Three-legged Black Bird and other stories from Kyoto

 

A conspiracy of Black Birds, a murder of Black Birds, a storytelling of Blackbirds and even an unkindness of Black Birds, describes how Black Birds are grouped throughout the ages. Of the Four Black Birds, one of us has three legs; an odd vision to the West perhaps, but not so strange in China or Japan, where samjoko, the three-legged crow or raven is a symbol of the sun’s phases - rising, zenith and setting. The sun’s light changes her glossy black feathers to silver, thus transforming the black of night to represent the silvery moon.  Samjoko is said to give birth to the light at the center of our galaxy, while at the same time embodying the void deep in the core the universe, towards which we are all traveling.          

In our conspiracy of Four Writing Blackbirds, we each arrive by different paths. The other Twenty participants arrive by invocation, invitation and synchronicity. I come via the northeastern edge of the ancient capital of Kyoto. Within earshot of the city, the last bit of population nestled in the narrow passage of the winding road which leads up to the temple-fortress of Mt Hiei. There I lived literally without sun in the shadow of the holy Hiei-zan, home of the warrior monks that terrorized Kyoto in the 10^th century. At the entrance to the road exiting the old capital, at the foot of a mist covered shrine stands an old mill site, with several incarnations as zendo, dojo and cha shitsu. The few families in dwellings stacked at the edge of the road say, as if remembering it themselves, at one time Hakuin Zen-ji, the Zen master in the 15^th century lived in the mill.

Across the sod bridge and part way up the steep sweating stone steps there is a pounding waterfall which attracts ascetics of all persuasions to sit or stand under the ice cold water in meditation. I never climbed the stairs without coming across a shivering practioner. Only once did I venture into the ominous atmosphere of the shrine at the top, where the shaman-medium resides, who shape shifted to frogs, dragons and snakes. The tradition of this shamanic-miko is rooted in the middle of the first millennium C.E. long before the influence of China. Her lineage is that of the creation goddess, Amaterasu, sometimes represented as a giant raven, Yata-Garasu.

It is said that the only way to find housing in Kyoto is for someone to die. And after a year of searching, with a new born baby this mill house was the closest we came to finding a habitable place to live. We took it even though it was clearly on the borderline in more ways than one. It was a liminal place between black and white, in the watery shadows; water flowing through our assembled pipe system down from the healing springs, water seeping through the moss on the stone cliff, south wall of our dwelling and the constant mist rising from the thunderous river that rushed past us down from Hiei-zan.

Great haunting shapes in the wet air lined the other side of the river where the stone lantern carver’s chisel rung out echoing above the roar of the water, in a constant plumbing for light. Crow-Ravens gathered in the fragrant cedar tree catching our coveted sun which touched the vegetable garden a few months of the year. As soon the mill was made livable, we moved in with our six month old daughter. We soon built an anagama, wood burning kiln, fifteen feet long wedged in the narrow space between the stone cliff and the river like a fire breathing snake. The pottery studio was called Haku-an Gama, White Cloud Kiln. Kyoto is a city rich in historical legends and myth. Once in the mountains I came across a yamabushi, from the sect of mountain hermits originating in the 8th century who practice extreme ascetics, wearing animal skins and carrying conch trumpets. It was in this dark, shadowy, wet mill house I was introduced to the image of the samjoko, the three-legged crow or raven, mythically residing in the sun. Raven was the favorite bird of the solar deity, Lugh, the Celtic God of Arts and Crafts. The image of the three-legged crow in the disc of the sun is a talisman for the healing of eyes and vision, which I have come to call on.

Living in the Japan that I chose to live in was not only living in another time, but also living with deep reflection on the power of the unseen worlds. An example is when my tea teacher became very ill, the first thing that was done was to check the geomancy of her home and change the direction of her bed. Usually unknowingly, I was at odds with the underlying structure of this ancient culture and its modern veneer. There is a traditional coupling of colors in Japan: the black and white of monks and funerals, the red and white of celebration and shrine priestess robes that point to the bond between one’s own life with the gods. Everything is symbolic.

And yet in the liminal at the edge of the conservative world of Kyoto, there was only borderline tolerance for a foreigner who had the audacity to bring fire to a place of water. The three of us: outsider, innocent and youth, all aspects of the Fool, brought red to black and white, the fundamental keys to the alchemy of individuation like three legs on a black bird.