The Bringer of Life

Air hasn’t always just been just the stuff that surrounds us that we have to breathe.

In ancient Greece, Air was called the Anima, before that word got dumbed down to mean the interiority of our being-ness, totally separate and individual and un-connected to anything else around us. Even the Bible acknowledges, multiple times actually, that Air is what animates us, what brings us to life. God made Adam out of Play-Dough or some shit, but when he “breathed life into him” Adam was alive. I can’t quote you chapter and verse here, but the Bible quite clearly states at least three times that God does not consider a baby a living being until they take their first breath.

In the mad rush to separate Earth from the Divine, Air was one of the earliest casualties. Only indigenous people have a continuing Relationship with Air in the multitude of forms it takes. Air can be the Wind, it can be a Storm, it can be destructive or cleansing or a blessing. It can bring us new things, or take away old things. The Winds bring the Winter, but they also bring the Spring.

And because Air is the Bringer of Life, it is itself alive, and intelligent. Air is associated with intellect, decisiveness, rationality, and calculations (political and mathematical). Having an exchange of viewpoints is often called “clearing the air.” When a business or a project is struggling, we say it’s “gasping for air.” When we put some new energy into it, we say we’re “breathing new life into it.”

Without Air, among many other bad things, there would be no conversation, no music, no birdsong, no laughter, none of any of that.

Air is what sound waves live in. (Yes, my little nimity-pimitiers, sound can travel in water, too, but when you have to breathe to talk, having underwater conversations is just not practical.) So Air is also a messenger and the Bringer of Knowledge.

And we know this. This is not news. Air is one of the Sacred Elements; anyone who has ever read Tarot cards, cast a circle, or dabbled in the Magical Arts at all is familiar with Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Spirit. But … we don’t treat Air like it’s a friend. Do you dump masses of fluorocarbons on your friends? Do you burn fossil fuels under their noses? I don’t think so. But we just keep on dumping metric tons of the shit into the air like it doesn’t matter, because everybody does it, and because it’s the way we have set up our entire habitat. We stopped walking generations ago.

Believe it or not, this isn’t a screed on climate change. My point is, Air used to have Divine significance, and I think maybe we were all better off when it did.

Air flows around us, and within us. Air connects us with nearly unbearable intimacy to every other living thing. Every breath we take contains information from everything that has ever been alive, human, animal, plant, or otherwise. The air I’m breathing over here this afternoon is the same air that Fred Rogers, Carl Sagan, Rosetta Tharpe, Prince, Marie Antoinette, JS Bach, Emily Dickinson, Aristotle, and Tutankhamen breathed before me. Jesus, if you like. The Buddha. The current Dalai Lama. Any llamas who have ever lived. Every living thing ever.

Nothing is more intimate than that. And nothing is more connecting than that. The Air that flows in my lungs today may flow in your lungs tomorrow. This is a huge deal. And Air just does it, it just shows up in your life totally invisible and brings you this … incredibly rich gift. Not only that, Air is the most essential thing for our survival. Water? We can go without water for a couple-three days. Food? Two weeks to a month-ish. Air? Two-three minutes.

What a holy, holy thing. What a gift, what a resource, what a force. If anything in this world needs to be resacralized, it’s Air. It’s the most essential element. The most critical synthesis we need for our survival – and yet it is the most invisible and overlooked substance on the entire planet. It’s pure spirit, pure energy, and because of us, it’s no longer anything like pure.

I have adjusted my new morning prayer accordingly.

I honor the Land that holds me;
I honor the Air that surrounds and flows through me;
I honor the Sky above me;
I give thanks for the Meshwork that connects me to all life';
I ask that my heart be brought into coherence with the sacredness inherent in this Place.

Breathe in. Hold the Air gently and lovingly in your lungs. Release it tenderly, longingly, like you don’t quite want to let go, just sigh it out. Repeat.