The Holy Garden
divine lessons from flowers and bees
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Paradise
The word paradise in Aramaic is paradesa, a loan word from the Persian language. It means a garden of pleasure. It’s a kind of supernal divine realm, and in Merkavah mysticism, it is the place one ascends or sometimes descends to (a journey fraught with perils) to behold the heavenly throne and the glory of the One. It is the Holy of Holies.
As I was sitting on my work stool and tidying up the garden yesterday, I was suddenly struck with the thought that the garden is a holy place, a place where one could, in some veiled way, see the face of the divine and behold a glorious vision of God through the creation.
Perhaps it was the extreme heat and humidity making the garden feel like a sweat lodge, or maybe it was the hypnotic humming and droning of the bees like a shaman’s drum or the intoxicating fragrance of the flowers (the scent of bee balm lingered on my fingers well into the night) that transported me into a visionary state.
Anyone familiar with Kabbalah knows that “Kether is in Malkuth and Malkuth is in Kether.” With Kether, the Crown, at the top of the Tree of Life and Malkuth, the Kingdom of this World, at the root. In many ways, it is a variation of “as above, so below.”
When lulled into a calm flow state of mind as I was that day, I often receive profound insights that I believe I would otherwise miss or not comprehend at the deep level these experiences allow. This moment was no exception. Something came through in a way so clear and understandable that it’s a lesson I know I will now always carry with me.
I will preface my story by saying that July and August are extraordinary for bees, especially in a pollinator garden. Bees have been associated with the goddess, Mary, and the divine feminine for a long time.
Bee symbolism in sacred texts, temples and artifacts dates back to the Neolithic Period. The intertwining of the Bee and the Goddess has occurred in multiple cultures and rites.
Melissa is a name that means “bee” and was a title as well for the Priestesses that served at the temples of Demeter and Artemis of Ephesus.
Honey is a frequent sacred offering to the Gods across many cultures, indicating the tie between the bees and divinity. ~ excerpt from Motherhouse of the Goddess
Last summer I spent a long time exploring this association in an art journal and you can see some of that art below.
One of the things that I find beneficial and enjoy is sound. I love crystal bowls, singing bowls, chimes, tuning forks, and all sound meditation tools. I ascribe my affinity for connecting soundwaves and vibration to divine communication to that passion. The humming of bees and other pollinators is spiritual music to my soul.
It also seems that in this particular case, sitting in the garden in the heat of the summer sun, the droning of the bees pulsed like the life force that one might call the spirit, the song of the source, or simply God/dess.
Lulled into a dream-like state as I snipped the many faded flowers off plants to encourage their rebloom, I noticed something with great clarity, as if it were being pointed out to me in an extraordinary way.
Stillness
Snipping off faded blooms is known in gardening parlance as deadheading, and depending on the plant, it can be quite a tedious task. Some gardeners like to quickly shear down the whole plant, which makes sense, especially for bushy growth habit plants that may need reining in and shaping. However, I generally like to go one at a time, carefully removing the spent blooms precisely because I can get into a rhythm, which becomes a meditative activity.
I noticed something I already knew, but this moment was different. It was a salient insight that impressed an important truth upon my mind.
While I was sitting on my work stool, a relatively passive situation, my hands were busy snipping, and my mind was engaged to a degree in evaluating the plant's health and deciding where exactly would be the best place to cut. It's not a high-demand activity but a busy one nonetheless. All the while, I enjoyed the bees and other pollinators around me.
The extreme heat, especially the humidity, meant I frequently stopped to mop my brow, sip some water, and sit quietly, resting my hands and back. In those moments, and one moment in particular, something interesting happened.
When I stopped, and my hands were still, my body relaxed, and my mind became calm like the tropical sea in the doldrums of summer. As the seconds ticked by, I was surrounded by bees and other pollinators. Each flower became a landing pad for at least a few, if not a dozen, as on the Pinky Pollen Ring Hydrangea. It was as if I had been transported to an alien world, an otherworld among other-than-human beings.
Now, I know this is always the case. Walk by a patch of coneflower or a Shrubby St. John’s Wort, and the many bees and other insects will scatter, stand still for a moment or two, and they will return. However, at this moment on this day, the heat and the humming of the bees had already lulled my mind into a meditative state, and I was already pondering the idea that the sound and motion of the bees were a living, breathing, moving symbol of the Divine Spirit. Like the Merkavah chariot of fire, this living symbol brought life, energizing, animating, and casting an all-pervasive web of vibration in which I and everything else lived, moved, and had its being.
In that moment of trance and expansion of mind and spirit, a lesson, simple as it seems now, hit me with the force of a word from God.
First, I knew more intensely and with greater certainty that a garden is a holy place, a temple, and a sanctuary of the divine presence. A garden, of course, is a cultivated place. It’s somewhere that human-created order has imposed itself on the otherwise wildness of nature. I instantly knew that wilderness was also a meeting space of this realm and other realms where the divine could be found, and I perceived that one might meet less than friendly and even opposing spiritual beings or forces in the wilderness. Good to know and keep in mind!
Then, I realized the imperative importance of stillness and silence if I want to cultivate my spiritual growth. When I stop my busyness, my work, my inner thoughts, and dialogue, the constant doing and focus on the supposedly urgent tasks of this world, the spiritual realm has a chance to reveal itself. The life of the spirit envelopes me when I am still. The stillness must be one of both body and mind, and perhaps stillness and silence are best achieved in nature, as the Spirit will use its creation to teach me the lessons I need to learn and reveal the truths I need to understand.
This isn’t news to me, but somehow, my state of mind and body was so different at that moment that it seemed as if my understanding of what was necessary for inner growth, spiritual ripening, and deep, unshakable peace was seared upon my soul in such a way as to make a lasting impression.
This is a resounding reminder that the spiritual world is always around us, and we can perceive it at least to some degree when we are still, quiet, and in a receptive state of mind, especially in a garden.
A garden is a magical place, a holy place. Because I garden in a way that leaves room for wild spaces, wild creatures, and wildness itself to weave their way through, I suspect that spiritual beings, the most sublime and the most natural and earthly, feel quite at home.
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.
~ Emily Dickinson
Sabbath moments like yesterday, times of stillness, silence, and divine encounters in the garden remind me that I’ve been in heaven all along.
As is usually the case with me, I turn to art when I have something important to process and reflect upon. Last night, I created a Bee journal for a mixed-media collage exploration of my experience. In it, I’ve begun to celebrate the holy garden, process the meditative visionary state I experienced, and enjoy continued rest and reflection for my soul through simple art making.
The little tagline for my business and my entire life has always been art~nature~soulwork. When I began using it, I was never satisfied. It didn’t seem clever or catchy enough, but as it turns out, it is authentic to my experience.
I like to know that I’m not alone in my spiritual experiences in the garden or nature or my love for art as a way to express my inner life, so I encourage you to share your experiences in the comments. It’s good to tell our stories and to share our experiences. It is a way to reaffirm the goodness of life, nature, and spirituality and explore our beliefs and place in the world. It is also a form of resistance against the machine that seeks to rob us of our value as eternal souls having a human experience in a garden.
The comments section is a safe and welcoming space to share your insights and experiences.
Comments and conversation are always appreciated and enjoyed, so feel free to let your voice be heard. I read them all and try to respond to each one.
Summer Season Materials to Explore
If you would like seasonal summer-themed materials to work with that incorporate art, nature and soulwork, including lots of inspiration, direction, and examples, don’t forget that on a hidden page just for Hedge Mystic Subscribers, you will find the Summer Solstice Exploration & Experience.
Thank you for reading Hedge Mystic and participating in this vibrant and growing community of creative, spiritual humans. You are always welcome here, appreciated, and loved.
PS
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This reminds me so much of an experience I had when I was camping in the White Mountains of Arizona. Somehow I managed some alone time. I’m thinking my husband most likely was with our boys at the creek? I was totally alone, sitting on a large boulder along a trail listening to the wind in the tall Ponderosa Pines. A very distinct thought/voice came into my mind and said the words, “Be still.” I’m from a Christian background and yes, I know that this is a verse from the Bible but still I realized that the voice in the trees and the wind was in fact the voice of the Divine. I felt so entirely connected at that moment and the feeling of calm that I felt wasn’t like any other.
Yes, yes, yes.
to the silent clothing
of subtle stillness
like standing in a quiet barn
12 heavy horses each to their own
stall, well fed and watered
nothing left to do but stand
watching and being watched
by something else
which they always see
I am not moved
but rather the space around me
expands
light bends like a breeze
shows me something
it should not be able too
aware and open
for perhaps the first time
I see how it really is here
stillness and light emerge
directly and blend like lovers
and I am actually a we
and we are a
stillness flickering
a moth winging
a sparrow diving
a horse turning
a bee landing
gently
coming to rest
Obrigado