In looking at the prompt for this project, the first thing that pops into my mind is the Gill Tract Community Farm. My involvement with the farm has been mythologically inspired since the day I discovered it. In early August, I received the book Ecotherapy” in the mail, and instantly dug into it, reading through multiple essays in one sitting. Without planning it out, I was wearing my Green Man shirt that day, and then a few hours later discovered the Gill Tract Community Farm while riding on my bike around San Pablo. Everything I had just been reading about in the book a few hours before, about integrating eco-consciousness in healing work with individuals and communities, seemed to be clearly in front of me as I peered through the chain-link fence at the wondrous sunflower mandalas lining the north side of the farm. The synchronistic convergence of events came at a time when I was looking for the next direction to take in my life, and I felt as if this was a very clear message that I needed to continue following this thread of meaningful dialogue with the Green Man and the forces of Earth-based magic and healing.

The image of the Green Man resonates very strongly for me, as the representation of a guiding spiritual force for my work with the Gill Tract Farm, in a similar manner to Philemon in Jung’s Red Book. The Green Man symbol is traceable to indigenous, Pagan mythologies of Europe. In particular, the legacy of the Earth based magic of the Celts and Druids have been the most influential for me. I am descended primarily from people from England, Ireland, and Spain, and have felt a strong resonance with the mythologies and symbols of the ancient Celtic tradition. My work at the Gill Tract Farm represents to me what I feel like is some kind of ancestral/genetic memory re-unfolding itself from a template that was useful perhaps to one or several of my ancestors, who maybe was a Druid earth-shaman or community organizer.

I have attended several Druid ceremonies during the various holy-days in the “wheel of the year” and gone to Pantheacon, which is one of the largest gathering of Pagan people in the world. During a ritual at Pantheacon 2014, the intention was focused upon driving out fracking wells from the few remaining holy Groves in the lands of England. Specifically, a fracking well was being built on an island that was mythologically associated with Avalon, and the ceremony was intended to call upon Earth Dragons of ancient myths to descend upon the petroleum-death-machine and unleash their wrath. With over 100 people in attendance, this ritual was powerful and moving. With the collective focus and attention of all present directed into the chants and magical language, I felt the air grow heavier as the presence of the dragons entered the space during the invocations. In conjunction with the natural cycles of the Earth, and charged with the energy of groups of people with a solid intention, mythology can be a very powerful force of healing, commUnity, and connection to the deep places of Self and spirit. This is what I want to bring to the Gill Tract Community Farm, albeit in a way that is much less ritualistic, formal, and specific to the Celtic culture. I want it to be inclusive and inviting to people of many different traditions and cultures. Plans are already in the works for ceremonial events centered around the natural cycles, with the upcoming Harvest/Winter-Planting event on Sunday, October 5, and the Full Moon Lunar Eclipse drum circle 3 days later, on the 8^th.

The Gill Tract Farm is not without its barriers to success. There are forces at play that would love to see parking lots and condos on top of the space, such as UC Berkeley and various corporate interests. UC Berkeley is the owner of the space occupied by the farm, but has very little commitment to continuing its ownership. The land that is presently being used by the community for the farm was taken via the Occupy movement. Prior to that, it was mostly neglected for several years, with weeds growing everywhere. Inspired by the zeitgeist of the Occupy movement, “Occupy the Farm” held its ground in the face of much resistance from police and university administration. At the time, the land was set to be sold to Whole Foods, but these plans were cancelled after community organizing and media uproar highlighted the irony of the situation. Eventually, a deal was struck with UCB for keeping the land. The community was allowed to continue using the space, but only under the supervision and management of the University and its bloated bureaucracy, and with the stipulation that the land be used for certain research purposes, since it was historically used by UCB for research. The research that is currently being conducted falls under both the social sciences and agriculture. The UCB-assisted community organizing effort is part of a social experiment to see how urban farms affect surrounding communities. The other side of the stipulation, the agricultural research, focuses on genetic modification, likely funded by Monsanto or similar companies. The most apparent manifestation of this symbolic, multi-level divide is visible just by walking past the farm: half of the land is styled in permaculture methods, with a more organically flowing design and diverse arrangement of plants, while the other half of the farm has GMO corn planted in the linear arrangements of monocrop design, each plant tagged with a unique code for identification purposes in the research design (reminds me of the image from the powerpoints of the saturnian SAT exam).

The farm itself is a microcosm for the macrocosm of the worldwide struggle against the forces of ecological destruction and plutocratic oppression. And further still, these inversely oscillating energies contained within the alchemical vessel of the Gill Tract Farm parallel the internal  process of the “coniunctio”, which brings together equal and opposite forces of the psyche. There is rich mythological soil here to work with to grow vibrant, useful, and empowering stories that inspire the community and the world at large.

The Gill Tract Community Farm has an extensive history that is kept alive by elders who have seen it change and evolve for many decades. I went to a pow-wow type event last week in which the elders of the community presented records, documents, pictures, flyers, newspaper clippings, and all manner of other artifacts showing the progression of the farm over the years, even going back to the days when the Ohlone people inhabited this space. I was thinking to myself “this right here is mythological gold”. All of the stories, images, characters, and symbologies necessary to create a mythology that is rooted in the land and locale was right in front of me.

Through my work with the “Education Work Group” at the Gill Tract farm, I want to create a mythologically stylized story of the history of the Gill Tract Farm, and share the story of the land and everything that’s happened in it for as far back as can be remembered or retrieved through the collective memory. The story can contain aspects of the farm’s history with Occupy the Farm, back to the 80’s and 90’s when activists from the farm promoted and helped start other farms across Berkeley and the Bay Area, back to the Early 1900’s when Mrs. Gill and a group of other local women greeted UC Berkeley garbage haulers with shotguns and rifles to protest illegal dumping on the farm (which encompassed most of North Berkeley and Albany at the time), all the way back the history and mythologies of the Ohlone people who inhabited the land before colonialism came in and took over. It would seem that a mythological theme, of “the Activists” vs “the System”, has been repeating throughout the history of this land, and I would like to apply the techniques learned in this class to unravel the underlying mythological currents, and then reassemble the various narratives into a history-and-peoples’spanning saga.

I might want to be mindful of the historical progression, of how the previous inhabitant-activists fought the system and lost, and learn from what went wrong. I may at some point find in myself, in parallel to the stories, the Shadow of “the Activist”, surrounded by self-righteous charisma, insubordination, and refusal to have an I-Thou relationship with “the System”. I may find that these Shadow aspects may be a factor in the previous iterations of the repeated story of the land. The Shadow of the Activist makes them feel strong in the face of the unstoppable juggernaut of “the System”, but ultimately undoes the Activist’s work by making it impossible for an interaction to take place in which both the System and Activist can see each other in a human, person-to-person interaction. The Activist Shadow often covers up a place of deep pain or perceived self-weakness, and as such, actions made from this place manifest in such a way that reinforces the wound.

Consciously cultivating the myth with acknowledgments of all aspects of the story is of utmost importance. Regardless of how it unfolds, the story is more or less well preserved by the elders, and they’re the first ones to go to find out more. I want to learn more about what has happened in this place, and preserve the story before it is lost with the fragility of the mortal human condition.

Something else specific that I might do would be to interview several of the elders and assemble stories of the locale, record the interviews, and then mix them into electronic music for my next electronic music album, under my DJ project “Mythogen Mysterion”. Now that I’m thinking about it, this is perfect. I was already planning on creating a concept album about permaculture and gardening, with songs called “Soil Sample”, “Decomposers”, “Helios”, and “Community Spirit” already in progress. I could make songs that distill specific parts of the story into audio-synaesthetic renditions of the happenings of each historical phase, backed by the spoken word, story/interviews with the elders of the community.

I feel like this project is going to allow me to integrate and tie in many different aspects of my life and various mythologies. Through applying what I’ve learned in this certificate course, I would like to make a constructive, meaningful impact on my local community. The vision is coming together, so the next step is to put ideas into action, and sow the seeds for the polycultured manifestation of this project.