KATABASIS

Once upon a time there was katabasis, the journey that changed my life.

When I was in my mid twenties, Chaos found me. When Chaos finds you, you know. And you also know nothing will ever be the same again. Chaos is not tender, it is not polite, it does not open doors nor pull out chairs, it drags them on the floor until the screeching sound makes you cover your ears and squeeze your eyes shut. It does not play nice, it is not transparent, and it does not care about your feelings. What did I know of Chaos? What fit was I to contend with Chaos? None whatsoever. It was a monster and it was devouring me.

Once in the grips of Chaos the question is, what do you want to do about it? Chaos comes with big questions, questions that – if you are honest – you cannot ignore, nor can you answer them in the ways you used to answer them. So the question becomes: will you go to the ends of the earth to find the answers? Will you do whatever it takes? I asked myself these questions. Part of me trembled at the thought of what that might entail, and yet part of me knew I would never know a day’s peace if I did not. To the ends of the earth. What is ‘the ends of the earth’? It is the Underworld. What is the Underworld? It is the domain of death, extinction, a place antithetical to human life. Katabasis is the descent into the Underworld.

From the Greek ‘descent’ and in the context of myth, katabasis is “the voluntary descent into the underworld of at least one still living being with at least the intention of returning alive”.* Katabasis is such a universal archetype that it occurs in folklore from all over the globe.

People go to the Underworld for many reasons. We read ancient stories of characters descending in order to rescue their true love, to redeem themselves for past transgressions, to gain answers to questions. The entry points that lead to the Underworld are varied. In hindsight, I believe mine was this: one day – in the midst of my swirling Chaos – I read a biblical passage in which Jesus asks a blind man what he wants him to do for him. The blind man says he wants to see, and in that moment his vision is restored. So I asked myself, if God (or the divine, the universe, however you want to put it) were asking me – Belinda – what I wanted him to do for me, what would I say? “To know truth from illusion.” Thus began my descent into the Underworld.

My katabasis took more than a decade. Before I began my descent – while I still had no clue about the epic journey on which I was about to embark – I felt compelled to journal every day, compelled by an intuition I could not explain at the time. All I knew is that I trusted it. So I started counting the days, and I journaled every day. That was a mammoth task in itself. The last thing I wanted to do – there in the depths of the Underworld – was write. Face myself. Articulate my thoughts and feelings. Capture it all, all the pain, all the darkness, all the paradoxical agony of what it meant to be alive in the realm of the dead.

I have long known that all of those pages soaked with ink and tears were not just for me, though how and why I was not sure. But today as I write this it is clear as daylight that it is for you. You, fellow traveller. You who want more from life, you who are thirsty for the water of Life, you who are willing to risk everything in order to find it.

I was so thirsty for more from life, I knew I had to honour that thirst and follow wherever it led. I held nothing back. I was all in. I was wide open and it cost me everything I had. Everything I was. So much of me died down there, and yet so much of me was born, there in the Underworld. This is the journey that has made me who I am.

Written on 12,800 journal pages is my journey: how it looks, how it smells, how it is to live this. And yesterday I also realised that our joint expedition into the Unknown – which unfolds organically month by month – has been a slowly unfolding map of katabasis.

To know what this journey involves, read Bridge.

To know one way you can re-conceptualise the darkness of the Underworld, read Noumenia.

To begin to understand the mystery of what happens, read Belly.

To know how it feels to arrive on the other side, read Home.

To know one of the outcomes of the journey, read Dream.

To know how you can know if you are on the right path, read Fit.

To know the importance of your journey in the grand scheme, read Song.

To know why you do not get to know how your journey ends right at the beginning, read Uncertainty.

To know what kind of mindset you need in order to undertake this journey, read Pistis.

To know what it feels like to tread this path, read Sea.

To know how to find peace in the turbulence of the Underworld, read Seven.

To know what you come to see on this journey, understand that you see through a Window into the Beyond.

To know how each person’s journey is unique and has its place, read Twine.

To know what kind of story this is, read Tablet.

***

There is an ancient Greek myth known as the myth of Trophonius, ‘a god of the Underworld’. It is a long story. Those who seek divine knowledge from him must descend into the Underworld. This happens through rituals that takes place at a river. When the inquirer returns from his descent he is given a chair upon which to sit, and he is questioned by the priests regarding what he saw, heard, and experienced. This is recorded on tablets, and it is done with each inquirer who makes this journey. The fruits of this treacherous and impossible journey are deemed so important that nothing which is experienced should be lost. Those thousands of journal pages are my tablet, that is my story.

Though it has been a journey of pain, loss, and profound suffering, you must not mistake me. It has also been a thing of unspeakable beauty, so precious, so breathtaking. And an extra gift? Recognising that the crux of my doctoral thesis is katabasis. Does life imitate art, or is it one grand narrative unfolding like a masterpiece? The fullness of that beauty, that we are yet to discover together.

Katabasis is a personal journey that leaves its traveller transformed. It is an impossible journey, one upon which no sane traveller would want to venture because the risk is great and survival is uncertain. Yet a few do survive and they emerge changed on the other side. The katabatic journey is not a straight line, it dips to come up.

I cannot overstate how rare it is that I get to see my life from this vantage point, looking back over a journey that has irrevocably transformed me. I do not build things, I do not make physical objects or generally run projects that can be completed in a day or five or fifty. My work is largely invisible until, usually at a much later stage, it becomes visible. My work is not sculpted from clay nor chiseled in stone. My work is ideas. Words knitted together, strings of notes strung on musical staffs, seeking to tell a story. What story, you may ask. As it turns out, the story of katabasis. The story of the “impossible”. The unfolding story of Life.

Land of the living – land of the dead – land of the Living.

Day 4316: I am Belinda, I have been to the Underworld, and I live to tell the story.

* Nesselrath, 2018:6.

(c) Belinda É. Samari. All rights reserved.