Gemstones unearthed from the fiery depths of Earth and Heart

Geode guides to relational ecosystemic thinking

Amethyst Geode detail photo by katriona mccarthy

Millions of years ago in Tazmourt, Morocco, gas got trapped in erupting lava, creating a bubble. As the lava slowly cooled into dark basalt, the hollow space was enclosed in igneous rock. As Earth’s water cycle rained above, below, the chthonic waters percolated into the rock bed through small pores and fractures, filling the basaltic void with silica-rich water. From patient and complex chemical change within the void bubble, silica started to precipitate along the margins. Crystallization ensued.

Quartz peaks from the periphery, slowly expanding towards the center. Interactions with other elements, such as iron, can alter clear quartz crystal from translucent to purple, creating amethyst geodes.

After millions of years, I sit at the bottom of a mine listening to the rhythmic and thunderous sound of the hammer hitting that basalt bedrock with astonishing precision and persistence, as the miner extracts the geode.  

Once it is separated from the bedrock, the geode is carefully delivered to another pair of experienced Amazigh hands and ears that sense its center. With simultaneous strength and softness, the miner knocks a tumbled stone around the geode until he feels it crack open. It is then that the inside of that ancient lava bubble meets the atmosphere for the very first time and its astounding inner beauty robs our mammal lungs of air: *gasp*.

Inside that seemingly uninteresting piece of black basalt laid buried a crystalized world of amethyst wonder: earthen alchemy, relationship between volcanic forces, heat, pressure, underground waters and atoms of Carbon, Silicon, Oxygen, Iron, Aluminum, expressed in striking quartz arrangements of beautiful purple hues… Meeting sentient human eyes, for the very first time.

After the surprised uproar (orgasmic if we’re being honest…) upon the opening of the ancient rock, I’m left in silenced awe. I hold the geode and consider how much time, how much unlikelihood, how much relationship, I hold in my hands in that moment.

Each unearthed geode is an interlaced millennial relationship not only across atomic elements, powerful lithospheric forces, and the planetary hydrological cycle; but also the human dimensions of mysticism, animism, capitalism, and the hard-working lives of the Imazighen people who exhume them with trans-generational mastery. An effort that supplies markets across the world, without the profit ever reaching the hands and lives of those who risk much to unearth these wonders.

One of the miners, in his 60’s, vigorously extracting rock in his sandals, basalt shards flying his direction, no helmet, glasses nor gloves; spoke to us of worries of a future when he can no longer work the hammer and pickaxe:

“I don’t have a retirement plan, even thought I worked hard my whole life…”

It might seem ridiculous, to some, to feel the shared panic of our denied retirement plans when one holds planetary time in the palm of their hand…

But that is exactly the focus we must not lose: these moments in which the abundant wonder and greatness of Life interlaces with the tangible precarious socioeconomic realities we inhabit. We do not have time for unshadowed definitions of beauty. We do not have space for more binary lies. Colonialist collectionism, extractivism, exploitation of indigenous labor, class issues… are not forgotten, must not be erased but made conscious, through the experience of wonder.

If we miss the intersectionality of the beauty and pain, we are separated from Life. And that separation and avoidance, by the privileged, is at the core of the violence we all experience to different degrees.

Our hearts and minds can hold complexity, because they too are born from the complexity of Life. Our hearts can alchemize fear from blockage into loving resistance, and geodes are wonderful teachers in this quest for unwaveringly sensing ecosystemic complexity.

Geodes as guides of systemic thinking

The name Geode stems from ancient Greek for ‘earthlike’ and I noticed then how beautifully a geode can illustrate the systemic layers we inhabit and the porous relationships between them. 

It is convenient to abstractly blame “the system”, we all do it and we all have intentions to “fight it”. But as one of my martial arts teachers would tell you:

“Fighting the invisible is exhausting and impossible.”

I’ve been gathering definitions across ages and backgrounds and, so far, “the system” is often portrayed as an unavoidable, overwhelming and powerful entity, separated from us, oppressing people violently from above.  And while many of our experiences feed this image, this image disempowers.

A geode and the truth of its porosity, despite impermeable rock appearance, embodies what I learned “the system” to be from john a. powell:

Agath geode illustrating the connected Systemic layers of relationship photo by zdenek machacek, edited by telma gl

The Eco-socio-economic system we inhabit is organized in growing levels of relationship at the core of which is the often-disempowered unit: the individual.

Each of us is part of the system. We are not separated from it, but its innermost level of expression. While “I is a weak pronoun”, as prof. powell says, to enact sustainable systemic change addressing the socio-ecological violence within our ecosystem, we must recognize our belonging: our non-separation from participation across levels of relationship within the ecosystem. We must think systemically, from our body through the ecosystem level.

If we think retirement: the political and economic decisions on worker’s rights, expressed at the institutional level, influence, and are influenced by, cultural values & definitions of rest, extractivism and productivity (etc.); which affect our relationships with our ecosystems and our bodies at the interpersonal and individual levels; and vice versa.

Just like groundwater permeates the pores in the rock matrix, the levels of the system are all connected by porous relationship.
Thus, resistance to systemic injustice crystalizes at different levels, influenced by local & temporary elemental composition.  

We live in impatient times of perpetual extraction of resources from both external and embodied nature. Demand and supply, competition and incentive guide the rhythms of our modern lives, which become more and more incompatible with a sustainable and prosperous ecosystem. We* (*in low struggle urbanized societies) live like we* hold no responsibility for the future, in a cretin distortion of carpe diem.

Despite our abundance of resources, we* do not have time nor energy to sit with said responsibility, nor with the pain that comes with accountability. Thus, we suffer deeply in collectively unacknowledged fear of the future. The undeniable sense that we are breeding precarity weights deeply in each of our hearts, and the precarity, that is already inescapable reality of many, feeds community exhaustion and disconnection.

Abstract ideas of self separation from “the system” that surrender our participation in both its upholding & transformation, rob us from the enlivening connection and belonging to the Earth’s ecosystemic relationships across human socio-economic structures, thus robing us of co-creating and becoming change. Together.

Let the geode be a teacher and reminder, of the many layers in which systemic change takes hold. An inspiration of multi-leveled alchemizing, chthonic, resistance, which can start by collectively investigating those dark, buried deep, places from where our definitions guide our actions. A daring, creative, community journey through intersectional pores.

In the opening of a millions of years old amethyst geode, I discover a plethora of alive questions:

• How can one keep their heart strong yet permeable to interlacing pain and beauty, uncertainty and hope, from within the system?

• What power do we delegate to distorted definitions that miss the complex connections between community action and ecosystemic change?

• What revolution would crystalize if we were to alchemize ourselves, and each other, into the loving defiance that supports ecosystemic life?