I became water

I became water
and saw myself
a mirage
became an ocean
saw myself a speck
of foam
gained Awareness
saw that all is but
forgetfulness
woke up
and found myself
asleep.
– by Binavi Badakhshani
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Companion Books & Other Affairs:

So, here we are again, with another edition of “The Hare’s Tale.  We are plunging down the rabbit hole following what is best described as the path of Khezr (more on this later). I am taking books off of my bedside and chairside tables and featuring them here. Most of them are poetry books, and we will see the likes of Dale Pendell, Gary Snyder, Sufi Poets of Persia and elsewhere, Seamus Heaney, William Butler Yeats, etc.

Poetry lies central to the work that I do in my life. I am not a great poet, but I can turn a phrase on occasion. Yet, I swim in the world of poetry, and all that it implies. I find it a solace, an inspiration, a spiritual quest.

So I will be sharing books that I love, and providing links on where to find them. I hope that you will find the poetry as moving as I do.

The Poetry found on this entry is from “The Drunken Universe”, An anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry Translation and Commentary by Peter Lamborn Wilson and Narollah Pourjavady. This book has lifted my spirits time and again, and has revealed beauty that I hadn’t a clue about. It is well worth having.

Eye Candy:
As you may or may not know there are actually 2 Blogs on Gwyllm.com. This one, “The Hares’ Tale, and “Eye Candy!” which is a visual blog. On it you will find art, gifs, photographs that take my fancy. Some of it may not be suitable for work (NSFW), but I believe all of it is beautiful. You’ll find images from the Occult, Persian & Mughal Miniatures, Mandalas, Oil Paintings, Film Stills, Nature Photographs, Erotica, a wide gamut of beauty. Here is the link: Eye Candy! … Please check it out! I try to update frequently.

“Sacred Drift”:
A title to a book that has entranced me… I have a long involvement with Sufism, going back to the mid-60’s. Granted, I have pursued it mainly through poetry, and commentary and the reading of the Quran. I have included an excerpt of it in the body of this entry, ” Al-Khiḍr: The Green Man of Sufism” I spent most of the last 2 weeks up all hours of the night pouring over this book. It opens vistas, wide amazing vistas of travel, and heresy. It is highly recommended, and I shall be doing a review of it in the weeks to come. A Note: I don’t always review books that would be deemed, “New”. Heaven knows I try, and I will, there are a couple of volumes sitting next to me that are new this year, and another only 5 years old, so I am catching up.

Radio EarthRites:
New Show on, with DJ Kykeon’s “The Eleusinian Invocations Mix“. Give it a listen. We are about to launch a fund raiser to upgrade the site, and to bring more services via Radio EarthRites. Your support is very important to that!

So, that is it for now. Working on art and publishing the early part of this week. I hope this finds you well, and in happiness.

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
DJ Kykeons’ Eleusinian Invocations Mix!
The Links
Companion Books: The Drunken Universe
Armand Amar:Baba Aziz
Al-Khiḍr: The Green Man of Sufism
Armand Amar: Poem Of The Atoms
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The Links:
Ancient Fabrics…
The Cost Of Nuclear Weapons & Testing
Turn Up The Heat!
Aftermath of a great Collision
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Radio EarthRites!

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Companion Books: The Drunken Universe

The Universe

The universe
is a kaleidoscope:
now hopelessness, now hope
now spring, now fall.
Forget its ups and downs:
do not vex yourself:
The remedy for pain
is the pain.

-Sarmad
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Nonexistence

Nonexistence
within existence
is my Rule
getting lost
in getting lost
my Religion.

– Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani
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The Lamp of Your Face

What need
lovers for world’s delights
or the moth
for refined pleasures,
“viewing the garden”?
His lips
parched for water of Union
with the Beloved:
what need to chase
the “fountain of Khezr”?
He who falls
in your quarter, what need
for the caravans
of paradise except
to seek your love?
Surrendering his body
to the couch of your disease
what need has he
for the “healing breath”
of Jesus?
If the Friend
did not sit with him
in his retreat, what need
for the cloister
of solitude?
Today he gives up
his soul to separation:
why should he wait
for the promise
of tomorrow?
What need anymore
for glass after glass
of red wine, intoxicated,
unconscious with your
amorousness?
I am that moth
at the lamp of your face:
San’at, what do I need
with the candle
of manifestation?

– Mohammad ‘Aref San’at
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Love came

Love came
flowed like blood
beneath skin, through veins
emptied me of my self
filled me
with the Beloved
till every limb
every organ was seized
and occupied
till only
my name remains.
the rest is It.
– by Abu-Said Abil-Kheir
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Within the eye of the eye

Within the eye of the eye
I placed an eye
polished and adorned
with her beauty
but suddenly fell
into the Quarter of Perfection
and now am freed from sight,
from even the eye of contemplation.

– Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani
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As Heard On Radio EarthRites:
Armand Amar:Baba Aziz

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Al-Khiḍr: The Green Man of Sufism

The prophets Elias and Khadir at the fountain of life, late 15th century. Folio from a khamsa(quintet) by Nizami (d. 1209); Timurid period. Opaque watercolor and silver on paper. Herat, Afghanistan, now at The Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution

Al-Khiḍr is Khezr, the Hidden Prophet, the Green Man, King of Hyperborea, wily servant of Moses, trickster-cook of Alexander, Khezr who drank from the fountain of life in the Land of Darkness. Flowers and herbs spring up in his footsteps, and he strolls across the water, walking toward Ibn Arabi’s ship, coming closer; his green robe trailing on green waves — or perhaps woven of waves. Or Khezr appears in the desert with water and initiation for the masterless ones, the mad and blameworthy, the unique ones. “And three things are worthy of the glance: water, green things, and a beautiful face…”

When you say the name of Khezr (or Khadir) in company you should always add the greeting “Salaam Aleikum!” since he may be there — immortal and anonymous, engaged on some mysterious karmic errand. Perhaps he’ll hint of his identity by wearing green, or by revealing knowledge of the occult and hidden. But he’s something of a spy, and if you have no need to know he’s unlikely to tell you. Still, one of his functions is to convince skeptics of the marvelous, to rescue those who are lost in deserts of doubt and dryness. So he’s needed now more than ever, and surely still moves among us playing his great game.

From the point of view of “History of Religions” clearly Islam inherited Khezr from earlier myths and faiths, a fact recognized by the Islamic tradition which associates him with Moses and Alexander. By the Middle Ages, however, he had been thoroughly assimilated into the world of Islam and taken on a special role, symbolized by his two titles, “the Green Man” and “the Hidden Prophet”. In particular, he comes to stand for a certain kind of esoteric knowledge, which can only manifest in our banal everyday life as shock, either of outrage or of laughter, or both at once.

Khezr is one of the afrad, the Unique Ones who recieve illumination directly from God without human mediation; they can initiate seekers who belong to no Order or have no human guide; they rescue lost wanderers and desperate lovers in the hour of need. Uways al-Qarani is their historical prototype, Khezr their ahistorical prototype.

Some have indentified Khezr with St. George — but he might more accurately be seen as both St. George and the dragon in one figure. Nature, for esoteric Islam, does not need to be pinned down like some biology specimen or household pest — there exists no deep struggle between Nature and Order in the Islamic worldview.

The “spirits” of Nature, such as Khezr and the djinn — who are in a sense the principles of natural power — recognize in the Muhammadan Light that green portion of the spectrum upon which they themselves are also situated. If Christian moralism “fixes” Nature by “killing it”, Islam proceeds by conversion — or rather, by transmutation. Nature maintains its measure of independence from the merely human and moral sphere, while both realms are bathed in the integrative and salvific light of Muhammadan knowledge.

…As an immortal mortal, Khezr behaves like a figure in a dream; in fact, he behaves as we do in our happiest dreams of flying, or of the quintessence of life, “a green thought in a green shade”. He resembles those late medieval paintings of vegetable people, faces made out of fruit and leaves and sunlight: slightly sinister, at once funny and beautiful…

Nowadays Khezr might well be induced to reappear as the patron of modern militant eco-environmentalism, since he represents the fulcrum or nexus between wild (er) ness and the human / humane. Rather than attempt to moralize Nature (which never works because Nature is amoral), Khadirian Environmentalism would rejoice simultaneously both in its utter wildness and its “meaningfulness” — Nature as tajalli (the “shining through” of the divine into creation; the manifestation of each thing as divine light), Nature as an aesthetic realization.

From ~ Sacred Drift: Esasys on the Margins of Islam, pgs. 57, 138-139, 140, 143
By ~ Peter Lamborn Wilson

Al Khiḍr’s Feast Day is April 23.

Find A Copy Here.  Highly Recommended!

Peter Lamborn Wilson proposes a set of heresies, a culture of resistance, that dispels the false image of Islam as monolithic, puritan, and two-dimensional. Here is the story of the African-American noble Drew Ali, the founder of “Black Islam” in this country, and of the violent end of his struggle for “love, truth, peace, freedom, and justice.” Another essay deals with Satan and “Satanism” in Esoteric Islam; and another offers a scathing critique of “Authority” and sexual misery in modern Puritanist Islam. “The Anti-caliph” evokes a hot mix of Ibn Arabi’s tantric mysticism and the revolutionary teachings of the “Assassins.” The title essay, “Sacred Drift,” roves through the history and poetics of Sufi travel, from Ibn Khaldun to Rimbaud in Abyssinia to the Situationists. A “Romantic” view of Islam is taken to radical extremes; the exotic may not be “True,” but it’s certainly a relief from academic propaganda and the obscene banality of simulation.

“This is my brand of Islam: insurrectionary, elegant, dangerous, suffused with light – a search for poetic facts, a donation from and to the tradition of spiritual anarchy.” —Hakim Bey

“Peter Lamborn Wilson, in his book Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam, offers an interesting window into the early evolution of Islamic ideas among African Americans.” —Abbas Milani, New Republic
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As Heard On Radio EarthRites:
Armand Amar: Poem Of The Atoms

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Beg for Love

Beg for Love.
Consider this burning, and those who
burn, as gifts from the Friend.
Nothing to learn.
Too much has already been said.
When you read a single page from
the silent book of your heart,
you will laugh at all this chattering,
all this pretentious learning.
– by Abu-Said Abil-Kheir