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
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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
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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.
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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