘umble effort in life goes always to the great circle and freedom available to us in life however you see it, as long as it is life giving, creative and sustaining rather than extractive, exploitive, polluting, for military aggression and power over others -and ultimately death-dealing.
Indeed, the market economy sucks the life out of us when it is not grounded in fidelity to Creation. This is true for spirituality, for medicine, for art. How do gifted folks share gifts in ways that nurture community while putting groceries on the table?
Though I have no quick answer to the question, Brian, I do believe it helps for people to put our thoughts into words and participate in this kind of written forum. Thanks for helping to stir the pot!