Faun and Nymph, 1868 – Pal Merse Szinyei
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“If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft
And from thy slender store two loaves (of bread) alone to thee are left
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.”
Moslih Saadi, Persian poet who lived in 13th century (from Ibn!)
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Follow The Flow Daily!: EarthRites on Tumblr!
It has been a week of wonders here at Caer Llwydd. Rowan & Jessa came back from a very successful filming of Pelt at the coast. (More to follow on this, look for it on the next Turf!) There was high praise for him and his crew from the Rangers at Fort Clatsop for their work there, and the way they cared for the facility etc.
We have been working away, and life is showing renewal here in Portland. Buds everywhere, the bulbs are pushing up, and the rain has now taken on the aspects of spring. I love it here.
This is a post I put together over the last week or so, with spring in mind. Of course all things Pan/Fauns/Dryads/Nymphs play through my head. Getting back to source as usual for my way of thinking.
Life is so swift with the changes. We watch with wonder as the world rages around us in celebration of life, and from which life flows, love. What is the heart from which all things flow? What is this source of all beauty, terror, joy, and absolute holiness?
Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
The Links
Sungrazer – Mountain Dusk
The Diamond Sutra
Pan Poems
Rudolph Nureyev : ‘L’apres-midi d’un Faune’
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The Links:
Greek Astrology Started In Babylon?
Scientists create brain cells from human skin in possible breakthrough for autism, Alzheimer’s research
Thanks To Walker For These 2 Links!
Hamilton And The Philosopher’s Stone
The Double Bind
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A Wee Bit Of Dutch Psychedelia….
Sungrazer – Mountain Dusk
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Excerpt:
“All living beings, whether born from eggs, from the womb, from moisture, or spontaneously; whether they have form or do not have form; whether they are aware or unaware, whether they are not aware or not unaware, all living beings will eventually be led by me to the final Nirvana, the final ending of the cycle of birth and death. And when this unfathomable, infinite number of living beings have all been liberated, in truth not even a single being has actually been liberated.”
“Why Subhuti? Because if a disciple still clings to the arbitrary illusions of form or phenomena such as an ego, a personality, a self, a separate person, or a universal self existing eternally, then that person is not an authentic disciple.”
“Furthermore, Subhuti, in the practice of compassion and charity a disciple should be detached. That is to say, he should practice compassion and charity without regard to appearances, without regard to form, without regard to sound, smell, taste, touch, or any quality of any kind. Subhuti, this is how the disciple should practice compassion and charity. Why? Because practicing compassion and charity without attachment is the way to reaching the Highest Perfect Wisdom, it is the way to becoming a living Buddha.”
“Subhuti, do you think that you can measure all of the space in the Eastern Heavens?”
“No, Most Honored One. One cannot possibly measure all of the space in the Eastern Heavens.”
“Subhuti, can space in all the Western, Southern, and Northern Heavens, both above and below, be measured?”
“No, Most Honored One. One cannot possibly measure all the space in the Western, Southern, and Northern Heavens.”
“Well, Subhuti, the same is true of the merit of the disciple who practices compassion and charity without any attachment to appearances, without cherishing any idea of form. It is impossible to measure the merit they will accrue. Subhuti, my disciples should let their minds absorb and dwell in the teachings I have just given.”
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Pan Poems:
Offering to Pan – Anna de Noailles
translated by Jethro Bithell
This wooden cup, black as an apple pip,
Where I with hard insinuating knife
Have carved a vine-leaf curling to its tip
With node and fold and tendril true to life,
I yield it up to Pan in memory
Of that day when the shepherd Damis rushed
Upon me, snatched it, and drank after me,
Laughing when at his impudence I blushed.
Not knowing where the horned god’s altar is,
I leave my offering in the rock’s cleft here.
–But now my heart is burning for a kiss
More deep, and longer clinging, and more near . . .
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Pipes of Pan
by: Arthur Guiterman (1871-1943)
“I love, you love, we love!”
Trilled the pipes of Pan
On the golden lea, Love,
When the world began.
Birds on every tree, Love,
Caught the mellow notes.
“I love, you love, we love!”
Pulsed their tiny throats.
“I love, you love, we love!”
Hear the echo still
By the summer sea, Love,
On the quiet hill!
So our simple glee, Love,
Ends where it began.
“I love, you love, we love!”
Trill the pipes of Pan.
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The Afternoon Of A Faun – Stéphane Mallarmé Poem
ECOLOGUE
The Faun:
These nymphs I would perpetuate.
So clear
Their light carnation, that it floats in the air
Heavy with tufted slumbers.
Was it a dream I loved?
My doubt, a heap of ancient night, is finishing
In many a subtle branch, which, left the true
Wood itself, proves, alas! that all alone I gave
Myself for triumph the ideal sin of roses.
Let me reflect . . .
if the girls of which you tell
Figure a wish of your fabulous senses!
Faun, the illusion escapes from the blue eyes
And cold, like a spring in tears, of the chaster one: But, the other, all sighs, do you say she contrasts
Like a breeze of hot day in your fleece!
But no! through the still, weary faintness
Choking with heat the fresh morn if it strives,
No water murmurs but what my flute pours
On the chord sprinkled thicket; and the sole wind
Prompt to exhale from my two pipes, before
It scatters the sound in a waterless shower,
Is, on the horizon’s unwrinkled space,
The visible serene artificial breath
Of inspiration, which regains the sky.
Oh you, Sicilian shores of a calm marsh
That more than the suns my vanity havocs,
Silent beneath the flowers of sparks, RELATE
‘That here I was cutting the hollow reeds tamed
By talent, when on the dull gold of the distant
Verdures dedicating their vines to the springs,
There waves an animal whiteness at rest:
And that to the prelude where the pipes first stir
This flight of swans, no! Naiads, flies
Or plunges . . .’
Inert, all burns in the fierce hour
Nor marks by what art all at once bolted
Too much hymen desired by who seeks the Ia:
Then shall I awake to the primitive fervour,
Straight and alone, ‘neath antique floods of light,
Lilies and one of you all through my ingenuousness.
As well as this sweet nothing their lips purr,
The kiss, which a hush assures of the perfid ones,
My breast, though proofless, still attests a bite
Mysterious, due to some august tooth;
But enough! for confidant such mystery chose
The great double reed which one plays ‘neath the blue:
Which, the cheek’s trouble turning to itself
Dreams, in a solo long, we might amuse
Surrounding beauties by confusions false
Between themselves and our credulous song;
And to make, just as high as love modulates,
Die out of the everyday dream of a back
Or a pure flank followed by my curtained eyes,
An empty, sonorous, monotonous line.
Try then, instrument of flights, oh malign
Syrinx, to reflower by the lakes where you wait for me!
I, proud of my rumour, for long I will talk
Of goddesses; and by picturings idolatrous,
From their shades unloose yet more of their girdles:
So when of grapes the clearness I’ve sucked,
To banish regret by my ruse disavowed,
Laughing, I lift the empty bunch to the sky,
Blowing into its luminous skins and athirst
To be drunk, till the evening I keep looking through.
Oh nymphs, we diverse MEMORIES refill.
‘My eye, piercing the reeds, shot at each immortal
Neck, which drowned its burning in the wave
With a cry of rage to the forest sky;
And the splendid bath of their hair disappears
In the shimmer and shuddering, oh diamonds!
I run, when, there at my feet, enlaced. lie
(hurt by the languor they taste to be two)
Girls sleeping amid their own casual arms;
them I seize, and not disentangling them, fly
To this thicket, hated by the frivilous shade,
Of roses drying up their scent in the sun
Where our delight may be like the day sun-consumed.’
I adore it, the anger of virgins, the wild
Delight of the sacred nude burden which slips
To escape from my hot lips drinking, as lightning
Flashes! the secret terror of the flesh:
From the feet of the cruel one to the heart of the timid
Who together lose an innocence, humid
With wild tears or less sorrowful vapours.
‘My crime is that I, gay at conquering the treacherous
Fears, the dishevelled tangle divided
Of kisses, the gods kept so well commingled;
For before I could stifle my fiery laughter
In the happy recesses of one (while I kept
With a finger alone, that her feathery whiteness
Should be dyed by her sister’s kindling desire,
The younger one, naive and without a blush)
When from my arms, undone by vague failing,
This pities the sob wherewith I was still drunk.’
Ah well, towards happiness others will lead me
With their tresses knotted to the horns of my brow:
You know, my passion, that purple and just ripe,
The pomegranates burst and murmur with bees;
And our blood, aflame for her who will take it,
Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire.
At the hour when this wood’s dyed with gold and with ashes
A festival glows in the leafage extinguished:
Etna! ’tis amid you, visited by Venus
On your lava fields placing her candid feet,
When a sad stillness thunders wherein the flame dies.
I hold the queen!
O penalty sure . . .
No, but the soul
Void of word and my body weighed down
Succumb in the end to midday’s proud silence:
No more, I must sleep, forgetting the outrage,
On the thirsty sand lying, and as I delight
Open my mouth to wine’s potent star!
Adieu, both! I shall see the shade you became.
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Rudolph Nureyev : ‘L’apres-midi d’un Faune’
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At evening, as he [Pan] returns from the chase, he sounds his note, playng sweet and low on his pipes of reed: not even she could excel him in melody–that bird who flower-laden spring pouring forth her lament uters honey-voiced song amid the leaves. At that hour the clear-voiced Nymphai are with him and move with nimble feet, singing by some spring of dark water, while Ekho wails about the mountain-top, and the god on this side or on that of the choirs, or at times sidling into the midst, plies it nimbly with his feet. On his back he wears a spotted lynx-pelt, and he delights in high-pitched songs in a soft meadow where crocuses and sweet-smelling hyacinths bloom at random in the grass.
-Homeric Hymn 19 to Pan