On The Music Box: Pitch Black- Future Proof(Dub Obscura)
Dim face of Beauty haunting all the world,
Fair face of Beauty all too fair to see,
Where the lost stars adown the heavens are hurled,
There, there alone for thee
May white peace be.
For here where all the dreams of men are whirled
Like sere torn leaves of autumn to and fro,
There is no place for thee in all the world,
Who driftest as a star,
Beyond, afar.
Beauty, sad face of Beauty, Mystery, Wonder,
What are these dreams to foolish babbling men
Who cry with little noises ‘neath the thunder
Of ages ground to sand,
To a little sand.
-Fiona MacLeod
So I awoke out of a flying dream this morning, realizing that I used my arms like wings, only not so quickly as a birds; Flying in Lucid Time is much like swimming, only when you sink….
This event was so real, I had to ask Rowan if he remembered being involved in it. Nothing like a bewildered face to bring you back to here and now… 8o)
Mary sez I should keep my realities a bit better sorted out. This still doesn’t explain why my arms are sore today…
We finish up the Fiona MacLeod focus today. I think you will enjoy the articles (2) and the poetry.
Have a nice one!
G
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The Links
The Wind, Silence, and Love
The Poetry of Fiona MacLeod
The True Face of Fiona MacLeod
Art: John Duncan
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The Links:
Ancient Weapons Discovered in Syrian Ruins
On the surface of it, UFOs could lurk
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The Wind, Silence, and Love
Fiona MacLeod
I know one who, asked by a friend desiring more intimate knowledge as to what influences had shaped her inward life, answered at once, with that sudden vision of insight which reveals more than the vision of thought, ‘The Wind, Silence, and Love.’
The answer was characteristic, for, with her who made it, the influences that shape have always seemed more significant than the things that are shapen. None can know for another the mysteries of spiritual companionship. What is an abstraction to one is a reality to another: what to one has the proved familiar face, to another is illusion.
I can well understand the one of whom I write. With most of us the shaping influences are the common sweet influences of motherhood and fatherhood, the airs of home, the place and manner of childhood. But these are not for all, and may be adverse, and in some degree absent. Even when a child is fortunate in love and home, it may be spiritually alien from these: it may dimly discern love rather as a mystery dwelling in sunlight and moonlight, or in the light that lies on quiet meadows, woods, quiet shores: may find a more initmate sound of home in the wind whispering in the grass, or when a sighing travels through the wilderness of leaves, or when an unseen wave moans in the pine.
When we consider, could any influences be deeper than these three elemental powers, for ever young, yet older than age, beautiful immortalities that whisper continuously against our mortal ear. The Wind, Silence, and Love: yes, I think of them as comrades, nobly ministrant, priests of the hidden way.
To go into the solitary places, or among trees which await dusk and storm, or by a dark shore: to be a nerve there,to listen to, inwardly to hear, to be at one with, to be as a grass filled with, or as reeds shaken by, as a wave lifted before, the wind: this is to know what cannot otherwise be known; to hear the intimate, dread voice; to listen to what long ago went away, and to what now is going and coming, coming and going, and to what august airs of sorrow prevail in that dim empire of shadow where the falling leaf rests unfallen, where Sound, of all else forgotten and forgetting, live in the pale hyacinth, the moonwhite pansy, and the cloudy amaranth that gathers dew.
And, in the wood: by the grey stone on the hill; where the heron waits; where the plover wails; on the pillow; in the room filled with flame-warmed twilight; is there any comrade that is as Silence is? Can she not whisper the white secrecies which words discolour? Can she not say, when we would forget, forget; when we would remember, remember? Is it not she also who says, Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest? Is it not she who has a lute into which all loveliness of sound has passed, so that when she breathes upon it life is audible? Is it not she who will close many doors, and shut away cries and tumults, and will lead you to a green garden and a fountain in it, and say, ‘This is your heart, and that is your soul: listen.’
The third one, is he a Spirit, alone, uncompanioned? I think sometimes that these three are one, and that Silence is his inward voice and the Wind the sound of his unwearying feet. Does he not come in wind, whether his footfall be on the wild rose, or on the bitter wave, or in the tempest shaken with noises and rains that are cries and tears, sighs, prayers and tears?
He has many ways, many hopes, many faces. He bends above those who meet in twilight, above the cradle, above dwellers by the hearth, above the sorrowful, above the joyous children of the sun, above the grave. Must he not be divine, who is worshipped of all men? Does not the wild-dove take the rainbow upon its breast because of him, and the salmon leave the sea for inland pools, and the creeping thing become winged and radiant?
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The Poetry of Fiona Macleod
The Prayer of Women
O Spirit, that broods upon the hills
And moves upon the face of the deep,
And is heard in the wind,
Save us from the desire of men’s eyes,
And the cruel lust of them,
And the springing of the cruel seed
In that narrow house which is as the grave
For darkness and loneliness . . .
That women carry with them with shame, and weariness,
and long pain,
Only for the laughter of man’s heart,
And the joy that triumphs therein,
And the sport that is in his heart,
Wherewith he mocketh us,
Wherewith he playeth with us,
Wherewith he trampleth upon us
Us, who conceive and bear him;
Us, who bring him forth;
Who feed him in the womb, and at the breast, and at
the knee:
Whom he calleth mother and wife,
And mother again of his children and his children’s
children.
Ah, hour of the hours,
When he looks at our hair and sees it is grey;
And at our eyes and sees they are dim;
And at our lips straightened out with long pain
And at our breasts, fallen and seared as a barren hill
And at our hands, worn with toil!
Ah, hour of the hours,
When, seeing, he seeth all the bitter ruin and wreck of
us–
All save the violated womb that curses him–
All save the heart that forbeareth . . . for pity–
All save the living brain that condemneth him–
All save the spirit that shall not mate with him
All save the soul he shall never see
Till he be one with it, and equal;
He who hath the bridle, but guideth not;
He who hath the whip, yet is driven;
He who as a shepherd calleth upon us,
But is himself a lost sheep, crying among the hills!
O Spirit, and the Nine Angels who watch us,
And Thy Son, and Mary Virgin,
Heal us of the wrong of man:
We, whose breasts are weary with milk
Cry, cry to Thee, O Compassionate!
—
The Rune of Age
O Thou that on the hills and wastes of Night art
Shepherd,
Whose folds are flameless moons and icy planets,
Whose darkling way is groomed with ancient sorrows:
Whose breath lies white as snow upon the olden,
Whose sigh it is that furrows breasts grown milkless,
Whose weariness is in the loins of man
And is the barren stillness of the woman:
O thou whom all would ‘scape, and all must meet,
Thou that the Shadow art of Youth Eternal,
The gloom that is the hush’d air of the Grave,
The sigh that is between last parted love,
The light for aye withdrawing from weary eyes,
The tide from stricken hearts forever ebbing!
O thou the Elder Brother whom none loveth,
Whom all men hail with reverence or mocking,
Who broodest on the brows of frozen summits
Yet deamest in the eyes of babes and children:
Thou, Shadow of the Heart, the Brain, the Life,
Who art that dusk What-is that is already Has-Been,
To thee this rune of the fathers-to-the-sons
And of the sons to the sons, and mothers to new
mothers–
To thee who art Aois,
To thee who art Age!
Breathe thy frosty breath upon my hair, for I am weary!
Lay thy frozen hand upon my bones that they support not,
Put thy chill upon the blood that it sustain not
Place the crown of thy fulfilling on my forehead;
Throw the silence of thy spirit on my spirit,
Lay the balm and benediction of thy mercy
On the brain-throb and the heart-pulse and the life
spring–
For thy child that bows his head is weary,
For thy child that bows his head is weary.
I the shadow am that seeks the Darkness.
Age, that hath the face of Night unstarr’d and moonless,
Age, that doth extinguish star and planet,
Moon and sun and all the fiery worlds,
Give me now thy darkness and thy silence!
—
A Milking Song
O sweet St Bride of the
Yellow, yellow hair:
Paul said, and Peter said,
And all the saints alive or dead
Vowed she had the sweetest head,
Bonnie, sweet St Bride of the
Yellow, yellow hair.
White may my milking be,
White as thee:
Thy face is white, thy neck is white,
Thy hands are white, thy feet are white,
For thy sweet soul is shining bright–
O dear to me,
O dear to see
St Bridget white!
Yellow may my butter be,
Soft, and round:
Thy breasts are sweet,
Soft, round and sweet,
So may my butter be:
So may my butter be O
Bridget sweet!
Safe thy way is, safe, O
Safe, St Bride:
May my kye come home at even,
None be fallin’ none be leavin’,
Dusky even, breath-sweet even,
Here, as there, where O
St Bride thou
Keepest tryst with God in heav’n,
Seest the angels bow
And souls be shriven-
Here, as there, ’tis breath-sweet even
Far and wide–
Singeth thy little maid
Safe in thy shade
Bridget, Bride!
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The True Face of Fiona MacLeod: A Short Article on Fiona Macleod/William Sharp
-RJ Stewart
William Sharp And The Esoteric Orders
(William Sharp, iow’s – Fiona MacLeod)
Fiona Macleod/William Sharp was one of the early exponents of some of our inner work. He/she was a member of an esoteric group along with Frederick Bligh Bond (the man who excavated Glastonbury Abbey according to spirit instructions…but that is another story), John Foulds (a remarkable composer), Maud McCarthy (married to Foulds, and protege of Annie Besant) and others. It seems likely that J.A. Goodchild, an expert on British manuscripts and traditions, was a mentor of Bligh Bond, and also involved in magical work.
It is likely, but not proven by “official” records, that William Sharp was also a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and was certainly in some similar group involving Golden Dawn members, but it is his link to this more obscure esoteric group (dedicated to the goddess Brigit), based in Glastonbury and London, that passes down to our work.
Lest anyone scream for evidence, I have Bligh Bond’s private notes describing several visionary events involving Sharp and others, and I also have the original documents describing some of the work done by the group or order in Glastonbury and London, around 1911. (I have also lodged some of these papers with the musicologist and composer Malcolm MacDonald, who is the biographer of John Foulds).
The group members were involved with spiritual music, the faery realm, the idea of the divine feminine, and work with sacred space and sacred geometry.
None of this evidence has passed into the hands of popular biographers or journalists, thus it does not appear in the endless trendy re-hashing books on magical groups such as the Golden Dawn.
William Sharp and Celtic Tradition
I do not think that Sharp worked with Celtic tradition in a folkloric sense. Thus, he is not a good exponent of tradition if you are looking for root information and source material. Instead he took material from his sources, both inner and outer, within Gaelic consciousness, and he then transformed this into a literary vehicle for his time and place. Nowadays we may find some of his work overblown or dull, yet in places it shines with a profound inspiration and beauty. I think that his time has come again as a writer and prophet, and there are some extract reprints of his work available, as well as original editions.
William and Fiona
William Sharp was inspired by an inner feminine consciousness, Fiona Macleod. He described her sometimes as an ancestral seeress. Today we would call her, perhaps, an inner contact, and at a deeper level, the goddess within. In this sense he embodied in person many of the deep changes of sexuality towards androgyny that are occurring today. It was not an easy embodiment for him, in the repressed 19th century. For a time the book-buying public thought that William Sharp and Fiona Macleod were separate persons. When he came out and admitted to being both, there was a scandal.
The Green Life
The Green Life was his/her term for the faery realm and planetary spirit: as Wilfion (his/her secret name for their true union and spiritual identity) lay dying to the human world, he/she spoke aloud of returning at last to the Green Life.
To me Sharp is an example of someone living their vision, and in a small way, he/she is a forerunner and prophet for some of our work today.
–R J Stewart
(Note: I hope to put a longer version of this article on our Web Pages soon)
You may pass this on freely to other people, but it is forbidden to sell it, to publish it, or to publish extracts from it, in any form whatsoever, be it printed, electronically published, or otherwise without written permission from RJ Stewart who holds worldwide copyright.
