Crowrider: The Questing Beast

A few weeks ago I spent a wonderful weekend with the mythologist, storyteller and all-around passionate soul Martin Shaw. He brought the story of Tristan and Isolde alive in the most animated manner. Emerald rings, broken swords, slain giants, blood, black sails and beating hearts pranced about our intimate gathering as he drummed us along the twisting path of love and betrayal illuminating the particular ways trickster announces itself in the human terrain of intimacy. There’s nothing that makes me happier than living inside of a story for days on end – marinating in metaphors, achingly pierced by the arrow of a resonant image that finds its mark within your psyche. It also didn’t hurt that we were out on the coast near Bolinas, Ca, where the forest meets the ocean – a fitting place to invite the imaginal (not imaginary) creatures of the in-between to howl and soar. For me, it was a much needed retreat. The last month I had felt a persistent melancholy; a heavy blanket of forgetfulness I couldn’t shake. And by forgetfulness I don’t mean forgetting where you left your keys – I mean forgetting who you are and where you are on the path.

And let’s be clear about what path I’m referring to. There’s the rule-bound path – the narrow, linear road that one must follow and adhere to. This is not the path I’m talking about. In fact we should all strive to be a little more dis-identified from this singular path. Too many of us live life as-if there is a right, marked path we should follow – we like to pretend life is a paint-by-numbers canvas and that if we “do it right” it will turn out pretty and worthy of showing our friends.

The path I felt disconnected from is the twisting, surprising turns of the deep self – the ever-unfolding passionate soul. This map does not come with a set of rules to follow – it is ink-stained, torn and partly missing. I know when I have stepped off of this path when I feel a lack of meaning and passion, when nothing I’m “doing” makes sense to me. Ironically, we often need to get off the aforementioned linear path and enter into the non-rational in order to sniff out the tracks of this deeper trail. Hence that cliché but true statement: that we need to get lost in order to be found.

But what is that thing that we are trying to find, what are we hunting? Whose companionship comforts us and gives us a sense of direction when we are turned around at the crossroads? The soul, the daimon, the deep self, are all names that one could use, but I’d like to explore the idea of The Questing Beast. Martin Shaw briefly mentioned this mythological character while tracking down another story, but the image flickered into my awareness long enough to sink its furry claws into my skin and I’ve been following the scent of drooling saliva ever since.

The Questing Beast is a female monster, also known as Glatisant, having the head of a serpent, the body of a leapord, the haunches of a lion and the feet of a hare. Also known as the Barking Beast, her howling sounds would stir the knights of the Arthurian tales into long, obsessive quests deep into the forest to hunt her. In the myths, they say she would somehow always stay one step ahead of her pursuers, confusing and beating them by killing the steeds they rode on. She is described as being intelligent and playful enjoying the chase but avoiding being caught at all costs.

I think of the Questing Beast as the feminine aspect within each of us, the passionate soul that lures us into the depths of the dark forest and inspires the never-ending journey of personal discovery and creativity. We long for her and are willing to go to great lengths to follow her – we are lustily drawn to her scent and her mysterious danger. She is never caught – for the quest is never done. We are heartened when we catch a whiff of her pungent odor – we feel lost and grieve when we have lost her tracks. For the knights, the masculine principle within us, our work in the world is given purpose and our passions ignited by the search for this mysterious and powerful being in the forest. And though we risk losing our steeds (the egoic vehicles that carry us through life) we are still drawn to the risk – for the hunt is everything.

It’s so remarkable how easily we can lose the scent of her – we start believing a lie, an old strategy of survival sneaks up and throws us off the scent of who we really are. We are convinced that we must return to the limitations of our rule-bound ways and give up the deeper mystery of what we are. It took me a while to recognize a psychic coups had transpired and that I had been drawn away from the passionate pursuit of my own inner beast. The particulars: I had spent the last four weeks trying to force myself to get back to my dissertation after a big holiday break and about a year of half-heartedly writing while I concentrated on other creative endeavors. The standards of the old-ruling power was convincing me to “get back to work” but its limited strategy has always involved abandoning my joy, my creativity, and my passion to “get the job done.” Not surprisingly, with this absurd idea overpowering me I started to feel depressed AND got very little work done.

I realize for myself that I can no longer live without the hunt. This old strategy of “doing” life without a connection to the passionate beast within is too costly, too boring and no longer productive. We forget that the pursuit is never done – there isn’t an end goal, X does not mark the spot. The intention of the quest is not to capture or to kill the beast – if we did the game would be over. Rather we want to keep the pursuit alive, to be pulled forward and outward by the howling in the forest, to love the process of the hunt as it guides the mystery of our own transformation and becoming.

Where have you lost the scent of your own beast? Where are you “doing” life without meaning or passion? What lie have you come to believe/what survival strategy has convinced you to abandon the hunt? If you could draw, paint, imagine your own inner beast, how would she look, what combination of animals would she be, what would her howl sound like that would call you from the castle and out into the forest? Leave a comment or work with these questions in your journal.

The Questing Beast: http://www.avians.net/paragon/glatisant.htm and http://www.employees.org/~pcorless/pendragon/glatisant.txt

Image: The Questing Beast by Carisa Swenson 2005