At the beginning of this short but no less educative article we would just like to point out that is has little to do with the martyrdom of the Polish Hunting Association, which of course is a fascinating story in itself but diametrically opposed to the alternative hunting approach that is of interest to us here. Alternative transcendental hunting is a continuation of the noble art of Great Classical Hunting and is derived from the intuitive needs of the spirit and the deepest instincts of the individual human persona.
Classical values return to contemporary culture through heroes active on the borders of this culture, in the broadly defined sphere of alternative...ity. The Classical hunt has become the transcendentalhunt is currently classified as an alternative field in art. What we are to consider in this story is the art of hunting and the role of instinct in humans throughout the centuries. Let us concentrate on the instinctive approach to the important events in the primordial skill of hunting.
 |
| Siberian shaman |
The very idea itself derives from ancient cultures. Down through the centuries a multiplicity of these ideas was brought to the fore. These ideas, however, differed from the classical prototype and were often in a way unacceptable by the practitioners of the Great Hunting tradition.
To some extent in opposition consumer hunting was born; this being a mass culling and holocaust of forest animals - a horde of howling dogs, and sitting in their saddles trophy hunters who have lost their instincts, their sensitivity and the feeling of harmony with Nature and wildlife. The great tradition of the art of hunting, so universal within different cultures and ethnic groups, as is the Moon, the Sun, Water and Earth, was lost. And so it came to pass that the classical traditon moved underground to be forgotten, or perhaps to be hidden beneath that materialistic layer placed there by the hands of our modern, authoritative establishment. The curtain has fallen over the Great Hunting Essence.
Post World War II times brought negative aspects into the development and peception of the very idea of hunting. The peak of mass hunting in the Polish cultural arena was the era of Edward Gierek the Great. Here we find forty year old youngsters, fans of the concrete industry, striving to accomplish something through rites de passage and transform their social-spiritual condition. Unfortunately, the lack of `fathers` able to initiate real hunters and perform this rite rsulted through time in the growth of a certain decadence and a decline in the art of hunting.
The very candidates for initiation also left much to be desired [with a few exceptions, of course]. Those who did hunt finally were those with immeasurable hunger and emotional deficiency. When the entire nation struggled using passive and active resistance [the black panthers of the shipyard industry], a clique of well-dressed barons compensated their own deficiencies with new kinds of sporting and leisure activities, as they saw hunting. Both retired and active servicemen would hunt, along with the top brass of the governing machine, i.e. the party establishment – the cogs of the totalitarian machinery, tchose scraps of human personalities. The folklore element included vodka, the pulpit, and shooting at boars and rabbits and at quickly replaced the spiritualism of Great Hunting.
A feeling for the game [that which is being hunted], the hunter`s instinct, was eliminated and reduced to naught.
The loss of these values and skills commenced in the 18th century, when Man, the subject, became transformed into a movable entity. The human machine is born in a mechanical incubator along with its political anatomy. Foucault describes the process as follows: „The human body was entering the machinery of power which explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it.” A new breed is born: the mechanism of power, which according to Foucault describes the ways of influencing the bodies of others, not only to make them do what is expected but also to make them work as it is expected, using predefined techniques with a prescribed pace and efficiency. Methods typical of monasteries moved into secular life. Monastery - factory - Barracks. Barracks - factory – Monastery. Barracks became one of the first elements of human uniformity on a large scale.
The army, perceived by many as a continuation of the hunting ideal, in reality differs from classical hunting radically.
Before the soldier was born, there was the warrior. Before the hobby huntsman there was the implicated hunter, who preceded the warrior. The hunter would hunt with his entire spirit, instinctively and intuitively becoming one with Nature. In spite of the different perceptions of the world around us, at a certain level wild life and human life could be considered as one – a non-material microcosm, encompassing the common macrocosm. There is one flow in life, oppositions complement each other providing unity - Adam and Eve, Yin and Yang, the good and the bad, life and death. However, linear time has moved us away from the traditional ways of perceiving reality spiritually. A century of steel and steam, an 8-hour workday, „uniformal” education and the cult of a desensitized brain has achieved this.
 |
| Lascaux - "Hunters" |
We have lost our ability, it has been forgotten in fact, of how to fish in harmony with Nature, to live instinctively and follow our hearts. „I think I am”, Buddhists declare ironically on the condition of contemporary man.
The modern era provides us with many H. Bosch like images in everyday news reports flashed up on giant LCD altar-screens: the heavy guns of warring nations blasting holes in the map of Europe, fire bombed Dresden, safari in Afghanistan, Russia trekking into Grozny [Chechen Republic], Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is a difference of cosmic proportions between the fictional heroism of Andrzej Kmicic in „The Deluge” or Mel Gibson in „Braveheart”, and a uniformed Hannibal Lecter holding high rank setting off for another „peacemaking” mission.
So how do we learn to hunt and where do we learn this noble skill? The righteous art of determining your life and its course and hunting which is connected to it should be learnt from noble people, the transcendentalists, in particular, Henry David Thoreau, the author of „Walden. Living in the Forest” and „Civil Disobedience”. The Sage of Concord, who inspired Gandhi, Martin Luther King and social activists ranging from Amnesty International to English radicals, from the Labour Party to the greens of Greenpeace.
Living in the forest in 1845, Thoreau carried out a cultural experiment [as much as a spiritual one], lasting 2 years, 2 months and 2 days. One hundred twenty years before the hippy movement, he created an independent center for the free man.
 |
| Henry David Thoreau |
His house became a shrine of the free spirit, an everyday shrine, not just a once in a blue moon one. He lived in harmony with the deepest of human instincts, satisfying and developing what was humanitarian and spiritual - nature and culture. He consciously combined it in himself. „Walden” is one of the leading guides of ethical and spiritual survival, on how to live in order to be. „Time is but a stream I fish in” says Thoreau. Deep humanitarianism and a profound recognition of human nature made him speculate about hunting also. He agrees that the young should be taught how to hunt and that it should be one of the pillars of the educational system. He claims it was one of he finest parts of his education. `Make them hunters and fishermen of men`. He remarks on Algonquian philosophy: „There is a period in the history of the individual, as in the race, when the hunters are the best men” and continues:
„We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected”.
„No human being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will want to murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. Such is oftenest the young man`s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind”. Halina Czaplińska, Thoreau`s philosophy researcher, claims he saw himself as a poet in everyday life more than in his creative activity.
As with many other transcendentalists, Thoreau was convinced of the superiority of the spirit over that of matter. According to a researcher of this philosophy, O. B. Fronthingham, the transcendentalists agreed on the dignity of the human entity and took the viewpoint that human nature and instinct have a supernatural and divine level. Instinct-nature and culture teach us how to survive, how to live and how to be.
We are still active hunters, and it does matter how and what we hunt. In ancient cultures the hunter respected the creatures he hunted. Killing an animal is not a personal act, according to religious studies scholar Joseph Campbell. To a hunter, an animal was an embodiment of his own ancestors, and God for that matter. The act of hunting was both a sacrifice and a form of transcendence at the same time.
 |
| David Lynch |
One hundred and fifty years after the death of the great hunter Thoreau, David Lynch, in his book „Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity” advises us how to fish on our trip along the lost highway of everyday life. The great hunter of contemporary film-making, who plans to expand his fishing into the Polish city of Lodz, describes the process of hunting as follows: „Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish you stay in the shallow water but if you want to catch the big fish you have to go deeper. Down deep the fish are more powerful and more pure. They`re huge and abstract and they are very beautiful. I look for a certain kind of fish that is important to me, one that can translate into cinema. But there are all kinds of fish swimming down there. There are fish for business, fish for sports. There are fish for everything. Everything, anything that is a „thing”, comes up from the deepest level. Modern physics call that level the Unified Field. The more your consciousness, your awareness is expanded, the deeper you go toward this source, and the bigger the fish you can catch.”
The desire to set off hunting is crucial. Lynch claims that the desire to invent is like a bait – when you fish, you have to wait patiently. The desire is the bait that attracts fish – our ideas. He calls it beautiful that once you succeed catching even the smallest fish, a piece of the bigger idea, it will attract others and they will all come to the same hook. The question yet to be answered is where to fish and how to find the perfect fishing spot. Lynch points out that smaller fish swim in shallow water, while the bigger ones can only be found in deeper waters. His advice on catching the big fish is to expand the fishing style, providing an allegory of consciousness.
The technique used by the film-maker to fill his pantry with fish is Transcendental Meditation. „Here is how it works: inside every human being is an ocean of pure, vibrant consciousness. When you transcend in Transcendental Meditation, you dive down into this ocean of pure consciousness. You splash into it. And it`s bliss. You can vibrate with this bliss. Experiencing pure consciousness enlivens it, expands it. It starts to unfold and grow.”
Our awareness and life in general is conditioned by our consciousness. Lynch states that you can fish ideas at deeper levels, where there is nothing to limit your creativity and live can be great fun.
Both Lynch and Thoreau fish in peace with Nature and the tradition of Great Hunting, in the manner of Upanishads, the Indian sages, Aeschylus and the Greek classics.
Let us set off to hunt as often as possible in harmony with intuition. Following our instincts let us establish hunting circles or enter those already in existence. Let us be the transcendental hunters of our own times. During the Great Hunting the company is marvelous and there are many from whom we can learn. Just look around you and then set out for the hunt.
 |
| Gregory Colbert - "Ashes and snow" |
From Take Me nr 5 june / july 2010
www.take-me.pl
www.take-me.pl
Bibliography:
Henry David Thoreau,Walden, czyli życie w lesie ["Walden or Life in the Woods"]
David Lynch, W pogoni za wielką Rybą. Medytacja ,Świadomość i Tworzenie ["Catching the Big Fish"]
Michel Foucault, Nadzorować i karać. Narodziny więzienia ["Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison"]
