The Shaking Spheres….
With ravished ears The monarch hears, Assumes the god, Affects to nod, And seems to shake the spheres. – John Dryden
Jicarilla – Gwyllm Llwydd
Whoa, 2 post in 3 days, returning to some normalcy, at least for a while.
So, there are some offers on this post for art, calendars and publications. Check ’em out. The publications are a bit time sensitive, especially with the holidaze, but will let you know the delivery date. Great offers on Blotter, and Prints. Stay Tuned.
There are 2 interviews with yers truly on this, one with Tom Hatsis from this past May in Ashland. The other is more recent, from Reality Sandwich! by Ronnie Pontiac. Long, but fun.
Some great music, an article that was featured in Invisible College #9, “Arcadia” and some beautiful poetry from Persia…
Anyway, I hope December is treating you well. Got my lights up 2 weeks early, heavens will wonders never cease?
A blessing on you and yours, and thanks to all who have supported my work over the past year!
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Time Of The Season Holiday Offerings!
The Links:
Tom Hatsis Interviewing Yers Truly
First Light – Marconi Union
Divine Inebriation
The Secret Rose Garden
Lars Leonhard – Lucid Dreams
Time Of The Season Holiday Offerings!
Calendars!
The Handy Desk Calendar:
Desk Calendar
The Wall Calendar:
Wall Calendar
Holiday Sale of The Hasheesh Eater!
Five dollars off the purchasing price, inclusive of shipping
30.00 for an unsigned copy (shipped from printers)
36.00 for a personalized signed copy. Limited to Six Books on hand
This offer is good for US sales only, sorry.
Order Soon Though To Arrive Before The Holiday!
Prints, Blotter Art On Sale. Keep the wolves away from an artist’s door!
All kinds of stuff for yer stockin’!
We are very excited about the 9th Edition, “Arcadia” in which we explore different cultural expressions from the past, present and future. Coming in at 148 pages, our largest edition yet, filled with great art, poetry, articles! For the first time we are following a theme, “Arcadia”. So excited about this one. Almost 75 pages of art alone!
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The Links:
Gwyllm Llwydd Interviewed In Reality Sandwich!
The End of Illusion
To Fight Climate Change We Must Empower Women!
Yes, the Octopus Is Smart as Heck. But Why?
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Tom Hatsis Interviewing Yers Truly At Exploring Psychedelics in Ashland, this past May….
I have spent lots of hours with Tom and his lovely friend Eden. Wonderful, good people. Life, she is good.
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First Light – Marconi Union
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An article I wrote…
From The 9th Issue Of The Invisible College Review:
Divine Inebriation
What else is Wisdom? What of man’s endeavour
Or God’s high grace, so lovely and so great?
To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait;
To hold a hand uplifted over Hate;
And shall not Loveliness be loved for ever?”
– Euripides,The Bacchae
Prologue:
Latin: maeander Greek maiandros…
This is a meander down ancient pathways. To perhaps cleave through the detritus of accumulated ages with the labrys of inner remembrance and recall down ivy laden trails into groves and grottoes of light and darkness, where our deep memories stir with the wild of the green and fecund world.
From Mt. Nysa, to Boeotia, across the wine coloured Mediterranean to Ægypt then onto Sumeria. Triumphant from India to Thrace vineyards sprung up where he strode with his maenads, leopards and wolves. The Centaurs decamped from Arcadia and followed his call from the Hellespont to the Atlas mountains… Twice born Dionysus, in whose blood and body we celebrated immortality and the dead,
a model for later incarnations… Lift up this krater of dark wine to our lips so that we might find imaginal realizations.
“Young man,
two are the forces most precious to mankind.
The first is Demeter, the Goddess.
She is the Earth — or any name you wish to call her —
and she sustains humanity with solid food.
Next came Dionysus, the son of the virgin,
bringing the counterpart to bread: wine
and the blessings of life’s flowing juices.
His blood, the blood of the grape,
lightens the burden of our mortal misery.
Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour out
to offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed.”
– Euripides,The Bacchae
There were perhaps two great Gods who spanned the time of the Olympians but whose origins are far more ancient, Demeter & Dionysus. Of Demeter we will leave for another time our concern is with Dionysus.
Dionysus, Bromius, Bacchus, Eleutherios, Iacchus (may come from the Ιακχος (Iakchos), a hymn sung in honor of Dionysus.) All names/epithets for perhaps the greatest incarnation of divinity in the ancient world.
Although Thebes is said to have been city of origin, and his mother the mortal Semele and his father Zeus, there is perhaps a much older story that predates the Olympian gloss.
It is said that Dionysus is the younger of these two deities and this is of course based on the idea/assumption that grains were domesticated before grapes, but some see this as the outcome of the lack of imagination. If one goes out in the Autumn into the forest you’ll often find birds & mammals inebriated on late fruit & berries that have given themselves over to fermentation, a conspiracy between plant and free floating yeast & friendly molds. I have seen birds fall out of trees, drunk and raving from berries, a grand cacophony continues until all is consumed. Grain ferments as well of course, as an example there was a grain shipment that derailed up in British Columbia several years ago which spilled several tonnes of grain on the side of the tracks. Come the Autumn & trains had to proceed with great caution in the are of the derailment due to drunken bears laying about on the tracks, stumbling around etc.
It doesn’t take a grand leap to think that pre-neolithic peoples observed and partook of the gifts of the season. It would be foolish to consider that the roots of Dionysus doesn’t emerge in the paleolithic. This is of course imaginal thinking but if we extrapolate and veer off the familiar path then all kinds of possibilities open up around the archetype. There are enough connections between Dionysus and the green world, that the horned god found on cave walls throughout Europe & elsewhere is the progenitor of Dionysus, or Dionysus in an earlier form/incarnation. After all, when Dionysus was born he is mentioned to be “horned” surely a clue, a link lies here to earlier times.
We share the inebriated state across a wide biome of life. Flora provides it, fauna consumes it. The pursuit of this state may indeed be universal.
“He is life’s liberating force.
He is release of limbs and communion through dance.
He is laughter, and music in flutes.
He is repose from all cares — he is sleep!
When his blood bursts from the grape
and flows across tables laid in his honor
to fuse with our blood,
he gently, gradually, wraps us in shadows
of ivy-cool sleep.”
– Euripides,The Bacchae
There are many elements of inebriation. It breaks down inhibitions and brings down hierarchies of thought and societal structures.. One should not wonder at the current state of affairs with drug laws & prisons for users. Humans like their counterparts in other species are programmed for altered states, the quest for transcendence.
“Receive the god into your kingdom
pour libations, cover your head with ivy, join the dance!”
– Euripides, The Bacchae
Dionysus is closely associated with the grape and ivy in most classic volumes. Some mistake him for the sovereign of wine alone. He brings more than that. Greek wines, in classic times were not just alcohol, but an admixture of many different plant teachers. Mind you, that alcohol if used correctly can deliver a transcendental state, now pretty much forgotten due to its ubiquitous nature in modern society. Anything sacred can be reduced over time to banal commodity… but if one has the proper set and setting… The Greeks mixed wine with such substances as Papaver somniferum (Opium Poppies), Hyoscyamus niger (Henbane), Mandragora (Mandrake), and Cannabis in its various iterations was indeed a heady drink. Wine was usually mixed with water, diluted due to the added constituents. The dilution of wine to water was usually 1 to 4 parts. This gives you an idea of the strength of it. There may of been other plants (Ivy has been cited) and even perhaps fungi (Ya never know!) It is a guessing game at this time until new evidence is turned up.
One could consider that Dionysus is the persona of the divinity in nature, the wild, the untamed, unfurrowed, unfenced, forces of chaos & riot. The reassertion of our inner nature, boundless, untrammeled without the constraints of societal hierarchies, pristine, pure and dangerous. This state is both joyous, and full of grief. Everything in full measure.
Back though to this… Demeter & Dionysus as Goddess & God are exalted and constrained by nature, a trait which they share with us. The seasons are the their holy path, which seems to culminate in harvest and riot. The round of the year hold them close to us, the joy of flowering spring, a drowsy indolent summer, the abrupt changes and beauty of autumn, and the grief and sadness of winter. The fields of grain cut down, the vine left to rot on the midden. These are divinities that are born, live and die yearly. This is a part of their immortal mystery, tied to the ancient cycles of life and death.
“Knowledge is not wisdom: cleverness is not without awareness of our death, not without recalling just how brief our flare is. He who overreaches will, in his overreaching, lose what he possesses, betray what he has now. That which is beyond us, which is greater than the human, the unattainably great, is for the mad, or for those who listen to the mad, and then believe them.”
– Euripides,The Bacchae
That we might live again, in all immortality, we eat this flesh, we drink this wine…
“He is the god of epiphanies—sudden spiritual manifestations—and of transformation, and there is more shape-shifting associated with Dionysus than with any other Greek god except for his father, Zeus, whose metamorphoses were usually prompted by his pursuit of women.
– Euripides,The Bacchae
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The Secret Rose Garden (and More)
The Poetry of Sa’d Ud Din Mahmud Shabistari
Tavern Haunters
The tavern is the abode of lovers,
The place where the bird of the soul nests,
The rest-house that has no existence
In a world that has no form.
The tavern-haunter is desolate in a lonely desert,
Where he sees the world as a mirage.
The desert is limitless and endless,
For no man has seen its beginning or ending.
Though you feverishly wander for a hundred years
You will be always alone.
For the dwellers there are headless and footless,
Neither the faithful nor infidels,
They have renounced both good and evil,
And have cast away name and fame,
From drinking the cup of selflessness;
Without lips or mouth,
And are beyond traditions, visions, and states,
Beyond dreaming of secret rooms, of lights and miracles.
They are lying drunken through the smell of the wine-dregs,
And have given as ransom
Pilgrim’s staff and cruse,
Dentifrice and rosary.
Sometimes rising to the world of bliss,
With necks exalted as racers,
Or with blackened faces turned to the wall,
Sometimes with reddened faces tied to the stake.
Now in the mystic dance of joy in the Beloved,
Losing head and foot like the revolving heavens.
In every strain which they hear from the minstrel
Comes to them rapture from the unseen world.
For within the mere words and sounds
Of the mystic song
Lies a precious mystery.
From drinking one cup of the pure wine,
From sweeping the dust of dung-hills from their souls,
From grasping the skirts of drunkards,
They have become Sūfīs.
—-
One Light
What are “I” and “You”?
Just lattices
In the niches of a lamp
Through which the One Light radiates.
“I” and “You” are the veil
Between heaven and earth;
Lift this veil and you will see
How all sects and religions are one.
Lift this veil and you will ask —
When “I” and “You” do not exist
What is mosque?
What is synagogue?
What is fire temple?
—-
A Drop of Seawater
Behold how this drop of seawater
has taken so many forms and names;
it has existed as mist, cloud, rain, dew, and mud,
then plant, animal, and Perfect man;
and yet it was a drop of water
from which these things appeared.
Even so this universe of reason, soul, heavens, and bodies,
was but a drop of water in its beginning and ending.
…When a wave strikes it, the world vanishes;
and when the appointed time comes to heaven and stars,
their being is lost in not being.
—-
The Marriage of the Soul
Descending to the earth, that strange intoxicating beauty of the unseen world
lurks in the elements of nature.
And the soul of man,
who has attained the rightful balance,
becoming aware of this hidden joy,
straightaway is enamored and bewitched.
And from this mystic marriage are born
the poets’ songs, inner knowledge,
the language of the heart, virtuous living,
and the fair child Beauty.
And the Great Soul gives to man as dowry
the hidden glory of the world.
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Lars Leonhard – Lucid Dreams
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
“Arcadia”
I dwell no more in Arcady, But when the sky is blue with May, And birds are blithe and winds are free, I know what message is for me, For I have been in Arcady. – Louise Chandler Moulton
Hello!
The lost blog posting. Originally meant for September 11th (time flies!) Meant to send this out months ago, but life got weird, health stuff of a loved one. Slightly changed due to the seasons (see below) but still the same.
Enjoy,
Gwyllm
Yeah, it has been awhile, but I think that I might be getting back up on the pony again as far as blogging goes. I have been about launching the new Invisible College Review (dropped the term of “magazine” due to distinct differences). This issue is a divergence from the past. Thematic, with 1/3 more pages than before. So happy with it. I have included an extract from one of the articles, and a few pictures as well from the issue. More to follow!
The winter is coming on rapidly, and I couldn’t be happier. Rain today. Perfection. The leaves have fallen already here in the north country, but mainly due to the lengthy drought. So much smoke during the summer and early fall on the left coast…. Years of fire prevention has backfired (sorry), on us. Fire is integral to the ecology of the west. We are now reaping what has been sowed for the last 100+ years of over management.
Our son Rowan moved out with his beloved, and friends. Empty Nesters! Who would imagine? The house is a lot quieter than before, but we are adjusting to it. Life, she flow on.
New projects coming, stay tuned. I am getting ready to do a tour to promote The Hasheesh Eater, and the new Review. If ya want me to come to your area and give a presentation, just let me know please..!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Arcadia The Ninth Edition
Extract: “Imaginal Arcadia”
Gwyllm @ Exploring Psychedelics
The Links
DCD:The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove
Poems From Ryokan:
The Timid Hare and the Flight of the Beasts
DCD:Ulysses
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The Ninth Edition! “Arcadia”
Order here, or at Invisible College 9th Edition
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The Ninth Edition Features:
Art:
Dan Hillier/Master Collagist
Martina Hoffmann/Visionary Artist
Pascal Ferry/Visionary Artist
Robert Venosa/The Legacy
Noel Taylor/Exploring New Territories
Poetry:
Dale Pendell
Michael Conner
Sa’d Ud Din Mahmud Shabistari
Iacopo Sannazaro
Articles:
P.D. Newman: Alchemically Stoned: The Psychedelic Secret Of Free Masonry Extract:The Sprig of Acacia and DMT
Alan Piper: The Altered States of David Lindsay: Three Psychedelic Novels of the 1920’s
Gwyllm Llwydd: Imaginal Arcadia & Dionysus Considered: Divine Inebriation
148 pages, our largest edition yet, 46 pages more than the previous one, filled with great art, poetry, articles! For the first time we are following a theme, “Arcadia”. So excited about this one. Almost 80 pages of art alone.
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From The Ninth Edition…
Extract: “Imaginal Arcadia”
Before Greece was “Greece” it was, something else.
Arcadia (the domain of Pan)
(Pan, being the embodiment of nature, often described as the god of shepherds, having roots deep, deep in the per-neolithic dream-time, containing all nature in his being, the Lord of the animals, the animus of the world…)
Arcadia, with her roots in the times before deliberate cultivation, before the plow ripped our mothers’ flesh, rises up in visions, art, poesy again and again hearkening to the age when it was golden, verdant, a tumbling world of plant, animal, spirits, and gods… before the times of subservience, neolithic priest-craft, kings and corporations.
Arcadia, the wild hunt, Centaurs chased by nymphs as Hamadryades observe from cool glens and sacred groves… echoed later by the Dionysian frenzies of the Bacchante. Classical scholars look backwards to a past surpassing their present, to an age not forgotten, but hidden, dormant, sleeping.
Pre-Religion, before priest-craft before alphabets stealing essence of the ancient tales, un-tonguing bards striking vision down to dusty tablets, then rotting pages over the ages.
Rivers churning with fish, herded by naiads through channel and rapid, swimming languorously in pools of emerald purity. Children playing in streams, the sunlight slanting down through the canopy, letting fish slip through their hands, laughing.
Before the Πελασγοί, Pelasgoí, before the Mycenaeans and Doric hordes streaming southward into the mother country with their jealous Olympians ousting an older world; an older order of Goddesses & Gods, who had walked upon the earth, titans, dragons, the Great Mother all encompassing.
Bear Clans, Wolf Clans, Deer Clans, Lion, Leopard Clans, the Horse Clans/Centaurs running on ridges high above the vale, ages before the Pythian mysteries were seized by Golden Apollo, long before Persephone’s descent. A chaos of green, a riot of divine madness, endless, ancient.
There was Colloquy and Chaos, nature unbound untrammeled, un-subservient to plows & plunder, a world still wrapped in wonder. Arcadia…
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Gwyllm Speaking @ Exploring Psychedelics
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The Links:
Tom Hatsis Interviewed By Ronnie Pontiac/Reality Sandwich!
The Response To Nike’s Add Campaign
Can a Tibetan Buddhist and a theoretical physicist find common ground on reality?
The Forest Man…
The Erasure Of Islam From Rumi’s Poetry Older article, but relevant.
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The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove
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Poems From Ryokan:
Slopes
of Mount Kugami –
in the mountain’s shade
a hut beneath the trees –
how many years
it’s been my home?
The time comes
to take leave of it –
my .though/ts wilt
like summer grasses,
I wander back and forth
like the evening star –
till that hut of mine
is hidden from sight,
till that grove of trees
can no longer be seen,
at each bend
of the long road,
at every turning,
I turn to look back
in the direction of that mountain
_____
Though frosts come down
night after night,
what does it matter?
they melt in the morning sun.
Though the snow falls
each passing year,
what does it matter?
with spring days it thaws.
Yet once let them settle
on a man’s head,
fall and pile up,
go on piling up –
then the new year
may come and go,
but never you’ll see them fade away
_____
Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days’ worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
______
You do not need many things
My house is buried in the deepest recess of the forest
Every year, ivy vines grow longer than the year before.
Undisturbed by the affairs of the world I live at ease,
Woodmen’s singing rarely reaching me through the trees.
While the sun stays in the sky, I mend my torn clothes
And facing the moon, I read holy texts aloud to myself.
Let me drop a word of advice for believers of my faith.
To enjoy life’s immensity, you do not need many things.
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The Timid Hare and the Flight of the Beasts
Once upon a time when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisatta [the future Buddha] came to life as a young lion. And when fully grown he lived in a wood. At this time there was near the Western Ocean a grove of palms mixed with vilva trees.
A certain hare lived here beneath a palm sapling, at the foot of a vilva tree. One day this hare, after feeding, came and lay down beneath the young palm tree. And the thought struck him, “If this earth should be destroyed, what would become of me?”
And at this very moment a ripe vilva fruit fell on a palm leaf. At the sound of it, the hare thought, “This solid earth is collapsing,” and starting up he fled, without so much as looking behind him. Another hare saw him scampering off, as if frightened to death, and asked the cause of his panic flight.
“Pray, don’t ask me,” he said.
The other hare cried, “Pray, sir, what is it?” and kept running after him.
Then the hare stopped a moment and without looking back said, “The earth here is breaking up.”
And at this the second hare ran after the other. And so first one and then another hare caught sight of him running, and joined in the chase till one hundred thousand hares all took to flight together. They were seen by a deer, a boar, an elk, a buffalo, a wild ox, a rhinoceros, a tiger, a lion, and an elephant. And when they asked what it meant and were told that the earth was breaking up, they too took to flight. So by degrees this host of animals extended to the length of a full league.
When the Bodhisatta saw this headlong flight of the animals, and heard the cause of it was that the earth was coming to an end, he thought, “The earth is nowhere coming to an end. Surely it must be some sound which was misunderstood by them. And if I don’t make a great effort, they will all perish. I will save their lives.”
So with the speed of a lion he got before them to the foot of a mountain, and lion-like roared three times. They were terribly frightened at the lion, and stopping in their flight stood all huddled together. The lion went in amongst them and asked why there were running away.
“The earth is collapsing,” they answered.
“Who saw it collapsing?” he said.
“The elephants know all about it,” they replied.
He asked the elephants. “We don’t know,” they said, “the lions know.”
But the lions said, “We don’t know, the tigers know.”
The tigers said, “The rhinoceroses know.”
The rhinoceroses said, “The wild oxen know.”
The wild oxen, “the buffaloes.”
The buffaloes, “the elks.”
The elks, “the boars.”
The boars, “the deer.”
The deer said, “We don’t know; the hares know.”
When the hares were questioned, they pointed to one particular hare and said, “This one told us.”
So the Bodhisatta asked, “Is it true, sir, that the earth is breaking up?”
“Yes, sir, I saw it,” said the hare.
“Where,” he asked, “were you living, when you saw it?”
“Near the ocean, sir, in a grove of palms mixed with vilva trees. For as I was lying beneath the shade of a palm sapling at the foot of a vilva tree, methought, ‘If this earth should break up, where shall I go?’ And at that very moment I heard the sound the breaking up of the earth, and I fled.”
Thought the lion, “A ripe vilva fruit evidently must have fallen on a palm leaf and made a ‘thud,’ and this hare jumped to the conclusion that the earth was coming to an end, and ran away. I will find out the exact truth about it.”
So he reassured the herd of animals, and said, “I will take the hare and go and find out exactly whether the earth is coming to an end or not, in the place pointed out by him. Until I return, do you stay here.” Then placing the hare on his back, he sprang forward with the speed of a lion, and putting the hare down in the palm grove, he said, “Come, show us the place you meant.”
“I dare not, my lord,” said the hare.
“Come, don’t be afraid,” said the lion.
The hare, not venturing to go near the vilva tree, stood afar off and cried, “Yonder, sir, is the place of dreadful sound,” and so saying, he repeated the first stanza:
From the spot where I did dwell
Issued forth a fearful “thud”;
What it was I could not tell,
Nor what caused it understood.
After hearing what the hare said, the lion went to the foot of the vilva tree, and saw the spot where the hare had been lying beneath the shade of the palm tree, and the ripe vilva fruit that fell on the palm leaf, and having carefully ascertained that the earth had not broken up, he placed the hare on his back and with the speed of a lion soon came again to the herd of beasts.
Then he told them the whole story, and said, “Don’t be afraid.” And having thus reassured the herd of beasts, he let them go.
Verily, if it had not been for the Bodhisatta at that time, all the beasts would have rushed into the sea and perished. It was all owing to the Bodhisatta that they escaped death.
Alarmed at sound of fallen fruit
A hare once ran away,
The other beasts all followed suit
Moved by that hare’s dismay.
They hastened not to view the scene,
But lent a willing ear
To idle gossip, and were clean
Distraught with foolish fear.
They who to Wisdom’s calm delight
And Virtue’s heights attain,
Though ill example should invite,
Such panic fear disdain.
Source: The Jataka; or, Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births, edited by E. B. Cowell, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897), no. 322, pp. 49-52. Translated from the Pali by H. T. Francis and R. A. Neil.
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Ulysses