Editorial

The Scars of The Whale

by Éric P. Lemoine & J.-B. Duret

I guess no one will be extremely surprised to see that a few articles in this edition of Wisp are talking about politics in a wide sense, and the US elections in particular — even readers from outside of the US, who by strange side-effects of globalization are sometimes more informed about them than the average American; nothing to be ashamed of, I remember reading stunningly accurate analysis of our own presidential elections in France last year, signed by British and American journalists,… the advantage of the vantage point precisely.

I am not going to develop this point any further, only to notice that as much as it may seem “natural” to have a convergence of politics-related articles this month, similar convergences throughout this edition of themes of other natures may be overlooked.
Usually when I see a few occurrences of the same imagery come to me in a short time (two can still be discounted as mere “coincidence”, but three starts to become hard to not notice), I stop and look at them to see what they are reflecting to me.

Here, as I see the articles coming at me, the experience is slightly different than from the reader who is unwrapping a new edition of Wisp, that he or she takes as a whole.
When you think of it, it is a mechanism we constantly activate in our day-to-day awareness: this fantastic and immaculate ability to mesh all sorts of various events, people, interactions, realities together and merge them into a flawless singular perception through our identity.

When we were on our spiritual journey in the USA two weeks ago (what better spiritual motive than to meet friends and enjoy their company?), we found ourselves a few times in gemstones shops. Many types of beautiful stones were on display; one could hardly imagine the set of events and the force of elements at play that had brought all of these stones before us. And yet, it’s very similar to that mechanism that makes all the events in our lives appear continuous. However, if you give those stones a closer look, you will start to notice variations in the quality and regularity of their structures: things like inclusions (foreign elements that are trapped inside during the formation of the stone) will start to pop at you.

Traditionally what is sought first and foremost, at least for precious gems, is the clearest crystals or gems: those without any inclusions; and yet there in that store, we find ourselves in the presence of a smoked quartz crystal presenting the most fascinating set of inclusions we had seen. It seemed to us as if a dragon head was trapped inside the crystal.

The mind is a marvellous tool; it can create sensible images out of the most seemingly chaotic structures. It may be easy to discount the images, but in doing so, it would be discounting that power of the mind to create simple and fathomable symbols out of the multiple arrangements of information.

What better than an image of a dragon to convey the wonderment of our own magic?
Far from being ugly and undesirable, all the inclusions are valuable, and they will speak to each of you differently.

However what they never fail to highlight is the fact that we are all linked together, and each of us holds a piece of the bigger picture.