Monotheism is the primitive religion which centers human consciousness on Hive Authority. There is One God and His Name is - (substitute Hive-Label). If there is only One God then there is no choice, no option, no selection of reality. There is only Submission or Heresy. The word Islam means submission. The basic posture of Christianity is kneeling. Thy will be done.
– Tim Leary
(Louis Welden Hawkins – Mask 1905)
A slow start for Monday… 20 degrees outside, wind chill takes it lower. Argh.
Nothing is moving in Portland, and the weather is a bit unceasing at this time…
Here is the entry for today, with a visit with our dear friend Nels Cline, playing with Mike Watts.
Excellent in MPOV. Nels just gets better as he goes along. He is now with Wilco, but his side
projects are always amazing…!
Covering a bit of old ground with the article, but it is well laid out, and worth a read.
We visit with Willy the Shake, and Mr. Rumi for our poetry outing today.
I discovered the art of Louis Welden Hawkins through a book on Symbolism that Mary bought
me over the holidays. Not a lot of info on him, but his work is very beautiful.
Bright Blessings, and have a great one!
Gwyllm
On The Menu:
The Links
Nels Cline in Performance…
Paganism in Christianity
Sonnets Three: William Shakespeare
In The Garden of Vision: A Visit With Rumi
Art: Louis Welden Hawkins
Louis Welden Hawkins (1849-1910) Was born in Germany of English parents, he took French nationality in 1895. Studied in Paris, at the Académie Julian. From 1881-91 he exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Francais; from 1894 with the Societé Nationale, the Rose+Croix Salons and the Libre Esthetique in Brussels. In touch with the Symbolist writers, with Stéphane Mallarmé, Jean Lorraine, Robert de Montparnasse etc. Akin to the Pre-Raphaelites in his dense, highly detailed style combined with strange or exotic subject matter.
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The Links:
From Peter Webster: Time to remove a Dictator
Stonehenge Didn’t Stand Alone, Excavations Show
Campaign to pardon the last witch, jailed as a threat to Britain at war
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‘el sexxo’ A video featuring our good friend Nels (currently with Wilco)
Nels played in our band back in the day…
Other players are: Mike Watt of The Minutemen, firehose currently on tour with the Stooges / Banyan is Stephen Perkins of Jane’s Addiction and Panic Channel/Willie Waldman on trumpet and Norton Wisdom performing visual art.
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(Louis Welden Hawkins – Priestess)
Paganism in Christianity
Rev Mervin Stoddart
Western Christianity is steeped in paganism just as Western culture is intrinsically pagan and anti-Christian. Intriguingly, most Western countries claim to be Christian and the many churches of the West like to send missionaries to proselytise people from such Eastern places as Africa, Asia and India whose inhabitants are regarded by Western Christians as heathens. The three most celebrated Western holidays provide astounding proofs of the high paganism of Western civilisation.
The new year celebration is the first pagan commemoration in Western countries each year. The month of January was named for Janus, the pagan Roman god of beginnings and endings, who was famous for having two faces, one looking back at the old year and the other seeing into the future new year. In fact, other months got their names from pagan origins. Februus was the old Italian god of festivals (februa) and Roman purifications occurred in that month. March was named for Mars, the Roman god of war and was actually the first month of the Roman calendar. April is more secular than pagan since its Latin name, Aprilis, came from the word aperire, meaning “to open”, perhaps referring to opening buds. May is linked to Maiesta, the Roman goddess of reverence and honour and may be related to the word “majors” or older men, since May was the Roman’s third month and was dedicated to older men with June being dedicated to juniors or younger men. June honours Juno the mother goddess, wife of Jupiter, the supreme Roman god. July borders on idolatry, being named for Emperor Julius Caesar after his assassination in July, 44 BCE. Julius and other Roman emperors were revered as gods. August memorialises the first Roman emperor-god, Augustus Caesar. The names of the other months stemmed from Latin numbers. For example, September was month number seven (septem in Latin) for the Romans; October was month eight (octo); November was month nine (novem) and December was month 10 (decem). Incidentally, the names of the days of the week are also steeped in paganism, with Sunday and Monday honouring sun worship and moon worship, respectively.
On February 24, 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull drastically changing the worldwide calendar from the original Julian calendar to what was named the Gregorian calendar. Time went suddenly from August 5, 1582 to the next day becoming August 15, 1582! For a very long period these two different calendars operated legally among Western nations even while Eastern peoples like the Chinese and Jews (Hebrews) continued, as they do today, to follow their own calendars, a combination of the lunar and solar years. Much confusion reigned in Western Europe regarding the correct dates for certain Christian feasts and other calendar commemorations. Two very significant differences existed between the Gregorian calendar followed by most Western nations today and the original Roman calendar. First, there was a change from March 25 to January 1 for New Year’s Day. Second, there was an arithmetical adjustment to the year length from 354 days (lunar year) to 365 days (solar year). The Julian calendar had recognised the solar cycle to be 365.25 days and did establish leap days and years.
However, the Gregorian calendar more accurately adjusted the solar cycle to 365.2522 days, thus forcing several countries to discard 14 days in the year that they switched from Julian to Gregorian calendars. The main reason for the time adjustments was to ensure a fixed or reasonable date for the spring equinox, once set by the Romans as March 21.
That event coincided with many ancient rituals relating to fertility, such as worship of Oester, the many-breasted Roman fertility goddess, from which originated the Christian Easter holiday.
Easter is the second pagan commemoration of the Western world, although it is called a Christian holy day, supposedly recalling the resurrection of Jesus the Christ. In Acts 12:4 of the King James Version the only biblical reference to Easter occurs but the Greek word thus translated is pascha, which in all other places in the KJV is translated as “Passover”. Much controversy exists as to whether Easter is pagan or Christian in origin. The fact is that Easter eggs, bunnies, sunrise services (sun worship) and other Western practices are all solidly grounded in pagan festivities.
The third Western pagan commemoration is Christmas, reminiscent of a major Roman pagan celebration named “Festival of the birth of the unconquered sun”. December 25 was celebrated as the day of the winter solstice.
Thus, all three major Western pagan holidays commemorate the significance of sun worship. All of these so-called Christian customs come from idol-worship. Easter commemorates the Egyptian cult of Isis, the Syrian and Babylonian cults of Astarte or “Ishtar”. It celebrates the Greek cult of Dionysus and the Roman festivals of Saturnalia.
Christmas honours the cults of the Druids in England, with their “boughs of holly” and other European pagan feasts. Those cults practise witchcraft, ceremonial prostitution, and human sacrificing. Many Christian churches accept that it was rather unlikely for Jesus the Christ to have been born in the dead of winter on December 25, yet Pope Julius I in AD 350 officially declared that day as Jesus’ birthday. In ancient England September 29 or Michaelmas was the official birthday of the Christ. Other Christians celebrated Jesus’ birthday in March or May. New Year’s Day, as we saw earlier, was celebrated on January 1 to honour Janus, the pagan god.
Paganism engulfs and permeates Christianity, thanks to the historical mishap called The Holy Roman Empire when religion and politics were sadly wedded. Consequently, Western holy days have become secular holidays on which to rip off the poor, exhibit the glamour of the wealthy and feed the greed of mankind’s most evil invention called capitalism.
It is rather difficult to say if it is a religious or secular greeting or even a pagan insult for someone to wish you “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”.
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(Louis Welden Hawkins – Aureole)
Sonnets Three: William Shakespeare
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
II
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter’d weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.
III
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear’d womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother’s glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember’d not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.
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In The Garden of Vision: A Visit With Rumi
Now sleeping, now awake, my hart is in constant fervor.
It is a covered saucepan, placed on fire.
O you! who have offered us from a cup a silencing wine;
Each moment a new tale is shouting to be told in silence.
In his wrath there are a hundred kindnesess,
In his meanness a hundred generosities;
In his ignorance immeasurable gnosis, silently speaking like the mind.
The words of those whom you have silenced,
Cannot hear but those whom you have made unconscious;
I m both silent and fermenting for you like the sea of Aden!
—
The True Sufi
What makes the Sufi? Purity of heart;
Not the patched mantle and the lust perverse
Of those vile earth-bound men who steal his name.
He in all dregs discerns the essence pure:
In hardship ease, in tribulation joy.
The phantom sentries, who with batons drawn
Guard Beauty’s place-gate and curtained bower,
Give way before him, unafraid he passes,
And showing the King’s arrow, enters in.
—
The Progress Of Man
First he appeared in the realm inanimate;
Thence came into the world of plants and lived
The plant-life many a year, nor called to mind
What he had been; then took the onward way
To animal existence, and once more
Remembers naught of what life vegetive,
Save when he feels himself moved with desire
Towards it in the season of sweet flowers,
As babes that seek the breast and know not why.
Again the wise Creator whom thou knowest
Uplifted him from animality
To Man’s estate; and so from realm to realm
Advancing, he became intelligent,
Cunning and keen of wit, as he is now.
No memory of his past abides with him,
And from his present soul he shall be changes.
Though he is fallen asleep, God will not leave him
In this forgetfulness. Awakened, he
Will laugh to think what troublous dreams he had.
And wonder how his happy state of being
He could forget, and not perceive that all
Those pains and sorrows were the effect of sleep
And guile and vain illusion. So this world
Seems lasting, though ’tis but the sleepers’ dream;
Who, when the appointed Day shall dawn, escapes
From dark imaginings that haunted him,
And turns with laughter on his phantom griefs
When he beholds his everlasting home.
—
I am part of the load
Not rightly balanced
I drop off in the grass,
like the old Cave-sleepers, to browse
wherever I fall.
For hundreds of thousands of years I have been dust-grains
floating and flying in the will of the air,
often forgetting ever being
in that state, but in sleep
I migrate back. I spring loose
from the four-branched, time -and-space cross,
this waiting room.
I walk into a huge pasture
I nurse the milk of millennia
Everyone does this in different ways.
Knowing that conscious decisions
and personal memory
are much too small a place to live,
every human being streams at night
into the loving nowhere, or during the day,
in some absorbing work.
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(Louis Welden Hawkins – Mme. Severine)
