Connecting to the Underworld

Last updated on: February 4, 2016 at 5:00 am by Erica Baron

Connecting to the Underworld 2016-02-04T05:00:45+00:00 Erica Baron

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A while back, when meditating on my role as Unitarian Universalist minister and Wiccan priestess, I came to understand something important about UU culture. In general, Unitarian Universalists struggle to connect and integrate the Underworld, and the part of our Selves that lives there.

Three Worlds of Existence

Let me explain. The Temple of Witchcraft, to which I also belong, posits three worlds of existence. We are not alone in this. It’s a pretty common idea. The physical world, and its spiritual corollaries make up the Middle World, the world of change and manifestation. This world is characterized by physical laws and concrete reality. Then there is the Upper world, which is characterized by compassionate detachment. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but think of the state of consciousness that is the goal of Buddhist meditation. There is deep compassion, but it is not an attachment kind of compassion. It is a kind of compassion that takes the long view and applies to everyone and everything without regard for personal likes and dislikes. Finally, there is the Underworld, which is the rich matrix from which the middle world grows. It is the place of transformation, where things go to die and be reborn, a bit like the process of composting.

The Temple also teaches that we have a piece of our Self that inhabits each of the three worlds. Again, this idea is found in other places, too. The self that inhabits the Middle world is the self we usually identify with, which we in the Temple call the “Namer” for the way this part of us likes to organize and label things. This is the self of ordinary consciousness, the one that can make and carry out plans, the one that lives here in our physical reality, the middle world.

The self that inhabits the Upper world is called the Watcher, for that detached long view that is part of the Upper world consciousness. This self can help us to be unconditionally compassionate, and can help us get out of attachment to the ups and downs of everyday life. It is the self that can see our true purpose most clearly, and help us to pursue it.

Finally, we have the self that in the Temple we call the Shaper, the self that inhabits the underworld. This self is characterized by strong emotions, a love of symbolism, groundedness in the body and in experience, the sort of intuitive knowing that comes from the gut. Starhawk calls this the Younger Self, and it is childlike in many ways: impulsive, deeply feeling, drawn to sensual stimuli, moved by story and wonder. We call this self the Shaper because it shapes our lives in the underground matrix of the underworld. We can come to conscious awareness of this self and its wants and needs, but if we don’t work for that, this is the self of the sub-conscious.

Unitarian Universalism

Younger Self

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