Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 29 -- The Underground River as Metaphor
If; for example, you live in Australia, you may naturally wish to weave into your shamanic
practice the landforms that you see in the course of your daily life, and you may know some of
the dream songs told by the Aborigines. The cosmic and natural forces that created the
landscape -- UNDERGROUND RIVERS, storms, earth upheavals, and so forth -- are the
creative Ancestors who imbued the land with the life force that has allowed the people to live
there happily for more than 100,000 years. -- Thomas Dale Cowan, Shamanism as a Spiritual
Practice for Daily Life (1996)
An underground river can be interpreted as effect.
Having a natural affinity with female consciousness, her [the moon, the "Queen of the Night
Sky"] timeless presence profoundly affects the ocean’s tidal flow, UNDERGROUND
STREAMS, weather conditions, body fluids, menstruation, conception, pregnancy, childbirth,
menopause and physical death. -- Roslyne Sophia Breillat, "Lunar Mystery, Woman and the
Moon," internet posting
An underground river can be a sermon, as seen in the bulletin of
Trinity Assembly of God, Mt. Morris, Michigan.
An underground river can feed our spiritual insteps.
Let the Earth energy flow in through your rootlets, effortlessly. Let it move up, up . . . up
through the reaches of your root system. Moving up through the UNDERGROUND WATERS,
up through the bedrock, up past the bones of our ancestors, up through the rich topsoil, and
right up into the soles of your feet. -- Wicca Spirituality, "Earth Grounding Meditation," internet
posting
An underground river can also be a non-metaphoric ATV spiritual destination.
Jump on your ATV or Mini-Rhino and drive over back-roads through Playa del Carmen’s low
shrub-jungle terrain en route to the hidden underground world of the ancient Mayans at the
mystical caverns of Chac Tun. You’ll be awed by nature’s majesty as she surrounds you with
spectacular stalactites and stalagmites. Follow your guide into the cavernous depths and
experience the power of an ancient Mayan ceremony of purification and renewal performed by
a local practitioner of Mayan spirituality. This ritual involves the sacred waters of an
UNDERGROUND RIVER as well as fire, earth, music, movement and meditation in the caverns
depths. -- Mayan Destinations, "Sunset ATV and Mayan Ceremony," internet posting
An underground river can provide lore for a new religion.
Fundamental to the image of L. Ron Hubbard as the prophet of Scientology are the tales of his
teenage travels. On an unnamed South Pacific island, the fearless lad calmed the natives by
exploring a cave that was said to be haunted by showing them that the rumbling sound from
within was nothing more sinister than an underground river. Hubbard wouldn't call it spiritual,
however; it was simply ascertaining a meaning.
In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982), Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln
speculate that an "UNDERGROUND STREAM" might also have connoted an unacknowledged
and thus "subterranean" bloodline of Jesus. As this one's a thriller, the metaphor's not subtle.
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