This is as good as it gets… the recovered bits of Mondays’ Trainwreck on Turfing, and Earthrites in general. argh….
Turfing & EarthRites.org Swag coming soon! Priceless Items! Keep the wheels of this site running!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
—-
On The Recovered Menu:
Psychedelic Healing Part 1 & 2
Bonus!: A Sufi Tale thrown in to the mix!!!
Coming Again -The orgasmic release of the Apocalypse myth
Poetry: Spring Has Sprung – Phil Whalen
Art: Jean-Leon Gerome
________
Psychedelic Healing Part 1
________
Psychedelic Healing Part 2
________
The Tiger and the Fox
A fox who lived in the deep forest of long ago had lost its front legs. No one knew how: perhaps escaping from a trap. A man who lived on the edge of the forest , seeing the fox from time to time, wondered how in the world it managed to get its food. One day when the fox was not far from him he had to hide himself quickly because a tiger was approaching. The tiger had fresh game in its claws. Lying down on the ground, it ate its fill, leaving the rest for the fox.
Again the next day the great Provider of this world sent provisions to the fox by this same tiger. The man began to think: “If this fox is taken care of in this mysterious way, its food sent by some unseen Higher Power, why don’t I just rest in a corner and have my daily meal provided for me?”
Because he had a lot of faith, he let the days pass, waiting for food. Nothing happened. He just went on losing weight and strength until he was nearly a skeleton. Close to losing consciousness, he heard a Voice which said: “O you, who have mistaken the way, see now the Truth! You should have followed the example of that tiger instead of imitating the disabled fox.”
(And Rumi said, “You have feet; why pretend that you are lame?”)
________
______
Coming Again -The orgasmic release of the Apocalypse myth
by Robert Anton Wilson Published November 15, 1999 in Whoa!
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! — Chicken Little
Back in the early 1980s, Vicki Weaver, a pious Christian lady, persuaded her husband Randy that the Bible proved that the final battle between Christ and Antichrist would take place in 1987, beginning with an attempted slaughter of the Christians by ZOG — the Zionist Occupied Government in Washington, D.C. The two of them (and their children) logically moved to a high hill in Idaho — Ruby Ridge — where they planned to stage their own last fight for the Lord.
Alas, 1987 passed, Vicki had to recalculate, and things were a bit fuzzy there for a while. But then the ’90s came ’round, Randy sold a sawed-off shotgun to a government informer, and the Feds arrived to arrest him. Randy and Vicki thought they were facing the ZOG, the Feds thought they were dealing with lunatics, and the results were so bloody all around that Ruby Ridge remains controversial to this day.
Sometimes, the Apocalypse can ruin your whole week.
On the other hand, I have survived Doomsday so many times that it has begun to bore me. In the last three months alone, I have — we all have — lived right on through three dates that leading eschatologists have authoritatively named as the Day of Reckoning (11 August, 11 September, and 7 November.).
I wonder why so many people have such a lascivious longing for the Apocalypse? It seems a far more popular fantasy game than Dungeons & Dragons, and, of course, it has all the thrills and chills of a slasher movie.
But there may be more here, just as there is to horror and catastrophe movies if you think about them. Neo-Freudians, and especially Reichians, suggest that our form of civilization stifles and constricts us so much that at times we all long to experience some orgasmic but catastrophic “explosion,” like King Kong breaking his chains and wrecking New York, or even more like the masochist in bondage, according to Dr. Reich. This sudden release from the bondage-and-discipline of our jobs and our taxes — actually called the Rapture by Fundamentalists — seems ghoulishly attractive to Christians, New Agers, and others who believe in a “spirit” that will survive the general wreckage. In that case, the end of the world seems no worse than a visit to the dentist: You know you’ll feel better afterwards. This sort of desire for Total Escape/Total Annihilation has always had its bards and visionaries.
Christianity, for instance, started out as a typical Doomsday cult:
Verily, I say unto you, there will be some of them that stand here which shall not taste of death until they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power. — Mark 9:1
And there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars… This generation shall not pass until all be fulfilled. — Luke 21: 25,32
And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven … This generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled. — Matt 24: 30,34
Of course, when all the marks standing there and their whole generation did pass without the Apocalypse coming, these prophecies required reinterpretation. The second most common talent among Doomsayers — after their unparalleled ability to predict dates on which the world perversely does not end — is their capacity to recalculate. But, then, theology is logic with deuces and one-eyed jacks wild.
Among those not committed to the Rapture, prophecies of doom usually have another loophole: Only most of humanity will perish. In these scenarios, those with the Right Ideas will survive, although they will probably need to stockpile food, water, and guns in advance.
Those with the Right Ideas are the ones who believe in the Prophet, of course. Thus there seems an element of sadism mixed in with the masochism of the Millennialist mentality: We will suffer only a little, these folks say, but the rest of you motherfuckers are really going to get the works. Well, Freud himself pronounced that sadism and masochism always contain a bit of one another.
Here’s a brief list of some of the Doomsdays that had to be postponed:
1141 CE — Hildegard of Bingen predicted the world would end that year. It didn’t.
October 22, 1844 — This was Doomsday, as calculated from the Bible by William Miller, who had previously goofed by announcing that it would occur in 1843. When the 1844 prophecy also failed, new calculations from the same texts gave birth to the Adventists, the Seventh-day Adventists and, later, the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses originally picked 1914 as the jackpot year. Some of them rejoiced in the bloody World War that began that year, as the palpable, visible, undeniable “beginning” of the end. But others calculated exact years for the end of the end: 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975, and 1994, for instance. I survived all of them, and I guess you did, too, or you wouldn’t be reading this.
In 1957, a pastor named Mihran Ask chose April 23, 1957 as the Last Day; I remember that vividly because Paul Krassner claimed in the next issue of The Realist that the world had really ended that day and we just weren’t paying attention.
In 1986, Moses David of the Children of God predicted the battle of Armageddon would happen that year and Christ would return in 1993.
In 1983, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh predicted the catastrophes would begin in 1984 and climax in 1999.
The famous psychic Edgar Cayce predicted that Christ would return in 1998. Why haven’t we heard from him? Maybe he’s having trouble finding a place to rent.
Another psychic, Criswell — best remembered for his oratorical performances in Ed Wood’s movies — predicted August 18, 1999 as the end of time.
This is only a very, very small selection of failed end-times prophecy; if you are curious, you can find longer lists of Doomsdays here and here.
So far, the batting average of all Doomsayers has stayed firm at 0.000. That, of course, will not stop this ever-popular guessing game. We survived the alleged three meteors of November 7, but we still have Y2K ahead of us; and if we survive that, well, the Weekly World News recently reported the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to be in the vicinity of Santa Fe, heading east.
As long as people enjoy scaring themselves and scaring one another, horror movies will remain popular, and so will Doomsday. Pick a date — any date — and you may become the leader of a new cult. You may even get as rich as Rajneesh or the Pope.
Robert Anton Wilson is the author of 32 books, including Everything Is Under Control, an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories, and maintains the Web’s strangest site @ www.rawilson.com. He also serves as CEO of CSICON (the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal).
________
Spring Has Sprung: Phil Whalen
Homage to St. Patrick, Garcia Lorca, & the Itinerant Grocer
FOR M-D. SCHNEIDER
A big part of this page (a big part of my head)
Is missing. That cabin where I expected to sit in the
Woods and write a novel got sold
out from under my imagination
I had it all figured out
in the green filter of a vine-maple shade
The itinerant grocer would arrive every week
There was no doubt in my mind that Id have money
To trade for cabbages and bread
Where did that vision take place-maybe Arizona
Or New Mexico, where trees are much appreciated-
I looked forward to having many of my own
possessed them in a nonexistent future green world of lovely prose
Lost them in actual present poems in Berkeley
All changed, all strange, all new; none green.
—
The Bay Trees Were About to Bloom
For each of us there is a place
Wherein we will tolerate no disorder.
We habitually clean and reorder it,
But we allow many other surfaces and regions
To grow dusty, rank and wild.
So I walk as far as a clump of bay trees
Beside the creeks milky sunshine
To hunt for words under the stones
Blessing the demons also that they may be freed
From Hell and demonic being
As I might be a cop, “Awright, move it along, folks,
Its all over, now, nothing more to see, just keep
Moving right along”
I can move along also
“Bring your little self and come on”
What I wanted to see was a section of creek
Where the west bank is a smooth basalt cliff
Huge tilted slab sticking out of the mountain
Rocks on the opposite side channel all the water
Which moves fast, not more than a foot deep,
Without sloshing or foaming.
—-
What About It?
When I began to grow old I searched out the Land
Of the Gods in the West, where our people have always said it is.
Once I floated there on the water. Once I flew there.
I heard their music and saw the magic dancing.
They appeared in many shapes; once as kachina,
Once I could only see shining feet and radiant clothes
Their houses blend into water, trees and stone.
A curtain moved. Water fell in certain order.
Sometimes there was a great mirror of polished bronze.
Other messages were smell of hinoki, sugi, gingko
Newly watered stones.
The land itself delivers a certain intelligence.
How embarrassing to note that four days are gone.
All I can say right now is I can see clouds in the sky
If I stand still and look out the window.
Diane Di Prima came and told me, “If we leave
Two hours of the day open for them
The poems will come in or out or however;
Anyway, to devote time in return for a place
That makes us accessible to them.”
—
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Tsung Ping (375-443). “Now I am old and infirm.
I fear I shall no more be able to roam among the beautiful mountains.
Clarifying my mind. I meditate on the mountain trails and wander
about only in dreams.”
-in The Spirit of the Brush, tr. by Shio Sakanishi. p. 34.
FOR KENNETH REXROTH
I always say I won’t go back to the mountains
I am too old and fat there are bugs mean mules
And pancakes every morning of the world
Mr. Edward Wyman (63)
Steams along the trail ahead of us all
Moaning, “My poor old feet ache, my back
Is tired and I’ve got a stiff prick”
Uprooting alder shoots in the rain
Then I’m alone in a glass house on a ridge
Encircled by chiming mountains
With one sun roaring through the house all day
& the others crashing through the glass all night
Conscious even while sleeping
Morning fog in the southern gorge
Gleaming foam restoring the old sea-level
The lakes in two lights green soap and indigo
The high cirque-lake black half-open eye
Ptarmigan hunt for bugs in the snow
Bear peers through the wad at noon
Deer crowd up to see the lamp
A mouse nearly drowns in the honey
I see my bootprints mingle with deer-foot
Bear-paw mule-shoe in the dusty path to the privy
Much later I write down:
“raging, Viking sunrise
The gorgeous death of summer in the east”
(Influence of a Byronic landscape-
Bent pages exhibiting depravity of style.)
Outside the lookout I lay nude on the granite
Mountain hot September sun but inside my head
Calm dark night with all the other stars
HERACLITUS: “The Waking have one common world
But the sleeping turn aside
Each into a world of his own.”
I keep telling myself what I really like
Are music, books, certain land and sea-scapes
The way light falls across them, diffusion of
Light through agate, light itself…I suppose
I’m still afraid of the dark
“Remember smart-guy there’s something
Bigger something smarter than you.”
Ireland’s fear of unknown holies drives
My father’s voice (a country neither he
Nor his great-grandfather ever saw)
A sparkly tomb a plated grave
A holy thumb beneath a wave
Everything else they hauled across Atlantic
Scattered and lost in the buffalo plains
Among these trees and mountains
From Duns Scotus to this page
A thousand years
(” . . . a dog walking on his hind legs-
not that he does it well but that he
does it at all.”)
Virtually a blank except for the hypothesis
That there is more to a man
Than the contents of his jock-strap
EMPEDOCLES: “At one time all the limbs
Which are the body’s portion are brought together
By Love in blooming life’s high season; at another
Severed by cruel Strife, they wander each alone
By the breakers of life’s sea.”
Fire and pressure from the sun bear down
Bear down centipede shadow of palm-frond
A limestone lithograph-oysters and clams of stone
Half a black rock bomb displaying brilliant crystals
Fire and pressure Love and Strife bear down
Brontosaurus, look away
My sweat runs down the rock
HERACLITUS: “The transformations of fire
are, first of all, sea; and half of the sea
is earth, half whirlwind. . . .
It scatters and it gathers; it advances
and retires.”
I move out of a sweaty pool
(The sea!) .
And sit up higher on the rock
Is anything burning?
The sun itself! Dying
Pooping out, exhausted
Having produced brontosaurus, Heraclitus
This rock, me,
To no purpose
I tell you anyway (as a kind of loving) . . .
Flies & other insects come from miles around
To listen
I also address the rock, the heather,
The alpine fir
BUDDHA: “All the constituents of being are Transitory: Work out your salvation with diligence.”
(And everything, as one eminent disciple of that master Pointed out, has been tediously complex ever since.)
There was a bird
Lived in an egg
And by ingenious chemistry
Wrought molecules of albumen
To beak and eye
Gizzard and craw
Feather and claw
My grandmother said:
“Look at them poor bed-
raggled pigeons!”
And the sign in McAlister Street:
IF YOU CAN’T COME IN
SMILE AS YOU GO BY
LOVE THE BUTCHER
I destroy myself, the universe (an egg)
And time-to get an answer:
There are a smiler, a sleeper, and a dancer
We repeat our conversation in the glittering dark
Floating beside the sleeper.
The child remarks, “You knew it all the time.”
I: “I keep forgetting that the smiler is
Sleeping; the sleeper, dancing.”
From Sauk Lookout two years before
Some of the view was down the Skagit
To Puget Sound: From above the lower ranges,
Deep in forest-lighthouses on clear nights.
This year’s rock is a spur from the main range
Cuts the valley in two and is broken
By the river; Ross Dam repairs the break,
Makes trolley buses run
Through the streets of dim Seattle far away.
I’m surrounded by mountains here
A circle of 108 beads, originally seeds
of ficus religiosa
Bo-Tree
A circle, continuous, one odd bead
Larger than the rest and bearing
A tassel (hair-tuft) (the man who sat
under the tree)
In the center of the circle,
A void, an empty figure containing
All that’s multiplied;
Each bead a repetition, a world
Of ignorance and sleep.
Today is the day the goose gets cooked
Day of liberation for the crumbling flower
Knobcone pinecone in the flames
Brandy in the sun
Which, as I said, will disappear
Anyway it’ll be invisible soon
Exchanging places with stars now in my head
To be growing rice in China through the night.
Magnetic storms across the solar plains
Make Aurora Borealis shimmy bright
Beyond the mountains to the north.
Closing the lookout in the morning
Thick ice on the shutters
Coyote almost whistling on a nearby ridge
The mountain is THERE (between two lakes)
I brought back a piece of its rock
Heavy dark-honey color
With a seam of crystal, some of the quartz
Stained by its matrix
Practically indestructible
A shift from opacity to brilliance
(The Zenbos say, “Lightning-flash & flint-spark”)
Like the mountains where it was made
What we see of the world is the mind’s
Invention and the mind
Though stained by it, becoming
Rivers, sun, mule-dung, flies-
Can shift instantly
A dirty bird in a square time
Gone
Gone
REALLY gone
Into the cool
O MAMA
Like they say, “Four times up,
Three times down.” I’m still on the mountain.
Sourdough Mountain I5:viii:55
Berkeley 27-28:viii:56
NOTE: The quotes of Empedocles and Heraclitus are from John
Burnet’s Early Greek Philosophy, Meridian Books, New York.
__________
