The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make. – William Morris
(Giulio Romano (1499-1546) Tribute to Apollo)
So, here we are in the days of Lugh, my patron deity. Warm sun, soft wind, fresh air. So much to be thankful for. I have spun around the sun another time, and it has been a great year. So much done, with family and friends, with love enough, and time enough (just) for all. The cornucopian moments are joining up, and there is a feast for all. These are harvest days.
I want to thank you all for holding on, and reading Turfing as it has gone through changes this past year. Not so many editions as before, but I am trying to make each have a quality and a polish to them. I have found a new lease on it all, by cutting back a bit.
This edition, is thick in that it will take awhile to enjoy it all if you go to the links and watch the videos. I opted for a shorter article than I wanted, but even that works, as I had found the photograph to illustrate Hakim Bey‘s writing a day or two ago. We are featuring William Morris this time around in the poetry and quotes. The more I read of Morris’s work, and the more I study his art, the deeper he draws me in. This is perhaps a happy conjunction, and I will be exploring more of his works as we go along. The Linkage is from my friend Cliff, who at this time is concerned deeply for a loved one. My thoughts are with him, and I am thankful as well for his support and nudges over the years.
The musical part of all of this is the new Dead Can Dance releases. I want to thank Peter and Margo for the lovely concert experience! A dream fulfilled for Mary and I!
Haxan. What can one say? This is an amazing bit of historic cinema. Watch a bit, but come back to it as you can. A unique film!
Thanks again for following along on my meanderings with Turfing. I hope this finds you all well, and with those that you love.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
The Linkage
William Morris Quotes
Dead Can Dance – Return Of The She-King
William Morris Poetry
Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages
The Assassins – Hakim Bey
Dead Can Dance – Opium
Giulio Romano – Art
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The Linkage:
So, this isn’t like a huge entry, but my friend Cliff sent it over a while back, and I think it is well worth reading!
The Valentines: The Blind Man Who Described the Elephant as a Huge Fucking Cock
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William Morris Quotes:
The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.
So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last for ever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die.
I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.
History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
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Dead Can Dance – Return Of The She-King
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William Morris Poetry
(William Morris by Sir William Blake Richmond)
Flora
I am the handmaid of the earth,
I broider fair her glorious gown,
And deck her on her days of mirth
With many a garland of renown.
And while Earth’s little ones are fain
And play about the Mother’s hem,
I scatter every gift I gain
From sun and wind to gladden them.
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Autumn
Laden Autumn here I stand
Worn of heart, and weak of hand:
Nought but rest seems good to me,
Speak the word that sets me free.
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Drawing Near The Light
Lo, when we wade the tangled wood,
In haste and hurry to be there,
Nought seem its leaves and blossoms good,
For all that they be fashioned fair.
But looking up, at last we see
The glimmer of the open light,
From o’er the place where we would be:
Then grow the very brambles bright.
So now, amidst our day of strife,
With many a matter glad we play,
When once we see the light of life
Gleam through the tangle of to-day.
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Echoes Of Love’s House
Love gives every gift whereby we long to live
“Love takes every gift, and nothing back doth give.”
Love unlocks the lips that else were ever dumb:
“Love locks up the lips whence all things good might come.”
Love makes clear the eyes that else would never see:
“Love makes blind the eyes to all but me and thee.”
Love turns life to joy till nought is left to gain:
“Love turns life to woe till hope is nought and vain.”
Love, who changest all, change me nevermore!
“Love, who changest all, change my sorrow sore!”
Love burns up the world to changeless heaven and blest,
“Love burns up the world to a void of all unrest.”
And there we twain are left, and no more work we need:
“And I am left alone, and who my work shall heed?”
Ah! I praise thee, Love, for utter joyance won!
“And is my praise nought worth for all my life undone?”
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The Nymph’s Song to Hylas
I KNOW a little garden-close
Set thick with lily and red rose,
Where I would wander if I might
From dewy dawn to dewy night,
And have one with me wandering.
And though within it no birds sing,
And though no pillar’d house is there,
And though the apple boughs are bare
Of fruit and blossom, would to God,
Her feet upon the green grass trod,
And I beheld them as before!
There comes a murmur from the shore,
And in the place two fair streams are,
Drawn from the purple hills afar,
Drawn down unto the restless sea;
The hills whose flowers ne’er fed the bee,
The shore no ship has ever seen,
Still beaten by the billows green,
Whose murmur comes unceasingly
Unto the place for which I cry.
For which I cry both day and night,
For which I let slip all delight,
That maketh me both deaf and blind,
Careless to win, unskill’d to find,
And quick to lose what all men seek.
Yet tottering as I am, and weak,
Still have I left a little breath
To seek within the jaws of death
An entrance to that happy place;
To seek the unforgotten face
Once seen, once kiss’d, once reft from me
Anigh the murmuring of the sea.
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Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages
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The Assassins – Hakim Bey
(View of a ruined fortress once used by the Assassins, near Semnan – James L. Standfield)
Across the luster of the desert & into the polychrome hills, hairless & ochre violet dun & umber, at the top of a dessicate blue valley travelers find an artificial oasis, a fortified castle in saracenic style enclosing a hidden garden.
As guests of the Old Man of the Mountain Hassan-i Sabbah they climb rock-cut steps to the castle. Here the Day of Resurrection has already come & gone–those within live outside profane Time, which they hold at bay with daggers & poisons.
Behind crenellations & slit-windowed towers scholars & fedayeen wake in narrow monolithic cells. Star-maps, astrolabes, alembics & retorts, piles of open books in a shaft of morning sunlight–an unsheathed scimitar.
Each of those who enter the realm of the Imam-of-one’s-own- being becomes a sultan of inverted revelation, a monarch of abrogation & apostasy. In a central chamber scalloped with light and hung with tapestried arabesques they lean on bolsters & smoke long chibouks of haschisch scented with opium & amber.
For them the hierarchy of being has compacted to a dimensionless punctum of the real–for them the chains of Law have been broken–they end their fasting with wine. For them the outside of everything is its inside, its true face shines through direct. But the garden gates are camouflaged with terrorism, mirrors, rumors of assassination, trompe l’oeil, legends.
Pomegranate, mulberry, persimmon, the erotic melancholy of cypresses, membrane-pink shirazi roses, braziers of meccan aloes & benzoin, stiff shafts of ottoman tulips, carpets spread like make-believe gardens on actual lawns–a pavilion set with a mosaic of calligrammes–a willow, a stream with watercress–a fountain crystalled underneath with geometry– the metaphysical scandal of bathing odalisques, of wet brown cupbearers hide-&-seeking in the foliage–”water, greenery, beautiful faces.”
By night Hassan-i Sabbah like a civilized wolf in a turban stretches out on a parapet above the garden & glares at the sky, conning the asterisms of heresy in the mindless cool desert air. True, in this myth some aspirant disciples may be ordered to fling themselves off the ramparts into the black–but also true that some of them will learn to fly like sorcerers.
The emblem of Alamut holds in the mind, a mandals or magic circle lost to history but embedded or imprinted in consciousness. The Old Man flits like a ghost into tents of kings & bedrooms of theologians, past all locks & guards with forgotten moslem/ninja techniques, leaves behind bad dreams, stilettos on pillows, puissant bribes.
The attar of his propaganda seeps into the criminal dreams of ontological anarchism, the heraldry of our obsessions displays the luminous black outlaw banners of the Assassins…all of them pretenders to the throne of an Imaginal Egypt, an occult space/light continuum consumed by still-unimagined liberties.
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Dead Can Dance – Opium
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(Zeus and Olympia – By Giulio Romano)
Give me love and work – these two only. – William Morris