:G2930 (G) - /en14/ /en3/ TIME CODE: 29:30 Evelyn moves Trudy into the area, mic at ready, beginning the interview. EVELYN Well now . . . congratulations again! TRUDY Thank you. EVELYN I think it's the most unusual wedding I've ever witnessed. Did you write the ceremony yourself? TRUDY Oh no, quite the contrary, it's a church ritual that I've spent the last week rehearsing. EVELYN Rehearsing here at Edgefield? TRUDY Well, not out here, but mentally, there is a script, sort of, the order of the proceedings is down on paper, in the Universal Church of Primitive Balance this is a very traditional wedding. EVELYN But very new to many of us, I think. For example, the fact that you were not present from the beginning but arrived from the herb garden later -- that has special significance, I assume? TRUDY The idea is that the bride and groom begin physically separated. It's not that unusual, really: in Christian weddings, it's traditionally bad luck to see your future mate the day of the ceremony, before the actual ceremony, you see -- here, the important thing is that we're a part of nature, the garden being the symbol of eternal life, life coming from the seed and all, and so in the garden, to begin with separation, you'd obviously have to be in different places here at Edgefield. EVELYN I see. There was, here in the ballroom, a good deal of chanting . . . TRUDY Yes. EVELYN And words about longing, yang without yin, yin without yang -- can you explain about that? TRUDY It all goes back to Primitive Balance. The central notion of the church is complementarity, which means that opposites, like male and female, but also any opposites, are incomplete alone and need to united in a kind of tension, tension in the metaphoric sense, the way you'd say a poem has tension, and that with this tension there is complementarity, because each principle, whether the male principle or the female principle, is complemented by its opposite, in what we call primitive balance. EVELYN I'm still not sure I understand. TRUDY Primitive balance is the most basic nature of the universe, of life. Life and death, for example: opposites, held in complementarity, different aspects of the same thing, really, a form larger than either life or death, so that what we call life is like a special form, a journey in which we have consciousness and every thing else, and death is the end of that form, the tension breaks, and movement into another form, which isn't really dead, in the sense of nonexistent, but is just different, a new form, with new complements and new tensions. In this sense life is eternal: life is eternally in primitive balance, in tension, expressing the complementarity of opposites. EVELYN How long have you belonged to the church? TRUDY Only a few months. EVELYN I must say, you've learned a good deal of church philosophy in that time! TRUDY I find it interesting. Cyndi, of course, has recorded much of the philosophy, through the words of Yin Priestess Dwallah, recorded it in writing, in books and pamphlets, as well as on audio and video cassettes. The philosophy is very accessible, actually. EVELYN But still new, strange and mysterious to those of us who haven't been exposed to it. TRUDY We're not so weird, really. We go back to the very basics, to the early matriarchies before the patriarchal revolution and the Christian distortion, well, what we call the Christian distortion, I suppose you wouldn't agree. Let's just say we go back to principles expressed twenty-five-thousand years ago, through Yin Priestess Dwallah. EVELYN In this sense, the ceremony becomes very poetic -- the offering of the female principle to complement the male principle, making a whole out of opposites -- something like that? TRUDY Sort of, yes. EVELYN Perhaps we can get more on the particulars from the Yin Priestess-- TRUDY No, she's just Cyndi now. EVELYN Cyndi, who channels back through time; and the groom himself is coming this way . . . Excuse me, would you join us? Yang Richard and Cyndi have come into the area, on their way to the bar. /en6/ /en10/ TIME CODE: 31:30 ?"Continue" ?"Bookmark" ?"Exit" :"Continue" Continue