Awakening The Leopard Within 🐆

Beauty as Defiance ⚜️

You see, we are and have been in a spiritual war. I’ve been quoting Rudolf Steiner for over a decade on this battle between light and dark.

“The spirits of darkness are now among us. We have to be on guard so that we may realize what is happening when we encounter them and gain a real idea of where they are to be found."- Steiner

So we all by know now it’s the corporate giants with their greed, that have been running amok with the intent to destroy us. However, I also believe it’s the slow, methodical, destruction of beauty that is also tarnishing our sad withering, human souls. Destroying beauty in the external can magnify how we feel internally. I’ve written about this before, how as a child I was so attune to the killing of trees, beautiful old buildings, and us as humans in general.

Through various reasons, I’ve recently been driving through cities in America, and seeing the poverty, drug ridden, strange zombie like quality of so many. Witnessing the boarded up and destruction of old buildings, along with the cheapened state of beauty become the norm. It’s almost like I’m mourning the death of us all as a species. The mourning of those who cannot even decipher the beauty of an old dilapidated, building from the 1860s, or a glorious cypress tree still trying to grow in an old abandoned park, lonely in its survival.

After watching the exquisite mini series “The Leopard”, I was reignited on this quest for beauty. I honestly feel the dark forces on this planet, have been able to rule easily by starving us of great architecture, music, art, food, literature, design, thoughts. Imagine how inspired we would be to our greatness if we visited a cathedral daily. If we saw the magnificent bells in towers ring throughout little towns and cities. This still exists, but so much has been destroyed in the name of war and modernity.

I’m at Magdalena at the moment, and I’m reminded of why I landed here. Yesterday in my exhausted state, after dealing with selling my home in Pacific Palisades, then evacuating from fires near our little ranch in Texas, I came here to find peace. The wind was raging here in New Mexico, however the bell in the bell tower was ringing its ancient song. In my tired, depleted state, I remembered that that’s the reason I unexpectedly bought this old, hacienda. I wanted a sanctuary that reminds me of the epochs we once lived in.

After I finished the Netflix show The Leopard, I sobbed uncontrollably for about thirty minutes. My partner could hear me crying inconsolably; he knows by now how I become so overcome with emotion, that he lets me be. The crying was about so much more than the film. It also was a sadness for the end of Pacific Palisades, Alta Dena, the destruction of the Amazon jungles, and all the other little heavens and havens destroyed.

Critics say the novel The Leopard, by Guissepe Tomasi de Lampidusa, is about the end of the aristocracy and the ruling class. Yes I believe that is partly so, but just like Tennessee Williams and Anton Chekhov, I feel these literary geniuses, were also commenting on the death of elegance, class, poetry, delicate sensitivity, fragile souls, and beauty. They could see what was coming in the form of modernism.

The famous line, spoken by The Prince towards the end of his life and the novel, said it all so eloquently. Don Fabrizio Salina said: “We were the leopards, the lions, those who take our place will be jackals and sheep”. I feel the jackals are the ones that place money and control over humanity and souls. The jackals are the ones who Steiner warned us about. The sheep are most of us humans that follow along with blind allegiance to rules, regulations, gossip, trends, asleep at the wheel through social media’s hypnotism.

Although I sobbed after watching the series, I also felt invigorated to dive deeper in beauty as my souls calling. Venus is coming out of retrograde, Ostara and spring are beginning their blossoming. We can decide to choose beauty over brutality as a form of defiance. I call on you all to find those moments in your daily life, and celebrate it.