Preface To the Infinite Compass By Jay (Sparrowhawk) Ray
The Native Americans call it The Four Directions or the Medicine Wheel.
The Celts call it the Quartered Circle, or The Encircled Cross.
Some call it the Wheel of Life.
I call it the Infinite Compass.
No matter what you call it, it speaks to us of a journey.
That journey is Life.
This concept has survived thousands of years, being passed down from generation to generation, since we were hunter gatherers. In the West, religion and trade shifted our focus from tribal knowledge to creating a focus on a culture for profit. Ageless wisdom was covered up with these new priorities, layer by layer. Now we find ourselves floundering to find a reason for being other than work. There was nothing in the economic lexicon that shows wisdom, self-reflection, co-operation, or care. Nor is there still. Indeed, there’s nothing that might alert us to the downhill spiral of self-esteem, caused by lack of meaning, or how to get off it. Time was money. The more we had, the better we would be. We worked harder and harder, earned more, bought more, but happiness evaded us. It got worse. The next chapter of change was ushered in by another revolution: the Industrial one. This one was predicated upon the perceived need to do it all faster and cheaper, regardless of costs to health and wellbeing. Although the Agricultural Revolution was supposed to enhance life, whether it really did or not was never considered. It’s only consideration was reaching the next stage of ‘’.
After three centuries of the Revolution, and two world wars, mental disease and dysfunction flourished. You can’t witness carnage year upon year without soul-death, coming hot on the heels of a searing collapse of the economy we had hitched our wagon to. There is nothing like a dose of disappointment to send disaffected humans on the rampage. The 20th century became a time of seeing the problem and searching for the answers - without changing the economic culture.
The post-war era spawned the 60’s generation of seekers. We’d had enough. The more we looked the less we found of value from what was on offer. So, we dropped out and found drugs. In doing so, we saw, for the first time, a lot more with our expanded awareness: the poisoned environment, poisoned government and poisonous corporations popping up . So began an era of questioning. Most of the world wasn’t interested, having no answers to give us anyway. The world just wanted to work, buy, and forget. The connection between the desire for more and the carnage it caused was never made.
Other cultures appeared to have retained something we had lost, truths our own peoples had long forgotten. We went in search of ourselves amongst them, finding much, but not who we were. Psychotherapy was born, encouraging us to seek within our own Psyche. But our small revolution was over by the ‘80’s. The mainstream culture subsumed itself into even greater excesses of work, profit, investment, and Rolex watches. Commoditisation of life continued on as the so-called ‘commons’ became scarce and for the elite. The entrepreneurs put a price on the essentials of life as the kids of the 60’s generation grew up to succumb..
However, the taste for discovery had settled in. Out of the era of the Beatles and the Maharishi, gurus came pouring in from the East. Alternatives for followers abounded. One by one, they also succumbed to the wealth as fame was lavished on them. Though we learned a lot from that, we didn’t find ourselves there either.
In the New Age counterculture of the 80’s the search moved on into the wisdom held by other indigenous peoples. We found a common denominator across their cultures as we strip-mined the indigenous wisdom of Australia, New Zealand, and Native America. They respected and revered their Ancestors keeping an unbroken lineage to their Wisdom Keepers. Ours couldn’t easily be found as they were hidden so far beneath the written philosophies of the early Christians church. Still, in desperation, we repeated the mistakes we made with the gurus. We attempted to becoming pseudo-indigenous, wanting these people to adopted us. Thus, we wore feathers in our hair, through our ears, and did sweat lodges. We chanted, doing smoking ceremony whilst sitting in the dust with their elders. But we didn’t want to hear what they had to say: ‘Go look to your own. That’s where your answers ’. So, as we purchased crystals and went to workshops all we found was more economics.
But there were always tools found along the way that we were able to save in our travelers’ bag. Not quite sure how to use them but we knew they were vital. Eventually some of us did find our way home though, discovering that beneath the youth culture of consumerism we did indeed have our own Ancestors. Going back to Pre-Christian times required patience but when we found them, those Ancestors we found knew us. They were looking for us as we searched for them. In our ancient history we rediscovered many of the same tools that other indigenous people had shown us. We also cast circles to dedicate a time and space to going deep within. We also honoured a symbol called the Quartered Circle, where the elements were called upon to preside in our rituals, reminding us of what we are made. Doing ritual showed us that it was not merely form, but a repetitive way of connecting us to our Earth, our Ancestors and to ourselves; what we are here for.
My attempt in this book is two-fold. Firstly, to distill some of this wisdom for you, in a practical way, for use in the 21st century. In doing so I came across some immediate conceptual difficulties. I wanted to show you how the symbolism of this ritual came into being, how ageless and pertinent it is to today. I also wanted to attempt to show you how to use it to understand what we are doing here and why. Because, contained in the symbol of a circle, dissected by a cross, is all the understanding we will ever need, use it as a self-growth tool for our entire journey through life. But I found myself having to reinvent the wheel. Or rather to seek how the wheel was invented. Not the physical one that changed the trajectory of our civilisation, but the metaphysical one. Physical wheels move us forward. Compasses, shows us the where to go. First stumbling block- where did the concept of direction; north, south, east, and west, itself come from? To find that I had to take myself back to the era of our hunter/gatherer Ancestors. To walk with them along the paths that were their survival, and ultimately our own. Going down that rabbit hole took me much further, along my own path, than I could ever have dreamed.
My second desire for this book is that of a warning. We are a 300,000 year old species at last reckoning. That means we lived for 297,050 years on this planet before the Agrarian Revolution. We managed to cohabitate alongside the other species in balance, by and large. While we may have learned many things, it seems that we have lost the ability to cooperate, not only with each other but with everything else as well. We have achieved that in the last 2972 years. I don’t know if we can learn from our lessons enough to survive for another 300,000 years. Sometimes I wonder if there is any point trying. So many times getting stuck in this book I have asked myself if I was going to be able to get it out in time for anyone to actually benefit from it. But a little voice inside said: “Keep writing, Jay”. From that I take it that, no matter what happens next, some humans will get something out of this work. Maybe that’s enough. But maybe, just maybe, every little helps. That the labyrinth will lead us to the center as a species, and there will be humans in the future that will look back at our era, smiling that we somehow found the truth and it did indeed set us free.