‘A LAND OF CONTRASTS’!
Torrid Zone Ecology – Class 4 – Middle Lesson
Planet Earth is a Being; no, this is not just some airy platitude, it is a reality. Earth is a living Being just like a human being, but one on a colossal scale – somewhat equivalent to the relationship of a person to its toe tinea (and in the capacity to irritate, the comparison continues!). Being so manifold, the elements that comprise the whole are infinitely overlaid and integrated – beings within beings!
One of the most fundamental of these sub-divisions is the head-heart-hand, or thought-feeling-will nature of the planet. This is based on the globally-accepted separation of the world into 3 main latitudinal zones – Frigid, Temperate, Torrid. These conveniently divide at 60° and 23 ½ ° north and south. So in one respect, the world has 2 ‘heads’, the North and South Frigid Zones – so who said the planet was supposed to be an exact copy of man?!
There are also 2 ‘hearts’, or Temperate Zones, in this particular exposition (there are others). But there is only one ‘hand’, or metabolic/will system, as there is only a single Torrid Zone. This is a seamless band across the Equator for 47° of latitude; embracing the area from the – misnamed – Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.
Misnamed? The two Tropic lines of latitude are named thus in acknowledgement of the sun’s path through the year – its cosmic movement. The word tropic means ‘to turn’. Incidentally, this 47° of latitude that the sun ‘apparently’ travels through each year, relates to that planet of movement itself, ‘Occult’ Mercury. Mercury is never seen from earth more than 47° from the sun’s perpendicular!
Anyway, the sun ‘turns’, and retraces its path at these two lines of latitude when it is about to enter the signs of Cancer and Capricorn, in the North and South Hemispheres respectively – or so the theory goes – alas, not so! Not since the ‘recession of the equinoxes’ occurred in 1413, as Rudolf Steiner – and the ‘straight’ astronomers – tell us!
In its yearly journey, the sun enters, not Cancer on the 21st June as previous, but Gemini. Similarly in the south, on our Summer Solstice, the 21st December, it enters not Capricorn, but Sagittarius. So the Tropics of Gemini and Sagittarius they are! Any references in this article will refer to them thus – someone has to make the change!
It is indeed a band of Will (heat) that girdles the earth between the two Tropics; but one in which a distinction between the wet and dry tropics must be made – especially in this Torrid Zone Ecology middle lesson in Class 4.
Both Tropics at 23 ½ ° actually run through most of the hot deserts of the world. The south, the Tropic of Sagittarius, creates the Atacama Desert in South America; the Dead Heart of Australia; and the Kalahari of Africa. The north Tropic, hat of Gemini, similarly bisects the hot, arid zones: the South-west deserts of North America, such as the Painted Desert of Nevada! The arid regions of India, stretching right through to Afghanistan and Arabia – to the mighty Sahara itself.
As desert geography is dealt with in other lesson units through primary school, it is not included in this study of Torrid Zone Ecology. Strictly speaking, the deserts aren’t ‘tropical’ at all, forming rather a water-less, inhospitable no-man’s-land between the lush Equatorial regions, and their milder but also bountiful temperate lands. Hence in this – as a 1st principle – Will 3-week unit, we enter the great jungles of the world – and stay there!
Rudolf Steiner described this ‘sill’ nature of the Torrid Zone; pointing out that a very large percentage of combustion, or global metabolism, occurs there – it is the compost heap of the planet! This is in the form of humus turnover, and a rapid life cycle; hurried along by the steamy, not-wet conditions. In man, most of the rotting diseases reach plague proportions in the tropics – like tinea!
Further evidence of this will-being of the planet can be seen in the winds. These range from the ‘passive will’ of the Doldrums, to those great Will Wheels, the cyclones. Most cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes are generated along the equatorial band; drifting north and south to wreak havoc in a mindless-will kind of way.
Torrid Ecology is essentially a science lesson, one which is taught in the Discovery, or etheric, stream of the 4 middle lesson streams. In the eternal and all-pervasive Subject Zodiac, science is inspired by the sign of Cancer, with its matter-bound sense of touch. Science is the Physical Body lesson; again this primal physical principle expresses through the circle; or in the sense of a moving mandala, a circular-spiral. This is known as the Unio Mystica – Mystery of the One – the First Creation, the physical body itself.
The climate-weather factor is the very foundation of a study of the tropics. Starting with the winds’ there are greater extremes here than anywhere else on earth. Scenes of tranquil tropic isles one day, being shredded the next by the savaging of the latest cyclone – Olive, Obadiah, or Osprey – or whatever the meteorologists call her – is familiar to all.
The lowest barometric pressures recorded are in the tropics (870 millibars near Guam!); these result in the strongest winds. Extremes even exist in a single cyclone, with the deceptively still ‘eye of the storm’ surrounded by screaming wind demons of terrifying ferocity.
Rainfall, although heavy in every jungle regions, can be eccentric too. Mount Wai ale-ale in Hawaii is the wettest place on earth, with rain on 350 out of 365 days a year! The island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean was once bucketed with 73 ½ inches in 24 hours! And the heaviest annual rainfall, but falling seasonally (unlike Hawaii), due to the Monsoon, is Meghalaya in India, with a drenching 1042 inches per year – average!
If the tropics is a world of wind and rain extremes, it is also one of equable temperature It is always hot – day and night, summer and winter. Actually to speak of seasons at all in most of the tropics is purely academic. The Mariana Islands once had a 9 year stretch with a temperature variation of only 12 degrees – talk about monotonous!
As the tropics are essentially a-seasonal, their peoples do not celebrate seasonal (Earth Soul) festivals, rather those directed to the Spirit. In some tropical cultures, such as Bali, they seem to ‘festival’ every day of the year!
Mind you, there are exceptions to this tempered temperature pattern; Mount Kilimanjaro, right on the Equator in Africa, is permanently snow-capped!
The will or metabolic function in man is, on a soul level at least, one of color. Our digestion is really a kind of kaleidoscopic cauldron! And so it is with the planet; the further one travels from the chessboard-hued frigid zones to the tropics, the more colorful the world becomes.
Beginning with fauna; we see birds, fish and insects take on dazzling hues as we leave the temperate forest and enter the jungles. The plant world does likewise; with the demure tonings of more temperate climes, giving way to a profusion of floral extravaganza towards the Equator.
The human being follows suit – tropical cultures are more colorful than cooler ones; not only in dress and artistic expression, but in the soul. They are happier – all other things being equal – and more carefree; verging on irresponsible insouciance in some paradisial societies – as Margaret Mead observed!
Yet even color as a dark face; the tropics, when color crosses the aesthetic threshold into the nauseous, spawn the greatest of all opponents of man’s spiritual progress – black magic. The planet’s ‘heart of darkness’ as Josef Conrad called it, is Central Africa. Robert Ruarch also make penetrating allusions to it in his Mau Mau-inspired book Something of Value. The ‘black heart’ he refers to – or black stomach! – is right on the Equator.
This Voo Doo – or whatever handle it hides behind – was exported to Central America; especially Haiti, where it flourishes under the mantle of evil ritual and superstition. There is also a center of this dark force in our near-neighbor, New Guinea. Even in the so-called ‘civilized’ community, black magic is often formallyascribed by the Coroner as ‘cause of death’!
The Sepik River area, with its terror-inducing idols and blood-rituals, is specially ill-favored by the gods of light. Black magic is ill-directed Will; one that is not heart – or even head – governed, but completely a-moral. It is a mindless, heartless, relentless will-power – to be repelled. The tropics can be paradise – or the pits of perdition!
A small step on the path of an oh-so-necessary redemption, is the teaching of this middle lesson; here we excite children with the mystery that abounds in the tropics, with color descriptions of the bizarre and sensational. Tropical plants and animals are bigger, weirder, more poisonous and diverse than their cousins in milder climes.
For instance we might place side-by-side the image of that will-obsessed fish, the Piranha, with one of nature’s most – again diminutive – delicate and gorgeous creatures, the jewel-like Hummingbird. There she is now, hanging suspended on air sipping nectar from an ever-generous Hibiscus; while just below in the foaming water, a hapless Tapir is being reduced to a skeleton in minutes! The tropics are indeed – to use a hackneyed tour-promotion phrase – ‘A land of contrasts.’!
The class night visit a tropical environment, like a hot-house, or a botanical gardens (tautology surely?). Perhaps a day in the local rainforest could be enjoyed – which in mid-latitudes, is a kind of trespassing tropical finger, more than a representative plant/animal community.
The children could build an ecological model; either of a general region that they’ve learned about, or even the vertical strata of the forest. 10-year-olds can be very inventive with sand, clay, wool, and what-not, to create the characteristic geology, flora, fauna, and people of the tropics. The model must be specific – one can’t have Orangutans and Mountain Gorillas in the same scene!
This longitudinal comparison of plants and animals is instructive. Observe the change in the Big Cats; from Leopards in Africa; Tigers in Asia – and Jaguars in South America. Thus we see the dramatic 3-fold division of the tropics along the Equator.
But what of the tropical islands? These can generally be thought of as part of one of the Big Three. The Polynesian Islands carry the scent of – as Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated in his Kon tiki Expedition – South America; the Melanesian of Asia; and those of the West Indian Ocean and East Atlantic are African in spirit – or soul at least.
Being a color world, lots of drawing and painting is particularly enjoyed in this Living World/Feeling unit. Her we can emphasize the species-diversity of the teeming tropics; a tree community I temperate regions might contain some half dozen species – a similar area in a jungle will have hundreds; that they know of! Temperate region animals tend to have greater quantity, living in great herds and so on, but less variety.
A save-the-tropical-forests campaign could be included in this lesson; perhaps even with a bit of writing-drawing-poetry practice in the form of green activism. If the children must wire, better to put it to a good cause! Documented appeals by children to save plants, animals and people can often touch the hard hears of decision-makers – where strident opposition fails. White Magic yes?
The good gods created the dazzling array of species as a mutual benison; we do not have the right to destroy a single one – we do so at our peril. Children can understand this, just as they can …
“Excuse me, I thought you were going to allow us – Earth, moon and Sun – a few paragraphs. I, the Earth, represent the ‘body’ of the tropics – the jungles of Africa. Even my general form, that of the great green disc of the Congo, is a body-will form. And right in the middle of it is another circle, like a staring blue eye – Lake Victoria. This is right on the Equator, and is the head waters of one of the two biggest rivers on earth, the Nile.
This is a major global artery – in the literal sense! – which runs south-north – a directional will-force – a living bloodstream – par excellence. How complementary this is with the Amazon, a west-east river, whose massive mouth (another ‘will’ term) is again right on the Equator! Children love this synchronicity,
Anyway, as the ‘body’ expression of the 3-fold Tropics, I, the African member, run a little thin on culture – or indeed civilization of any kind. The Congo is even today a primitive region. The main religion of Central Africa for instance is that of the Earth-body itself, Animism. Even colonization by higher civilizations has been a dismal failure in Central Africa I’m afraid. Over to you Moon.”
“What? Oh thanks Earth; if it’s back-to-basics tropics for you, then Africa it is; but if it is culture your geographic heart yearns for, then the Asia/Moon tropics have a plenitude. Indeed these regions, stretching from India, Burma, South-east Asia, to Indonesia and so on, nurture three specific Moon religions – Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
On every had, one’s soul is soothed by Art – music, architecture, painting; and other advanced expressions of me, the ‘Creative Star’. If the circle of the Congo suggests Will/body principles, then my geographic forms assume the sinuous, water-wave Moon curve.
This is a marvelous ‘Shui’ or water line, sweeping down from the Himalayas, through the East Indies – to Northern Australia (and beyond). Oh by the way, as a general rule we don’t deal with the Australian tropics I this unit. Oz geography is taught in lots of other lessons through primary. Although of course in map drawing – of which there should be plenty – the top of the continent appears. The thin, rectangular band between the Tropic Latitudes, which is a map of world ‘Tropicana’, is most interesting. Sun? Will you take it from here?”
“I will indeed; to describe the 3rd zone, that of Tropical America, as a realm, not of body or soul as in Africa and Asia, but of Spirit. This holy light emanates from me actually; all major religions in the region have been of the Sun. Even those blook-drenched conquerors of the Sun religions of the Incas and Aztecs, the Spanish Christians, worshipped – nominally at least – a Sun god, the Christ.
Christianity is an (oft-corrupted) Sun religion; and strangely enough it doesn’t get a guernsey in Central Africa – or for the most part in tropical Asia. The Sun Spirit is ego-based; and again we see form follow function. That greatest of all tropical forests, the Amazon Basin, is square formed, expressing an aspect of world ego. According to Rudolf Steiner, this ego force permeates all the Americans; so even if tropical America is, first and foremost, a Will zone, it is one permeated by ego – the Sun Essence itself. I hope the teacher give the children some ego food, in the form of lots of facts and figures.
Excuse me Sun, but I’ve got space restrictions on this piece, I’d like to finish up now’ I’ve got a few more…
“!!! Nobody interrupts the Sun, not even Class 4 schoolteachers. Now where was I? Oh yes: 10-year-olds are experiencing their Sun year; one acknowledged in that aspect of the unfolding etheric body called the Conceptual. So a few concepts – Sun-based that is, i.e. ‘life-filled’ – can’t harm. Among these could be the names of countries and major cities of tropic regions. Then there are natural features, like mountains, rivers and seas. That’s all I wanted to say. So what did you want to add?”
…?…. er, you actually just said it.
“I did? Oh I’m sorry, but there must be some lofty thought you can end the article with?”
Um… the Torrid Zone is… is a Land of Contrasts,
THE EQUATOR
Light-pervaded, bright but shaded,
Girdle of the world.
Ring of the Equator green,
Magic of a tropic dream
Floats on air of perfume rare.
Stretching up with slender arms,
Coconuts reach up their palms.
Triangulated fingers touch
The fingers of the Sun.
Twice a year the Sun is here,
Suspended overhead.
He warms the waters crystal clear,
He piles the clouds in a pillowed tier
Though it may rain, he smiles again
When he rises burnished red.
TRAVELERS’ TREE
The time is Summer Solstice;
December days are hot.
The Madagasca Travelers’ Tree
Should give a shady spot.
Look up, look down,
No shadow’s found –
It all seems so mysterious?!
No shadow’s found
Upon the ground –
It’s the Tropic of Sagittarius!!
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