An Oceanic Cosmology

I find it quite absurd that I am just now discovering Ernest Haeckel's illustrations and contributions to the curious creation which is our world. My artistic brain is particularly fond of fractals, so I am quite thrilled to have stumbled upon this geniuses work recently. Being inclined to fantasy, people usually shrug off my wide-eyed exploratory speculations of experiences i’ve had with, for clarity and lack of a better word, extra-terrestrials. With a head-titled back to the stars i’ve been guided in tone and healing with spectacular species coming from a place unquestionably “other.” It is not a stretch for me to assume that such extraordinary beings, with a knowledge inconceivable to the human brain, are found hidden in the depth of the seas. I imagine them swimming and sunk into the darkness, resonating throughout the wild waters, and tuning into this beautifully unique world at stake.

Haeckel, with his drive for discovery and an eye for detail, depicted onto the preservable page wonderfully intricate images he witnessed from the life of the ocean. Flipping through the online collection of Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms of Nature) is like seeing with someone else’s eyes. I love imagining this prolific man turning his sights from microscope to etch and back again millions of times to embody the precise calculations of symmetry so often found in his work. What I like best about these images is that it stimulates a fractal oriented cosmic view of world. It brings the usually unseen, untouchable, ungraspable secrets up from the very magical soup of our biological beginnings and presents it to us with a flash breath of beauty. Representing at once our cellular similarities to the artistic wonderment of the cosmic ocean and leaving us just that much more assured that beauty exists even when we are not looking.

By the way, I just learned this man coined the term “ecology.”

Although I haven’t read much on the man himself (besides being aware of his contributions to the field of “scientific racism” in the late nineteenth century) I get quite a transmission of personal alchemy through his artwork. I am fascinated with the subjects he spent enough time with to master and with the repeated particulars he choose. While his work ranges from various species both submerged and surfaced, there is one in particular that synchronously struck me, leaving me believing that this man perhaps was far more than a zoologist, naturalist, artist, physician, teacher, son, and philosopher; he is a spirit song humming along with immaculately “art”-iculate attention; Eternity doesn’t ask much more from us. His collection of hummingbirds:

I am captivated by this shared fascination of the unseen. I am drawn to mystery like a hummingbird to nectar, a starfish to stone, and the artist to the eyes of god. In my few dreams with hummingbirds they are always swimming over the ocean. It is as though they are taking messages from the sea and whispering them into flowers. When we take the time to stop, be stunned, and smell the beauty, we can receive miraculous gifts. In one of my experiences with being energetically near “extra-terrestrials,” while taking time to sit with the magic al flower of Darlingtonia californica, aka Cobra Lily*, I asked them how to communicate with them. In that instant, while sitting under a star-blanketed night sky in the quite stillness of Southern Oregon’s woods, I heard what my brain could only attribute to a hummingbirds** winged vibration fly up right next to my ear and then off again.

Martin Pretchel in his book, The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Son, includes a true story of a man enthralled with South American hummingbird bird songs. Managing to land a job on a mammal research ship working in the Pacific ocean, he convinced the one of the researchers to broadcast his slowed-down hummingbird songs (to replicate sonic sounds) underneath the water. “For days on end, pods upon pods of whales of every kind came rolling in, breaching and blowing along side the ship, diving and gathering around the underwater speakers, chattering, hooting, and cooing in courteous, measured replies between the hummingbirds phrases” (137). Upon speeding up the recorded whale responses the crew discovered that they sounded like, “very ornate hummingbird songs!” They are listening. Thankfully. Are we?

for clickable zoomable images of Hackels illustrations see: http://algorithmic-worlds.net/Haeckel/haeckel.php

*Dedicated to the stellar teachers held and kept manifest within the endangered colony of cobraesk plant beings. All my love and gratitude for your healings, initiations, and supreme wisdoms helping me "relax into being" the artful observer of lifes hidden wonders. May we help you as much as you have helped us as we go forth in our inter-galatic hyper-dimensional journey toward wholeness.

**To the vibratory preparation of the hummingbird: My heart beats rapidly in your divine presence. Thank you.