On The Menu:
Wickerman Festival In Scotland…
The Eleusinian Mysteries: Healing and Transformation
Poetry: Hafiz on Love….
Art: The Oriental School…
Talk Later… Must Run. More on the way!
Gwyllm
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Record numbers attend Wickerman
The Wickerman festival in Dumfries and Galloway has attracted record numbers, organisers have announced.
Almost 16,000 music fans flocked to Kirkcudbright for the fourth annual event on 21-22 July, billed as Scotland’s alternative music festival.
Bands headlining included Marky Ramone, System 7, Sandi Thom and local favourites, Dangleberries.
The event featured a nine metre high wickerman made out of willow, which was set on fire at midnight.
The festival, which is inspired by the 1972 horror film of the same name, has grown in popularity since it was first staged in 2002.
It aims to provide an alternative to large-scale music events such as T in the Park.
Attendance figures were up 5,000 on last year, and up more than 9,000 on 2004.
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The Eleusinian Mysteries: Healing and Transformation
Stations of the Eleusinian Mysteries
These activities represent the “stations” through which the Mystai were required to pass on their initiatory travels to Eleusis. Although there is some dispute from text to text as to the order of their occurrence in the nine day journey to Eleusis, authors seem to agree upon the nature and symbolism of the stations (or events) themselves.
1. Agrymos Assembly: Fifteenth (some say the nineteenth) day of Boedromion
2. Purification-attended to by the “Hydranos” Priest of Purification: Journey to the Sea (Rhetoi-place favored by the Eleusinians here it was said that salt water flowed to the sea) the 16th. day of Boedromion
3. Sacrifices: Offerings for Demeter as the Sorrowing One, (a sow, barley, fish (mullet) . Prayers for women and children.
4. Solemn procession in honor of Asklepios, god of healing on the eighteenth day of Boedromion. Libation (trygetos)offered to Dionysius and to other gods. Preparation of the Kykeon. Carrying of sacred baskets, chest of sesame, carded wool, salt, pomegranates , poppies, a serpent, boughs of ivy and cakes.
5. Day of Iacchus (Dionysos’ alter-ego), Divine child of Zeus (Hades) and Demeter (Persephone). Revelry – procession by sacred fig tree. Day of Torches. Bridge of Jests. Through ‘mystical entrance’ to Eleusis. Dance with the fifty daughters of Ocean, stars and moon. Games are celebrated. Tying of Kroke on the right hand and left foot. Myrtle branches. Women carry the Kykeon.
6. Day of Rest: Sacrifice and Purification preparation.
7 & 8. Initiation Ritual: Dromena [things Done]; Legomena [Things Said]; Deicymena [Things Shown]. Vision of ineffable things [a golden serpent, an egg, and the phallus and Persephone [Queen of the Dead]. Those who entered the Telestarion for the Vision [Epoptai] fasted for nine days, drank the Kykeon – fermented barley and mint drink probably containing ‘Ergot’ (the mold which grows on wheat that is the base for LSD).
Divine Marriage enacted by Heirophant and Priestess.
The vision of the ‘great fire’. Birth in fire by Brimo of Brimos.
Elevation of a single grain of wheat.
Libations to the dead.
9. Plemochoai: the ‘pourings of plenty’. Hye – Kye. “Flow – Conceive”.
We have endeavored to maintain the nature and symbolism in each of the events in order to convey the appropriate mythological, psychological and philosophical essence. We will celebrate them as follows:
0. Prior to Retreat – Agrymos
1. Tying of Cord of Aspirations/taking of a new (mythic) name
Bridge of Jests / Drinking of The Kykeon
Silence & Fasting
2. Pilgrimage to the Sacred Way (awake with prayers for women an children)
Honoring Asclepius as the God of Healing
Grieving with Demeter:
Sacrifice (‘blood’ of anger) to Raging Demeter Erinys
The Kallichoron -(‘salt’ of sorrow) to Sorrowing Demeter
Purification – Alade! to the sea
Sacrifice (pig)
The Night of Speaking with the dead
3. Synthema and Rite of Kroke
Trusting Ariadne – The Labyrinth
Oracle of the Earth
Trance Dance
The Telestarion/The Vision of Ineffable Things
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Poetry: Hafiz on Love…
Like The Morning Breeze
Like the morning breeze, if you bring to the morning good deeds,
The rose of our desire will open and bloom.
Go forward, and make advances down this road of love;
In forward motion, the pain is great.
To beg at the door of the Winehouse is a wonderful alchemy.
If you practice this, soon you will be converting dust into gold.
O heart, if only once you experience the light of purity,
Like a laughing candle, you can abandon the life you live in your head.
But if you are still yearning for cheap wine and a beautiful face,
Don’t go out looking for an enlightened job.
Hafiz, if you are listening to this good advice,
The road of Love and its enrichment are right around the curve.
———
Laughing At the Word Two
Only
That Illumined
One
Who keeps
Seducing the formless into form
Had the charm to win my
Heart.
Only a Perfect One
Who is always
Laughing at the word
Two
Can make you know
Of
Love.
——–
All the Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
—–
Like The Morning Breeze
Like the morning breeze, if you bring to the morning good deeds,
The rose of our desire will open and bloom.
Go forward, and make advances down this road of love;
In forward motion, the pain is great.
To beg at the door of the Winehouse is a wonderful alchemy.
If you practice this, soon you will be converting dust into gold.
O heart, if only once you experience the light of purity,
Like a laughing candle, you can abandon the life you live in your head.
But if you are still yearning for cheap wine and a beautiful face,
Don’t go out looking for an enlightened job.
Hafiz, if you are listening to this good advice,
The road of Love and its enrichment are right around the curve.
