Spring Has Sprung!

On The Menu:
The Commentary…
Radio EarthRites Fund Raiser: Save The Music!
Substack Update
The Links
Cult | 09-04-22 | by [A]LCrego_
Dead Can Dance: Opium
Poetry: Sappho
Greek Fairy Tales: Fairy Hunting
Brendan Perry: The Voyage Of Bran
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The Commentary:
Dropping back into Blog Land for an entry. Not as much as I would like, but I have found myself with way too many irons in the fire, which does happen with me as I take on too many projects.

At the present, I am working on a talk that I will be giving online in June. I will keep you posted. Quite excited to get back into the ring again, I do wish that things would open up a bit to allow for a speaking tour, no matter how localized in the Northwest/Northern California. Hopefully Covid will burn itself out soon.

Working on Publishing, Radio EarthRites, and of course the SubStack. In my ADHD ways I spin my wheels way too frequently, trying to prioritize what is needed. Spring finally is asserting itself, here in the first weeks of old summer (Which traditionally started on the 1st of May. The back garden is a riot of colour, always amazing to experience.

I hope this finds you well, and not overwhelmed by the world. Hard at times, oh yes.

Bright Blessings,
G
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Radio EarthRites Fund Raiser: Save The Music!

Every so often we hold a fundraiser for Radio EarthRites.
This year it is more important than ever as our main storage hard drive has crashed, and some 800 GB of music & related files have been lost. (but recoverable!

We have gotten an estimate of $150 to around $600 for recovery of the information and files on the drive.

So, we are asking for a one-time donation or for folks to subscribe to the station to help us recover the music files and attending information we had stored on the drive.
If you can make a donation or sign up for a subscription it would be greatly appreciated.

We have a bunch of new music on the station, and now, a bunch of spoken word shows as well coming up.
e also have a new Radio EarthRites Program & Notes Page, which is also the Radio Page. Please check it out! Info on the music, spoken word, updates, etc.

Our Fund Raiser is being featured on the new page along with this coming week’s new schedule. Stay Tuned! More Music, Spoken Word!

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SubStack Update:
Salvia Divinourm Presentation
The latest entry (above)
I have 3 more coming with the possibility of 3 additional entries appearing soon if I can transfer them from paper to screen. I enjoy this project; it is a great focusing tool. I have found the joys of dictation in all of this, it hurries the process along.
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The Links:

Spreading the principles and truth of nonviolence in Nigeria
From The School Of Unintended ConsequencesAgainst Human Exceptionalism
Anonymous, anti-capitalist and awe-inspiring: were crop circles actually great art?
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Cult | 09-04-22 | by [A]LCrego_

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Dead Can Dance: Opium

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Poetry: Sappho

I took my lyre and Said

I took my lyre and said:
Come now, my heavenly
tortoise shell: become
a speaking instrument
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Leto and Niobe

Before they were mothers
Leto and Niobe
had been the most
devoted of friends
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Dapple-throned Aphrodite

Dapple-throned Aphrodite,
eternal daughter of God,
snare-knitter! Don’t, I beg you,

cow my heart with grief! Come,
as once when you heard my far-
off cry and, listening, stepped

from your father’s house to your
gold car, to yoke the pair whose
beautiful thick-feathered wings

oaring down mid-air from heaven
carried you to light swiftly
on dark earth; then, blissful one,

smiling your immortal smile
you asked, What ailed me now that
me me call you again? What

was it that my distracted
heart most wanted? “Whom has
Persuasion to bring round now

“to your love? Who, Sappho, is
unfair to you? For, let her
run, she will soon run after;

“if she won’t accept gifts, she
will one day give them; and if
she won’t love you — she soon will

“love, although unwillingly…”
If ever — come now! Relieve
this intolerable pain!

What my heart most hopes will
happen, make happen; you your-
self join forces on my side!
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Hesperus The Bringer

O Hesperus, thou bringest all good things–
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent’s brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o’erlabored steer;
Whate’er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring’st the child too to its mother’s breast.
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Ode To Aphrodite
Deathless Aphrodite, throned in flowers,
Daughter of Zeus, O terrible enchantress,
With this sorrow, with this anguish, break my spirit
Lady, not longer!

Hear anew the voice! O hear and listen!
Come, as in that island dawn thou camest,
Billowing in thy yoked car to Sappho
Forth from thy father’s

Golden house in pity! … I remember:
Fleet and fair thy sparrows drew thee, beating
Fast their wings above the dusky harvests,
Down the pale heavens,

Lightning anon! And thou, O blest and brightest,
Smiling with immortal eyelids, asked me:
‘Maiden, what betideth thee? Or wherefore
Callest upon me?

‘What is here the longing more than other,
Here in this mad heart? And who the lovely
One beloved that wouldst lure to loving?
Sappho, who wrongs thee?

‘See, if now she flies, she soon must follow;
Yes, if spurning gifts, she soon must offer;
Yes, if loving not, she soon must love thee,
Howso unwilling…’

Come again to me! O now! Release me!
End the great pang! And all my heart desireth
Now of fulfillment, fulfill! O Aphrodite,
Fight by my shoulder!
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Sappho To Her Girlfriends

This is my song of maidens dear to me.
Eranna, a slight girl I counted thee,
When first I looked upon thy form and face,
Slim as a reed, and all devoid of grace.
But stately stature, grace and beauty came
Unto thee with the years — O, dost not shame
For this, Eranna, that thy pride hath grown
Therewith? Alas for thee ! I have not known
One beauty ever of more scornful mien,
As though thou wert of all earth’s daughters queen!
Mnasidica is comelier, perchance,
Than my Gyrinna — ah, but sweetly rings
Gyrinna’s matchless voice ! In rapture-trance
I listen, listen, while Gyrinna sings.
Hero of Gyara is fleet of foot
As fawns, and as light-footed in the dance,
The dance taught by the measures of my lute.
Ever-impassioned Gorgo! — is it strange
That I grow weary of the change on change
Of thine adored ones? — of thy rhapsodies
O’er each new girlfriend, while the old love dies?
Joy to thee, daughter of a princely race,
For thy last dear one! Lie in her embrace —
Till shines a new star on thy raptured eyes!
Fonder of maids thou art, I trow, than she.
The ghost who nightly steal young girls, to be
In Hades of her woeful company.
This is my fair girl-garden: sweet they grow —
Rose, violet, asphodel and lily’s snow;
And which the sweetest is, I do not know;
For rosy arms and starry eyes are there.
Honey-sweet voices and cheeks passing fair.
And these shall men, I ween, remember long;
For these shall bloom for ever in my song.
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Greek Fairy Tales: Hunting Fairies

I had never heard of fairies until one autumn evening in our summer home on the highlands of Petsà, which, eagle-like, watches over olive groves, raisin fields and the blue Corinthian Gulf. Laughter and voices raised in greeting woke me from my early sleep and told me that my Grandmother Adamis was being welcomed to the group of neighbor women who had gathered in our garden to tell stories in the moonlight.

“Is it about the Fairy Wife you are going to tell us tonight, Grandmother Adamis?” I heard someone ask.

“Or the Fairy Ring? I thought it was the Fairy Ring!” cried another voice.

“Oh, the fairies’ palace, Grandmother! You promised to tell us about their palace!”

Grandmother Adamis laughed. Rising on my elbow, I could see the younger women hurrying to make a place for her and pass her wine, nuts and cheese. In the center of the group a fire glowed red, in contrast to the clear, silver light of the full moon above. During the autumn months, after the corn is gathered, the grapes crushed and the barrels filled with wine, the villagers spend the evenings out of doors. The older women talk while the girls knit and sing. Now, on Grandmother’s arrival, the girls dropped their work and all grew silent to listen. Grandmother knew more paramythia, myths, than any woman in Eurostena, and she was a born story-teller.

In wonder and a breathless, ecstatic fear, I strained my ears to catch what snatches I could. As the strange stories followed one another, forms, pentamorphes, five times beautiful, seemed to glide before me: maidens in white with flowing, golden hair, handsome youths on horseback, chariots of cloud, seas shimmering with jewels, palaces light as foam and lovely as dew in sunshine. Oh, if I could see these things which Grandmother Adamis described! If I could hear the flute-like voices and silvery music which she said rang through the Fairy Hills!

But the fairies, it seemed, had some terrible, mysterious power. One must beware. One must not venture alone too high among the mountain tops. The fairies might—Grandmother’s voice would sink to a whisper and the circle of heads draw closer about her. I could learn only that all places are safe for him who carries a loaded gun, the highest hills and even the palaces of the fairies. With this thought, as the moon paled and the dawn came and the group in the garden dispersed, I slept.

A gun! That was my first idea on waking. I must have a gun. I intended to see fairies and visit fairy palaces, but where to find the gun? Then I remembered. As soon as I had learned to write at school, an old lady who lived in the neighborhood asked me to write letters for her to her son in America, because she could not write. The first time I went to her house, I noticed a huge, old-fashioned gun hanging on the wall. It had been used, she told me, by her grandfather in the War of 1821, and was called a Karabena. It was very clumsy and had grown rusty, but now as I pictured it, it seemed the most priceless of treasures. There remained only the question of how to make it mine.

For months, whenever I was in the old lady’s house, I gazed longingly at the Karabena every moment that I was not writing, and wondered how I could approach the subject. Then one day the following spring, the lady told me that I had been very good and that she wished to give me something in return for what I had done.

“Will you give me that gun?” I burst out.

“Oh, not that,” she said. “You don’t know how to use it. You would hurt yourself.”

I replied that I knew a great deal about guns from having read about them ever since the autumn. Besides, I said, I would accept nothing else from her, so at last she consented. The Karabena was mine.

It remained hidden for days among the barrels in our cellar, while I cleaned and polished it a little at a time, and collected powder and shot. Finally the gun was loaded and ready, and very proudly did I set out with it across my shoulder. From the stories of Grandmother Adamis, I understood that the fairies often appeared just at noon, but I started early since it was some distance to the top of the Neraidorahe, Fairy Hill, where the entrances to fairy palaces were said to be found. I was congratulating myself on getting away unseen, when my mother’s voice called from the doorway.

“Theodorake I, come back. Where did you get that gun?”

When I told her, she asked what I was about to do with it. My answer was sufficiently evasive.

“Well,” she said, “don’t try to shoot and whatever you do, don’t go up to the Neraidorahe! Evil will come to you!”

After waiting till she had returned to her work, I hurried through the village and started up the mountain.

“Ho, Theodorake!” rang out above me. The old shepherd known to everyone as Uncle Kostas was making his way down the slope toward me. Since I was in no mood for further interruption, I pressed on as if I had not heard.

“Ho there!” came the call again. “I know you, son of Perikles. Where are you going with that Karabena?”

“To the Neraidorahe to hunt fairies,” I replied casually.

“Stop!” He was directly above me now and he planted himself in my way. The picture of him, in his great, loose shepherd’s cloak, with its pointed hood thrown back, his short, full skirt and his brown shoes with a fluffy red ball on each pointed tip, is still vivid in my mind. “See those hills yonder,” he cried, his right hand extended in a dramatic gesture, his white hair blowing in the wind. “On one of those hills the fairies overpowered me. You do not know what they can do. Listen to me. I was older than you are and I had a better gun than your Karabena. A gun cannot save you. The fairies carried me away and kept me for a year and a day, and it was only by a miracle that I escaped from them. They can take you as they took me, but you may never get away. Listen to one who has lived in their palace and learned their ways and been their prisoner!”

Old Uncle Kostas with the help of his staff settled himself heavily on a stone in order to relate his adventure. This was my chance.

“The fairies will not scare me,” I told him. “I will fire at them and chase them back into their caves.”

I darted past him and went on up the mountain side. When I glanced back and saw him plodding slowly downward shaking his head, I laughed to myself. I would show them all.

In the steep, rocky slope above me were several great, black holes like yawning cavern mouths. Perhaps, I thought, these opened on moonlight-flooded gardens and shining palaces and all the beautiful things Grandmother had described. If I could frighten the fairies, I could enter unharmed and see for myself. Carefully I approached the holes, lay down behind a pine tree and made my Karabena ready to shoot at the first fairy that should appear.

Soon I heard the whistle of the noon train and I watched it far below as it hurried along the southern shore of the Gulf. The time had come. For a moment everything was still. Then the gently stirring air brought me a soft, whirring sound that grew louder and louder. The air itself, moving faster and faster, became a wind from the north, and at the same time in front of one opening something white went whirling around and around just above the ground.

A wild fear rushed upon me. The unknown terrors that were whispered of in the garden and the weird power that had seized Uncle Kostas, seemed to grip my heart. Clutching my gun I turned and tore down the mountain side like one mad. I slipped and stumbled, struck my feet against stones and scratched my arms on tree trunks, but nothing stopped me until I reached home and fell into the kitchen in front of my mother. I accepted her scolding humbly and never again did I go fairy-hunting.
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Brendan Perry: The Voyage Of Bran

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