I have often wondered about this land as have many others. Creatives such as Edgar Allen Poe to H.P. Lovecraft’s subconscious minds were drawn here through their work. In Ancient Greece Antarctica was called “Terra Australis Incognita” by Ptolemy and Aristotle. Meaning unknown Southern land.

I have never understood, in a world full of greedy corrupt systems that monetises everything, why this land never been economically capitalised.

There are many theories about the Southern hemisphere, but two stories that fascinated me are the journeys of two men and their teams who journeyed into the Sub-Antarctic.

During the Terra Nova expedition 1910-1913, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and 4 others set out to South Georgia to be the first to the south pole but were defeated by a Norwegian team. His diary entries show he lost heart. The group started the return journey home but sadly never made it. During his time there, Scott had written a profound statement in his diary, which was published a year after his death.

“There is a purity about the Antarctic that penetrates one’s being”

Did he cross some type of threshold?

The second is about Ernest Henry Shackleton who was originally on the first expedition but was taken ill before the journey began. He returned in 1914 with a team of 27. They endured many hardships, including losing their ship called “Endurance”.

Ernest expressed his feelings of South Georgia

“We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had “suffered, starved, and triumphed, grovelled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole.” We had seen God in his splendour’s, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of men.”

He also said that along the journey, he and two of his men had felt there was a another presence walking alongside them. “The third man factor, also known as third man syndrome, refers to a psychological phenomenon where individuals in extreme situations perceive the presence of a comforting or helping entity. This unseen companion often appears during times of great stress, isolation, or life-threatening circumstances, providing support and guidance. Many survivors of traumatic experiences report feeling this benevolent presence, which helps them cope with their ordeal.” Wikipedia

Shackleton like Scott believed that providence guided them. Providence a term used to describe an unseen force that protects and guides events towards a purpose.

Was it a transcendental state he had tapped into? Being an Irish man, were these men touched by what a Druid would call Awen? A living current of consciousness, believed by the Druids to permeate all things? Awen is said to awaken precisely in moments of crisis or inspiration. When the mind opens to something beyond itself, in this state, the ego dissolves and the person becomes an open vessel for the flow of creation.

These three men had gone beyond the limits of endurance, and Shackleton had asked all 27 men to keep their spirits high, not speaking a word of defeat. Which they did not. In that state of surrender, it appears something greater flowed through them and all of the men on this trip survived.

Shackleton’s story reminds me of the archetypal experience of Joseph Campbells the hero’s Journey. Many who have been to Antarctica describe it as a threshold experience. A rite of passage. A liminal space where a person stands between the given order of who they are expected to be in society and the untouched silence of the void. During the silence when away from the noise of the world, the mind quietly transforms itself and here it seems they experienced a moment of some type of awakening, a meeting of the mystery.

The frozen southern hemisphere makes me wonder if we are in some sort of randomised control trial. Civilisation being the experimental group, experiencing many variables and Antarctica being a control group where you can experience who you truly are and what life looks like, without interference.

Maybe this is why it is so expensive to travel there, because you leave as one person and return as another.

Thanks for reading