Author: Gwyllm

“How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.” – William Butler Yeats

(John Duncan – Sleeping Princess)

This entry is a return. If you know me at all, you will recognize what I speak of….

This is a farewell to June, in all her brilliance, beauty and apex of the season. I have had a fire in my head, a kindling of poetry and image. Life is good, and there is wonders yet to be felt, and shared. I hope that June was as sweet for you as it was for us here at Caer Llwydd.

Here is to the rest of the wild summer, hold each moment lightly. They fly so fast.

Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
William Butler Yeats Quotes
Perfume Tree – August / Crystal Tips
Scottish Highland Tales: The Fox And The Wrens
William Butler Yeats – Poems
Perfume Tree – Warm Sun Fingers
Art: John Duncan
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William Butler Yeats Quotes:
“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.”

“Time drops in decay,
Like a candle burnt out,
And the mountains and woods
Have their day, have their day;”

“Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!”

“When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.”

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.”

“If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.”

“In dreams begin responsibility”
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Perfume Tree – August / Crystal Tips

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Scottish Highland Tales: The Fox And The Wrens

A FOX had noticed for some days a family of wrens, off which he wished to dine. He might have been satisfied with one, but he was determined to have the whole lot–father and eighteen sons,–and all so like that he could not tell one from the other, or the father from the children.

“It is no use to kill one son,” he said to himself, because the old cock will take warning and fly away with the seventeen. I wish I knew which is the old gentleman.”

He set his wits to work to find out, and one day, seeing them all threshing in a barn, he sat down to watch them; still he could not be sure.

“Now I have it,” he said; “well done the old man’s stroke! He hits true,” he cried.

“Oh!” replied the one he suspected of being the head of the family; “if you had seen my grandfather’s strokes you might have said that.”

The sly fox pounced on the cock, ate him up in a trice, and then soon caught and disposed of the eighteen sons, all flying in terror about the barn.
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William Butler Yeats – Poems

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
—

He Remembers Forgotten Beauty

When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wrought with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth;
The roses that of old time were
Woven by ladies in their hair,
The dew-cold lilies ladies bore
Through many a sacred corridor
Where such grey clouds of incense rose
That only God’s eyes did not close:
For that pale breast and lingering hand
Come from a more dream-heavy land,
A more dream-heavy hour than this;
And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
I hear white Beauty sighing, too,
For hours when all must fade like dew,
But flame on flame, and deep on deep,
Throne over throne where in half sleep,
Their swords upon their iron knees,
Brood her high lonely mysteries.
—

A Poet To His Beloved

I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams,
White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
White woman with numberless dreams,
I bring you my passionate rhyme.
—

The Hosting Of The Sidhe

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing ‘twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.
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Perfume Tree – Warm Sun Fingers

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“There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.” – William Butler Yeats
(John Duncan – Pensive)

“Fear not what is not real, never was and never will be. What is real, always was and cannot be destroyed.” – Bhagavad Gita

Krishna To Arjuna: “Man must do his duty. Do not think of the fruits, the results. ‘These are mine, those are not mine’ -do not have such thoughts. A wise man treats all alike. Anger and desire dull your intelligence. Accept pain and pleasure in the same way. A man must understand and do what is right. Everyone that is born must die. Justice is more important than human beings. Partha, give up this base faint-heartedness, arise and do your duty.”

Or words to that effect, which changed my life when I first read the Bhagavad Gita, so many years ago. Commit yourself to life, hold nothing back. This perhaps what devotion is, full committal to a path. Of course, the world is littered with what comes from this, both positive and negative. It still seems a bit much to sort out. Over the years I return to these first passages again, and again. They are beautiful, and I dive into them like the questing beast that I am.

Everything turns on what one is devoted too. Life is fed by the passion for itself. Can we really step that far back from it?

Much Love,
G
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On The Menu:
Bhagavad Gita Quotes
Maneesh De Moor – Silent Ganges
Indian Fairy Tale: Pride Goeth Before A Fall
Indian Mystical Poetry – Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo Bio
Bahramji & Maneesh de Moor – Dreamcatcher
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Bhagavad Gita Quotes:
“When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.”

“Neither in this world nor elsewhere is there any happiness in store for him who always doubts.”

“Fear not what is not real, never was and never will be. What is real, always was and cannot be destroyed.”

“A man’s own self is his friend. A man’s own self is his foe.”

“Delusion arises from anger. The mind is bewildered by delusion. Reasoning is destroyed when the mind is bewildered. One falls down when reasoning is destroyed.”

“There is neither this world nor the world beyond nor happiness for the one who doubts.”

“One who has control over the mind is tranquil in heat and cold, in pleasure and pain, and in honor and dishonor; and is ever steadfast with the Supreme Self.”

“One gradually attains tranquillity of mind by keeping the mind fully absorbed in the Self by means of a well-trained intellect, and thinking of nothing else.”

“The power of God is with you at all times; through the activities of mind, senses, breathing, and emotions; and is constantly doing all the work using you as a mere instrument.”
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Maneesh De Moor – Silent Ganges

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Indian Fairy Tale: Pride Goeth Before A Fall

In a certain village there lived ten cloth merchants, who always went about together. Once upon a time they had travelled far afield, and were returning home with a great deal of money which they had obtained by selling their wares. Now there happened to be a dense forest near their village, and this they reached early one morning. In it there lived three notorious robbers, of whose existence the traders had never heard, and while they were still in the middle of it the robbers stood before them, with swords and cudgels in their hands, and ordered them to lay down all they had. The traders had no weapons with them, and so, though they were many more in number, they had to submit them-selves to the robbers, who took away everything from them, even the very clothes they wore, and gave to each only a small loin-cloth a span in breadth and a cubit in length.

The idea that they had conquered ten men and plundered all their property, now took possession of the robbers’ minds. They seated themselves like three monarches before the men they had plundered, and ordered them to dance to them before returning home. The merchants now mourned their fate. They had lost all they had, except their loincloth, and still the robbers were not satisfied, but ordered them to dance.

There was, among the ten merchants, one who was very clever. He pondered over . calamity that had come upon him and his friends, the dance they would have to perform, and the magnificent manner in which the three robbers had seated themselves on the grass. At the same time he observed that these last had placed their weapons on the ground, in the assurance of having thoroughly cowed the traders, who were now commencing to dance. So he took the lead in the dance, and, as a song is always sung by the leader on such occasions, to which the rest keep time with hands and feet, he thus began to sing:

‘We are enty men,
They are erith men:
If each erith man,
Surround eno men
Eno man remains.
Ta, tai, tom, tadingana.”

The robbers were all uneducated, and thought that the leader was merely singing a song as usual. So it was in one sense; for the leader commenced from a distance, and had sung the song over twice before he and his companions commenced to approach the robbers. They had understood his meaning, because they had been trained in trade.

When two traders discuss the price of an article in the presence of a purchaser, they use a riddling sort of language.

“What is the price of this cloth?” one trader will ask another.

“Enty rupees,” another will reply, meaning “ten rupees.”

Thus, there is no possibility of the purchaser knowing what is meant unless he be acquainted with trade language. By the rules of this secret language erith means “three” enty means “ten,” and eno means “one.” So the leader by his song meant to hint to his fellow-traders that they were ten men, the robbers only three, that if three pounced upon each of the robbers, nine of them could hold them down, while the remaining one bound the robbers’ hands and feet.

The three thieves, glorying in their victory, and little understanding the meaning of the song and the intentions of the dancers, were proudly seated chewing betel and tobacco. Meanwhile the song was sung a third time. Ta tai tom had left the lips of the singer; and, before tadingana was out of them, the traders separated into parties of three, and each party pounced upon a thief. The remaining one–the leader himself–tore up into long narrow strips a large piece of cloth, six cubits long, and tied the hands and feet of the robbers. These were entirely humbled now, and rolled on the ground like three bags of rice!

The ten traders now took back all their property, and armed themselves with the swords and cudgels of their enemies; and when they reached their village, they often amused their friends and relatives by relating their adventure.
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Indian Mystical Poetry – Sri Aurobindo

Ocean Oneness

Silence is round me, wideness ineffable;
White birds on the ocean diving and wandering;
A soundless sea on a voiceless heaven,
Azure on azure, is mutely gazing.

Identified with silence and boundlessness
My spirit widens clasping the universe
Till all that seemed becomes the Real,
One in a mighty and single vastness.

Someone broods there nameless and bodiless,
Conscious and lonely, deathless and infinite,
And, sole in a still eternal rapture,
Gathers all things to his heart for ever.
—

Because Thou Art

Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,
My soul blind and enamoured yearns for Thee ;
It bears Thy mystic touch in all that is
And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy.

Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze
And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune :
Thy sweetness haunts my heart through Nature’s ways;
Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune.

It loves Thy body in all living things;
Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone:
The moments bring Thee on their fiery wings ;
Sight’s endless artistry is Thou alone

Time voyages with Thee upon its prow
And all the future’s passionate hope is Thou.
—

The Mother Of Dreams

Goddess supreme, Mother of Dream, by thy ivory doors when thou standest,
Who are they then that come down unto men in thy visions that troop, group upon group, down the path of the shadows slanting?
Dream after dream, they flash and they gleam with the flame of the stars still around them;
Shadows at thy side in a darkness ride where the wild fires dance, stars glow and glance and the random meteor glistens;
There are voices that cry to their kin who reply; voices sweet, at the heart they beat and ravish the soul as it listens.

What then are these lands and these golden sands and these seas more radiant than earth can imagine?
Who are those that pace by the purple waves that race to the cliff-bound floor of thy jasper shore under skies in which mystery muses,
Lapped in moonlight not of our night or plunged in sunshine that is not diurnal?
Who are they coming thy Oceans roaming with sails whose strands are not made by hands, an unearthly wind advances?
Why do they join in a mystic line with those on the sands linking hands in strange and stately dances?

Thou in the air, with a flame in thy hair, the whirl of thy wonders watching,
Holdest the night in thy ancient right, Mother divine, hyacinthine, with a girdle of beauty defended.
Sworded with fire, attracting desire, thy tenebrous kingdom thou keepest,
Starry-sweet, with the moon at thy feet, now hidden now seen the clouds between in the gloom and the drift of thy tresses.
Only to those whom thy fancy chose, O thou heart-free, is it given to see thy witchcraft and feel thy caresses.

Open the gate where thy children wait in their world of a beauty undarkened.
High-throned on a cloud, victorious, proud I have espied Maghavan ride when the armies of wind are behind him;
Food has been given for my tasting from heaven and fruit of immortal sweetness;
I have drunk wine of the kingdoms divine and have healed the change of music strange from a lyre which our hands cannot master,
Doors have swung wide in the chambers of pride where the Gods reside and the Apsaras dance in their circles faster and faster.

For thou art she whom we first can see when we pass the bounds of the mortal;
There at the gates of the heavenly states thou hast planted thy wand enchanted over the head of the Yogin waving.
From thee are the dream and the shadows that seem and the fugitive lights that delude us;
Thine is the shade in which visions are made; sped by thy hands from celestial lands come the souls that rejoice for ever.
Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass, then beyond thee we climb out of Space and Time to the peak of divine endeavour.
—

I Have A Hundred Lives

I have a hundred lives before me yet
To grasp thee in, O Spirit ethereal,
Be sure I will with heart insatiate
Pursue thee like a hunter through them all.

Thou yet shalt turn back on the eternal way
And with awakened vision watch me come
Smiling a little at errors past and lay
Thy eager hand in mine, its proper home.

Meanwhile made happy by thy happiness
I shall approach thee in things and people dear,
And in thy spirit’s motions half-possess,
Loving what thou hast loved, shall feel thee near,

Until I lay my hands on thee indeed
Somewhere among the stars, as ’twas decreed.
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Sri Aurobindo Bio
From Wikipedia: Sri Aurobindo (Bengali: শ্রী অরবিন্দ (অরবিন্দ ঘোষ) Sri Ôrobindo) (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru, and poet.[2][3] He joined the Indian movement for freedom from British rule and for a duration became one of its most important leaders,[4] before developing his own vision of human progress and spiritual evolution.

The central theme of Sri Aurobindo’s vision is the evolution of human life into life divine. Writes he:”Man is a transitional being. He is not final. The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner spirit and the logic of nature’s process.”

Sri Aurobindo synthesized Eastern and Western philosophy, religion, literature, and psychology in writings. Aurobindo was the first Indian to create a major literary corpus in English.[5] His works include philosophy; poetry; translations of and commentaries on the Vedas, Upanishads, and the Gita; plays; literary, social, political, and historical criticism; devotional works; spiritual journals and three volumes of letters. His principal philosophical writings are The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga, while his principal poetic work is Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol.
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Bahramji & Maneesh de Moor – Dreamcatcher

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“Death is as sure for that which is born, as birth is for that which is dead. Therefore grieve not for what is inevitable.” – Bhagavad Gita

Nothing is true, everything is permitted. – William S. Burroughs

In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed. – William S. Burroughs

Greetings,

I have had a pleasant evening with family, and two very nice visitors, David Heskin (one of the artist in the latest edition of The Invisible College, and Elliot Rasenick, founder and director of The Beloved Festival & other wonderful projects in the Oregon area. He brought Alex & Allyson Grey to Portland recently. We had a great time, talking about art, culture, and community. It was such a pleasant surprise, and truly made my evening. David works in partnership with his wife Aloria Weaver who is another very fine artist. Hopefully we will see more of their work in The Invisible College soon.

It has been raining off and on all day and night here since last evening. Very wet! We have had a wonderful event; We had a hatching of Baby Mantid (Mantises!) out in our garden yesterday and today. Perhaps some 250 – 500 of the little ones over the last two days emerging from the egg sack. Amazing to watch. I coaxed a couple up on my finger today. So delicate, and fierce! They stood their ground bravely, and then leapt off into the leaves. We are happy to welcome them to the garden, they keep pest down, and bring all kinds of good luck with them!

Printing shirts again, I will be running some designs on Turfing for you to look at. I am also printing some shirts for Rowan’s film, “Amour Sincere”. The final edit I think is done, and he is about to start sending it out to his contributors.

Lots of walks early in the day, gardens, flowers, and the occasional piece of art along the way. I love Portland this time of year, such beauty and greenery! There is no town quite like Portland, and there is no better neighborhood and community than the South East. We so love it here… 80) Between the people out walking, the kids setting up Tea Stands, the bicyclist, and the early gardeners out, it is quite the place.

Hope This Finds You Well!

Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:
William S. Burroughs Quotes
Coil – Egyptian Basses (by Derek Jarman)
The Drug Panic – Aleister Crowley
D.A. Levy Poems
Coil – Dark Age of Love
Art: Gwyllm Llwydd
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William S. Burroughs Quotes:

A cat’s rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.

A functioning police state needs no police.

Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo – and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way.

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say ‘I want to see the manager.’

Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

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Coil – Egyptian Basses (by Derek Jarman)

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The Drug Panic – by a London physician
First published in The English Review, July 1922

Aleister Crowley

It is a long while since I was at school, and I may have forgotten some things, but I remember well that I was taught there to beware of a certain type of fallacy called non distributio medii; and this fallacy is at the base of all the recent most baneful, most mischievous, most wasteful and most insolent legislation which we see on all hands, but nowhere more than in the matter of such follies as the Dangerous Drugs Act.

The present writer agrees entirely with the thesis expounded by a New York Specialist in the June issue of The English Review. In this matter of the Dangerous Drugs Act Parliament seems to have been inspired by ignorance made deeper by the wildest ravings of that class of newspaper which aspires to thrill its readers — if reading it can be called — with blood-curdling horrors.

And here is where the fallacy I mentioned comes in. We are all laudably busy in “cleaning up” Sin in its hydra-headed and Protean forms. Very good: we hear that a woman abuses morphine, or a man goes mad and destroys his family with an axe. We then argue that as the morphine and the axe can injure society, it must be made as difficult as possible for anyone to buy these engines of atrocity. No! We do not do so in the case of the axe, because it is obvious to everybody that there is a large class of very poor men whose livelihood would be taken away if they could not get axes.

Then why does not the same argument apply in the case of morphine? Because the public is ignorant of the existence of “a large class of very poor men” who would die or go insane if morphine were withheld from them.

Bronchitis and asthma, in particular, are extremely common among the lower classes, in consequence of exposure, bad air, and other unsanitary conditions. One of my own patients is a most brilliant exponent of electrical science, endowed with a creative genius which would have enriched the world in a thousand ways had he not been hampered all his life by spasmodic asthma. The man cannot live and work at all unless he has a supply of heroin in case he is seized by a spasm. His ill-health had prevented him amassing a fortune; he is, in fact, extremely poor. Now what is the effect of the Dangerous Drugs Act on him — and he is only one of probably 100,000 similar cases in these islands? Only this — that he must trudge round constantly to his doctor to obtain a new prescription: this means time and money which he can ill afford. Also, it might mean danger to his life, if he happened to forget his supply of the drug, and were seized with an attack; for he could hardly explain — in the violence of the paroxysm — to a chance-summoned doctor that heroin, and heroin alone, would relieve him.

Nor does the mischief end here. (It is, to begin with, infernally un-English and unsportsmanlike to spy upon professional men, the pharmacist as well as the doctor.) All prescriptions for dangerous drugs are retained by the dispenser. He can obtain drugs as he requires them from the wholesale houses, and the transfer must be reported to the Central Spy Station. Detective-inspectors then drop in at all hours on the pharmacist, weigh what he has in stock, and see if the amount dispensed tallies with the amount prescribed. Woe to the wight who cannot account for the eighth of a grain! (It is not my business, but it is very much the business of the public, to inquire into the cost of conducting this elaborate infamy.) And this microscopical meddling with reputable and responsible druggists, while the stuff is being sold all over England in wholesale quantities!

But it does not stop here, even. The spies note the quantities prescribed by each physician, and sherlock him home. The statistics show that Dr. Black had prescribed 2 ounces 3 pennyweights 1 scruple and 23/8 grains of morphia during the last month, while Dr. White has only prescribed 41/6 grains in the same period. As Dr. White happens to be a kidney, and Dr. Black a cancer, specialist, the anomaly is not so remarkable as it appears to Inspector Smellemout, who has no knowledge of medicine whatever, and cares for nothing but the pleasures of bullying and the hopes of promotion. So he goes to Dr. Black, and warns him! The D. D. Act has nothing before its eyes but a (largely imaginary) class of “addicts.” Dr. Black is suspected of selling prescriptions to people who are not in real need of the drug. In America, traps are laid for doctors. A detective, usually a “lady,” goes to the doctor with a false story of symptoms read up for the purpose from a medical book. She not improbably adds to the effect by shameless seduction; and if she gets the prescription, one way or another, the unhappy doctor is “railroaded” to jail. We have not reached that height of civilization in England as yet; but we have only to keep on going!

Now what is the effect on Dr. Black? He has been, we may suppose, established as a physician, with perhaps an appointment at a leading hospital, for the past thirty years. He has found it necessary to prescribe constantly increasing doses of morphia — as the only palliative — in hope less cases of cancer. And now an inspector who doesn’t know his toe from his tibia is sitting opposite to him, notebook in hand, browbeating him. “Do you mean to tell me that after prescribing morphia daily to Miss Grey for nearly eleven years she has not become an addict?”

And so on. 1 Of course she is an addict, as much as we ourselves are addicted to breathing — stop it for one brief hour, and death often ensues! Strange! No law about it yet, either — shameful! The upshot of the Inspector’s visit is to make Dr. Black try to prescribe less morphia. In other words, the law tries to compel him, under pain of the possible loss of his reputation or even of his diploma, to violate his oath as a physician to use his judgment and experience for his patients’ benefit.

And meanwhile, Dr. White, that good man, who prescribes so little morphia, has an even better brother, Dr. Snow White, who never prescribes it at all, but, being highly esteemed as a consultant, is often sent for in difficult cases by Continental physicians, and returns to England with a few pounds of various “Dangerous Drugs” safely bestowed and sells them discreetly at enormous prices to his exclusive clientele of “fast” or “ultra-smart” people about town.

My colleague from New York is a thousand times right to insist that the whole question is one of moral education. And what does the D. D. Act actually do? It sets at naught the moral education which no self-respecting physician or even pharmacist can have failed to acquire during his training in science. The Legislature deliberately determines to distrust the very people who are legally responsible for the physical well-being of the nation, and puts them under the thumb of the police, as if they were potential criminals. It makes a diploma waste paper. It drives the patient into the hands of the quack and the peddler of drugs.

Nobody in England — or America for that matter — seems to have the remotest idea of the enormity of public ignorance. Compulsory education has made every noodle the peer of the greatest knowers and thinkers — in his own estimation. The really educated classes have lost their prestige. The public imagines itself entitled to pronounce with authority on questions which the experts hold most debatable. Yet instead of “education” having leveled the community, knowledge has advanced so rapidly in so many directions that the specialist has been forced to specialize still further. The gap between (say) the Professor of Organic Chemistry and the yokel is vastly greater than it was in 1872. But the specialist is distrusted more and more, even in England. In America he is not only distrusted, he is hated. There is an epidemic of witch-finding, one is tempted to say. If democracy is to mean that intellectual superiority is a police offence, there seems no reason for not adopting the Bolshevik theories at once.

And there is certainly no difficulty in understanding why democracies have in the past invariably led to the extinction of the nations which adopted them. The whole essence of Evolution is to let the best man win; yet our recent theory seems to be that the best man, the “sport,” is necessarily a danger to society. The English Constitution is based upon a hierarchical principle; men are to be tested in every respect, and those who succeed are entrusted with power, while the weakest must go to the wall, as Nature intends and insists that they shall. But now, apparently with the charitable design of ensuring that none but the weakest, physically and morally, shall propagate their kind, we send our best men into a type of warfare where neither courage nor intelligence can be of the slightest avail; we make politics impossible or men of high principle or decent feeling; and we end by telling those who have risked their lives time and again in the pursuit of that knowledge which will enable us to prepare a stronger and cleaner race of men for the future that they are not to be trusted to prescribe for their own patients!

We are patient, we physicians, we warriors in an age-long battle against disease, ninety-five percent of which is the direct result of ignorance, vice, and stupidity; that is perhaps why we remain quiet under the foul and senseless insult of the Dangerous Drugs Act. But the inhibition acts in another way. Already, just as the best representatives of English life refuse to go into politics, we see that the best qualified men and women refuse to be subjected to the ignominy inseparable from the profession of teaching. Those who are already in the mire prefer to stay there, or feel that there is no way out. But they warn the newcomer against entering. Similarly, if the prestige of the pharmacist is to go, he will be forced to earn his living as he does in America by opening ice-cream-soda fountains and similar undignified methods of compensating himself for the self-respect which insane legislation has taken from him; and the medical profession will be filled by men who have no true love of knowledge or pity for humanity, but are in a hurry to put up a brass plate and push their way to the front.

A story to end! The reductio ad absurdum — pray pardon the undemocratic phrase — is given by the case of the University of ——, one of our six most prominent universities. This body ran out of its supply of cocaine; a small quantity was urgently required for research work. Application was made in due form.
It was refused.
Correspondence.
Cross-correspondence.
Counter-cross-correspondence.
Affidavits.
Files.
Dockets.
Pleas.
Cross-pleas.
Etc., etc., etc., for all the world like “a jolly chapter of Rabelais.”
The matter eventually reached the Privy Council!!!
It was refused.
More correspondence.
Cross-correspondence.
…Etc., as before.
The Scientific Research Society took up the matter on behalf of the University. More correspondence, etc. — and there the matter still is. But think of what might have happened! Imagine all those old professors solemnly sitting round their board-table sniffing cocaine in the hope of One Last Jag! And they could have sent a boy to Switzerland and got all they wanted in three days.
________________________________
D.A. Levy Poems

the bells of the Cherokee ponies

i thought they were
wind chimes
in the streets at night
with my young eyes
i looked to the east
and the distant ringing
of ghost ponies
rose from the ground

Ponies Ponies Ponies

(the young horse becomes
a funny sounding
word)

i looked to the east
seeking buddhas to
justify those bells
weeping in the darkness

The Underground Horses
are rising

Cherokee, Delaware, Huron
we will return your land to you

the young horses
will return your land to you

to purify the land
with their tears

The Underground Horses
are rising
to tell their fathers

“in the streets at night
the bells of Cherokee ponies
are weeping.”
—
himeros

she left in a whisper
without a trace

yet i remember
a last hungry kiss

her golden face
—
for a rainy day

kisses
we tried to save
pressed in books
like flowers from
a sun warmed day
only
years later to
open yellowing pages
to find those same
kisses – wilted and dry.
—
The North American Book Of The Dead
Selections From: The Burial Grounds of the Cat Nation

(portrait of a Young Man Trying to Eat the Sun)

I.
A wreath of angels around the eye to OM
opens to no light
no light and the eye opens
to a quiet place of clouds
sun moon mountains water wind
the quiet place is no thought
the quiet place is a wreath of
angels around the eye to AUM opens to ecstasy

i live in the world noise
behind all the world noise is the quiet place
when i look for the quiet place
i sometimes find a pale horse
and ride to the clouds
sun moon mountains water wind
the pale horse disappears
when i am there
i look for the dry atmosphere
and the world ocean

(AM I THERE)

i open the searchlights

(AM I THERE)

when i open the searchlights do i
bring the quiet place here

in the quiet place
roars the ocean water
the ocean is silent
a child calling is answered
with laughter is absolute silence
in the quiet place
are clouds moving
the sound of the sun
the sound of the moon
is absolute silence
in the quiet place
are clouds moving
on the mountains
is the roar of waterfalls
is the snap of a snow covered branch breaking
the explosion of the mountain not moving
is absolute silence
in the quiet place
is the wind whistling
the wind picking me up
is absolute silence
i stop here/not knowing where i can not go – YET
but go into Now
HERE I AM

the quiet place is a doorway
that opens to nothing
the return is thought
to stop is HERE I AM
the quiet place is a doorway
that opens to no time
all directions in no time
are like motions of light

[. . . ]

4.

when leaving the body
one goes to the
Lotus of a Thousand Petals
getting there one must cross
his own mountains
everyone gets there
EVENTUALLY
one leaves the body

one may leave the body by leaving
the body he writes ‘EXIT’ on his toe
he writes ‘EXIT’ on his navel
i leave by the crown of thorns
(this is the aperture of Brahma)
this is the Brahmarandhra
this is the way of the Tibetan monk
leaving the body
before
i tried to leave my body
by breaking down the walls
for seven years
i tried to leave my body
by breaking down the walls
when i found the door
i stuck one foot Out
YAAAAAAAAAHH

WHAT IS THIS
NOISE NOISE NOISE
thousands of birds singing
thousands of teakettles ringing
thousands of radio signals JAMMED on one channel
NOW i know where the door is
i struggle with my fear
each day i throw a spoonful
out the window
when leaving the body
one dies
but how many kinds of death are there?

when leaving the body
one does not look back
when leaving the body
one goes to the
Lotus of a Thousand Petals
getting there one must cross
his own mountains
Everyone gets there
EVENTUALLY

5.

(this is the time of the great light)
if there is a dark time
i will hide the body
in a world place
if waves of darkness sweep the beaches
of the world place seeking to carry
THE LIGHT away like sand
i will carry the light
to the Quiet Place
(this is the time of the great light)

THE LIGHT
is beyond inquisition
INVISIBLE
it illuminates the would be executioner
THE LIGHT moves
like the wind
moves clouds sun moon mountains water
moves like birds to an internal island
that is found with the eye
one can reach the island by going there
(this is the time of the great light)
the great light carries everything
one finds the great light in dreams
if one carries the great light
from the deep sleep
into the waking dream
one becomes a man
no one sees men
men are hidden by lies

the great men enter the dreams
of others
with the great light
others become great men
the great men move on like
the wind moves
clouds sun moon mountains water

(this is the time of the great light)

the great light is everywhere
one finds the great light
by opening the eye
one opens the eye with love

________________________________
Coil – Dark Age of Love

________________________________
(Gwyllm Llwydd – The Divine Sarah)

(Gwyllm Llwydd – Passion Play)


L S D

(life light love, seed sun son, death daughter dna)

Hold in reverence
This great Symbol of Transformation
And the whole world comes to you

Comes to you without harm, and
Dwells in commonwealth
Dwells in the union of heaven and earth

Offer music…..
Food…..
Wine…..
And the passing guest will stay for a while

But the molecular message
In its passage through the mouth
Is without flavor

It cannot be seen
It cannot be heard
It cannot be exhausted by use

It remains

Tim Leary
______________

Greetings,

I have been at a loss for words as of late, being involved in several projects at once. It is often hard for me to put down what I am thinking about and sometimes I pull up to the computer and cannot find the words, or drift off on the internet for way to long.

Well, here are some thoughts. Going off to the our favourite plant store (Portland Nursery) I spied a hummingbird sitting on an evergreen branch close to the entrance. I had Mary stop, and we stood there entranced for 10 minutes. We were no more than three feet away. I stopped an older lady, who was stumbling about, and she was taken with the moment, thanking us profusely for sharing. A couple of days before, we had one of our local hummingbirds who frequent our garden most days, attacking a Jay, to get it away from where her nest was. She was fierce, driving the Jay away from her babies. The attack went on for an hour in the late afternoon. Mary and I kept an eye out for the results. We have not seen her since, but our timing might be off.

I hope to have a few more postings shortly, I have 4 more stacked up and needing a bit of work on them. I have been trying to be away from the computer as much as possible, and re-engaging with the world.

This entry is based around poems from Allen Ginsberg, the writings of Ralph Metzner and the sonic beauty of Max Richter. I hope you enjoy it!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

On The Menu:
Max Richter – November
The Random Quotes
Varieties of Conscious Perception – Ralph Metzner
Allen Ginsberg: Three Poems/Shifting Consciousness
Max Richter – The Nature of Daylight
Art: Gwyllm Llwydd
___________________________________

Max Richter – November

____________________________________

The Random Quotes:
Kin Hubbard: “There’s no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn’t tell you about it?”
Don Marquis: “When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: ‘Whose?’”
Will Rogers: “Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else.”
Soren Kierkegaard: “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Michael Fry and T. Lewis: “The more things change, the more they remain… insane.”
Fran Lebowitz: “In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.”
Ambrose Bierce: “Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.”
____________________________________

Varieties of Conscious Perception
Ralph Metzner

This article is an excerpt from Andrew Beath’s book Consciousness In Action, the Power of Beauty, love and Courage in a Violent Time (Lantern Press, 2005)

Introduction

Ralph Metzner is a psychotherapist and professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. A consciousness researcher and philosopher, he has been involved in America’s social change movement since teaching at Harvard with Tim Leary and Ram Das, in the sixties.

Some of Ralph’s work describes and maps human consciousness. He addresses the importance of altered states and expanded consciousness to guide our soul in finding its life purpose. In the course of our conversations I asked Ralph to discuss how an individual’s childhood development and socialization might affect her emotions and intellectual perception, thereby determining the level of her consciousness.

In addition, I was curious to know Ralph’s perspective about the concept of Eros as the underlying attractor, one could say glue, that brings diverse elements together in the process of creative expression, while building Creation’s ever deepening complexity. We also discussed various meditation practices that might result in altered states of consciousness. He told me:

If you believe and experience, as I do, what the Buddhists say, then even a hermit in a cave in the Himalayas or a monk in a monastery could be doing activism, working at other levels of consciousness to bring about a change from within.

I’m very involved in, and drawn to, the Buddhist perspective. When I teach my classes about the states of consciousness and the comparison of the philosophies of the East and the West, I show that the Eastern conception of consciousness is profoundly different from ours. In the West we say we have consciousness, and then we have a personal unconscious, of course. We try to analyze the unconscious in order to become more conscious.

In the East the language is completely different. They say the default mode of being in life is unconscious, literally unknowing, blindness, symbolized by a blind person. Consciousness is possible but only if you practice meditation or yoga. In the Buddhist Wheel of Life, Wheel of Samsara, at the hub of the wheel are the three animals. They symbolize craving, aversion, and unconsciousness. What they are saying is that the wheel of life keeps turning because of these three factors.

Interestingly enough it’s like Freud: you have unconscious craving and aggression as the core dynamics of the psyche. So you practice disciplines of consciousness and those have the effect of liberating us from the wheel. Then we’re less tightly gripped by the unfolding processes that keep churning along.

The Soul’s Vision

A distinction one can make is between practices that bring about certain expanded states, temporarily, and more lasting transformation. In traditions like Buddhism there are those that emphasize doing the practices and not paying so much attention to unusual experiences – like visions or feelings of bliss and merging that may come up – because they can be distractions. What you’re after is a more permanent transformation of your total way of being, not just a state of oneness every now and again.

There are other traditions, such as Tibetan Buddhism and also mystical practices, as well as shamanic traditions where the seeking of visionary states for the non-ordinary knowledge or understanding that they can provide is definitely cultivated. Then there is always the question of yes, okay, you have a visionary state, you have a vision, but then you have to apply it, otherwise you’re just diddling around.

If you want your life to have passion, traditional people would say you’re seeking a vision, but a vision of what? The answer is: a vision of your life. What is my life really about? What am I doing here? So I would say, yes, seek a vision for yourself, then for yourself in relationship with others. Not only because society needs visions, also because each individual needs a vision. Actually I would go even further than that. Each individual has a vision. The soul has a vision. You choose to come into form. You, the soul, the spirit, chooses to incarnate. So what is the vision of your soul? Why did you come here? Was it to be a teacher, a healer, an artist, a builder?

The vision of the oneness, the diversity and the magnificence of life is a similar core experience for many people, and much of its beauty comes from the incredible diversity, the complexity and the differentiation. Thomas Berry says there are three principles in the universe: one is the unity, the communion; another is the subjectivity, the consciousness aspect; the third is differentiation, the multiplicity and diversity.

The Intention of Expanded States

We are all vulnerable to being thrown off center, and yet there is the possibility of recovering and coming back to center, of remembering who we are, remembering intention. So intention and centering are key concepts, in a strategic sense, of trying to maintain a particular consciousness and, by extension, conscious activism.

We’re referring not just to an altered state, but an expanded state. There are also contracted states, or disassociated states – addictions, compulsions, psychosis, and so forth. The altered state in itself is not necessarily related to a positive transformation unless the proper intention is there. For example, a ritual can encourage positive social change, but this is not necessarily so. It depends on the intention behind the ritual, the purpose. The Nazis were masters of rituals of destruction, rituals of domination; and so is the Pentagon. What is the intention of the ritual? That’s what I want to know before I consider it to be of benefit to greater awareness.

I would characterize the positive aspect of all these possibilities as expanding your perspective beyond that of the egocentric self. We know people can expand, and we also know that some become very spacey. They may be expanded into an awareness of spacey things, but not integrated – not related to something in particular.

Mapping Consciousness

Conceptually, one distinction that I make is between states of consciousness, levels of consciousness, and stages of consciousness development. These are actually three different notions. The idea of an ordinary state of consciousness and an altered state can be followed as a kind of paradigm. Familiar states, like sleeping and dreaming and waking, as well as meditative states, ecstatic states, drug induced states, psychic states, pathological states, mystical states, religious experiences or visionary states of consciousness all last for a particular limited time, which might be short or long.

In each you’re functioning in a different way. Your perception is different. Your feelings, your thinking is different, possibly expanded. It lasts a specific time period, which might be only two minutes, but that two minutes might be life changing. Such experiences can have a profound impact on a person’s life in terms of changing their set of priorities and values. Or they can have an impact that is more subtle and interior and not necessarily externally visible.

Levels of consciousness refer more to what are said to be permanent structural features of consciousness for human beings. Of course we live in a context of many other beings besides humans but I am referring to humans with those levels.

Then there are other aspects that all the traditional teachings call higher levels, not in terms of higher value but higher in frequency. Like the subtle bodies, or the levels of soul, or of spirit that we may have access to in, say, meditative states and that we also go into when we die. Shamanism calls it the spirit world and, of course, that world is inhabited by other beings as well. But we are human and come to all of it through human consciousness.

My professional work and personal experience have confirmed that the whole planet has an astral level or dimension. The astral body, or emotional body as some call it, is the body in which we function in the astral world, just like the physical body is the body in which we function in the physical world. That concept refers to the whole world, landscapes, creatures, beings, non-humans and every other being.

Unity and Diversity

The notion of unity is tricky to work with because relatedness and Eros and connectedness always imply an “other.” Sometimes people say, “There is really no separation between you and me,” and so forth. That kind of language can be confusing. You can recognize differences and still feel connected. In fact to perceive a connection, a relation, implies the perception of an “other,” different from self, doesn’t it?

There can be states of consciousness, temporary states, where you dip into that unity of consciousness, nirvana, or whatever name you’d like to use, where there is no differentiation, no form, no nothing. But as soon as you have one single thought, much less say something or do something, you’re in the realm of multiplicity, not just duality but also actual multiplicity. In terms of personal development I lean more towards saying, “Well yes, there are mystical states of oneness. I value them and love them, but they are not states where you can stay. As soon as you start to do something you come down and you’re in the world of multiplicity.”

Jung had a notion of “wholeness,” or “undividedness,” as he called it. I like wholeness because it means that all the different parts of oneself are included as a goal of personal development. It is also open-ended because it allows for you to know parts of yourself that you don’t yet know.

For example, if I’m in a state of oneness at the moment, then I don’t feel anger; in fact it’s hard for me to even imagine feeling angry with anyone. But I know that in my ordinary life I’m going to get angry again if I’m confronted with something that is outrageous and that is a threat. I’m going to mobilize rage to defend myself or my family. In this way I would be able to understand myself as a being that has different kinds of reactions according to the circumstances. I want to become as conscious of those potential reactions as possible.

Personal Perception Creates One’s Worldview

You have ways of understanding, of thinking, ways of behaving and perceiving reality that you learn as you grow up in society. You have a worldview. You have perceptions, social skills, and professional skills. That’s all part of your equipment. You learn those. In psychotherapy we work a lot with helping people free themselves from entanglement of these conditioned patterns of reaction and interaction that may have been appropriate at an earlier stage of life, or perhaps in another level of evolution – personal or collective – but have become counterproductive and inappropriate.

When threatened, it is appropriate to mobilize a tremendous amount of energy to either attack or flee. When not threatened, that same energy is wildly inappropriate and destructive. Consider righteous indignation. I might be righteously indignant about something that is being done to somebody else, although I’m not actually threatened. Is that an appropriate reaction? Expanded consciousness allows me to understand that if it’s happening to them, it’s also happening to me. If I see somebody beating up a defenseless person in the street, I would want to intervene but, hopefully, I would be able to intervene without rage.

People will often say in therapy things like “love is letting go of fear,” or “you just have to get over your fear” and that kind of thing. Then people feel badly because they can’t let go of their fear. I no longer say that. I no longer say you can get rid of all of your fears or your capacity for fear.

Primal fear and primal rage are basic evolutionary reactions that we share with all animal life. They are designed for protection. You can’t, you don’t want to get rid of them. There is no way that you can, nor would it be desirable. You wouldn’t survive if you didn’t have the capacity to mobilize rage-energy when attacked. It’s something that just happens and it’s over as soon as it’s over.

There are other reactions that are secondary reactions, overlays, and neurotic fears that are not appropriate anymore. Rage or blame that is based on judgments and delusion-created cravings. Those we definitely want to get rid of. So we don’t, we can’t, free ourselves from the evolutionary part of our being. That comes from having a biological body that has evolved on this planet. It is survival instinct. Wholeness would imply that you maintain that physical-mammal body in an integrated way so it doesn’t dominate you and it doesn’t spill over into your interpersonal relations. Then you don’t function as a predator in your everyday life.

Eros and the Web of Life

We need a relational worldview in which the systemic interrelatedness of everything, which this theory of conscious activism calls Eros, is the prime mythic image. The web of life would be another image of it. I often recall a woman I know who is a conscious activist, Claire Cummings. She does a lot of work with Native American issues, and she said that what Native Americans would like from people are three things, all beginning with the letter “r”: relatedness, respect and reciprocity. And in a way that is a good model for anyone, human beings, animals or spirits. All three of those “r” words are Eros concepts.

We could call that a communion of subjects. As Thomas Berry says, we’re moving from a world in which we have a collection of objects to a world in which we have a communion of subjects. These ideas fit with the notion of the web of life, which I work with a lot. It’s the web of interconnectedness, which is a kind of a systems view. It’s also the most ancient view of indigenous and shamanic people and similar to the Anglo Saxons’ concepts of “Wyrd.” It’s a web in which the basic principle is connection, the same as Eros and relatedness. It’s impossible to ever really be outside of this web.

There are also levels of consciousness involved. I had a dream once when I was starting to work with the notion of the web of life. The dream indicated that this web exists on many levels. It became clear to me that you can think of the web of life at a biological or genetic level where all life has the same DNA coding process, at least for life on this planet. So single cells, trees, animals, plants, everything shares this code. All of these things come from original single-celled organisms. This creates a very direct biological interconnectedness.

But the web of life also exists at the emotional level, and that would be the dimension we call love, and it would also be O. E. Wilson’s notion of “biophilia,” an instinct. He says all life has an instinct to love other biological living forms –biophilia. That’s the feeling that we have when we love trees, love the ocean, or love the rainforest. It’s not sexual love but it’s love in an embracing sense.

You could say that even beyond the mental there is a level of unity or oneness that goes beyond “web,” because “web” is still a concept, after all, a metaphor, a form. If you think of something like essence, or soul, or spirit, then you’re talking about formless consciousness. There are formless qualities of consciousness where there is a sense of union that can be felt, experienced, known and understood. Yet it is unable to be represented in any kind of conceptual form.

Our ancestors had a much closer connection to the natural world. That’s the issue that fascinates me. Historically, how has it come about that we live in a world where we get so disconnected as a culture? The current interest in shamanism, working with herbal medicine, psychoactive herbs and other substances, as well as the current focus on organic approaches to farming and nutrition all have the quality of bringing about a more direct experiential connection with nature—not rejecting technology, necessarily, being conscious of how technology can be useful, but also aware of how it can separate us in our thinking.

Some people say the hunter-gatherer cultures have something to teach us. They do not mean that we have to go back to hunting to get our food; however, there are some attitudes and perceptions that hunter-gatherer societies have developed that would be of great value to recapture. Among other things, I’m referring to a sense of respect, sometimes bordering on reverence, from humans toward non-humans, especially the animals that these people hunt and kill for food or to provide clothing. That way of being is more in context with consciousness of the web of interrelatedness.

If you’re in a web, you have to respect the others who are in the web, even for your own self-interest. It doesn’t make any sense otherwise. You can only really get into these toxic postures of domination and superiority if you think of yourself as an individual who has to struggle for survival against other individuals.
____________________________________

Allen Ginsberg: Three Poems/Shifting Consciousness

LYSERGIC ACID

It is a multiple million eyed monster
it is hidden in all its elephants and selves
it hummeth in the electric typewriter
it is electricity connected to itself, if it hath wires
it is a vast Spiderweb
and I am on the last millionth infinite tentacle of the spiderweb,
a worrier
lost, separated, a worm, a thought, a self
one of the millions of skeletons of China
one of the particular mistakes
I allen Ginsberg a separate consciousness
I who want to be God
I who want to hear the infinite minutest vibration of eternal
harmony
I who wait trembling my destruction by that aethereal music
in the fire
I who hate God and give him a name
I who make mistakes on the eternal typewriter
I who am Doomed
But at the far end of the universe the million eyed Spyder that
hath no name
spinneth of itself endlessly
the monster that is no monster approaches with apples, perfume,
railroads, television, skulls
a universe that eats and drinks itself
blood from my skull
Tibetan creature with hairy breast and Zodiac on my stomach
this sacrificial victim unable to have a good time
—–

MESCALINE

Rotting Ginsberg, I stared in the mirror naked today
I noticed the old skull, I’m getting balder
my pate gleams in the kitchen light under thin hair
like the skull of some monk in old catacombs lighted by
a guard with flashlight
followed by a mob of tourists
so there is death
my kitten mews, and looks into the closet
Boito sings on the phonograph tonight his ancient song of
angels
Antinous bust in brown still gazing down from
my wall
a light burst from God’s delicate hand sends down a wooden
dove to the calm virgin
Beato Angelico’s universe
the cat’s gone mad and scraowls around the floor
What happens when the death gong hits rotting ginsberg on
the head
what universe do I enter
death death death death death the cat’s at rest
are we ever free of — rotting ginsberg
Then let it decay, thank God I know
thank who
thank who
Thank you, O lord, beyond my eye
the path must lead somewhere
the path
the path
thru the rotting ship dump, thru the Angelico orgies
—

WALES VISITATION

White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—

Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
the wisdom of earthly relations,
of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
orchards of mind language manifest human,
of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny
bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs—

Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower
& network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness
clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—
Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!

All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind
undulating on mossy hills
a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
on the mountainside
whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
in granitic undertow down—
and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
and lifted the grasses an instant in balance
and lifted the lambs to hold still
and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave

A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,
a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,
the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean
tonned with cloud-hang,
—Heaven balanced on a grassblade.
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,
One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,
one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies,
one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering
to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—

No imperfection in the budded mountain,
Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
grass shimmers green
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,
horses dance in the warm rain,
tree-lined canals network live farmland,
blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills,
pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern—

Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air,
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
myriad-formed—
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells dropped
doubled down the stem trembling antennae,
& look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—
I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,
smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,
trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,
lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,

Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart
Calling our Presence together
The great secret is no secret
Senses fit the winds,
Visible is visible,
rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,
gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,
rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,
breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,
Heaven breath and my own symmetric
Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,
Sounds of Aleph and Aum
through forests of gristle,
my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal,
All Albion one.

What did I notice? Particulars! The
vision of the great One is myriad—
smoke curls upward from ashtray,
house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
starless
upward in motion with wet wind.

July 29, 1967 (LSD)—August 3, 1967 (London)
__________________

Max Richter – The Nature of Daylight

From Lao Tse:
In this world, there is nothing softer or thinner than water. But to compel the hard and unyielding, it has no equal. That the weak overcomes the strong, that the hard gives way to the gentle — this everyone knows. Yet no one acts accordingly.

Prepare for the difficult while it is still easy. Deal with the big while it is still small. Difficult undertakings have always started with what’s easy. Great undertakings always started with what is small. Therefore the sage never strives for the great, And thereby the great is achieved.
______________

Life Bubbles:
When the lack of inspiration strikes, and believe me it does… I end up looking at the entries I have lined up, sigh and walk away. Well, I have walked back, and I am letting this one go at this point.

I would like to point out that the two illustrations for this post are from the new Invisible College… where there is a new Shameless Promotional Product Posting where you can get yourself a very stylish T-Shirt(s)… we have 2 new designs!

Mary and I have been working away on the old print shop, and now have a work bench for new projects, etc.

Life slips towards the Solstice!

Bright Blessings!
Gwyllm
___________________________

On The Menu:
Bill Hicks – Manifesto
The Bothy Band – Old Hag You Have Killed Me
Joachim Du Bellay Poems
The Bothy Band – Tiocfaidh an Samhradh
Art: Gwyllm Llwydd

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Bill Hicks – Manifesto

THE COUNTS OF THE NETHERWORLD

MANIFESTO

The time has come to air the Voice of Reason,
In a world gone mad, adrift on banal seas,
For all who feel that lies have had their season,
And whose Hearts Cry Out, instead, for Honesty,

For all the weary souls grown bored with dreaming,
Whose thirst for Knowledge and for Beauty goes unslaked,
For all who long to wake from what is seeming,
And know what’s Real, and what is Real, to embrace,

For all who’ve sat and watched with mounting horror,
Evil’s reign upon this world grow ever-clear,
For all who’ve sought in vain, Emancipators,
Wielding Swords of Truth, and laughing without fear.

For all who’ve ever asked themselves in reference to the world, “Is it just me, or does this suck?” Take Heart!

It does suck, but you are not alone in thinking so. Behold the Counts!
Beacons encouraging the spark in every mind to join them in illuminating the Netherworld of our Collective Unconscious. Sleeper Awaken to the cry of players as they call for the Voice of Reason in every mind to come forth in choir and sing hymns to Beauty and Truth.
________________

The Bothy Band – Old Hag You Have Killed Me

________________

Joachim Du Bellay Poems

L’Olive augmentée: 1)

For that famous crown I feel no longing,
That sacred wreath, gold-haired Apollo wore;
Nor that of the god in India, they adore:
A simple hat round my head goes circling.

Still less do I wish for the palm they bring,
That soft branch adorning Cyprian shore:
One alone, that Athens honours more,
I wish for, which Heaven has in its granting.

O happy bough, that the wise Goddess
Chose to keep, to grace her sacred altar,
And honour her, the bough that she held dear!

Then, let mind grant me the skilfulness
To sing of you, for now I hope to render
You the equal of immortal laurel, here!

Note: The olive is taken to be an emblem, as Petrarch adopted the laurel as an emblem of Laura, and may refer to his lady’s name.
—

‘D’amour, de grace, et de haulte valeur’

(L’Olive augmentée: 2)

With love, with grace and with noble value
The divine fires were bound, and the sky
Clothed with a precious mantle, on high,
Of ardent rays of every tint and hue.

All was filled with beauty, goodness too,
The tranquil sea, the gracious winds that vie,
When she was born here, where we sigh,
She to whom all Earth’s honour does accrue.

She took her colour from the lily white,
Her hair from gold, her lips from the rose,
And from the sun her eyes glowing bright.

The heavens employed their liberality
And in her spirit their seed did enclose,
From the gods her name won immortality.
—

‘Loyre fameux, qui ta petite source’

(L’Olive augmentée: 3)

Famed Loire, who swell your little source
With a host of streams and mighty rivers,
And who, from afar, send your clear waters
Down to the Ocean, in your lively course,

Your royal head lifts itself with force
Among the finest of all the others,
Like a bull among his lesser brothers,
Though envious Po in his anger roars.

Command then the gentlest of Naiads
To leave their deep and humid quarters,
With you, whom their paternal flood I name,

To celebrate with joyous aubades,
She, who you, and your flowing daughters,
Has deified with her eternal fame.
__________________________

The Bothy Band – Tiocfaidh an Samhradh

__________________________

Sweet like the Lord of the cedars and hyssops,
I piss toward the dusky skies, very high and very far,
With the assent of the great heliotropes. – Rimbaud

Wonder

Wonder,
A garden among the flames!

My heart can take on any form:
A meadow for gazelles,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka’ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah,
The scrolls of the Quran.

My creed is Love;
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is my belief,
My faith.

– Ibn Arabi

Welcome to this edition of Turfing… Here is what we have going for this one…
On The Menu:
Thoughts On Ira Cohen
The Links
Invasion Of The Thunderbolt Pagoda
Trembling Blue Stars – Cold colours
Ira Cohen Poetry..
Trembling Blue Stars – All Eternal Things
Photos: Ira Cohen
Additional Poetry: Ibn Arabi
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Thoughts On Ira Cohen

I sit here, listening to The Majoon Traveler going over in my mind about the man that was Ira Cohen. (I have had this entry sitting for almost a month, digesting his passing.) I never met Ira, but there were connections through his time in Kathmandu, and his publishing with John Chick on the Bardo Matrix Imprint. I had met John when I was first 15 years old in Boulder when John Chick’s “Bardo Matrix” Light Shows and Dance Concerts fueled my early lysergic visions. Later on, I stumbled across Ira’s mylar photography, poetry and more in the late(r) 60′s.

On my desktop, in my email files sat a message to him for 6 months regarding an interview for Issue 7 of The Invisible College. The week I was going to send it, Ira passed. Once more my hesitation led to a severed path… I had admired his works so much that I was intimidated in contacting him. Well, so it goes.

Ira’s work was wide ranging. From editing and producing magazines, poetry books, photography (oh the innovations!) to experimental films, he covered more ground than most in his life. He was beloved by his friends, lovers of poetry and photography, and I would think the gods. I will not go into his life story, his childhood etc., that has been covered more than adequately by others. I offer up my admiration for his work(s), and the artist intent personified by the way he embraced life. Supposedly he did not consider himself a Beat, though many thought of him that way. Perhaps he saw the path as the Bohemian, which would fit with his wide ranging talents.

No matter how much of his works that I find, there is always more to turn up. I hope someone puts together his poems, his photographs, and his various films into packages that more people can dip into. His works need to have a wider audience now, not that he seemed to ever care. It was in the doing, and with that I can identify.

Here is to Ira, who transcended all sorts of boundaries in his life. He touched many with his works, and I am pleased to say he touched my heart as well.

There are people who touch your heart but who you never meet, Ira you were one such person. Thank you for the gifts of your art and passion. You were one of the great originals!

Good voyage Ira, I hope to catch you on the flip side…!

Blessings,
Gwyllm
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The Links:
Ira Cohen’s Obituary
A Memorial Page For Ira…
Oldest Identified Ritual…
In The Mind Of An Infant…
Inattentive Super Heroes?
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One of Ira’s films. He produced this in conjunction with Angus Maclise…

Invasion Of The Thunderbolt Pagoda

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The Real made me contemplate the light of the veils as the star of strong backing rose, and He said to me, “Do you know how many veils I have veiled you with?”
“No”, I replied.
He said, “With seventy veils.
Even if you raise them you will not see Me, and if you do not raise them you will not see Me.”
“If you raise them you will see Me and if you do not raise them you will see Me.”
“Take care of burning yourself!”
“You are My sight, so have faith. You are My Face, so veil yourself.”

— Ibn ‘Arabī, Contemplation of the Light of the Veils
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Trembling Blue Stars – Cold colours

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Ira Cohen Poetry..

Imagine Jean Cocteau

Imagine Jean Cocteau in the lobby
holding a torch
Imagine a trained dog act,
a Rock and Roll Band
Imagine I am Curly of the Three Stooges
disguised as Wm Shakespeare
Imagine that I’m the cousin of the Mayor
of New York or the King of Nepal
(I didn’t say Napoleon!)
Imagine what it is like to be in the glare
of hot lights when you are longing for dark
corners
Imagine the Ghost Patrol, the Tribal
Orchestra –
Imagine an elephant playing a harmonica
or someone weighing out bones on the edge
of the desert in Afghanistan
Imagine that these poems are recorded moments
of temporary sanity
Imagine that the clock was just turned back –
or forwards — a hundred years instead of an hour
Let us pretend that we have no place to go,
that we are here in the Cosmic Hotel,
that our bags are packed & that we have one hour
to checkout time
Imagine whatever you will but know that it is not
imagination but experience which makes poetry,
and that behind every image,
behind every word there is something
I am trying to tell you,
something that really happened.

An Act of Jeopardy
for Garcia Lorca

A star of blood you fell
from the point of the hypodermic
singing of fabulous beasts &
spitting out the sex of vowels
Your poems explode in the mouth
like torrents of sperm on a night
full of zebras & bootheels
Your ghost still cruses the river-
fronts of midnight assignations
in a world of dead sailors carrying
armfuls of flowers in search of
your unmarked grave
Your body no sanctuary for bees,
Death was your lover in a rain of
broken obelisks & rotting orchids
In the tangled rose of a single heartbeat
I offer you the shadow of a double
profile,
two heads held together at the bridge
of the nose by a nail of opium
smoke
in the long night’s dreaming
& memory of water poured between
glasses
In my mailbox I find a letter from
a dead man & know that for every
shadow given
one is taken away
Yet subtraction is only a special form of
addition and implies a world of hidden
intentions below a horizon of lips
thin as your fingernail sprouting
mysteries in the earth
The ace of spades dealt from the bottom
of the deck severs the hand which
retrieves it & the eyes of Beauty
sewn together peer over a black lace fan
in the vulgar sunlight of a Spanish
morning without horses
The Belt of Orion is loosened
before you as you remove the silver
fingerstalls from your mummy hands &
kneel to plunder the nightsky in a shower of
bitter diamonds.
(Somewhere under a blanket someone weeps
for a lover.)
Peace to your soul
& to your empty shoes
in the dark closets of
kings with no feet!!!

From The Moroccan Journal – 1987
My heart feels like an uncut diamond
Though it is still the same, it is not the same
Someone speaks of a bridge to be built from Tangier
to Algeciras or is it Gibraltar?
“Yes & then a highway to the stars or more likely
an elevator to the Underworld,” says Yellow Turban
To White Jellaba as the exhaust fumes from the bus
engulf them, leaving behind not even a single
shadow.
Is that Mel Clay in a white jacket turning the corner?
No, it is a figment of my imagination escaped from the
asylum.
Is that Ian Sommerville walking backwards up the street
as if pulled by a giant magnet?
No, that is Wm. Burroughs making electricity
from dead cats.
Is that Tatiana glistening on Maxiton?
No, that is the sun dancing in the sugar bowl.
Is that Marc Schelfer wavering on the cliffedge?
No, it is a promontory in the wind of time
about to fall in the sea.
Is that Beethoven’s 9th Symphony being played
up the street?
No, it is the sound of the breadwagons
rumbling over cobblestones
Is that George Andrews with two girls in hand
looking for bread?
No, it is an unidentified flying object about to land.
Is that One-eyed Mose hanging by his heels?
No, that is the hanged man inventing the Taro.
Are the dead really so fascinated by lovemaking?
Yes, that is how they travel.
Is that Irving in short pants looking for trouble?
No, that’s me unable to stop thinking.
Is that Kenneth Halliwell looking for Joe Orton?
Is that Jane Bowles looking for Sherifa, Rosalind looking
for her baby, Alfred searching for his lost hair?
Is that the wig of it all, the patched robe of my brain,
the wind talking to itself?
Brion is dead and Yacoubi is dead, and I am a not unhappy
ghost remembering everything, the warp & woof of memories,
her yellow slip, her shaved cunt, her idiot child.
Dream shuttle makes me exist everywhere at once.
The blind beggars led by children keep coming.
“They all have many houses in the Casbah,”
chant the unbelievers sucking on sugar.
Words keep coming back like Bezezel for tits, Lictcheen
for oranges, like Mina, like Fatima, like Driss Berrada
dropping his trousers for an injection in the middle
of his shop.
The trunk is full of old sepia postcards,
barebreasted girls smoking hookahs etcetera.
We speak of the cataplana, the mist which obscures
even the cielo you cannot even see the hand in front
of your face.
We embrace, he says he thought of me only yesterday,
he says there are always nine such men who look like us
in the world and that we are the tenth.
We speak of the gold filets in the sky over Moulay Absalom.
The garbage men in rubber boots go thru the Socco pushing
wheeled drums of collected garbage.
An unveiled woman wobbles out of a taxi and heads home
before sunrise.
Paul couldn’t believe that was a Karma Street,
but I will never forget it.
And Billy Batman, who made the best hash in the world,
he dropped a loaded pistol in Kabul, shot himself in the balls,
took some heroin and lay down to die.
Now I must get up from my table in the allnight Café Central.
No more Dr. Nadal, no more window with red crosses & red
crescents.
The water thrown from buckets runs across the café floors
& over the sidewalks & I drop a dirham into the hand
of a blind beggar singing in the dark on the American stairs

From Anais Nin’s “A Spy in the House of Love” The women wear fireflies in their hair, but the fireflies stop shining when they go to sleep so now and then the women had to rub the fire- flies to keep them awake.”

Atlantis Express
Let’s take a silver train underground
to the back streets of Atlantis
thru the corrugated iron roots &
then to the peak itself, to the
saddle of the last ridge past strewn
boulders,
finally meandering thru cascading snow
wearing miner’s hats on the perpendicular
dark night &
going up to the edge of the Southern Cross
where we reach at last the pure white
glistening glaciers &
begin to chant over bones in rags
of Scorpio
Armless in the sticky substance how could
they ever have had a chance?
Permission will not be required
only poems of blood offered to
the memory of TREE
It is not ice which is eternal
but the fury of the absolute
separating the void from the spirit
of man,
uplifting like life when it is used
against itself,
that is, Radical Love — & again, we
are reduced to living beings
Caught by the instant
we are taken away
We live in the imprint of the flame
& we are helmeted within the internal
blackness
where the ray begins its passage
across the indignant sky
Vain clouds uncaring in a tangle of
crossbeams
culminate in the hermaphroditic mirror
of the epileptic dancer
asleep
And during sleep
the light is joined
to the light
It is all a matter of getting up
and then to abandon the pain
It is there that the journey beings
in the self generated flame of
Spontaneous Combustion
(Swayambhunath)
The main line running counter
to the triangle comprising the
MAELSTROM, the DOLDROMS & the
SARGASSO SEA where sleeping Atlanteans
dream forever,
this line, this battlefield of the ages,
crosses the divide of my most wandering
backdoor heart.
We will all have to go
if we want to reappear
in the rhythm of the ritual
It’s the wheel of fools spinning
over my bed
If I put my left foot first
they will find a way to call me
by that name
tracking tremors
like glyphs
on drunken walls
in the negative palace
just before taking eave
of my senses
the white powder dissolves
in the sunlight
& making noise like a peacock
he hops on one foot up the mountain.

Song to Nothing
And surely we will die without memory
coming to cold in the shadow of space
& if it isn’t too late
for the star to love you
spraying the sky w/ whispers
attuned to galaxies hungry for flame
And if the tongue of night sings
of Albino winos
till the morning light shafts
the doorway
then surely we will die tonight
faceless at the White
Gate
sharing the smoke
w/ ancient shapes in future garb
and you stand somewhere there
on the other side
feeding on the pain of dreamlessness
Wherefrom the misty morning of
white shadows
& the unresisting need to destroy?

Samael, Samael, I beg it may be forgiven
that they may be driven
out of the black into the white
Only let the dazzle remain
for gamblers to surprise,
the strategic diamond, the throne
of compressed bone
in the unshored dark
where only light can forgive
& your mind is singed
Embers of echoes in the vastness
disguise the yearning to burn
blind eyes
in arrogant displays of feeling,
Running wild these beasts will feast
on the newborn kind
for surely we will die tonight
unless we learn to ignore
what the others live for
on the other side of morning
& the Skin of Nothing left by the same
summer
masks the faceless wanderer

O let it happen,
this weird to discover
the shape of Beauty in everything
extreme
for surely we will die tonight
whether we will or whether we
dream
O Samael, forgive the dreamer
forgive the dream

The Song of Nothing is your lullabye.

If my heart were made of bread
I would wait at least one moment
before breaking the sunrise –
The Arm of the Dorje

Sunyata Song to the Winter Sun

There was much wind
but I new not how to call it,
a roomful of strangers,
how familiar the feeling,
how cold it must be barefoot
at the fountain when the sun goes down,
how the brown people love the blond baby
The white horse which looks out
from the wall suggests a journey
I once might have taken,
a covered memory reeking of sulphur
Words, they can go anywhere,
can they tell me where I come from,
the name of my planet,
the empty space which was my home?
The condemned murderer longs for
a firing squad, knows
where to put the shadows
you keep inside
Between hands there are worlds
of ashes & thunder,
silent collisions of meaning,
the utter sugar of nights
taken for granted
They say the sun rises every day,
that sleep is incidental
I say myself
& so I look for your face at dawn
rising over my grief, over
the twice told terrain, violet w/ciphers,
Suffused w/ yr eternal smile
I would offer my flesh to your tiger,
turn your stone wheels w/ my water
Longing for the peaks the stars say
it will be clear
Let us meet in the sky then
till we come closer down here.

The Day of the Basilisk The Wayfarer’s Song

It started in the dark room
thinking that night had fallen at dawn
Then arising we glued red eyes
into the dry sockets of a dead bird
its belly full of dirty cotton
Then across the paddies & out of
the town
where familiar figures of Kleist &
Eschenbach
rise from the road in eddies of dust
The voice of the Changeling names the day,
the day of the Basilisk, usurped
from the tyrant’s quest to know
how not to maim the Gilded Hind of
self knowledge
Licchavi sirens shortchanged of a renaissance
spread out cracked wooden arms,
split skulls of haunting beauty, smiling
Mud murtis made by nature distract
Goethean comments fearful of what is hidden
while the delicate head of Mahadev
whittled by the wind
still seals the lingam in the ancient temple
We look with Medusa’s eyes
at the first born fruits,
the full breasts of the river
where there is no infidelity

The golden larva w/ the royal face of Narayan,
hold it by its tail & call it by its name
Narayan, Narayan
it will dance for you & shake its head,
it lives only on air ‘we do not know if
it is alive or if it is dead, so gilded
its beauty
The face of Vishnu etches a dream of
ancient seas tinted w/ fallen light
Your face is everywhere
Your glory rings out over the peaks
capped w/ flame
Your shadow is enclosed within your shadow
You watch yourself falling
While falling you watch yourself looking down
You want to pick up the Tamang corpse
no one will touch
You call the children of darkness,
refute the wasted years of salt
poured into furrows
You see the thread needled to the hem of Night
betrayed by the shinbone of Day
where the fear is burned away
You look w/ basilisk eyes
turning the day to stone,
touched & transfigured
by the human, by the changing,
by the eternal, the always repeating
Alone.

Dhulikel/Panauti

Insomnia On Duke Ellington Boulevard
July 14, Breakfast w/myself at the Olympia Diner, 106th & B’way
Fell asleep around 4 AM
w/ the TV on
Van Heflin & Barbara Stanwyck
enter my disturbed sleep
Sometimes the only way out
is to die, but happily
someone else escapes,
takes to the road, goes on
traveling.
I’m up at seven, go to the post office.,
send two Cuban alligators
to Brussels,
the read Gabriel’s column in NEWSDAY
about the real meaning of the closet,
feel nauseous, order a hardboiled egg
which come w/out a shell
mashed in a cup
Is my heart, too, yearning
for its dying hour?
Please bring me one order
of cool snow!

*

If I could remember just a fraction
of what I said on the telephone
If he could take his clothes off
and sit on the banks of the Ganga
If she could see the profile of Caliban
in the smoke over the oilfieds
If we could just take off & go to Madagascar
If they would stop killing each other
and wake up tomorrow morning
w/ a new vision
I would stick my head in a printing press
and you could read tomorrow’s paper today:

EXTRA! EXTRA!
Read all about it
Poets’ brains prove to be useful!

P.S. Sometimes when I pick up my pen
it leaks gold all over the tablecloth.

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O lover – whosoever you are – know that the veils between you and your beloved – whosoever he might be – are nothing save your halt with things, not the things themselves; as said by the one who hasn’t tasted the flavour of realties. You have halted with things because of the shortcoming of your perception; that is, lack of penetration, expressed as the veil; and the veil is nonexistence and nonexistence is nothingness. Thus there is no veil, If the veils were true, then who got veiled from you, you should also have been in veil from him.

— Ibn ‘Arabī, The book of veils.
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Trembling Blue Stars – All Eternal Things

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Blessings Ira!