Month: August 2026

Oh my gosh, more than one Substack a month! Who would ever guess? I am trying to play a bit of catch up as of late. This entry was actually started 2 months ago. The past couple of days has been a blessing in that I am able to do work on my art and writing. Even the weather is sweet, clouds in the morning, cool enough for me to have cognizant thoughts instead of the scattered ADHD mindscape that I dip into way too frequently.

On The Menu: The Links/ New Art – The Golden Centre/ On Dying/ Counterpoint/ Poesy – Rabia al Basri/ Japan – Ghost (2003 Mix)

The Links: How The Troubadours Shaped Medieval Romance / How Art Invented Humanity / Is this the world’s oldest image of a mind‑altering plant?/ Can Plants Feel Pain?/ Rewilded land remains green amid drought-stricken English countryside

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New Art – The Golden Centre/Vimana Series

This piece is constructed in part with pen and ink work I did nearly 30 years ago, to finally see the light of day in this piece as fading sunlight. I am very excited to share this piece! I hope you like it!

G

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Recently I had a dream in which I saw the timeline of my remaining life here in this place. It struck me that I had a bunch of stuff to do before I clocked out.

The Dream. This dream came with a remembrance of an old Sufi saying. “Die before you die”. (some credit Rumi, but I am sure he picked it up along the way) I was given a timeline in which to complete what I came here to do this lifetime. I have been remiss on a few items, I swear. Death came to me and invited me to let it go when the time was right. As I understood the message, that we “Die before you die” was that preparation was everything.

I have had a few close encounters in my life, accidents, illness, the police… This was not an encounter on this side but on the other. Oddly comforting and assuring.

I guess it is in the task at hand. The doing. Being present for those that need you, and for yourself as well.

This life has gone so fast.

Much Love,

G

For your consideration a counterpoint to the current societal madness:

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. But then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” – Ursula le Guinn

We live in a shared reality. The present state of things is only very recent in the human timeline… From what I recall from the Neolithic on Is less than 1% of our time on Mother Earth. We now live in an aberration; A state that runs counter to all that went before and if we are so lucky to all that comes after.

The experiment is coming to an end. I believe we are here to help rectify the imbalance of this age.

We are watching systems of government & economies collapsing and mutating. This is not a time to wax nostalgic over what is now fading away. The Event Horizon is beckoning.

As it has been pointed out by David Graeber & David Wengrow, we did not just jump from hunter gatherers to farming in one cataclysmic leap but moved back and forth for several thousand years.

I started dictating this sitting in a fabulous Garden alongside the Willamette where I was painting exterior walls for a friend. For all the insanity in the world it is but a blip compared to what is really going on. As I worked there, a hummingbird would come almost daily to flit about me as I worked. Sweetness.

We have solutions available, but we must seize on them, and soon.

For the Future, and those that come after.

Poesy – Rabia al Basri:
I have loved Thee with two loves –
a selfish love and a love that is worthy of Thee.
As for the love which is selfish,
Therein I occupy myself with Thee,
to the exclusion of all others.
But in the love which is worthy of Thee,
Thou dost raise the veil that I may see Thee.
Yet is the praise not mine in this or that,
But the praise is to Thee in both that and this.
—
If I adore You out of fear of Hell, burn me in Hell!
If I adore you out of desire for Paradise,
Lock me out of Paradise.
But if I adore you for Yourself alone,
Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty.
—
Your hope in my heart is the rarest treasure
Your Name on my tongue is the sweetest word
My choicest hours
Are the hours I spend with You —
O Allah, I can’t live in this world
Without remembering You–
How can I endure the next world
Without seeing Your face?
I am a stranger in Your country
And lonely among Your worshippers:
This is the substance of my complaint.
—
With my Beloved I alone have been,
When secrets tenderer than evening airs
Passed, and the Vision blest
Was granted to my prayers,
That crowned me, else obscure, with endless fame;
The while amazed between
His Beauty and His Majesty
I stood in silent ecstasy
Revealing that which o’er my spirit went and came.
Lo, in His face commingled
Is every charm and grace;
The whole of Beauty singled
Into a perfect face
Beholding Him would cry,
‘There is no God but He, and He is the most High.’

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Japan – Ghost (2003 Mix)

And a note as I depart this posting. A blessing on you and yours, I hope the days and nights are sweet.

Until Later!

G

The Muse – Gwyllm

 

I have been away for a while, taking care the best I can of a family member who has been in pain. This has been a juggling act, as with the economy and all I have pretty much returned to work on a full/part-time basis, which leaves not a lot of time. This is not a complaint, but just a nod to the given situation.

I want to thank all of you who have continued to support my writing and my art. Hopefully there will be a turn around, and I can publish more frequently.

As Far as Art Goes…I have a new piece coming out shortly, I have been working on it since early May this year. As soon as I get it scanned, I will share

G

On The Menu:

Sky Daddy/s and other Mythologies / Sappho – Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite/ Orphic Hymn to the Muses

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Sky Daddy’s

I grew up in a military family. Both of my parents were from Methodist backgrounds. In the military there is only one option for Methodist, or other Sects of the Protestant mindset: “Military Protestant”. Whether they be Methodist, Lutherans, Southern Baptist, Snake Handlers… All went into the one pot/chapel.

Our Sundays went like this: Kids off to Sunday School. Parents join us later for Chapel. By the time all of this was done, 2.5 hours or more, I would be starved. Then a big meal and on with the day after I explained at my father’s behest what I had learned that day in chapel. Usually, it ended with me in detention for not grasping the intricacies of Christian/Protestant thought. Not surprising, as my mind was usually elsewhere. (The grand poobaa Sky Daddy along with his son was a fascination to me. Why would you tell a people they were special and then punish them all of the time? If your son was a part of you, why did you have to impregnate a woman with yourself and then sacrifice yourself to yourself? So many contradictions and conflictions…) more of this perhaps later…

What I see in these recalling’s is the inculturation that goes on across cultures. Perhaps a little more aggressive here as I read recently in a comment about folks running around trying to convert others to their version of the Sky God: “Australian here. Grateful that we got the convicts and you got the puritans.”

As a child I was alright with this, didn’t know any better until one Sunday, the minister said something along these lines: “You were born in sin, and you are condemned because of the actions of Eve in the Garden of Paradise.” Well… that didn’t seem right to me. What had I done? I was 7 years old. That one instance set me on a path… that was followed up the next year by a gift from my mother when we were about to drive across the US:

Within this book I discovered that there was more than one version of “God” It was an eye opener. The Iliad introduced me to Athena, the first version of the Goddess that I knew of. The story of her interactions with humans, and her whisperings to their consciousness and conscience was enthralling to a young lad. Of course there were Sky Daddy’s as well, Zeus of course, but Apollo as well. Hey! They had more than one! Bonus! I spent that summer enraptured by the book. Then I went on to find other myths, discovering the Roman take on it with the Aeneas gloss on the tale… I found a version of the Aeneid in Latin when I was 12 and tried to teach myself Latin so that I could read it in the original. (I gave up after a couple of months) Then of course there is the British version of Brutus of Troy coming up the River Dart and landing in what is now Totnes… (This is in Devon) according to medieval legend, marking his arrival in Britain where he famously proclaimed, “Here I stand and here I rest, and this town shall be called Totnes.” (Which is a lovely town, and they even have the stone he first stepped on btw)

The short of it all is that I was ruined for Christianity, although I thought/and think that Jesus was an okay guy and really tried his best. It seems a pattern in Middle Eastern Myth Structure that the messenger gets sacrificed. Bad deal that. Still, I struggled along and tried to fit in for a while, becoming fascinated with the Apocalyptic Books. Then things took a turn…

I took LSD, and what I discovered further upset the Apple Cart of Mythology I had been raised with. On my second excursion I had what is classically called “The White Light” experience. Within that timeless moment of the eternal that which some would call God (too small! too focused culturally!) presented itself as the Divine Feminine, The Great Mother Goddess. Within the experience my life that I had known was shattered. The overarching Oneness I discovered had shown me something no book, no word, experience had ever shown me.

It will soon be 60 years since I first ventured into the maelstrom of consciousness that psychedelics hints at. My initial encounter with altered consciousness on one hand was a marvelous moment but also a horrible one in that i couldn’t articulate what had occurred with adequate nuance. Words failed me repeatedly when I tried to describe the loss of individual self, the ecstasy of merging with the Atman of the Universe…

Well, back to Sky Daddy’s:

There are some remarkable similarities in sky deities, most seem to have evolved from humble beginnings and become conflated later on in their careers. For the longest time I thought Jehovah had begun as a mouse demon who raided granaries. Last week I found out that actually was Apollo. YHWH was a conglomerate deity made up from the Canaanite deity, and El and desert peoples war and thunder god. Among the Hittites, El was known as Elkunirša (Hittite: 𒂖𒆪𒉌𒅕𒊭 Elkunīrša). Although El gained different appearances and meanings in different languages over time, it continues to exist as El-, -il or -el in compound proper noun phrases such as Elizabeth, Israel, Michael, and Bethel, most of which are theophoric given names. (thanks Wikipedia!)

On the whole they’re not very pleasant deities more than likely they are like Archons of the Gnostic belief system.

This is great: Apollo Mouse Cult More

Then there is this guy. Demanding folks to sacrifice their children to him to prove their worthiness or cutting off their foreskins if male. It only got worse over time it seems.

Walking away from the absolutism of Sky Daddy was a process. The society drowns in it to this day. – I may flesh this out a bit more later on.

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Sappho – Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite

The Greek Poet Sappho and the Girl from Mytilene

 

‘Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite’

Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite,
I beg you, Zeus’s daughter, weaver of snares,
Don’t shatter my heart with fierce
Pain, goddess,

But come now, if ever before
You heard my voice, far off, and listened,
And left your father’s golden house,
And came,

Yoking your chariot. Lovely the swift
Sparrows that brought you over black earth
A whirring of wings through mid-air
Down the sky.

They came. And you, sacred one,
Smiling with deathless face, asking
What now, while I suffer: why now
I cry out to you, again:

What now I desire above all in my
Mad heart. ’Whom now, shall I persuade
To admit you again to her love,
Sappho, who wrongs you now?

If she runs now she’ll follow later,
If she refuses gifts she’ll give them.
If she loves not, now, she’ll soon
Love against her will.’

Come to me now, then, free me
From aching care, and win me
All my heart longs to win. You,
Be my friend.–

Orphic Hymn to the Muses

Daughters of Mnemosyne, daughters of thundering Zeus,
Pierian Muses, renowned and illustrious,
Beloved of the mortals you visit, many-shaped,
you give birth to unblemished virtue in every discipline,
You nourish the soul, you set thought aright,
as you become mistresses of the mind’s power.
Sacred and mystic rites you taught to mortals,
Cleio, Euterpe, Thaleia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polhymnia, Ourania,
mother Calliope, mighty sublime goddess.
Do come to the initiates, O goddesses, in your manifold holiness,
do bring glory and emulation that is lovely and sung by many.

Over The Temple – Gwyllm Llwydd

Thank you for visiting! More Soon.

G