I grabbed this off of: The Obama Experiment
Dream Land
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
-Tao Te Ching
Russian Summer
A bit of different with this one…
From a quick view of Psilocybin mushrooms, to the automatic writings of Austin Osman Spare, the artist that defined much of the latter days of the OGD (though not a member) and associated magickal thought , to the dream poetry of Cymric writer Arthur Symons. Photographs were found on a Russian site. Russia’s forest and country side are an enchantment. I hope before I shed this mortal coil that I can travel across Russia some summer.
On The Home Side:
What I have been reading – Quicksilver – Part 1 of the Baroque Cycle I would suggest you read the reviews. Wonderful work. Neal Stephenson is the author. I have been transported back in time to a world of monumental discovery and adventure, mixed just right. I want to thank Leanna for turning me on to these. I read it it daily for about a half hour, and explore a world gone by but still influencing the present. Not to missed.
What we have been watching – HogFather Not to be missed. Loved this film. It explores the winter celebrations of Discworld, very similar to Solstice and Christmas, but with a delicious twist. Terry Pratchett is a hero in our household, not only for his writing and Humanistic stance, but for how he is dealing with early onset Alzheimer’s. His works continue to inspire many people, and I have to say, HogFather is truly wonderful. You can rent it from Netflix, and if I were you (which I am not) I would rent it right away.
And with all that said, enjoy.
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
A wee bit of a documentary on Psilocybin…
A history of Playing Cards – Illustrations: Ukrainian Face Cards
Anathema of Zos ~ The Sermon to the Hypocrites
Arthur Symons in Dreamland…Poetry
Photographs – Summer Across Russia
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A wee bit of a documentary on psilocybin…
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A history of Playing Cards – Illustrations: Ukrainian Face Cards
c820AD
Cards are invented in China, during the Tang dynasty. The first suits are in fact increasing denominations of currency (coins, strings of coins, myriads of strings, and tens of myriads), which suggests they may have been derived from actual money. Alternative theories say they may have been a paper adaptation of dominoes, or dice.
Early 14th century
Probable first arrival of cards in Europe, in Italy. They have travelled from China via India and the Middle East, and specifically with the Mamluks of Egypt.
1371
First documentary evidence of cards in Spain; in a Catalan rhyming dictionary, of all places.
1377
First detailed description of playing cards in Europe, by a Swiss monk named John of Rheinfelden.
1380
Suddenly, they’re everywhere – mentions of cards crop up as far afield as Florence, Basle, Regensburg, Brabant, Paris and Barcelona.
1392-93
Charles or Charbot Poupart, the treasurer of the household of Charles VI of France, records payment for the painting of three sets of cards.
1440
Johann Gutenberg invents the movable-type press. Improvements in printing technology mean that cards can now be mass-produced.
1462
Earliest reference to cards in Britain. This and most of the mentions thereafter are bannings, fulminations against the evils of gambling, or notices of arrest for so doing.
1480
The four suits now commonly seen worldwide are first used in France, adapted from the German suits of hearts, bells, leaves, and acorns.
Late 1400s
The ace, or one, which had always had the lowest value in cards, starts to gain a special significance. Ace becomes high.
Early 1500s
Card-makers at Rouen hit upon the distinctive card illustrations that we still use today.
1520
First mention of the game of triomphe in Spain. Now obsolete, the game spawned many games such as euchre, whist and bridge.
1674
Publication of Charles Cotton’s Compleat Gamester, one of the first attempts to lay down authoritative rules for many card and dice games.
1685
The first paper money is issued in North America – as IOUs on the backs of used playing cards – by Jacques de Meulles, the French governor of Quebec.
1711
First systematic tax on packs of cards introduced.
1742
Publication of Edmund Hoyle’s Short Treatise on the Game of Whist. The pamphlet goes through several editions and becomes one of the bestselling publications of the 18th century.
1793
Post-revolutionary French authorities ban the depictions of royalty on playing cards. Kings, queens and jacks became liberties, equalities and fraternities. This stands for 12 years until Napoleon comes to power and tells them not to be so silly.
1834
First documented game of poker on a Mississippi river steamer. The game, a refinement of the Persian game “as nas”, takes its name from a similar French game, “poque”.
Mid-1800s
Card names abbreviated and placed in the corner for the first time. Partly for this reason, the “knave” (whose abbreviation is the same as for “king”) now becomes the “jack”.
1857
First appearance of the joker.
1868
Bezique is introduced to England. The rules, as published, are unclear; panic in the streets.
Early 20th century
Canasta is invented in South America. It becomes globally popular after WW2.
1909
In a New York club, ET Baker invents gin rummy. It catches on in Hollywood, and subsequently the world, in the 1940s.
1914-18
Pontoon is the game of choice among soldiers in first world war trenches.
1925
Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, on a cruise from San Francisco to Havana, perfects the rules of contract bridge, which becomes the most popular card game in the west.
1935
Card manufacturers attempt to introduce a fifth suit (not black, not red, but green) called the “eagles” in the US and “crowns” in the UK. It is a dismal failure.
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~ Anathema of Zos ~ The Sermon to the Hypocrites
An Automatic Writing By Austin Osman Spare
Hostile to self-torment, the vain excuses called devotion, Zos satisfied the habit by speaking loudly unto his Self. And at one time, returning to familiar consciousness, he was vexed to notice interested hearers-a rabble of involuntary mendicants, pariahs, whoremongers, adulterers, distended bellies, and the prevalent sick-grotesques that obtain in civilisations. His irritation was much, yet still they pestered him, saying: Master, we would learn of these things! Teach us Religion!
And seeing, with chagrin, the hopeful multitude of Believers, he went down into the Valley of Stys, prejudiced against them as Followers. And when he was ennuye, he opened his mouth in derision, saying:-
O, ye whose future is in other hands! This familiarity is permitted not of thy-but of my impotence. Know me as Zos the Goatherd, saviour of myself and of those things I have not yet regretted. Unbidden ye listen’d to my soliloquy. Endure then my Anathema.
Foul feeders! Slipped, are ye, on your own excrement? Parasites! Having made the world lousy, imagine ye are of significance to Heaven?
Desiring to learn-think ye to escape hurt in the rape of your ignorance? For of what I put in, far more than innocence shall come out! Labouring not the harvest of my weakness, shall I your moral-fed desires satisfy?
I, who enjoy my body with unweary tread, would rather pack with wolves than enter your pest-houses.
Sensation . . Nutrition . . . Mastication . . . . Procreation . . . ! This is your blind-worm cycle. Ye have made a curiously bloody world for love in desire. Shall nothing change except through your accusing diet?
In that ye are cannibals, what meat should I offer? Having eaten of your dead selves savoured with every filth, ye now raven to glutton of my mind’s motion?
In your conflict ye have obtained . . . ? Ye who believe your procreation is ultimate are the sweepings of creation manifest, returning again to early simplicity to hunger, to become, and realise-ye are not yet. Ye have muddled time and ego. Think ye to curb the semen sentimentally? Ye deny sexuality with tinsel ethics, live by slaughter, pray to greater idiots-that all things may be possible to ye who are impossible.
For ye desire saviours useless to pleasure.
Verily, far easier for madmen to enter Heaven than moral Lepers. Of what difference is Life or Death? Of what difference is dream or reality? Know ye nothing further than you own stench? Know ye what ye think ye know for certain? Fain would I be silent. Yet too tolerant is this Sun that cometh up to behold me, and my weakness comes of my dissatisfaction of you solicit . . . . but be ye damned before obtaining fresh exuses of me!
Cursed are the resurrectionists! Is there only body and soul?
Is there nothing beyond entity? No purchase beyond sense and desire of God than this blasting and devouring swarm ye are?
Oh, ye favoured of your own excuses, guffaw between bites! Heaven is indifferent toyour salvation or catastrophe. Your curveless crookedness maketh ye fallow for a queer fatality! What! I to aid your self-deception, ameliorate your decaying bodies, preserve your lamentable apotheosis of self?
The sword-thrust not salve-I bring!
Am I your swineherd, though I shepherd unto goats? My pleasure does not obtain among vermin with vain ideas-with hopes and fears of absurd significance. Not yet am I overweary of myself. Not ye shall I palliate abomination, for in ye I behold your parents and the stigmata of foul feeding.
In this ribald intoxication of hypocrisy, this monument of swindlers’ littlenesses, where is the mystic symposium, the hierarchy of necromancers that was?
Honest was Sodom! your theology is a slime-pit of gibberish become ethics. In your world, where ignorance and deceit constitute felicity, everything ends miserably-besmirched with fratricidal blood.
Seekers of salvation? Salvation of your sick digestion; crippled beliefs: Convalescent desires. Your borrowed precepts and prayers-a stench unto all good nostrils!
Unworthy of a soul-your metamorphosis is laborious of morbid rebirth to give habitance to the shabby sentiments, the ugly familiarities, the calligraphic pandemonium-a world of abundance acquired of greed. Thus are ye outcasts! Ye habitate dung-heaps; your glorious palaces are hospitals set amid cemeteries. Ye breathe gay-heartedly within this cess-pit? Ye obtain of half-desires, bent persuasions, of threats, of promises made hideous by vituperatious righteousness! Can you realise of Heaven when it exists without?
Believing without associating ye are spurious and know not the way of virtue. There is no virtue in truth, nor truth in righteousness. Law becomes of desire’s necessity. Corrupt is the teacher, for they who speak have only spent words to give.
Believe or blaspheme! Do ye not speak from between your thighs?
To believe or unbelieve is the question. Verily, if you believe of the least-ye needs must thrive all things. Ye are of all things, of all knowledge, and, belike, will youor stupidity to further self-misery!
Your wish? Your heaven? I say your desire is women. Your potential desire a brothel.
Ah, ye who fear suffering, who among ye has courage to assault the cloudy enemies of creeds, of the stomach’s pious hopes?
I blaspheme your commandments, to provoke and enjoy your bark, your teeth grinding!
Know ye what ye want? What ye ask? Know ye virtue from maniacal muttering? Sin from folly? Desiring a teacher, who among ye are worthy to learn?
Brutally shall I teach the gospel of soul-suicide, of contraception, not preservation and procreation.
Fools! Ye have made vital the belief the Ego is eternal,, fulfilling a purpose not lost to you.
All things become of desire; the legs to the fish; the wings to the reptile. Thus was your soul begotten.
Hear, O vermin!
Man has willed Man!
Your desires shall become flesh, your dreams reality and no fear shall alter it one whit.
Hence do I travel ye into the incarnating abortions-the aberratons, the horrors without sex, for ye are worthless to offer Heaven new sexualities.
Once in this world I enjoyed laughter-when I remembered the value I gave the contemptible; the significance of my selfish fears; the absurd vanity of my hopes; the sorry righteousness called I.
And you?
Certainly not befitting are tears of blood, nor laughter of gods.
Ye do not even look like MEN but the strange spawn of some forgotten ridicule.
Lost among the illusions begat of duality-are these the differentiations ye make for future entity to ride your bestial self? Millions of times have ye had re-birth and many more times will ye again suffer existence.
Ye are of things distressed, living down the truths ye made. Loosing only from my overflow, perchance I teach ye to learn of yourselves? In my becoming shall the hungry satisfy of my good and evil? I strive me neither, and confide subsequent to the event.
Know my purpose: To be a stranger unto myself, the enemy of truth.
Uncertain of what ye believe, belike ye half-desire? But believe ye this, serving your dialectics:-
Subscribing only to self-love, the outcroppings of my hatred now speak. Further, to ventilate my own health, I scoff at your puerile dignitaries’ absurd moral clothes and bovine faith in a fortuitous and gluttonous future!
Dogs, devouring your own vomit! Cursed are ye all! Throwbacks, adulterers, sycophants, corpse devourers, pilferers and medicine swallowers! Think ye Heaven is an infirmary?
Ye know not pleasure. In your sleep lusts, feeble violence and sickly morale, ye are more contemptible than the beasts ye feed for food.
I detest your Mammon. Disease partakes of your wealth. Having acquired, ye know not how to spend.
Ye are good murderers only.
Empty of cosmos are they who hunger after righteousness. Already are the merciful spent. Extinct are the pure in heart. Governed are the meek and of Heaven earn similar disgust. Your society is a veneered barbarity. Ye are precocious primitives. Where is your success other than through hatred?
There is no good understanding in your world-this bloody transition by procreation and butchery.
Of necessity ye hate, and love your neighbor by devouring.
The prophets are nauseating and should be persecuted. Objects of ridicule, their deeds cannot live through their tenets. Actions are the crierion, then how can ye speak other than lies?
Love is cursed. Your desire is your God and execration. Ye shall be judged or your appetite.
Around me I see your configuration-again a swine from the herd. A repulsive object of charity! The curse is pronounce; for ye are slime and sweat-born, homicidally reared. And again shall your fathers call to the help of women. Ye vainly labour at a rotten Kingdom of Good and Evil. I say that Heaven is catholic-and none shall enter with susceptibility of either.
Cursed are ye who shall be persecuted for my sake. For I say I am Convention entire, excessively evil, perverted and nowhere good-for ye.
Whosoever would be with me is neither much of me nor of himself enough.
Zos tired, but loathing his hearers too much, he again reviled them saying:-
Worm-ridden jackals! Still would ye feast on my vomit? Whosoever follows me becomes his own enemy; for in that day my exigency shall be his ruin.
Go labour! Fulfil the disgust of becoming yourself, of discovering your beliefs, and thus acquire virtue. Let your good be accidental; thus escape gratitude and it sorry vainglory, for the wrath of Heaven is heavy on easy self-indulgence.
In your desire to create a world, do unto others as you would-when sufficiently courageous.
To cast aside, not save, I come. Inexorably towards myself; to smash the law, to make havoc of the charlatans, the quacks, the swankers and brawling salvationists with their word-tawdry phantasmagoria; to disillusion and awaken every fear of your natural, rapacious selves.
Living the most contemptible and generating everything beastly, are ye so vain of your excuse to expect other than the worst of your imagining?
Honesty is unvoiced! And I warn you to make holocaust of your saints, your excuses: these flatulent bellowings of your ignorance. Only then could I assure your lurking desire-easy remission of your bowdlerised sins.
Criminals of folly? Ye but sin against self.
There is no sin for those of Heaven’s delight. I would ye resist not nor exploit your evil: such is of fear, and somnambulism is born of hypocrisy.
In pleasure Heaven shall break every law before this Earth shall pass away. Thus if I possessed, my goodness towards ye would be volcanic.
He who is lawless is free. Necessity and time are conventional phenomena.
Without hypocrisy or fear ye could do as ye wish. Whosoever, therefore, shall break the precept or live its transgression shall have relativity of Heaven. For unless your righteousness exist not, ye shall not pleasure freely and creatively. In so much as ye sin against doctrine, so shall your imagination be required in becoming.
It has been said without wit: “Thou shalt not kill.” Among beasts man lives supremely-on his own kind. Teeth and claws are no longer sufficient accessory to appetite. Is this world’s worst reality more vicious than human behaviour?
I suggest to your inbred love of moral gesture to unravel the actual from the dream.
Rejoice ye! The law-makers shall have the ugly destiny of becoming ubject. Whatsoever is ordained is superseded-to make equilibrium of this consciousness rapport with hypocrisy.
Could ye be arbitrary? Belief foreshadows its inversion. Overrun with forgotten desires and struggling truths, ye are their victim in the dying and begetting law.
The way of Heaven is a purpose-anterior to and not induced by thought. Desire, other than by the act, shall in no wise obtain: Therefore believe symbolically or with caution.
Between men and women having that desire there is no adultery. Spend the large lust and when ye are satiated ye shall pass on to something fresh. In this polite day it has become cleaner to fornicate by the wish than to enact.
Offend not your body no be so stupid as to let your body offend ye. How shall it serve ye to reproach your duality? Let your oath be in earnest; though better to communicate by the living act than by the word.
This God-this cockatrice-is a projection of your imbecile apprehensions, your bald grossness and madhouse vanities. Your love is born of fear; but far better to hate than further deception.
I would make your way difficult. Give and take of all men indiscriminately.
I know your love and hate. Inquire of red diet. Within your stomach is civil war.
Only in Self-love is procreative will.
What now! Shall I attempt wisdom by words? Alphabetic truths with legerdemain grammar? There is no spoken truth that is not past-more wisely forgotten.
Shall I scrawl slippery paradox with mad calligraphy? Words, mere words! I exist in a wordless world, without yesterday nor to-morrow- beyond becoming.
All conceivableness procures of time and space. Hence I spit on your tatterdemalion ethics, mouldering proverbs, priestly inarticulations and delirious pulpit jargon. This alone I give ye as safe commandments in your pestilent schisms.
Better is it to go without than to borrow. Finer far to take than beg. From Puberty till Death realise “Self” in all. There is no greater virtue than good nourishment. Feed from the udder, and if the milk be Sour, feed on . . . Human nature is the worst possible!
Once I lived among ye. From self-decency now I habitate the waste places, a willing outcast; associate of goats, cleaner far, more honest than men.
Within this heterogenousness of difference, reality is hard to realise; evacuation is difficult.
These spiritualists are living sepulchres. What has decayed should perish decently.
Cursed are they who supplicate. Gods are with ye yet. Therefore let ye who pray acquire this manner:-
O Self my God, foreign is thy name except in blasphemy, for I am thy iconoclast. I cast thy bread upon the waters, for I myself am meat enough. Hidden in the labyrinth of the Alphabet is my sacred name, the Sigil of all things unknown. On Earth my kingdom is Eternity of Desire. My wish incarnates in the belief and becomes flesh, for, I am the Lijving Truth. Heaven is ecstacy; my consciousness changing and acquiring association. May I have courage to take from my own superabundance. Let me forget righteousness. Free me of mrals. Lead me into temptation of myself, for I am a tottering kingdom of good and evil.
May worth be acquired through those things I have pleasured.
May my trespass be worthy.
Give me the death of my soul. Intoxicate me with self-love. Teach me to sustain its freedom; for I am sufficiently Hell. Let me sin against the small beliefs.-Amen.
Concluding his conjunction, Zos said:-
Again, O sleep-walkers, beggars and sufferers, born of the stomach; unlucky men to whom happiness is necessary!
Ye are insufficient to live alone, not yet mature enough to sin against the law and still desire women.
Other than damnation I know no magic to satisfy your wishes; for ye believe one thing, desire another, speak unlike, act differently and obtain the living value.
Assuredly inclination towards new faculties springs from this bastardy!
Social only to the truths convenient to your courage, yet again beasts shall be planted.
Shall I speak of that unique intensity without form? Know ye the ecstasy within? The pleasure between ego and self?
At that time of ecstasy there is no thought of others; there is No Thought. Thither I go and none may lead.
Sans women-your love is anathema!
For me, there is no way but my way. Therefore, go ye your way-none shall lead ye to walk towards yourselves. Let your pleasures be as sunsets, honest . . bloody . . . grotesque!
Was the original purpose the thorough enjoyment of multitudinous self, for ecstasy? These infinite ramifications of consciousness in entity, associating by mouth, sex, and sense!
Has the besetting of sex become utter wretchedness-repetition made necessary of your scotomy?
O bloody-mouthed! Shall I again entertain ye with a little understanding? An introspection of cannibalism in the shambles of diet-the variating murder against the ancestral? Is there no food beyond corpse?
Your murder and hypocrisy must pass before ye are uplifted to a world where slaughter is unknown.
Thus, with a clean mouth, I say unto ye, I live by bread alone. Sleep is competent prayer. All morality is beastly.
Alas, there has been a great failure. Man is dead. Only women remain.
With tonque in cheek I would say: “Follow me! That ye realise what is hidden in all suffering. I would make your self-mortification voluntary, your wincing courageous.”
Still will ye be with me? Salutation to all suicides!
With a yawn Zos wearied and fell asleep.
In time the stench awoke him-for he had slept amidst the troughs- and he observed that the crowd were no longer with him-that only swine remained. And he guffawed and spake thus: “Not yet have I lost relationship and am thereby nearly asphyxiated! Caught up am I in the toils of sentiment, the moral hallucinations within the ebb and flow of hopes and fears?
Shall age alone transmute desire? Not yet have I disentangled illusion from reality: for I know not men from swine, dreams from reality; or whether I did speak only unto myself. Neither know I to whom my anathema would be the more impressionable . . . .
My insensible soliloquy s eaten as revelation! What I spake with hard strived conceit to increase enterprise brings forth only swinish snorts. Water is not alone in finding its level.
I have not me tragedy, no, not in this life! Yet, whether I have spewed their doctrines upon the tables of the Law or into the troughs, at least I have not cast away the flesh of dreams.
And turning towards his light, Zos said: This my will, O Thou Glorious Sun. I am weary of my snakes descending-making slush.
Farewell antithesis. I have suffered. All is paid.
Let me go forth to recreate my sleep.
Here Ends this Book
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Russian Summer – 2
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If a country is governed with tolerance,
the people are comfortable and honest.
If a country is governed with repression,
the people are depressed and crafty.
When the will to power is in charge,
the higher the ideals, the lower the results.
Try to make people happy,
and you lay the groundwork for misery.
Try to make people moral,
and you lay the groundwork for vice.
Thus the Master is content
to serve as an example
and not to impose her will.
She is pointed, but doesn’t pierce.
Straightforward, but supple.
Radiant, but easy on the eyes.
-Tao Te Ching
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Arthur Symons in Dreamland…Poetry
At Fontainebleau
It was a day of sun and rain,
Uncertain as a childs swift moods;
And I shall never spend again
So blithe a day among the woods.
Was it because the Gods were pleased
That they were awful in our eyes,
Whom we in very deed appeased
With barley-cakes of sacrifice?
The forest knew her and was glad,
And laughed for very joy to know
Her child was with her; then, grown sad,
She wept, because her child must go.
And Alice, like a little Faun,
Went leaping over rocks and ferns,
Coursing the shadow-race from dawn
Until the twilight-flock returns.
And she would spy and she would capture
The shyest flower that lit the grass;
The joy I had to watch her rapture
Was keen as even her rapture was.
The forest knew her and was glad,
And laughed and wept for joy and woe.
This was the welcome that she had
Among the woods of Fontainebleau.
—
The Turning Dervish
Stars in the heavens turn,
I worship like a star,
And in its footsteps learn
Where peace and wisdom are.
Man crawls as a worm crawls;
Till dust with dust he lies,
A crooked line he scrawls
Between the earth and skies.
Yet God, having ordained
The course of star and sun,
No creature hath constrained
A meaner course to run.
I, by his lesson taught,
Imaging his design,
Have diligently wrought
Motion to be divine.
I turn until my sense,
Dizzied with waves of air,
Spins to a point intense,
And spires and centres there.
There, motionless in speed,
I drink that flaming peace,
Which in the heavens doth feed
The stars with bright increase.
Some spirit in me doth move
Through ways of light untrod,
Till, with excessive love,
I drown, and am in God.
—
Indian Meditation
Where shall this self at last find happiness?
O Soul, only in nothingness.
Does not the Earth suffice to its own needs?
And what am I but one of the Earths weeds?
All things have been and all things shall go on
Before me and when I am gone;
This self that cries out for eternity
Is what shall pass in me:
The tree remains, the leaf falls from the tree.
I would be as the leaf, I would be lost
In the identity and death of frost,
Rather than draw the sap of the trees strength
And for the trees sake be cast off at length.
To be is homage unto being; cease
To be, and be at peace,
If it be peace for self to have forgot
Even that it is not.
—
The Ecstasy
What is this reverence in extreme delight
That waits upon my kisses as they storm,
Vehemently, this height
Of steep and inaccessible delight;
And seems with newer ecstasy to warm
Their slackening ardour, and invite,
From nearer heaven, the swarm
Of hiving stars with mortal sweetness down?
Never before
Have I endured an exaltation
So exquisite in anguish, and so sore
In promise and possession of full peace.
Cease not, O nevermore
Cease,
To lift my joy, as upon windy wings,
Into that infinite ascension, where,
In baths of glittering air,
It finds a heaven and like an angel sings.
Heaven waits above,
There where the clouds a fastnesses of love
Lift earth into the skies;
And I have seen the glim of the gates,
And twice or thrice
Climbed half the difficult way,
Only to say
Heaven waits,
Only to fall away from paradise.
But now, O what is this
Mysterious and uncapturable, bliss
That I have known, yet seems to be
Simple as breath, and easy as a smile,
And older than the earth?
Now but a little while
This ultimate ecstasy
Has parted from its birth,
Now but a little while been wholly mine,
Yet am I utterly possessed
By the delicious tyrant and divine
Child, this importunate guess.
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Russian Summer – 3
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Making Magick…
Akashic Fountain – Ira Cohen
This entry came about from the Earth Rites List. (nods below) It got me thinking, and as usual, instead of a poem, it has turned into a multi-hour extravaganza of searching for photo’s, pictures, poems, article, music, video… argh.
I could go on and on about the selections today, but I will let you go through it. Larger than I wanted, smaller than I hoped, this entry touches on two pivotal points amongst the galaxies swirling in my cranium. I hope you find the beauty here that I was searching for tonight. This Entry is dedicated to Ira Cohen, and indeed features much of his work.
Much Love,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
The One And Only Link at the top of the page
Memories of a Free Festival – David Bowie
Making Magic – Peter Gorman
Links Of Interest
Frog Poison Trial
High Magick – The Poetry And Images of Ira Cohen
Ira Cohen Bio
Ira Cohen – Song To Nothing
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The One And Only Link at the top of the page….:
I love this link. I often overload people with stuff to read, but this is a little gem of an article. Copy the addy and spread this one about, okay?
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Kinda a throw back for me, but this is a unique live recording from 1969 I had never heard. I think of the Festivals then, and now. Back then, they were often free….
Memories of a Free Festival – David Bowie
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(Thanks to Don Ford for the tip in this direction – See Video Below)
Making Magic
By Peter Gorman
-from OMNI July 1993
The night air in the backwater lowlands of the Peruvian Amazon was thick with the incessant buzzing of insects. Overhead bats flew, their shapes silhoutted by a half moon rising behind the forest across the Rio Lobo. Though the rainy season had begun, the river was still near the low point of the year, and great gnarled tree trunks, swept from the banks during the last flood season, stood out against the water like monstrous sculptures in the pale light. From beyond the jungle clearing of the tiny Matses Indian puebla of San Juan came the howling of a distant band of monkeys and the melancholy cry of the pheasant-like paujil.
In the camp, a handful of Matses children played our flashlights into the village trees, while their fathers combed the branches and nearby brush, hunting for a dow-kietl, the frog that secretes sapo, a vital element in the Matses pharmacopoeia. (Although the word sapo means “toad” in Spanish, the extract comes from a frog) The Matses limited command of Spanish doesn’t draw a distinction between the two.) The men imitated the frog’s mating call, a low, guttural bark, as they moved, and the women nearby giggled at the sound. I was suprised that the dow-kiet!s didn’t respond.
The Matses are a small, seminomadic, hunting-gathering tribe who live in the remote jungle along the Rio Yavari, on the border of Peru and Brazil. Unlike other tribes in the region, they possess only rudimentary weaving and ceramics skills, they have no formal religion, no ceremony or dance, and they produce nothing for trade. What they do is hunt – with bows and arrows, spears, clubs, and occasionally shotguns when they can get shells. Theirs is the harsh world of the lowland forests and swamps, a world where malaria, yellow fever, and venomous snakes keep mortality rates high. To survive, the matses have become masters of the natural history of the flora and fauna of the region.
They know the habits and cycles of the animals that share their land, they’ve studied the plant life that surrounds them, and they’ve learned to see the jungle as their ally. For the Matses the earth is a benevolent ti-ta, or mother, who provides for all their needs. Neighboring tribes say the Matses can move like the wind and talk with the animals. They say the Matses know the jungle’s secrets. Sapo is one of them.
I had come to Peru to collect dow-kiet! Specimens for researchers at the American Museum of Natural History, for whom I’ve collected Matses artifacts – mostly throwaway things like used leaf baskets and broken arrows – and the Fidia Research Institute for the Neurosciences in Rome. My reports on the uses of sapo had sparked interest and curiosity among scientists who were eager to see a specimen of the frog that produces the unusual material, in part because of the extraodinary experience it produced in me and in part because of my description of it’s myriad of uses. I was eager to see the dow-kiet! As well, because although I’d seen sapo used and had myself, I had never actually seen the frog that produces it.
That Western science look an interest in sapo is encouraging: Until recently, most researchers have dismissed the natural medicines of indigenous groups like the Matses. Fortunately, that attitute is changing, but with the loss of an average of one tribe a year in Amazonia alone – to acculturation, disease, or loss of their forest homes – the plant and animal medicines of these peoples are disappearing faster than they can be studied.
The Matses are one of the tribes currently at risk. During the eight years I’ve been visiting their camps, both missionary and military contact have been steadily increasing, and they’re quickly acculturating to a new lifestyle. Camps that planted no more than two or three crops to supplement their diet of game and wild foods just a few years ago now plant a dozen or more. And where most Matses had only a handful of manufactured things when I first met them – some clothing, a few metal pots, a machete, and perhaps and old shotgun – in some caps the men now work for loggers, and the sound of chain saws fills the air. At San Juan, the most accessible camp on the Lobo, most of the Matses not only have new Western clothing, they have begun to refer to Matses who live deep in the jungle as animales.
This is a very different group from the first Matses I ran into in 1984. It was my second trip to Peruvian Amazonia – I’d fallen in love with the jungle on my first trip – and I was studying food gathering and plant identification with my guide, Moises, a former military man who specialized in jungle survival. We had been working on a small river called the Auchyako for about a week when we ran into local hunters who said they had seen signs that a family of Matses had moved into the area. Moises, excited by the news, said we should make an attempt to meet them.
I was easily sold on the idea: so, hoping they would make contact, we hiked three days into the jungle and made a camp. Two days later, a young Matses hunter carrying a bow and arrows, his mouth tattooed and his face adorned with what looked like cat whiskers, came into our camp and borrowed our gun.
When he returned later in the day, he was carrying two large wounded monkeys in palm-leaf baskets he carried from his forehead with templines. Clinging to his hair was a baby monkey the offspring of one of the adults. The hunter returned our gun, left one of the monkeys, and then disappeared into to forest. We followed him back to his camp and watched from a distance as he gave the remaining adult to a women who began to roast it over an open fire, oblivious to its cries. The baby monkey he brought to a young woman who was nursing a child of her own. Without hesitation, she took the monkey and allowed it to nurse at her free breast. Those dual images represented a combination of cruelty and compassion I’d never imagined and taught me more about the reaslity of the jungle than anything I had previosuly experienced. More than that, those images compelled me to return to the Matses again and again.
I first met Pablo in 1986 on my third trip to the Amazon. Moises and I had flown over the dense Peruvian jungle from Iquitos to the Rio Lobo, borrowed a small boat, and made our way to his camp. Pablo was Moises closest friend among the Matses, an adept hunter who fiercely resisted acculturation. The villiage, several days upriver and much more remote than San Juan, was home to Pablo, his four wives, their 22 children, and his brother Alberto, who had two wives and six children. Each wife had her own hut, so there were several in the puebla. When we arrived, we were invited to climb the steep and muddy riverbank to the Puebla. There, Pablo’s main wife, Ma Shu, served us a meal of cold roast sloth and yucca.
After dinner, Pablo produced an old brown beer bottle and a hollow reed tube. From the bottle he poured a find green powder into his hand and worked it into one end of the tube. Alberto put the other end of the tube to his nose and Pablo blew the powder into his nostrils. They repeated the process several times. Moises explained that the powder was nu-nu and that Matses hunters used it to have visions of where to hunt. He said that after the visions they would go to the place they had seen and wait for the animals in the vision to appear. I told Moises he was dreaming, but he insisted that was what happened and pressed Pablo to give me some. A few minutes later, the tube was put to my nose. When The nu-nu hit, it seemed to explode inside my face. It burnt my nose and I began to choke up a wretched green phlegm. But the pain quickly subsided and I closed my eyes. Out of the blackness I began to have visions of animals–tapir, monkey, wild boar–that I saw more clearly than my limited experience with them should
have allowed. Then suddenly the boars stampeded in front of me. As I watched them thunder past my field of vision, several began to fall. Moments later, the visions faded, and a pleasant spit of drunkenness washed over me.
Moises asked what I saw and whether I recognized the place where the vision happened. I told him it looked like the place where we’d eaten lunch earlier in the day. He asked what time it was in the vision, and I told him that the sun was shining but mist still hung from the trees. He put the time between 7 and 8 a.m. Despite my suspicion that I’d’ invented the entire vision, Moises told the Matses what I’d seen.
At dawn the next morning, several of us piled into our boat and headed toward the spot I’d described. As we neared it, I was astounded to hear the thunderous roar of dozens of boars charging across the river in front of us. We jumped out of the boat and chased them. Several ran into a hollow log and Pablo and Alberto blocked the ends with thick branches while me others made nooses out of vines. Holes were cut Into the top of the log with a machete, the nooses slipped through them, and the boars strangled. We returned with seven boars. enough meat for the entire village for four days.
Improbable as it seemed, the scene was close enough to what I’d described that there was no denying the veracity of the vision I later asked how nu-nu worked, and Pablo explained–in a mix of hand signals, Matses, and pigeon Spanish–that nu-nu put you in touch with the animals. He said the animals’ spirits also see the visions and know what awaits them. The morning after the hunt, I was with Pablo, sitting on the bark floor of Ma Shu’s hut, pointing to things and asking what the Matses words for them were. I made notes, writing down the phonetic spelling of things like bow, arrow, spear, and hammock. Pablo was utterly bored with the exercise until I pointed to a small leaf bag that hung over a cooking fire ‘Sapo.” he said, his eyes brightening.
From The bag he pulled a piece of split bamboo, roughly the size and shape of a doctor’s tongue depressor. It was covered with what looked like a thick coat of aging varnish. “Sapo.” He repeated, scraping a little of the material from the stick and mixing it with saliva. When he was finished, it had the consistency and color of green mustard. Then he pulled a smoldering twig from the fire, grabbed my left wrist, and burned the inside of my forearm. I pulled away, but he held my wrist tightly. The burn mark was about the size of a match head. I looked at Moises. “Una nueva medicinn,” he said, shaking his head, “I’ve never seen It.”
Remembering the extraordinary experience I’d had with nu-nu, I let Pablo burn my arm a second time He scraped away the burned skin, then dabbed a little of the sapo onto the exposed areas Instantly my body began to heat up. In seconds I was burning from the Inside and regretted allowing him to give me a medicine I know nothing about. I began to sweat. My blood began to race. My heart pounded. I became acutely aware of every vein and artery in my body and could feel them opening to allow for the fantastic pulse of my blood. My stomach cramped and I vomited violently. I lost control of my bodily functions and began to urinate and defecate. I fell to the ground. Then, unexpectedly, I found myself growling and moving about on all fours. I felt as though animals were passing through me, trying to express themselves through my body. It was a fantastic feeling but it passed quickly, and I could think of nothing but the rushing of my blood, a sensation so intense that I thought my heart would burst. The rushing got faster and faster. I was in agony. I gasped for breath. Slowly, the pounding became steady and rhythmic, and when it finally subsided altogether. I was overcome with exhaustion, I slept where I was. When I awoke a few hours later, I heard voices. But as I came to my senses.. I realized I was alone. I looked around and saw that I had been washed off and put into My hammock. I stood and walked to the edge of the hut’s unwalled platform floor and realized that the conversation I was over hearing was between two of Pablo’s wives who were standing nearly 20 yards away. I didn’t understand their dialect, of course, but I was surprised to even hear them from that distance. I walked to the other side of the platform and looked out into the jungle; its noises, too, were clearer than usual.
And it wasn’t just my hearing that had been improved. My vision, my sense of smell, everything about me felt larger than life, and my body felt immensely strong: That evening I explained what was feeling with hand gestures as much as language. Pablo smiled. “Bi-ram-bo sapo.” he said, “fuerte.” It was good sapo. Strong.
During the next few days, my feeling of strength didn’t diminish; I could go whole days without being hungry or thirsty and move through the jungle for hours without tiring Every sense I possessed was heightened and in tune with the environment, as though the sapo put the rhythm of the jungle into my blood.
I asked Pablo about sapo’s uses and discovered there were several. Among hunters; it was used both to sharpen the senses and as a way to increase stamina during long hunts when carrying food and water was difficult. In large doses, it could make a Matses hunter “invisible” to poor-sighted but acute smelling jungle animals by temporarily eliminating their human odor. As a medicine, sapo also had multiple uses, serving as a tonic to cleanse and strengthen the body and as a toxin purge for those with the grippe.
The women explained that they sometimes used sapo as well. In sparing doses applied to the inside of the wrist it could establish whether a woman was pregnant or not. And during the later stages of pregnancy, it was used to establish the sex and health of a fetus. Interpreting the information relied on an investigation of the urine a woman discharged following the application of the medicine: Cloudiness or other discoloration of the urine and the presence or absence of specks of blood were all evidently indicators of the fetus’s condition. In cases where an unhealthy fetus was discovered, a large dose of sapo applied to the vaginal area was used as an abortive. There was no way for me to verify what they said, though there was no reason to doubt them.
When I asked Pablo how the Matses learned about sapo, he said the dow-kiet! told them. Whether he meant the frog told them through their study of its behavior and habits or whether he believed he was in communication with it on some level, I don’t know.
When I returned to New York, I was surprised to find that my description of nu-nu was old hat to the anthropologists I spoke with at the American Museum of Natural History–several tribes evidently employed similar snuffs for shamanic purposes. What did surprise them, however, was my account of sapo. None of them had ever heard of it, and while several South American tribes have hunting myths about frogs, there were no records of the Matses or any other tribe utilizing a frog’s secretions in the way I described. But while my report was considered interesting, it was also inadequate, as I had no photographs of the frog and no samples of the medicine. The following year I returned to Pablo’s village and discovered that sapo was also used as a shamanic tool. It was spring and the lowlands were flooded. Game had retreated deep into the forest to seasonal lagoons, so hunting was difficult, and even nu-nu failed to produce hunting visions. When I arrived, the Matses hadn’t eaten meat for several days.
Pablo explained that when the river was so high, it was trapping season and that he was about to set a tem-po-te!, tapir trap. He had been giving
himself five sapo burns each morning and night for three days in preparation for the task and would continue until the trap was successful. Pablo explained, as well as I could understand it, that sapo, used In such large doses, allowed a hunter to project his animas – his spirit – to his trap while he slept. The animas would take the form of a tapir and lure real tapir to it.
The day after we arrived, Moises and I went into the jungle with Pablo and Alberto. We walked for almost two hours before Pablo found a suitable site and began to construct the trap, a simple spring device set between two trees. Pablo called to the tapir while he worked, telling it what a special path he was making. He called to the other animals as well, warning them to stay away, to leave this place for his friend. When he finished the trap, he chewed handfuls of leaves and spit them out across the trip vine, both to cover his human scent and as a signpost so that his animas could find it at night.
As we were returning to the puebla, Alberto explained that traps were only set when there was no other way to get meat, because once a trap was set, no other animals could be hunted. When I asked why, he explained that animals talk to each other and that killing them provokes their spirits, ruining the trap. Seeing that I didn’t understand, Pablo added that when he sent out his animas masquerading as a tapir, the provoked spirits would warn the prey that what they saw was not a real tapir but a Matses animas in disguise. Exceptions to the taboo were large river turtles and sloth-the turtle because it doesn’t bother to talk to other animals and the sloth because it speaks so slowly that by the time it says what’s on its mind, the river has fallen and trapping time is over.
During the next two days. Pablo never returned to the trap, although he continued using massive doses of sapo. But on the morning of the third day, he awakened us before dawn and said he had a nu-nu vision that the trap was about to be sprung. He was insistent that we hurry.
The Matses moved through the forest effortlessly, almost at a jog, and the women chided me for having to struggle to keep up. But as we neared the trap area, everyone stopped and grew absolutely quiet. Pablo’s eyes blazed. “Petro,” he whispered to me excitedly, “tian-te, tem-po-te” A tapir was about to be trapped.
We waited about ten minutes, then heard a sharp snap, followed by an agonizing animal scream. Suddenly, everyone began running toward the trap. The wounded and disoriented tapir crashed through the brush, bellowing in pain, then fell into a stream bed. The women caught up with it, killed it, and began to cut it up. While they did, Pablo brought me to the sprung trap and gave me the bloody spike.
Back in camp we feasted. Afterwards I asked Pablo for a sample of sapo, but he’d been using so much to prepare far the hunt that he had none to give me. So once again I returned to the states with no hard evidence of the existence. of the dow-kiet!
It took two more trips to Peru before finally managed to secure a small amount of sapo, and when I finally did, I gave half of the stick to Charles Myers. the curator of the museum’s Herpetology Department, who passed it on to John Daly at the National Institutes of Health. Having finally produced the material I’d frequently talked about, my reports began to circulate and prompted a letter from Vittorio Erspamer, a pharmacologist who worked with the Fidia Research Institute for the Neurosciences. He wondered whether sapo might not come from one of a number of frogs he’d randomly collected in Amazonia several years earlier. Research done by the chemicals found in their skin had shown that several produced peptides-protiens-that were similar to peptides produced by humans. If it could be shown, he wrote, that one of those frogs was already in use by humans, it would be an important scientific breakthrough. I wrote back and offered to provide him with a specimen if I ever managed to collect one.
A year after Erspamer’s letter reached me, I traveled back to the Lobo with Moises. We hiked across the jungle to Pablo’s, discovered his burned camp, and moved down the river where happily we found him at San Juan. “Malo casadores,” Moises snarled, after we’d been watching the men of San Juan trying to find a dow-kiet! for nearly an hour. “Bad hunters. Everything is changed with them. They’re finished.” He was still grumbling about the state of the Matses when I heard Pablo calling me. “Petro Dow-kiet! Petro?” He was standing on a hill at the back of the puebla with Pa Mi Shua and two of his children. “Bi-ram-bo, Pablo!” I laughed: “Bi-ram-ho dow-kiet!.” Yes, I would like a dow-kiet!
Pablo laughed and began to bark out the frog’s mating call. The other men in the camp stopped their hunting and watched him. Between the guttural barking noises he was making we could hear him berating the frogs for making the hunt so difficult. Pa Mi Shua and his children, walking along side him on the path toward the center of camp, roared his antics.
Suddenly Pablo stood and stiffened. From the grass on the side of the path came the sound Pablo was making. He barked again, and again his call was returned. Then a second frog joined the first, and a third, and suddenly the whole camp seemed to resound with the barking of dow-keit!s. Pablo bent down and picked one up. “Mas dow-kiet!, Petro?” More, Peter? I laughed and said yes. He bent down and picked up another. “Mas? Bastan-te sapo, Petro?” More? Did I want a lot of sapo?
I told him two were enough. and he came into the camp, a frog in each hand. He gave one of them to me. It was beautiful. A little smaller than my palm, it had an extraordinary electric green back, a lightly spotted white underside, and deep black eyes. It grasped my fingers tightly, and in secends could feel my blood begin to heat up as the sapo it was secreting began to seep into the small cuts that covered my hands. I quickly put it down. Pablo giggled with delight, then broke a small branch from a tree and placed both dow-kiet!s on it, hilariously imitating my reaction.
One of the Matses men collected four sticks and stood them in the ground, making a small square. Another pulled apart some palm leaves, stripped out the fibers and rolled them into strings against his leg. He handed four of them to Pablo. who tied one to each of one frog’s legs, then tied the free ends to the four posts, suspending the animal like some strange green trampoline. Once the frog was secure, Pa Mi Shua knelt and gently began to manipulate the frog’s elongated center toe between her fingers, stimulating it to secrete sapo. It was an unexpectedly sexual image, and the men joked about it. Pa Mi Shua blushed and told them to be quiet.
The man who had placed the sticks in the ground disappeared into his hut for a moment, then returned with a piece of split bamboo. He began to scrape the suspended frog’s sides and legs, collecting sapo. When the stick was covered, he dried out the secretions over our tiny kerosene lamp and then gave the stick to me.
That night, both frogs were tied by one leg to a low tree branch to keep them from escaping, and in the morning, the sapo from the second frog was collected. Neither was hurt by the process, and if I hadn’t been taking the two specimens back to the States, they would have been set free.
One of the frogs died shortly after I returned home, and I gave its skeleton along with part of the sapo sample and some photographs to the Natural History museum. The healthy dow-kiet! along with a second sapo sample and similar photos was sent to Erspamer in Rome. Six months later, I received his report. He was very excited.
He identified the dow-kiet! as a phyllomedusa bicolor, a rare arboreal tree frog. The sapo, he said, is a sort of fantastic chemical cocktail with potential medical applicati
ons. “No other amphibian skin can compete with it,” he wrote. “Up to seven percent of sapo’s weight is in potently active peptides, easily absorbed through burned, inflamed areas of the skin.” He explained that among the several dozen peptides found in sapo, seven were bioactive- which meant that each has an affinity and selectivity for binding with receptor sites in humans. (A receptor is like a lock that when opened with the right key–the bioactive peptides-triggers chemical reactions in the body.) The peptide families represented in the dow-kiet! include bradykinins, tachykinins, caerulein, sauvagine, tryptophyllins, dermorphins. and bombesins.
Based on the concentrations and functions of the peptides found in and extracted from the sapo sample I sent, Erspamer was able to account for all of the physical symptoms I described as sapo intoxication. On the peripheral effects. Erspamer repoited, “Caerulein and the equiactive phyllocaerulein display a potent action on the gastrointestinal smooth muscle and gastric and pancreatic secretions. . . . Side effects observed (in volunteer patients with post operative intestinal atony) were nausea, vomiting, facial flush, mild tachycardia (heart palpitations), changes in blood pressure, sweating, abdominal discomfort, and urge for defecation.”
Phyllomedusin, a new peptide of the tachykinin family, strongly affects the salivary glands, tear ducts, intestines, and bowels: and contributed to the violent purging I experienced. Sauvagine causes a long-lasting fall in blood pressure, accompanied by severe tachycardia and stimulation of the adrenal cortex, which contributed to the satiety, heightened sensory perception, and increased stamina I described. Phyllokinin, a new peptide of the bradykinin family, is a potent blood-vessel dilator and accounted for the intense rushing in my blood during the initial phase of sapo intoxication.
“It may be reasonably concluded, Erspamer wrote. “that the intense peripheral cardiovascular and gastrointestinal symptoms observed in the early phase of sapo intoxication may be entirely ascribed to the known bioactive peptides occurring in large amounts in the frog material.”
As to sapo’s central effects, he wrote, “increase in physical strength, enhanced resistance to hunger and thirst, and more generally, increase in the capacity to face stress situations may be explained by the presence of caerulein and sauvagine in the drug. Caerulein in humans produces “an analgesic effect . . . possibly related to release of beta-endorphins .. . in patients suffering from renal colic, rest pain due to peripheral vascular insufficiency (limited circulation), and even cancer pain.” Additionally, “It caused in human volunteers a significant reduction in hunger and food intake.
The sauvagine extracted from sapo was given subcutaneously to rats and caused “release of corticotropin (a hormone that triggers the release of substances from the adrenal gland) from the pituitary with consequent activation of the pituitary-adrenal axis.” This axis is the chemical communication link between the pituitary and the adrenal glands, which controls our flight-or-fight mechanism. The effects on the pituitary-adrenal axis caused by the minimal doses given the laboratory rodents lasted several hours. Erspamer noted that the volume of sauvagine found in the large quantities of sapo I described the Matses using would potentially have a much longer lasting effect on humans and would explain why my feelings of strength and heightened sensory perception after sapo use lasted for several days.
But on the question of the “magical” effects I described in tapir trapping, Erspamer says that “no hallucinations, visions, or magic effects are produced by the known peptide components of sapo.” He added that “the question remains unsolved” whether those effects specifically, the feeling that animals were passing through me and Pablo’s description of animas projection were due to “the sniffing of other drugs having hallucinogenic effects, particularly nu-nu.
With regard to sapo’s uses relating to pregnancy, Erspamer did not address any of the issues but abortion: “Abortion ascribed to sapo may be due either to direct effect of the peptide cocktail on the uterine smooth muscle or, more likely, to the intense pelvic vase dilation and the general violent physical reaction to the drug.
From the medical-potential point of view, Erspamer said several aspects of sapo are of interest. He suggested that two of its peptide, phyllomedusin and phyllokinin have such a pronounced affect on the dilation of blood vessels that they “may increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier. thus facilitating access to the brain not only of themselves, but also of the other active peptides.” Finding a key to unlocking the secret of passing that barrier is vital to the discovery of how to get medicines to the brain and could one day contribute to the development of treatments for AIDS, Alzheimer’s, and other disorders that threaten the brain.
There is also medicanal potential in dermorphin and deltrorphin, two other peptides found in sapo. Both are potent opioid peptides, almost identical to the beta-endorphins the human body produces to counter pain, and similar to the opiates found in morphine. Because they mirror beta-endorphins, however, sapo’s opioid peptides could potentially function in a more precise manner than opiates. Additionally, while dermorphin and deltorphin are considerably stronger than morphine (18 and 39 times, respectively), because of their similarities to the naturally produced beta-endorphin, the development of tolerance would be considerably lower and withdrawal less severe than to opiates.
Both phyllocaerulein and sauvagine possess medical potential as digestive aids to assist those receiving treatment for cancer. Other areas of potential medical interest in the peptides found in sapo include their possible use as anti-inflammatories, as blood-pressure regulators, and as stimulators of the pituitary gland.
The only report thus far on sapo from John Daly’s team at the National Institutes of Health (written with seven co-authors, including Katharine Mitten, who recently discovered the use of the phyllomedusa bicolor among several tribes closely related to the Matses) was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (November 14, 1992) and concentrates exclusively on a newly discovered peptide found in sapo One of the chemical fractions Daly’s team isolated is a 33-amino-acid-long peptide he calls adenoregulin. which may provide a key to manipulating cellular receptors for adenosine, a fundamental component in all human cell fuel. “Peptides that either enhance or inhibit binding of adenosine analogs to brain adenosine receptors proved to be present in extracts of the dried skin secretion,” Daly wrote. According to an interpretive report on the Daly paper written by lvan Amato and published in Science (November 20. 1992), “Preliminary animal studies by researchers at Warner-Lambert have hinted that those receptors, which are distributed throughout the brains of mammals, could offer a target for treating depression, stroke, seizures, and cognitive loss in ailments such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Of course, medical potential only in frequently results directly in new medicines: Science may not be able to isolate or duplicate the peptides found in sapo or side effects may be discovered that would decrease their value as medicines. But even if sapo’s components do not eventually serve as prototypes for new drugs, sapo will become an important pharmacological tool in the study of receptors and the chemical reactions they trigger. Certainly the study of the unique activity of sapo’s bioactive peptides will advance our knowledge of the human body. Additionally, as possibly the first zoologically derived
medicine used by tribals ever investigated for Western medical potential. Sapo will help open the door to a whole new field of investigation.
Unfortunately, while science catches up to the natural medicines of tribal peoples, time is running out. That Pablo was the only man at San Juan still able to draw a response from the dow-kiet! is an indication that most Matses no longer rely on it. And we have no way of knowing how many other medicines the Matses–and others–once used but have abandoned, which might also have been valuable to us.
We do knew that nearly 80 percent of the world’s population relies on natural medicines for its primary health care. Investigations into a small portion of them have already provided us hundreds of drugs, from aspirin and atropine to digitalis and quinine. Fully 70 percent of the antitumor drugs used in the treatment of cancers are derived from traditional medicines as well. Yet our investigations have hardly begun. Obviously, there is much to learn from peoples like the Matses before acculturation strips them of their knowledge. It remains to be seen whether the discoveries that have begun to be made in connection with sapo spark the interest of investigators while there is still time to learn it. 
Links of Interest:
Frog secretions and hunting magic in the upper Amazon
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Frog Poison Trial
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High Magick – The Poetry And Images of Ira Cohen
Brussels
Here in the shadow
of the Church of Saint Marie
where the comfort of greatness
costs no more than the price
of a little heart
I wake to the unspoken
in the middle of the night
& take my warning from the
blood’s rumor
A stranger in the field
of sleep crosses the border
of our separation
and I see the fallen light
leap up in the darkness
The war is over
but the casualties continue
as the first snow of winter
disappears-
a confectioner’s dream
dissolved by dread.
-Dec. 5, 1998
—
(like looking through butterflies wings- Jimi Hendrix)
For Liza Stelle
Hither Hills, Montauk
Awake in a dark room
in the middle of the night
Too many sleeping bodies
for an insomniac with a fractured
elbow
Today we remember Liza,
bury her ashes under a shade
tree
behind the house
Kasoundra tells me of a game
Liza played with Lakshmi
who was around four years old
at the time
They traded sentences,
Maybe it was supposed to be
insults, & Lakshmi said,
“You are sex & cement!”
I am an aerial in the darkness
awaiting a flash of lightning
The procession still goes on
after reaching the sea where the urn
is washed clean-
The eyrie will be made with notched
wood
Not a single nail will be necessary
Venus is a mirror surrounded
by clouds,
eternity is surrounded by bolts of
lightning
& you appear in negative
freckled with bits of mica
singing a song filled with desire
“Take the scenic route,” you said-
Brightly colored Tibetan flags
surround your tent-
Invisibility surrounds your presence
to us, who have not yet embarked
So long, Rainbow, evanescence
was your middle name!
—
The Day That Paul Bowles Died
“Having no hope we live in longing”
Eternal you remain
After three days in a coma…
you were my link to the last
millennium,
the 1940′s camel hair overcoat
I could borrow from the closet.
when I asked you if you knew
Rumi,
you replied by asking,
“where is that?”
yet you knew Paul Robeson
& Greta Garbo–
a world of music in your head
I can’t imagine Tangier without
you,
just another old swimming pool
with grass growing in it
the muezzin sings your name
over the Casbah,
amigo, Sahabi–
Haunted by puberty,
almost blind & hard of hearing,
a rush of gardenias sends you
on your way–
So long, pal, a last pipe of kif &
salaam
now you are public property
—
Ballad of the Gone MacLise
for Angus MacLise died Summer Solstice, June 21, 1979
In the poem one can lay down
the heartline, the harp can bring the tears
muffled by the sound of the drum,
your gamelans cut by the Buddha’s knife
of compassion
Down at the Snowman I heard
them discussing your cremation
A dervish has fallen off the roof
the tall skinny one with the coathanger shoulders
I know the way the pillars of the Vision
trembled before you in the sunlight
You saw the door of Konya open in the slums
of Brooklyn where light shafted thru abandoned
factories in the amphetamine dawn
Now the shades of Mecca are drawn for you,
Poet,
the five Dhyani Buddhas transcend your
deepfreeze
& await your burning w/ cloths of the 5 wisdom colors
Your unsatisfied cravings fly out of the pyre,
the blessings of your friends crackle w/ ghee
the white and black til seeds (sesame) burn in
the untrammeled day & still you are wandering
Angus,
passing thru the Bardo Keyhole –
Listen once more to those Tibetan horns,
they are calling you past Freak Street
where you sold the White Goddess for junk
Forget all your regrets & go now w/ the egret,
put on your robe of sky –
The Vagabond Maverick Poet MacLise
has left these burning halls,
the windtraps are wild with sound
I see your hands beating a Persian rhythm
on suitcases of itinerant dreams,
I hear the droning of Beelzebub’s flies
making clear the ghastly way,
an opera undone by a chorus of 108 Mahasiddhas
singing your discarded lists of cembalums,
symphonic poems, untold futures
You bummed cigarettes from Ram,
borrowed time & change from Krishna
Now that your balance is finally broken
go in peace to the Buddhafields
nodding in to the sound of your tartan
The bane is over –
A new wheel is spinning its song
Tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock
we will meet at the Vidyaswari Ghat
For you it’s free, this one way ticket
which is non transferable
Remember that before you try to come back
May light mantle your shadow &
may you not see what is not to be seen
Farewell, MacLise, thawing on the Riverbank,
I do not expect to meet your like again,
Farewell, brother, the shadow of Don Quixote
lowers its lance & you are overstood.
—
RANSOM NOTE FOR BRION GYSIN
Inside the Phantom Bubble
a shrunken city is held suspended
by magnetic grapples
in a state of perpetual coma
could he then, by opening spirit
locks,
escape to the very edge of
futility???
Drops of water run down
a timeless vacuum goldenshocks
of white sliding mercury
turning from silk
on the tail
of unkept wishes
Under eyelids there is only the wall
of silence
He flickers thru mysteries
turning snowy diadems to fantasy
w/ gold
This man is forever passing,
he sees earth’s image become shadow,
this man who sleeps,
GLOWING!
All within, we rise.
Showers of stars sparkle everywhere
A procession of strange hunchbacks
& dwarves,
a windless calm
Head thrown back,
eyes upward,
whispered moment of immortality.
—
OMA’S SONG
He said paint ships
So I painted ships
He said paint mountains
So I painted mountains
He wanted hills
I gave him hills
But they were my ships
My mountains, my hills
– Spoke by Jack Micheline
Buddha sits in the shape
of a bell
He wears the smiles of children
on his fingers
In the kingdom of the eye
we reverence both Sun & Moon
filling their begging bowls
with real rice
Odin gave one eye
to gain back the knowledge
he lost
& he saw that it came pouring
thru his nose
The tears of the hungry ghost
run down the face our dreams
This is the story of his temple
In the eyes of the God
the dog is reflected
In the eyes of the dog
you can see the God,
the face of our civilization
with the plastic money mirror
bouncing flat light off the cross
On the drunken path
he gave it away
The colors, the lakes,
the karma of a goat.
———-
Ira Cohen – The Ira Cohen Akashic Record…. 
Ira Cohen is an “electronic multimedia shaman” who has travelled with those in the Beat Generation, but who remains a less talked-about, universal visionary and solider–across time, space, dimension, and light. His sashays into other cultures have brought us great and sometimes shocking photographs from the “other side”. His works with mylar photography brought the word home. He has photographed Jimi Hendrix, Herbert Huncke, and myriad of others in strange twisting colors. He has published people like Gregory Corso and Angus MacLise in his rice-paper presses. A complete artistic accomplishment, bibliography, and biography of Ira–as well as articles and artwork–is at Big Bridge Magazine. With permissions, I’ve excerpted a bio here.
He uses phrases like: “Electronic/Multimedia/Shamanism” and Akashic Record and they are cool names if you know what they mean or can get past them. He is not a “Beat” and resents association with the Beats though he has been called “post-beat” which is important for our knowledge. But I see him as being in the heart and belly of the 60′s doing the real work–camera, pen, dope, exploration of mysticism, a multi-faceted phenomenological mystic with real visionary powers. And I want to open people up to him. Bring them through a friendly door and then let them descend into Ira’s world without knowing it is happening, and then finally find themselves in this mystic paradise of life and death, his “revolving door”. And then ask themselves “how in the world could I have not known Ira Cohen?” Or have not known how key he is and was to the understanding of the old and the new, the hallucinatory mind-expanding layers of reality that frighten and amuse us, the panorama of the traveling circus of all physical and non-physical things. Cohen is a true and unquestionable original innovator, friend of Gysin, Burroughs, Bowles, and Charles Henri Ford, the absolute geniuses of transformation, transmigration, and the cosmic joke. And then when the audience walks away they will say, where is that monument to Ira Cohen, the one we built for Rimbaud and Baudelaire, for Burroughs and Valery, for Genet and Gertrude Stein. Ira Cohen must be made accessible! But he has made it absolutely impossible to penetrate the organic construct of his spirit, without running the risk that you will sell him out in the process–or maybe not. Maybe something gentle to begin with, a pale lavender, a dash of blue and fluff of white, then the slow spinning of Gods and Gurus and Shamans and Mythologies, the painted faces, deformed limbs, the broken erections, the flaming corpse of his dearest friend Angus MacLise and then settling everyone down to say: Hey, it’s alright. There is life, laughter, love and humanity in these strange visions, no need to come down from your trip, be cool with it, it is the inside of a beetle’s shell, life in a termite nest, air rushing through the lungs and jaws of a lion, a hoot!
– Michael Rothenberg
1935: Born to deaf parents; learned to spell on his fingers when he was one.
1964: Edited and published GNAOUA in Tangier featuring William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Jack Smith, and Irving Rosenthal.
1966-1970: Started the Universal Mutant Repertory Company and became “The Father of Mylar Photography,” making celebrated photographs in bendable mirrors of Jimi Hendrix, Charles Ludlam, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Robert LaVigne, etc.
1966: Brought out The Hashish Cookbook under the name of Panama Rose, and Jilala, an LP record of Moroccan trance music. Wrote The Goblet of Dreams for Playboy Magazine.
1968: Directed and starred in the award winning film The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda. Appeared in Jack Smith’s Reefers of Technicolor Island. Produced Paradise Now in Amerika, a film of the Living Theater’s historic 1968 American tour.
1970s: Went to Kathmandu and started the Starstreams Poetry Series under the Bardo Matrix imprint, publishing on rice paper the work of Gregory Corso, Charles Henri Ford, Angus MacLise, and Paul Bowles (among others). Also published his own work including Poems From The Cosmic Crypt, Seven Marvels and Gilded Splinters.
1980-1985: Three photos by Ira Cohen (of Jules Deelder, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg) were produced as part of a limited-edition silkscreen series (1980-1993) by Kirke Wilson, and published by Ins & Outs Press, Amsterdam, Holland. Ira and Kirke Wilson later collaborated independently on an Akashic Silkscreen Edition print, a portrait of Charles Henri Ford from Ira’s photograph. Ins & Outs Press also published a series of postcards, which included many of Ira’s photographs, most notably the Bandaged Poets series.
1980 to present: Moved back to New York.
Photographic exhibitions worldwide include: Kathmandu Portfolio, The Bandaged Poet Series, Kings with Straw Mats, Dangerous Visions, Retrospectacle, About Faces (with Carol Beckwith), New York Slings Hots, From The Mylar Chamber (a two-man show at the Lessing Gallery in NYC with Man Ray, a two-man show at Space Time Light New York) with Jack Micheline, etc. Photographs have appeared in The London Sunday Times, Avant Garde, LIFE Magazine, Facade Paris), Nexus, Nieuwe Revue (Amsterdam), Caliban, etc.
Galleries include: Wildfire Gallery (Amsterdam), Photo Boutique (New York), ART (New York), October Gallery (London), Visionary Gallery (New York), Deer Gallery (New York), Susan Cooper Gallery (Woodstock, NY), TAM TAM Gallery (Prague), Caravan of Dreams (Ft. Worth, TX), Varia Theater (Brussels), Nul Gallery (Amsterdam), Merlin Theater (Budapest), TB Institute (Tokyo), Anya Gosseln Gallery (Dublin), Gallery of Photography (Dublin), Plateau (Akashic Weekend, Brussels).
He has photographed many book and record covers including: John McLaughlin’s Devotion and Spirit’s The 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. Recently, he has made photographs for Bill Laswell and Axiom Records, including Blues in the East. A silk-screen edition of a Mylar portrait of Jimi Hendrix, called Reflections, was also used on the recent CD The Ultimate Experience. Also did photos for Pharoah Sanders’ CD Message From Home (Verve) 1996
He has exhibited photographs of Southern Ethiopia and produced The Goblet of Dreams (Marrakesh 1987).
1986-1995: Uncountable poetry readings from Okinawa to San Francisco. He has also been a featured reader in Paris (Paysage du Nord-Ouest, Brussels John Cage Tribute), Prague, Portland (Artquake) and Texas (Mandalay Poetry Festival). He appeared in Dublin with the Burroughs-Gysin Here to Go Show.
Contributing Editor to: Ins & Outs (Amsterdam), Third Rail (Los Angeles), Ignite (New York), Nexus (Dayton, OH), XPress (Bohemia, NY), 15 Minutes (St. Louis), Growing Hand (San Francisco). Edited Jack Smith’s Historical Treasures for Hanuman Books. Co-edited The Great Society with Bobby Richkin. Published Petroleum Petroleum by Gustav Meyrink (Akashic Bulletin #1, 1991).
Books of Poetry: The Stauffenberg Cycle and Other Poems (Holland), From the Divan of Petra Vogt (Rotterdam), On Feet of Gold (Synergetic Press), Media Shamans Ratio 3 (with Gerard Malanga and Angus MacLise, Temple Press, England). Also, a CD of readings: The Majoon Traveler (with music by Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Moroccan trance music, etc., Sub Rosa, Belgium). Kaliban und Andere Gedichte (Altaquito Press, Gottingen).
President of The Akashic Record, a non-profit corporation dedicated to publishing and preserving sacred materials, lost scenarios, the hidden meaning of the hidden meaning. Staged at The Kitchen, NY, in collaboration w
ith Sylvie Degiez and Wayne Lopes (Cosmic Legends, Gift of Eagle) an Akashic Event, ORFEO: The $500 Opera, based on the work of Angus MacLise. In May, 1995, he edited an Akashic Issue for Broadshirt, a magazine on a T-shirt designed by Phyllis Segura, with over twenty contributors including Paul Bowles, Brion Gysin, Judith Malina, etc.
Contributing Editor and Photographer, NY Black Book 1997-99 NYC. Performed with John Zorn Radical Jewish Culture Group at Lincoln Center December 1995, NY. Collaborated with Nadine Ganase Dance Company on Crossing the Border, a multimedia performance from 1996-99 in Brussels, Paris, Glasgow, Amiens, Hamburg, Hanover, etc. Audio cassette of Crossing the Border, readings by Ira Cohen and music by Philippe Franck (available from Transcultures). Reading at St. Mark’s Poetry Project with Gerard Malanga Feb. 12,1997.
Jilala, CD release of historic 1966 recording with new material (Baraka).
Kings with Straw Mats, video documentary of the Hardwar Kumbh Mela, 1986 Mystic Fire Video, 1998). Online photo gallery (www.mysticfire.com) Ira Cohen Portraits of India.Minbad Sinbad, a book of writings and photos dealing with Morocco published in French (Didier Devillez, Brussels, 1998).
1998: Regular live broadcast bi-weekly on Internet called The Majoon Traveler (www.channelp.com).
1999: Photographic collaboration with Allan Graubard for his poem Fragments from Nomad Days.
October 1999 screening of The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda at the Whitney Museum, NYC.
Release of Angus MacLise CD The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda sound track (Siltbreeze); A Book of Photographs published in 2000 by Kargo (Paris).
And… much more. Check out his site! – Gwyllm
____________________
Ira Cohen – Song To Nothing
All Along The Watch Tower
Love is the last relay and ultimate outposts of eternity.
– Dante Gabriel Rossetti
All Along The Watch Tower: I kinda rediscovered what I liked about Dylan’s work over the holidaze. I stumbled on an album that I had downloaded of Bryan Ferry (Roxy Music) The Album is “Dylanesque” and there is something to say on the positive side to have someones songs re-interpreted by another singer/musician. Suffice to say, it has been a bit of a revelry for yours truly. Nothing beats a good vocal, and the emotions that are tied to the human voice. (a big nod to John Gunn on this, “yes John, you are right”) Ferry’s handling of these Dylan songs are recommended if you can find the album… There are some videos from youtube with Mr. Ferry’s take on Dylan.
Turfing Format Changes: I will be going back to a near daily format, but with an abbreviated form, more along the line other more traditional Blogs, with a blow out or 2 during the week. As it is, I have been taking several days getting these out, and I feel like I am losing a bit of edge… So, stay tuned!
On other fronts….
Radio Free EarthRites is back up!
A big thank you to our friend Doug in the Euro Bat Cave for bringing Radio Free EarthRites back on line! Click Here For The Radio!
All Three Channels are up and chugging away, and just awaiting your listening pleasure. It looks like Doug will be setting up Video capacities, and Cell Phone capacities as well for your listening and viewing pleasure!
We are currently uploading new music, some that I have found, and some that Peter up in Olympia turned me onto as well. Hopefully we’ll be doing some shows again, a little more focused activities etc. Raymond Soulard may be moving some of his shows over to Radio Free EarthRites as well, which would be an interesting addition. If you have interviews, music you want featured, or collected aural oddities (and soon visual hopefully) let me know at llwydd at earthrites.org.
If you enjoy the service, and want to contribute something to the kitty, we would be most appreciative!
–
We got a new bit of poetry from Laura & Dale Pendell ‘Seeding The New Year’, a limited edition from Exiled-In-America Press.
If I may quote:
“most hold it
some fold it
all honor it
speaking to it
through it”
Be sure to check out Dale’s new website as well: http://dalependell.com/ It looks like it is still growing, and so far I like the look of it. You can see some of Laura’s work at this site:http://www.womanrisingbooks.com/
—
New Year Art Specials!:
The Art Biz(well all biz) has been a bit quiet as of late, therefore we are I am getting ready for my next art show at the end of February, and have great deals going on Prints, Posters, Blotter Art and T-Shirts (adding the shirts tonight and new prints as well. Check out the art!
Gwyllm-Arts Web Site
We also have the new 2009 calendars available at lulu.com: Gwyllm’s New 2009 Calendar! There’s lots of new art on this calendar, as well as Moon Cycles, The Celtic Year, and Birthdates of Entheogenic Notable Personalities!
These calendars are known to grace walls of the Entheogensia throughout the land. Be one of them, don’t be left out! 80)
You’ll also find the first 2 editions of the ‘Invisible College’ Magazine/Journal on sale at this location as well Stay tuned for the next edition.
________
On The Menu:
Bryan Ferry – All Along The WatchTower
The Links
The Maynard James Keenan & Terence McKenna Quote-a-thon!
Folk Tales From India: The Soothsayer’s Son
The Poetry of Dane Zajc
Bryan Ferry – The Times Are A Changin’
Art: – Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Bright Blessings!
Gwyllm
________
Bryan Ferry – All Along The WatchTower
________
The Links:
Fearing The Anarchist of Tarnac….
Tarnac 9 and the State repression to come?
Cabbage-patch revolutionaries? The French ‘grocer terrorists’
_______
The Maynard James Keenan & Terence McKenna Quote-a-thon!
“I think psychedelics play a major part in what we do, but having said that, I feel that if somebody’s going to experiment with those things they really need to educate themselves about them. People just taking the chemicals and diving in without having any kind of preparation about what they’re about to experience tend to have no frame of reference, so they’re missing everything flying by and all these new perspectives. It’s just a waste. They reach a little bit of spiritual enlightenment, but they end up going, ‘Well, now I need that drug to get back there again.’ The trick is to use the drugs once to get there, and maybe spend the next ten years trying to get back there without the drug.”
-Maynard James Keenan
“Something has to change.
Un-deniable dilemma.
Boredom’s not a burden
Anyone should bear.”
-Maynard James Keenan
“It’s not enough.
I need more.
Nothing seems to satisfy.
I don’t want it.
I just need it.
To feel, to breathe, to know I’m alive.”
-Maynard James Keenan”
“Psychedelics return us to the inner worth of the self, to the importance of the feeling of immediate experience – and nobody can sell that to you and nobody can buy it from you, so the dominator culture is not interested in the felt presence of immediate experience, but that’s what holds the community together.”
-Terence Mckenna
“I think of going to the grave without having a psychedelic experience like going to the grave without ever having sex. It means that you never figured out what it is all about. The mystery is in the body and the way the body works itself into nature.”
-Terence Mckenna
“What the Archaic Revival means is shamanism, ecstacy, orgiastic sexuality, and the defeat of the three enemies of the people. And the three enemies of the people are hegemony, monogamy and monotony! And if you get them on the run you have the dominators sweating folks, because that means your getting it all reconnected, and getting it all reconnected means putting aside the idea of separateness and self-definition through thing-fetish. Getting it all connected means tapping into the Gaian mind, and the Gaian mind is what we’re calling the psychedelic experience. Its an experience of the living fact of the entelechy of the planet. And without that experience we wander in a desert of bogus ideologies. But with that experience the compass of the self can be set, and that’s the idea; figuring out how to reset the compass of the self through community, through ecstatic dance, through psychedelics, sexuality, intelligence, INTELLIGENCE. This is what we have to have to make the forward escape into hyperspace.”
-Terence Mckenna
_______________
I have been here before./ But when or how I cannot tell:/ I know the grass beyond the door,/ The sweet keen smell,/ The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
-Dante Rossetti
_______________
Folk Tales From India: The Soothsayer’s Son
A soothsayer when on his deathbed wrote out the horoscope of his second son, whose name was Gangazara, and bequeathed it to him as his only property, leaving the whole of his estate to his eldest son. The second son thought over the horoscope, and said to himself:
“Alas! am I born to this only in the world? The sayings of my father never failed. I have seen them prove true to the last word while he was living; and how has he fixed my horoscope! ‘FROM MY BIRTH POVERTY!’ Nor is that my only fate. ‘FOR TEN YEARS, IMPRISONMENT’–a fate harder than poverty; and what comes next? ‘DEATH ON THE SEA-SHORE’; which means that I must die away from home, far from friends and relatives on a sea coast. Now comes the most curious part of the horoscope, that I am to ‘HAVE SOME HAPPINESS AFTERWARDS!’ What this happiness is, is an enigma to me.”
Thus thought he, and after all the funeral obsequies of his father were over, took leave of his elder brother, and started for Benares. He went by the middle of the Deccan, avoiding both the coasts, and went on journeying and journeying for weeks and months, till at last he reached the Vindhya mountains. While passing that desert he had to journey for a couple of days through a sandy plain, with no signs of life or vegetation. The little store of provision with which he was provided for a couple of days, at last was exhausted. The chombu, which he carried always full, filling it with the sweet water from the flowing rivulet or plenteous tank, he had exhausted in the heat of the desert. There was not a morsel in his hand to eat; nor a drop of water to drink. Turn his eyes wherever he might he found a vast desert, out of which he saw no means of escape. Still he thought within himself, “Surely my father’s prophecy never proved untrue. I must survive this calamity to find my death on some sea-coast.” So thought he, and this thought gave him strength of mind to walk fast and try to find a drop of water somewhere to slake his dry throat.
At last he succeeded; heaven threw in his way a ruined well. He thought he could collect some water if he let down his chombu with the string that he always carried noosed to the neck of it. Accordingly he let it down; it went some way and stopped, and the following words came from the well: “Oh, relieve me! I am the king of tigers, dying here of hunger. For the last three days I have had nothing. Fortune has sent you here. If you assist me now you will find a sure help in me throughout your life. Do not think that I am a beast of prey. When you have become my deliverer I will never touch you. Pray, kindly lift me up.” Gangazara thought: “Shall I take him out or not? If I take him out he may make me the first morsel of his hungry mouth. No; that he will not do. For my father’s prophecy never came untrue. I must die on a sea coast, and not by a tiger.” Thus thinking, he asked the tiger-king to hold tight to the vessel, which he accordingly did, and he lifted him up slowly. The tiger reached the top of the well and felt himself on safe ground. True to his word, he did no harm to Gangazara. On the other hand, he walked round his patron three times, and standing before him, humbly spoke the following words: “My life-giver, my benefactor! I shall never forget this day, when I regained my life through your kind hands. In return for this kind assistance I pledge my oath to stand by you in all calamities. Whenever you are in any difficulty just think of me. I am there with you ready to oblige you by all the means that I can. To tell you briefly how I came in here: Three days ago I was roaming in yonder forest, when I saw a goldsmith passing through it. I chased him. He, finding it impossible to escape my claws, jumped into this well, and is living to this moment in the very bottom of it. I also jumped in, but found myself on the first ledge of the well; he is on the last and fourth ledge. In the second lives a serpent half-famished with hunger. On the third lies a rat, also half-famished, and when you again begin to draw water these may request you first to release them. In the same way the goldsmith also may ask you. I beg you, as your bosom friend, never assist that wretched man, though he is your relation as a human being. Goldsmiths are never to be trusted. You can place more faith in me, a tiger, though I feast sometimes upon men, in a serpent, whose sting makes your blood cold the very next moment, or in a rat, which does a thousand pieces of mischief in your house. But never trust a goldsmith. Do not release him; and if you do, you shall surely repent of it one day or other.” Thus advising, the hungry tiger went away without waiting for an answer.
Gangazara thought several times of the eloquent way in which the tiger spoke, and admired his fluency of speech. But still his thirst was not quenched. So he let down his vessel again, which was now caught hold of by the serpent, who addressed him thus: “Oh, my protector! Lift me up. I am the king of serpents, and the son of Adisesha, who is now pining away in agony for my disappearance. Release me now. I shall ever remain your servant, remember your assistance, and help you throughout life in all possible ways. Oblige me: I am dying.” Gangazara, calling again to mind the “DEATH ON THE SEA-SHORE” of the prophecy lifted him up. He, like the tiger-king, walked round him thrice, and prostrating himself before him spoke thus: “Oh, my life-giver, my father, for so I must call you, as you have given me another birth. I was three days ago basking myself in the morning sun, when I saw a rat running before me. I chased him. He fell into this well. I followed him, but instead of falling on the third storey where he is now lying, I fell into the second. I am going away now to see my father. Whenever you are in any difficulty just think of me. I will be there by your side to assist you by all possible means.” So saying, the Nagaraja glided away in zigzag movements, and was out of sight in a moment.
The poor son of the Soothsayer, who was now almost dying of thirst, let down his vessel for a third time. The rat caught hold of it, and without discussing he lifted up the poor animal at once. But it would not go away without showing its gratitude: “Oh, life of my life! My benefactor! I am the king of rats. Whenever you are in any calamity just think of me. I will come to you, and assist you. My keen ears overheard all that the tiger-king told you about the goldsmith, who is in the fourth storey. It is nothing but a sad truth that goldsmiths ought never to be trusted. Therefore, never assist him as you have done to us all. And if you do, you will suffer for it. I am hungry; let me go for the present.” Thus taking leave of his benefactor, the rat, too, ran away.
Gangazara for a while thought upon the repeated advice given by the three animals about releasing the goldsmith: “What wrong would there be in my assisting him? Why should I not release him also?” So thinking to himself, Gangazara let down the vessel again. The goldsmith caught hold of it, and demanded help. The Soothsayer’s son had no time to lose; he was himself dying of thirst.
Therefore he lifted the goldsmith up, who now began his story. “Stop for a while,” said Gangazara, and after quenching his thirst by letting down his vessel for the fifth time, still fearing that some one might remain in the well and demand his assistance, he listened to the goldsmith, who began as follows: “My dear friend, my protector, what a deal of nonsense these brutes have been talking to you about me; I am glad you have not followed their advice. I am just now dying of hunger. Permit me to go away. My name is Manikkasari. I live in the East main street of Ujjaini, which is twenty kas to the south of this place, and so lies on your way when you return from Benares. Do not forget to come to me and receive my kind remembrances of your assistance, on your way back to your country.” So saying, the goldsmith took his leave, and Gangazara also pursued his way north after the above adventures.
He reached Benares, and lived there for more than ten years, and quite forgot the tiger, serpent, rat, and goldsmith. After ten years of religious life, thoughts of home and of his brother rushed into his mind. “I have secured enough merit now by my religious observances. Let me return home.” Thus thought Gangazara within himself, and very soon he was on his way back to his country. Remembering the prophecy of his father he returned by the same way by which he went to Benares ten years before. While thus retracing his steps he reached the ruined well where he had released the three brute kings and the gold smith. At once the old recollections rushed into his mind, and he thought of the tiger to test his fidelity. Only a moment passed, and the tiger-king came running
before him carrying a large crown in his mouth, the glitter of the diamonds of which for a time outshone even the bright rays of the sun. He dropped the crown at his life-giver’s feet, and, putting aside all his pride, humbled himself like a pet cat to the strokes of his protector, and began in the following words: “My life-giver! How is it that you have forgotten me, your poor servant, for such a long time? I am glad to find that I still occupy a corner in your mind. I can never forget the day when I owed my life to your lotus hands. I have several jewels with me of little value. This crown, being the best of all, I have brought here as a single ornament of great value, which you can carry with you and dispose of in your own country.” Gangazara looked at the crown, examined it over and over, counted and recounted the gems, and thought within himself that he would become the richest of men by separating the diamonds and gold, and selling them in his own country. He took leave of the tiger-king, and after his disappearance thought of the kings of serpents and rats, who came in their turn with their presents, and after the usual greetings and exchange of words took their leave. Gangazara was extremely delighted at the faithfulness with which the brute beasts behaved, and went on his way to the south. While going along he spoke to himself thus: “These beasts have been very faithful in their assistance. Much more, therefore, must Manikkasari be faithful. I do not want anything from him now. If I take this crown with me as it is, it occupies much space in my bundle. It may also excite the curiosity of some robbers on the way. I will go now to Ujjaini on my way. Manikkasari requested me to see him without failure on my return journey. I shall do so, and request him to have the crown melted, the diamonds and gold separated. He must do that kindness at least for me. I shall then roll up these diamonds and gold ball in my rags, and wend my way homewards.” Thus thinking and thinking, he reached Ujjaini. At once he inquired for the house of his goldsmith friend, and found him without difficulty. Manikkasari was extremely delighted to find on his threshold him who ten years before, notwithstanding the advice repeatedly given him by the sage-looking tiger, serpent, and rat, had relieved him from the pit of death. Gangazara at once showed him the crown that he received from the tiger- king, told him how he got it, and requested his kind assistance to separate the gold and diamonds. Manikkasari agreed to do so, and meanwhile asked his friend to rest himself for a while to have his bath and meals; and Gangazara, who was very observant of his religious ceremonies, went direct to the river to bathe.
How came the crown in the jaws of the tiger? The king of Ujjaini had a week before gone with all his hunters on a hunting expedition. All of a sudden the tiger-king started from the wood, seized the king, and vanished.
When the king’s attendants informed the prince about the death of his father he wept and wailed, and gave notice that he would give half of his kingdom to any one who should bring him news about the murderer of his father. The goldsmith knew full well that it was a tiger that killed the king, and not any hunter’s hands, since he had heard from Gangazara how he obtained the crown. Still, he resolved to denounce Gangazara as the king’s murderer, so, hiding the crown under his garments, he flew to the palace. He went before the prince and informed him that the assassin was caught, and placed the crown before him.
The prince took it into his hands, examined it, and at once gave half the kingdom to Manikkasari, and then inquired about the murderer. “He is bathing in the river, and is of such and such appearance,” was the reply. At once four armed soldiers flew to the river, and bound the poor Brahman hand and foot, while he, sitting in meditation, was without any knowledge of the fate that hung over him. They brought Gangazara to the presence of the prince, who turned his face away from the supposed murderer, and asked his soldiers to throw him into a dungeon. In a minute, without knowing the cause, the poor Brahman found himself in the dark dungeon.
It was a dark cellar underground, built with strong stone walls, into which any criminal guilty of a capital offense was ushered to breathe his last there without food and drink. Such was the cellar into which Gangazara was thrust. What were his thoughts when he reached that place? “It is of no use to accuse either the goldsmith or the prince now. We are all the children of fate. We must obey her commands. This is but the first day of my father’s prophecy. So far his statement is true. But how am I going to pass ten years here? Perhaps without anything to sustain life I may drag on my existence for a day or two. But how pass ten years? That cannot be, and I must die. Before death comes let me think of my faithful brute friends.”
So pondered Gangazara in the dark cell underground, and at that moment thought of his three friends. The tiger-king, serpent-king, and rat- king assembled at once with their armies at a garden near the dungeon, and for a while did not know what to do. They held their council, and decided to make an underground passage from the inside of a ruined well to the dungeon. The rat raja issued an order at once to that effect to his army. They, with their teeth, bored the ground a long way to the walls of the prison. After reaching it they found that their teeth could not work on the hard stones. The bandicoots were then specially ordered for the business; they, with their hard teeth, made a small slit in the wall for a rat to pass and re-pass without difficulty. Thus a passage was effected.
The rat raja entered first to condole with his protector on his misfortune, and undertook to supply his protector with provisions. “Whatever sweetmeats or bread are prepared in any house, one and all of you must try to bring whatever you can to our benefactor. Whatever clothes you find hanging in a house, cut down, dip the pieces in water, and bring the wet bits to our benefactor. He will squeeze them and gather water for drink! and the bread and sweetmeats shall form his food.” Having issued these orders, the king of the rats took leave of Gangazara. They, in obedience to their king’s order, continued to supply him with provisions and water.
The snake-king said: “I sincerely condole with you in your calamity; the tiger-king also fully sympathises with you, and wants me to tell you so, as he cannot drag his huge body here as we have done with our small ones. The king of the rats has promised to do his best to provide you with food. We would now do what we can for your release. From this day we shall issue orders to our armies to oppress all the subjects of this kingdom. The deaths by snake-bite and tigers shall increase a hundredfold from this day, and day by day it shall continue to increase till your release. Whenever you hear people near you, you had better bawl out so as to be heard by them: ‘The wretched prince imprisoned me on the false charge of having killed his father, while it was a tiger that killed him. From that day these calamities have broken out in his dominions. If I were released I would save all by my powers of healing poisonous wounds and by incantations.’ Some one may report this to the king, and if he knows it, you will obtain your liberty.” Thus comforting his protector in trouble, he advised him to pluck up courage, and took leave of him. From that day tigers and serpents, acting under the orders of their kings, united in killing as many persons and cattle as possible. Every day people were carried away by tigers or bitten by serpents. Thus passed months and years. Gangazara sat in the dark cellar, without the sun’s light falling upon him, and feasted upon the breadcrumbs and sweetmeats that the rats so kindly supplied him with. These delicacies had completely changed his body into a red, stout, huge, unwieldy
mass of flesh. Thus passed full ten years, as prophesied in the horoscope.
Ten complete years rolled away in close imprisonment. On the last evening of the tenth year one of the serpents got into the bed-chamber of the princess and sucked her life. She breathed her last. She was the only daughter of the king. The king at once sent for all the snake-bite curers. He promised half his kingdom and his daughter’s hand to him who would restore her to life. Now a servant of the king who had several times overheard Gangazara’s cries, reported the matter to him. The king at once ordered the cell to be examined. There was the man sitting in it. How had he managed to live so long in the cell? Some whispered that he must be a divine being. Thus they discussed, while they brought Gangazara to the king.
The king no sooner saw Gangazara than he fell on the ground. He was struck by the majesty and grandeur of his person. His ten years’ imprisonment in the deep cell underground had given a sort of lustre to his body. His hair had first to be cut before his face could be seen. The king begged forgiveness for his former fault, and requested him to revive his daughter.
“Bring me within an hour all the corpses of men and cattle, dying and dead, that remain unburnt or unburied within the range of your dominions; I shall revive them all,” were the only words that Gangazara spoke.
Cartloads of corpses of men and cattle began to come in every minute. Even graves, it is said, were broken open, and corpses buried a day or two before were taken out and sent for their revival. As soon as all were ready, Gangazara took a vessel full of water and sprinkled it over them all, thinking only of his snake-king and tiger-king. All rose up as if from deep slumber, and went to their respective homes. The princess, too, was restored to life. The joy of the king knew no bounds. He cursed the day on which he imprisoned him, blamed himself for having believed the word of a goldsmith, and offered him the hand of his daughter and the whole kingdom, instead of half, as he promised. Gangazara would not accept anything, but asked the king to assemble all his subjects in a wood near the town. “I shall there call in all the tigers and serpents, and give them a general order.”
When the whole town was assembled, just at the dusk of evening, Gangazara sat dumb for a moment, and thought upon the Tiger King and the Serpent King, who came with all their armies. People began to take to their heels at the sight of tigers. Gangazara assured them of safety, and stopped them.
The grey light of the evening, the pumpkin colour of Gangazara, the holy ashes scattered lavishly over his body, the tigers and snakes humbling themselves at his feet, gave him the true majesty of the god Gangazara. For who else by a single word could thus command vast armies of tigers and serpents, said some among the people. “Care not for it; it may be by magic. That is not a great thing. That he revived cartloads of corpses shows him to be surely Gangazara,” said others.
“Why should you, my children, thus trouble these poor subjects of Ujjaini? Reply to me, and henceforth desist from your ravages.” Thus said the Soothsayer’s son, and the following reply came from the king of the tigers: “Why should this base king imprison your honour, believing the mere word of a goldsmith that your honour killed his father? All the hunters told him that his father was carried away by a tiger. I was the messenger of death sent to deal the blow on his neck. I did it, and gave the crown to your honour. The prince makes no inquiry, and at once imprisons your honour. How can we expect justice from such a stupid king as that? Unless he adopt a better standard of justice we will go on with our destruction.”
The king heard, cursed the day on which he believed in the word of a goldsmith, beat his head, tore his hair, wept and wailed for his crime, asked a thousand pardons, and swore to rule in a just way from that day. The serpent-king and tiger-king also promised to observe their oath as long as justice prevailed, and took their leave. The gold-smith fled for his life. He was caught by the soldiers of the king, and was pardoned by the generous Gangazara, whose voice now reigned supreme. All returned to their homes. The king again pressed Gangazara to accept the hand of his daughter. He agreed to do so, not then, but some time afterwards. He wished to go and see his elder brother first, and then to return and marry the princess. The king agreed; and Gangazara left the city that very day on his way home.
It so happened that unwittingly he took a wrong road, and had to pass near a sea-coast. His elder brother was also on his way up to Benares by that very same route. They met and recognised each other, even at a distance. They flew into each other’s arms. Both remained still for a time almost unconscious with joy. The pleasure of Gangazara was so great that he died of joy.
The elder brother was a devout worshipper of Ganesa. That was a Friday, a day very sacred to that god. The elder brother took the corpse to the nearest Ganesa temple and called upon him. The god came, and asked him what he wanted. “My poor brother is dead and gone; and this is his corpse. Kindly keep it in your charge till I finish worshipping you. If I leave it anywhere else the devils may snatch it away when I am absent worshipping you; after finishing the rites I shall burn him.” Thus said the elder brother, and, giving the corpse to the god Ganesa, he went to prepare himself for that deity’s ceremonials. Ganesa made over the corpse to his Ganas, asking them to watch over it carefully. But instead of that they devoured it.
The elder brother, after finishing the puja, demanded his brother’s corpse of the god. The god called his Ganas, who came to the front blinking, and fearing the anger of their master. The god was greatly enraged. The elder brother was very angry. When the corpse was not forthcoming he cuttingly remarked, “Is this, after all, the return for my deep belief in you? You are unable even to return my brother’s corpse.” Ganesa was much ashamed at the remark. So he, by his divine power, gave him a living Gangazara instead of the dead corpse. Thus was the second son of the Soothsayer restored to life.
The brothers had a long talk about each other’s adventures. They both went to Ujjaini, where Gangazara married the princess, and succeeded to the throne of that kingdom. He reigned for a long time, conferring several benefits upon his brother. And so the horoscope was fully fulfilled.
X. NOTES: THE SOOTHSAYER’S SON
Source.–Mrs. Kingscote, Tales of the Sun (p. 11 seq.), from Pandit Natesa Sastri’s Folk-Lore of Southern India, pt. ii., originally from Indian Antiquary. I have considerably condensed and modified the somewhat Babu English of the original.
Parallels.–See Benfey, Pantschatantra, S 71, i. pp. 193- 222, who quotes the Karma Jataka as the ultimate source: it also occurs in the Saccankira Jataka (Fausboll, No. 73), trans. Rev. R. Morris, Folk-Lore Journey iii. 348 seq. The story of the ingratitude of man compared with the gratitude of beasts came early to the West, where it occurs in the Gesta Romanorum, c. 119
It was possibly from an early form of this collection that Richard Coeur de Lion got the story, and used it to rebuke the ingratitude of the English nobles on his return in 1195. Matthew Paris tells the story, sub anno (it is an addition of his to Ralph Disset), Hist. Major, ed. Luard, ii. 413-6, how a lion and a serpent and a Venetian named Vitalis were saved from a pit by a woodman, Vitalis promising him half his fortune, fifty talents. The lion brings his benefactor a leveret, the serpent “gemmam pretiosam,” probably “the precious jewel in his head” to which Shakespeare alludes (As You Like It, ii. 1., cf. Benfey, l.c., p. 214, n.), but Vitalis refuses to have anything to do with him, and altogether repudiates the fifty talents. “Haec referebat Rex Richardus munificus, ingratos redarguendo.”
Remarks.–Apart from the interest of its wide travels, and its appearance in the standard mediaeval History of England by Matthew Paris, the modern story shows the remarkable persistence of folk-tales in the popular mind. Here we have collected from the Hindu peasant of to-day a tale which was probably told before Buddha, over two thousand years ago, and certainly included among the Jatakas before the Christian era. The same thing has occurred with The Tiger, Brahman, and Jackal (No. ix. supra).
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The Poetry of Dane Zajc
Slovenian Poet….
Words Into Rain
Rain, protect me from myself.
Let me not come to myself staggering,
with tattered skin.
With curses under my swollen
tongue, lies,
honeyed sweetnesses.
With smiles of my head’s journey,
promises, false
hopes. Rain, do not.
Do not let me near myself.
Not the trodden one. Not the harrowed one.
Not the grabbing one, rain.
You are thoughtfulness. Immuring me
into the quietude of drops. Drops.
Flooding pathways with water.
Making crossings impassable.
Grab him we talk about,
hold him under water, don’t let go.
Crush his soul at the kednjovec cathedral.
Let him die. Let water inundate his eyes.
A torrent wash his words away.
Let birds and mice scatter him around.
Keep him away from me with a distance of life.
The cornerstone between us – death.
Rain, keep me in the water.
Cover me with water.
Keep me from speaking.
Lock me out of myself, rain.
—
Down Down
when I think about all your hopes
etched in your footsteps
I follow them
the footsteps that suddenly
sink into fog and mud
and damp cold
when I expect you and you come
and sit quietly by me
and I ask Is everything, everything gone
In a flash, you say, in an insane
instant it went down down
it vanished
I think of you coming with legs
corroded from a traitorous journey
and I see no reflection of your eyes
and I watch the heavy clouds falling
over the sharp-edged cliffs
and hear the spruce tips piercing
the bellies of a dark wind.
—
Gold Hats
brush my lips gently
so they don’t burst open
swollen with desire
(gold hats smell in the quiet sun
smell sharp of semen
of a drop that fell
into the scent of a girl’s body)
brush my nipples
with the tip of your tongue only
my impatient ardent
nipples will burst into flames
if kindled by your lips
(gold hats hide dark lust
in the deep throats
the flowery crowns bend toward the landscape beyond)
brush with tentacles
at where you are at where I am
until the head inside is ablaze
and you quiver give taste
and I press you crush you
drink you drink
(gold hats bend their
crowned heads
the scent of semen mixes with a sweet drop
the smell of a girl
in the lonesome afternoon)
—
Nothing
She vanishes in the clouds
And is gone
In clear nights she swallows stars of the
Big Dipper
With a sharp edge
And I know that beyond the edge there is a
Fathomless space
Nothing
—-
Dane Zajc
(Slovenia, 1929-2005)
Dane Zajc worked as a librarian and editor for several literary magazines. He made his debut in 1958 with a collection of neo-expressionist poetry. He went on to publish nine more volumes of poetry, but also made his name as a writer of lyrical drama.
Dane Zajc was President of the Slovene Writers Association from 1991 until 1995. He received several literary awards, including the prestigious Preseren Prize.
In his poetry Zajc communicates his experience of the world as an absurd and threatening place. His landscapes are empty, silent, blank, destroyed by man and inhabited by animals only. He shows us mans existential situation, using symbols and archaic, biblical, often grotesque images. Zajcs poetry is lyrical; his language concise and powerful. Silences seem as important and significant as words. A frequent theme in Zajcs poems is the ineffectiveness of language and communication. The poets relation to his words is that of God to his creatures: they are earth, real and concrete, as well as unruly and rebellious. Zajcs wording is clear; yet his words often seem to have detached themselves from their original meanings. The essence of things remains a mystery, although the poet tries to approach it in words as well as he can. Zajcs later poems show a stronger tendency towards the dramatic, with less surreal, fantastic elements. His language has become more sober and austere, lending his poetry a prayer-like, incantatory quality.
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Bryan Ferry – The Times Are A Changin’
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A sonnet is a moment’s monument, -/ Memorial from the Soul’s eternity/ To one dead deathless hour.
– Dante Gabriel Rossetti quote
Hogmanay!
Here is to the Beauty, Here is to the Madness… Here is to good company, a glass of Absinthe and to sweet Poesy….
Here is to Women, in all their divine beauty, Here is to our Children… Here is to a future that we can all embrace…
Here is to the Living, and Here is to the Dead…
I tip my glass to the passing of the old, and the coming of the new, Here is to each and every one of you!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
Gates Of Eden
Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull just glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
With his candle lit into the sun
Though its glow is waxed in black
All except when ‘neath the trees of Eden
The lamppost stands with folded arms
Its iron claws attached
To curbs ‘neath holes where babies wail
Though it shadows metal badge
All and all can only fall
With a crashing but meaningless blow
No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden
The savage soldier sticks his head in sand
And then complains
Unto the shoeless hunter who’s gone deaf
But still remains
Upon the beach where hound dogs bay
At ships with tattooed sails
Heading for the Gates of Eden
With a time-rusted compass blade
Aladdin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks
Side saddle on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise
You will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Eden
Relationships of ownership
They whisper in the wings
To those condemned to act accordingly
And wait for succeeding kings
And I try to harmonize with songs
The lonesome sparrow sings
There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden
The motorcycle black madonna
Two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The gray flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
Who pick up on his bread crumb sins
And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden
The kingdoms of Experience
In the precious wind they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what’s real and what is not
It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden
The foreign sun, it squints upon
A bed that is never mine
As friends and other strangers
From their fates try to resign
Leaving men wholly, totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die
And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden
At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what’s true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden
-Robert Zimmerman
Gates of Eden – Bryan Ferry
___________
From The Carmina Gadelica
Hogmanay Carol
I am now come to your country,
To renew to you the Hogmanay,
I need not tell you of it,
It was in the time of our forefathers.
I ascend by the door lintel,
I descend by the doorstep,
I will sing my song becomingly,
Mannerly, slowly, mindfully.
The Hogmanay skin is in my pocket,
Great will be the smoke from it presently.
The house-man will get it in his hand,
He will place its nose in the fire;
He will go sunwards round the babes,
And for seven verities round the housewife.
The housewife it is she who deserves it,
The hand to dispense to us the Hogmanay,
A small gift of the bloom of summer,
Much I wish it with the bread.
Give it to us if it be possible,
If you may not, do not detain us;
I am the servant of God’s Son at the door,
Arise thyself and open to me.
Hogmanay Of The Sack
CALLUINEN HO!–This rune is still repeated in the Isles. Rarely, however, do two persons recite it alike. This renders it difficult to decide the right form of the words.
The walls of the old houses in the West are very thick–from five to eight feet. There are no gables, the walls being of uniform height throughout. The roof of the house being raised from the inner edge of the wall, a broad terrace is left on the outside. Two or three stones project from the wall at the door, forming steps. On these the inmates ascend for purposes of thatching and securing the roof in time of storm.
The ‘gillean Callaig’ carollers or Hogmanay lads perambulate the townland at night. One man is enveloped in the hard hide of a bull with the horns and hoofs still attached. When the men come to a house they ascend the wall and run round sunwise, the man in the hide shaking the horns and hoofs, and the other men striking the hard hide with sticks. The appearance of the man in the hide is gruesome, while the din made is terrific. Having descended and recited their runes at the door, the Hogmanay men are admitted and treated to the best in the house. The performance seems to be symbolic, but of what it is not easy to say, unless of laying an evil spirit. That the rite is heathen and ancient is evident.
Hogmanay of the sack,
Hogmanay of the sack,
Strike the hide,
Strike the hide.
Hogmanay of the sack,
Hogmanay of the sack,
Beat the skin,
Beat the skin.
Hogmanay of the sack,
Hogmanay of the sack,
Down with it! up with it!
Strike the hide.
Hogmanay of the sack,
Hogmanay of the sack,
Down with it! up with it!
Beat the skin.
Hogmanay of the sack,
Hogmanay of the sack.
Hogmanay
We are come to the door,
To see if we be the better of our visit,
To tell the generous women of the townland
That to-morrow is Calendae Day.
(hould the guisers be inhospitably treated, they file round the fire withershins and walk out, and raise a cairn in or near the door, called ‘carnan mollachd,’ cairn of malison, ‘carnan cronachd,’ scaith cairn)
The malison of God and of Hogmanay be on you,
And the scath of the plaintive buzzard,
Of the hen-harrier, of the raven, of the eagle,
And the scath of the sneaking fox.
The scath of the dog and of the cat be on you,
Of the boar, of the badger, and of the ‘brugha,’
Of the hipped bear and of the wild wolf,
And the scath of the foul foumart.
The Song Of Hogmanay
Now since we came to the country
To renew to you the Hogmanay,
Time will not allow us to explain,
It has been since the age of our fathers.
Ascending the wall of the house,
Descending at the door,
My carol to say modestly,
As becomes me at the Hogmanay.
The Hogmanay skin is in my pocket,
Great the fume that will come from that;
No one who shall inhale its odour,
But shall be for ever from it healthy.
The house-man will get it in his grasp,
He will put its point in the fire;
He will go sunwise round the children,
And very specially round the goodwife.
The wife will get it, she it is who deserves it,
The hand to distribute the Hogmanay,
The hand to bestow upon us cheese and butter,
The hand without niggardliness, without meanness.
Since drought has come upon the land,
And that we do not expect rarity,
A little of the substance of the summer,
Would we desire with the bread.
If that we are not to have it,
If thou mayest, do not detain us;
I am the servant of God’s Son on Hogmanay,
Arise thyself and open the door.
Hogmanay here! Hogmanay here!
The Wooing…
m13-cluster
We are in the cosmos and the cosmos is in us.
-Matthew Fox
—
Dear Friends,
Well, the major portion of the holidays have passed, and everyone seems to still be in command of their senses. (at this point) It seems that the established order of capitalism has been weakened a bit. I know of very few people who went on that giant credit bender that has been required to keep the wheels of commerce churning. Maybe the upheavals in the markets as well as the price yo-yo of petroleum has finally knocked some chinks out of the armor, maybe something new and w/holistic will start to emerge; maybe an economy of balance will become the norm. (practice…practice…)
Radio Crash On other notes: Radio Free EarthRites is down for awhile, having lost the power supply on our hard drive in the UK. We will keep you updated on it’s emerging condition…..
With all that said, I hope life is treating you well, and that you are weathering the season!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
P.S. A Happy Birthday to Deirdre Nixon!
——
On The Menu
The Gwyllm Llwydd 2009 Calendar! (it finally is here….)
Cosmic Quotes
Minilogue/hitchhikers choice – short version
The Courtship of Etain – Prologue In FairyLand
Poems For Remembrance
Minilogue – Animals (short version)
______________
Get your 2009 Calendar Here!
This year’s calendar has Lunar Cycles, The Celtic Year, and the births of notable Entheogenic personages…
All new illustrations (of course) and a few updated images from years past. The majority of these images have never been printed before. The will become available as prints soon at Gwyllm-Arts.com!
Hey! Help out the artist, and adorn your wall with a bit of beauty and pertinent calendar dates and celebration!
Thanks,
Gwyllm
___________
Cosmic Quotes:
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
-Carl Jung
The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.
-Stephen Jay Gould
You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
-Wislawa Szymborska
Our dreams are firsthand creations, rather than residues of waking life. We have the capacity for infinite creativity; at least while dreaming, we partake of the power of the Spirit, the infinite Godhead that creates the cosmos.
-Jackie Gleason
Other times, you’re doing some piece of work and suddenly you get feedback that tells you that you have touched something that is very alive in the cosmos.
-Leonard Nimoy
I’m playing dark history. It’s beyond black. I’m dealing with the dark things of the cosmos.
-Sun Ra
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Minilogue/hitchhikers choice – short version
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The Courtship of Etain – Prologue In FairyLand
From The Leabhar Na H-Uidhri
Lillith – Gabriel Rossetti
Etain of the Horses, the daughter of Ailill, was the wife of Mider, the Fairy Dweller in Bri Leith. Now Mider had also another wife named Fuamnach who was filled with jealousy against Etain, and sought to drive her from her husband’s house. And Fuamnach sought out Bressal Etarlam the Druid and besought his aid; and by the spells of the Druid, and the sorcery of Fuamnach, Etain was changed into the shape of a butterfly that finds its delight among flowers. And when Etain was in this shape she was seized by a great wind that was raised by Fuamnach’s spells; and she was borne from her husband’s house by that wind for seven years till she came to the palace of Angus Mac O’c who was son to the Dagda, the chief god of the men of ancient Erin. Mac O’c had been fostered by Mider, but he was at enmity with his foster-father, and he recognised Etain, although in her transformed shape, as she was borne towards him by the force] of the wind. And he made a bower for Etain with clear windows for it through which she might pass, and a veil of purple was laid upon her; and that bower was carried about by Mac O’c wherever he went. And there each night she slept beside him by a means that he devised, so that she became well-nourished and fair of form; for that bower was filled with marvellously sweet-scented shrubs, and it was upon these that she thrived, upon the odour and blossom of the best of precious herbs.
Now to Fuamnach came tidings of the love and the worship that Etain had from Mac O’c, and she came to Mider, and “Let thy foster-son,” said she, “be summoned to visit thee, that I may make peace between you two, and may then go to seek for news of Etain.” And the messenger from Mider went to Mac O’c, and Mac O’c went to Mider to greet him; but Fuamnach for a long time wandered from land to land till she was in that very mansion where Etain was; and then she blew beneath her with the same blast as aforetime, so that the blast carried her out of her bower, and she was blown before it, as she had been before for seven years through all the land of Erin, and she was driven by the wind of that blast to weakness and woe. And the wind carried her over the roof of a house where the men of Ulster sat at their ale, so that she fell through the roof into a cup of gold that stood near the wife of Etar the Warrior, whose dwelling-place was near to the Bay of Cichmany in the province that was ruled over by Conor. And the woman swallowed Etain together with the milk that was in the cup, and she bare her in her womb, till the time came that she was born thereafter as in earthly maid, and the name of Etain, the daughter of Etar, was given to her. And it was one thousand and twelve years since the time of the first begetting of Etain by Ailill to the time when she was born the second time as the daughter of Etar.
Now Etain was nurtured at Inver Cichmany in the house of Etar, with fifty maidens about her of the daughters of the chiefs of the land; and it was Etar himself who still nurtured and clothed them, that they might be companions to his daughter Etain. And upon a certain day, when those maidens were all at the river-mouth to bathe there, they saw a horseman on the plain who came to the water towards them. A horse he rode that was brown, curvetting, and prancing, with a broad forehead and a curly mane and tail. Green, long, and flowing was the cloak that was about him, his shirt was embroidered with embroidery of red gold, and a great brooch of gold in his cloak reached to his shoulder on either side. Upon the back of that man was a silver shield with a golden rim; the handle for the shield was silver, and a golden boss was in the midst of the shield: he held in his hand a five-pointed spear with rings of gold about it from the haft to the head. The hair that was above his forehead was yellow and fair; and upon his brow was a circlet of gold, which confined the hair so that it fell not about his face. He stood for a while upon the shore of the bay; and he gazed upon the maidens, who were all filled with love for him, and then he sang this song:
West of Alba, near the Mound
Where the Fair-Haired Women play,
There, ‘mid little children found,
Etain dwells, by Cichmain’s Bay.
She hath healed a monarch’s eye
By the well of Loch-da-lee;
Yea, and Etar’s wife, when dry,
Drank her: heavy draught was she!
Chased by king for Etain’s sake,
Birds their flight from Teffa wing:
‘Tis for her Da-Arbre’s lake
Drowns the coursers of the king.
Echaid, who in Meath shall reign,
Many a war for thee shall wage;
He shall bring on fairies bane,
Thousands rouse to battle’s rage.
Etain here to harm was brought,
Etain’s form is Beauty’s test;
Etain’s king in love she sought:
Etain with our folk shall rest!
And after that he had spoken thus, the young warrior went away from the place where the maidens were; and they knew not whence it was that he had come, nor whither he departed afterwards.
Moreover it is told of Mac O’c, that after the disappearance of Etain he came to the meeting appointed between him and Mider; and when he found that Fuamnach was away: “‘Tis deceit,” said Mider, “that this woman hath practised upon us; and if Etain shall be seen by her to be in Ireland, she will work evil upon Etain.” “And indeed,” said Mac O’c, “it seemeth to me that thy guess may be true. For Etain hath long since been in my own house, even in the palace where I dwell; moreover she is now in that shape into which that woman transformed her; and ’tis most likely that it is upon her that Fuamnach hath rushed.” Then Mac O’c went back to his palace, and he found his bower of glass empty, for Etain was not there. And Mac O’c turned him, and he went upon the track of Fuamnach, and he overtook her at Oenach Bodbgnai, in the house of Bressal Etarlam the Druid. And Mac O’c attacked her, and he struck off her head, and he carried the head with him till he came to within his own borders.
Yet a different tale hath been told of the end of Fuamnach, for it hath been said that by the aid of Manannan both Fuamnach and Mider were slain in Bri Leith, and it is of that slaying that men have told when they said:
Think on Sigmall, and Bri with its forest:
Little wit silly Fuamnach had learned;
Mider’s wife found her need was the sorest,
When Bri Leith by Manannan was burned.
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Poems For Remembrance…
The Rose from Armidas Garden by Marie Spartali Stillman
—
Those who are dead are never gone:
they are there
in the thickening shadow.
The dead are not under the earth:
they are there in the tree that rustles,
they are there in the wood that groans,
they are in the water that runs,
they are in the water that sleeps,
they are in the hut,
they are in the crowd,
the dead are not dead.
Those who are dead are never gone:
they are in the breast of the woman,
they are in the child that is wailing,
and in the firebrand that flames.
The dead are not under the earth:
they are in the fire that is dying,
they are in the grasses that weep,
they are in the whimpering rocks,
they are in the forest,
they are in the house,
the dead are not dead.
-Birago Diop
—-
Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird whose wings are still
fragile, learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in
order to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that are alive.
-Thich Nhat Hanh
—-
One man believes he is the slayer,
another believes he is the slain.
Both are ignorant; there is neither slayer nor slain.
You were never born; you will never die.
You have never changed; you can never change.
Unborn, eternal, immutable, immemorial, you do not die when the body dies.
Realizing that which is indestructible,
eternal, unborn, and unchanging,
how can you slay or cause another to be slain?
As a man abandons his worn-out clothes and acquires new ones,
so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within.
The Self cannot be pierced with weapons or burned with fire;
water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it.
The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry.
It is everlasting and infinite,
standing on the motionless foundation of eternity.
The Self is unmanifested, beyond all thought,
beyond all change. Knowing this, you should not grieve.
-Bhagavad Gita 2.19-25
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Minilogue – Animals (short version)
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Vimana-V – This illustration can be found in the new calendar!
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Winter Solstice – The Turning Wheel…
To Juan at the Winter Solstice
There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether are learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.
Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison of all true kings that ever reigned?
Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.
Or is it of the Virgin’s silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right she crooks a finger smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.
Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?
Much snow is falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.
Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.
Robert Graves
A Winter’s Seance….
One of those large ones, I have to say…
This is a convoluted entry… It walks across continents, opens doors, closes windows, summons spirits. The darkest days and longest nights takes this entry in like a secret lover up the back stairs. New pleasures, unknown territories and that sudden wonderful surprise in the dark…
This is a Winter’s Seance: the spirits are rising to greet you.
We are pleased to introduce you to psychedelic rock of The Asteriods Galaxy Tour… a dark story from Theophile Guatier, and poetry from the poetic father of Pakistan. You’ll find art from perhaps the least sung of the Spanish Surrealist, and quotes from Aldous Huxley.
Feed the artist please, they are hungry in their caves.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour – Around the Bend
Aldous Huxley Quotes
The Mummy’s Foot -Theophile Gautier
Poetry: The Divine Dance of Allama Muhammad Iqbal
Allama Muhammad Iqbal: A Biography
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour – The Sun Ain’t Shining No More
Artist Remedios Varo
A Biography:
Remedios Varo Uranga (December 16 1908 – October 8, 1963) was a Spanish-Mexican, para-surrealist painter. She was born María de los Remedios Varo Uranga in Anglès, Girona, Spain in 1908. During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris where she was largely influenced by the surrealist movement. She met her husband, the French surrealist poet Benjamin Peret, in Barcelona. She was forced into exile from Paris during the Nazi occupation of France and moved to Mexico City at the end of 1941. She initially considered Mexico a temporary haven, but would remain in Latin America for the rest of her life. She had an early abortion due to the economic realities of her life. Due to the abortion, she could not become pregnant again.
In Mexico she met native artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Her strongest ties were to other exiles and expatriates, notably the English painter Leonora Carrington and her great love, the French pilot and adventurer, Jean Nicolle. Her last major relationship was with Walter Gruen, an Austrian who had endured concentration camps before escaping Europe. Gruen believed fiercely in Varo, and gave her the support that allowed her to fully concentrate on her painting.
After 1949 Varo developed her remarkable mature style, which remains beautifully enigmatic and instantly recognizable. She often worked in oil on masonite panels she prepared herself. Although her colors have the blended resonance of the oil medium, her brushwork often involved many fine strokes of paint laid closely together – a technique more reminiscent of egg tempera. She died at the height of her career from a heart-attack in Mexico City in 1963.
Her work continues to achieve successful retrospectives at major sites in Mexico and the United States.
(from wikipedia)
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The Asteroids Galaxy Tour – Around the Bend (Official Music Video)
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Aldous Huxley Quotes:
“A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.”
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
“All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.”
“Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.”
“Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.”
“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”
“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”
“Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.”
“One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters.”
“The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.”
“What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.”
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THE MUMMYS FOOT
by
Theophile Gautier
I had entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those curiosity-venders, who are called marchands de bric-a-brac in that Parisian argot which is so perfectly unintelligible elsewhere in France.
You have doubtless glanced occasionally through the windows of some of these shops, which have become so numerous now that it is fashionable to buy antiquated furniture, and that every petty stock-broker thinks he must have his chambre au moyen age.
There is one thing there which clings alike to the shop of the dealer in old iron, the wareroom of the tapestry-maker, the laboratory of the chemist, and the studio of the painter:–in all those gloomy dens where a furtive daylight filters in through the window-shutters, the most manifestly ancient thing is dust;–the cobwebs are more authentic than the guimp laces; and the old pear-tree furniture on exhibition is actually younger than the mahogany which arrived but yesterday from America.
The warehouse of my bric-a-brac dealer was a veritable Capharnaum; all ages and all nations seemed to have made their rendezvous there; an Etruscan lamp of red clay stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony panels, brightly striped by lines of inlaid brass; a duchess of the court of Louis XV nonchalantly extended her fawn-like feet under a massive table of the time of Louis XIII with heavy spiral supports of oak, and carven designs of chimeras and foliage intermingled.
Upon the denticulated shelves of several sideboards glittered immense Japanese dishes with red and blue designs relieved by gilded hatching; side by side with enameled works by Bernard Palissy, representing serpents, frogs, and lizards in relief.
From disemboweled cabinets escaped cascades of silver-lustrous Chinese silks and waves of tinsel, which an oblique sunbeam shot through with luminous beads; while portraits of every era, in frames more or less tarnished, smiled through their yellow varnish.
The striped breastplate of a damascened suit of Milanese armor glittered in one corner; Loves and Nymphs of porcelain; Chinese Grotesques, vases of celadon and crackle-ware; Saxon and old Souvres cups encumbered the shelves and nooks of the apartment.
The dealer followed me closely through the tortuous way contrived between the piles of furniture; warding off with his hands the hazardous sweep of my coat-skirts; watching my elbows with the uneasy attention of an antiquarian and a usurer.
It was a singular face that of the merchant:–an immense skull, polished like a knee, and surrounded by a thin aureole of white hair, which brought out the clear salmon tint of his complexion all the more strikingly, lent him a false aspect of patriarchal bonhomie, counteracted, however, by the scintillation of two little yellow eyes which trembled in their orbits like two louis-d’ or upon quicksilver. The curve of his nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which suggested the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands–thin, slender, full of nerves which projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, and armed with claws like those on the terminations of bats’ wings–shook with senile trembling; but those convulsively agitated hands became firmer than steel pincers or lobsters’ claws when they lifted any precious article–an onyx cup, a Venetian glass, or a dish of Bohemian crystal. This strange old man had an aspect so thoroughly rabbinical and cabalistic that he would have been burnt on the mere testimony of his face three centuries ago.
“Will you not buy something from me to-day, sir? Here is a Malay kreese with a blade undulating like flame: look at those grooves contrived for the blood to run along, those teeth set backwards so as to tear out the entrails in withdrawing the weapon–it is a fine character of ferocious arm, and will look well in your collection: this two-handed sword is very beautiful–it is the work of Josepe de la Hera; and this colichemarde, with its fenestrated guard–what a superb specimen of handicraft!”
“No; I have quite enough weapons and instruments of carnage;–I want a small figure, something which will suit me as a paper-weight; for I cannot endure those trumpery bronzes which the stationers sell, and which may be found on everybody’s desk.”
The old gnome foraged among his ancient wares, and finally arranged before me some antique bronzes–so-called, at least; fragments of malachite; little Hindoo or Chinese idols–a kind of poussah toys in jadestone, representing the incarnations of Brahma or Vishnoo, and wonderfully appropriate to the very undivine office of holding papers and letters in place.
I was hesitating between a porcelain dragon, all constellated with warts–its mouth formidable with bristling tusks and ranges of teeth–and an abominable little Mexican fetish, representing the god Zitziliputzili au naturel, when I caught sight of a charming foot, which I at first took for a fragment of some antique Venus.
It had those beautiful ruddy and tawny tints that lend to Florentine bronze that warm living look so much preferable to the gray-green aspect of common bronzes, which might easily be mistaken for statues in a state of putrefaction: satiny gleams played over its rounded forms, doubtless polished by the amorous kisses of twenty centuries; for it seemed a Corinthian bronze, a work of the best era of art–perhaps molded by Lysippus himself.
“That foot will be my choice,” I said to the merchant, who regarded me with an ironical and saturnine air, and held out the object desired that I might examine it more fully.
I was surprised at its lightness; it was not a foot of metal, but in sooth a foot of flesh–an embalmed foot–a mummy’s foot: on examining it still more closely the very grain of the skin, and the almost imperceptible lines impressed upon it by the texture of the bandages, became perceptible. The toes were slender and delicate, and terminated by perfectly formed nails, pure and transparent as agates; the great toe, slightly separated from the rest, afforded a happy contrast, in the antique style, to the position of the other toes, and lent it an aerial lightness–the grace of a bird’s foot;–the sole, scarcely streaked by a few almost imperceptible cross lines, afforded evidence that it had never touched the bare ground, and had only come in contact with the finest matting of Nile rushes, and the softest carpets of panther skin.
“Ha, ha!–you want the foot of the Princess Hermonthis,”–exclaimed the merchant, with a strange giggle, fixing his owlish eyes upon me–”ha, ha, ha!–for a paper-weight!–an original idea!–artistic idea! Old Pharaoh would certainly have been surprised had some one told him that the foot of his adored daughter would be used for a paper-weight after he had had a mountain of granite hollowed out as a receptacle for the triple coffin, painted and gilded–covered with hieroglyphics and beautiful paintings of the Judgment of Souls,”–continued the queer little merchant, half audibly, as though talking to himself!
“How much will you charge me for this mummy fragment?”
“Ah, the highest price I can get; for it is a superb piece: if I had the match of it you could not have it for less than five hundred francs;–the daughter of a Pharaoh! nothing is more rare.”
“Assuredly that is not a common article; but, still, how much do you want? In the first place let me warn you that all my wealth consists of just five louis: I can buy anything that costs five louis, but nothing dearer;–you might search my vest pockets and most secret drawers without even finding one poor–five-franc piece more.”
“Five louis for the foot of the Princess Hermonthis! that is very little, very little indeed; ’tis an authentic foot,” muttered the merchant, shaking his head, and imparting a peculiar rotary motion t
o his eyes.
“Well, take it, and I will give you the bandages into the bargain,” he added, wrapping the foot in an ancient damask rag–”very fine! real damask–Indian damask which has never been redyed; it is strong, and yet it is soft,” he mumbled, stroking the frayed tissue with his fingers, through the trade-acquired habit which moved him to praise even an object of so little value that he himself deemed it only worth the giving away.
He poured the gold coins into a sort of medi34val alms-purse hanging at his belt, repeating:
“The foot of the Princess Hermonthis, to be used for a paper-weight!”
Then turning his phosphorescent eyes upon me, he exclaimed in a voice strident as the crying of a cat which has swallowed a fish-bone:
“Old Pharaoh will not be well pleased; he loved his daughter–the dear man!”
“You speak as if you were a contemporary of his: you are old enough, goodness knows! but you do not date back to the Pyramids of Egypt,” I answered, laughingly, from the threshold. I went home, delighted with my acquisition.
With the idea of putting it to profitable use as soon as possible, I placed the foot of the divine Princess Hermonthis upon a heap of papers scribbled over with verses, in themselves an undecipherable mosaic work of erasures; articles freshly begun; letters forgotten, and posted in the table drawer instead of the letter-box–an error to which absent-minded people are peculiarly liable. The effect was charming, bizarre, and romantic.
Well satisfied with this embellishment, I went out with the gravity and price becoming one who feels that he has the ineffable advantage over all the passers-by whom he elbows, of possessing a piece of the Princess Hermonthis, daughter of Pharaoh.
I looked upon all who did not possess, like myself, a paper-weight so authentically Egyptian, as very ridiculous people; and it seemed to me that the proper occupation of every sensible man should consist in the mere fact of having a mummy’s foot upon his desk.
Happily I met some friends, whose presence distracted me in my infatuation with this new acquisition: I went to dinner with them; for I could not very well have dined with myself.
When I came back that evening, with my brain slightly confused by a few glasses of wine, a vague whiff of Oriental perfume delicately titillated my olfactory nerves: the heat of the room had warmed the natron, bitumen, and myrrh in which the paraschistes, who cut open the bodies of the dead, had bathed the corpse of the princess;–it was a perfume at once sweet and penetrating–a perfume that four thousand years had not been able to dissipate.
The Dream of Egypt was Eternity: her odors have the solidity of granite, and endure as long.
I soon drank deeply from the black cup of sleep: for a few hours all remained opaque to me; Oblivion and Nothingness inundated me with their somber waves.
Yet light gradually dawned upon the darkness of my mind; dreams commenced to touch me softly in their silent flight.
The eyes of my soul were opened; and I beheld my chamber as it actually was; I might have believed myself awake, but for a vague consciousness which assured me that I slept, and that something fantastic was about to take place.
The odor of the myrrh had augmented in intensity; and I felt a slight headache, which I very naturally attributed to several glasses of champagne that we had drunk to the unknown gods and our future fortunes.
I peered through my room with a feeling of expectation which I saw nothing to justify: every article of furniture was in its proper place; the lamp, softly shaded by its globe of ground crystal, burned upon its bracket; the water-color sketches shone under their Bohemian glass; the curtains hung down languidly; everything wore an aspect of tranquil slumber.
After a few moments, however, all this calm interior appeared to become disturbed; the woodwork cracked stealthily; the ash-covered log suddenly emitted a jet of blue flame; and the disks of the pateras seemed like great metallic eyes, watching, like myself, for the things which were about to happen.
My eyes accidentally fell upon the desk where I had placed the foot of the Princess Hermonthis.
Instead of remaining quiet–as behooved a foot which had been embalmed for four thousand years–it commenced to act in a nervous manner; contracted itself, and leaped over the papers like a startled frog;–one would have imagined that it had suddenly been brought into contact with a galvanic battery: I could distinctly hear the dry sound made by its little heel, hard as the hoof of a gazelle.
I became rather discontented with my acquisition, inasmuch as I wished my paper-weights to be of a sedentary disposition, and thought it very unnatural that feet should walk about without legs; and I commenced to experience a feeling closely akin to fear.
Suddenly I saw the folds of my bed-curtain stir; and heard a bumping sound, like that caused by some person hopping on one foot across the floor. I must confess I became alternately hot and cold; that I felt a strange wind chill my back; and that my suddenly rising hair caused my nightcap to execute a leap of several yards.
The bed-curtains opened and I beheld the strangest figure imaginable before me.
It was a young girl of a very deep coffee-brown complexion, like the bayadere Amani, and possessing the purest Egyptian type of perfect beauty: her eyes were almond-shaped and oblique, with eyebrows so black that they seemed blue; her nose was exquisitely chiseled, almost Greek in its delicacy of outline; and she might indeed have been taken for a Corinthian statue of bronze, but for the prominence of her cheek-bones and the slightly African fulness of her lips, which compelled one to recognize her as belonging beyond all doubt to the hieroglyphic race which dwelt upon the banks of the Nile.
Her arms, slender and spindle-shaped, like those of very young girls, were encircled by a peculiar kind of metal bands and bracelets of glass beads; her hair was all twisted into little cords; and she wore upon her bosom a little idol-figure of green paste, bearing a whip with seven lashes, which proved it to be an image of Isis: her brow was adorned with a shining plate of gold; and a few traces of paint relieved the coppery tint of her cheeks.
As for her costume, it was very odd indeed. Fancy a pagne or skirt all formed of little strips of material bedizened with red and black hieroglyphics, stiffened with bitumen, and apparrently belonging to a freshly unbandaged mummy.
In one of those sudden flights of thought so common in dreams I heard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-a-brac dealer, repeating like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with so enigmatical an intonation:
“Old Pharaoh will not be well pleased: he loved his daughter, the dear man!”
One strange circumstance, which was not at all calculated to restore my equanimity, was that the apparition had but one foot; the other was broken off at the ankle!
She approached the table where the foot was starting and fidgeting about more than ever, and there supported herself upon the edge of the desk. I saw her eyes fill with pearly-gleaming tears.
Although she had not as yet spoken, I fully comprehended the thoughts which agitated her: she looked at her foot–it was indeed her own–with an exquisitely graceful expression of coquettish sadness; but the foot leaped and ran hither and thither, as though impelled on steel springs.
Twice or thrice she extended her hand to seize it, but could not succeed.
Then commenced between the Princess Hermonthis and her foot–which appeared to be endowed with a special life of its own–a very fantastic dialogue in a most ancient Coptic tongue, such as might have been spoken thirty centuries ago in the syrinxes of the land of Ser: luckily, I understood Coptic perfectly well that night.
The Princess Herm
onthis cried, in a voice sweet and vibrant as the tones of a crystal bell:
“Well, my dear little foot, you always flee from me; yet I always took good care of you. I bathed you with perfumed water in a bowl of alabaster; I smoothed your heel with pumice-stone mixed with palm oil; your nails were cut with golden scissors and polished with a hippopotamus tooth; I was careful to select tatbebs for you, painted and embroidered and turned up at the toes, which were the envy of all the young girls in Egypt: you wore on your great toe rings bearing the device of the sacred Scarab34us; and you supported one of the lightest bodies that a lazy foot could sustain.”
The foot replied, in a pouting and chagrined tone:
“You know well that I do not belong to myself any longer;–I have been bought and paid for; the old merchant knew what he was about; he bore you a grudge for having refused to espouse him;–this is an ill turn which he has done you. The Arab who violated your royal coffin in the subterranean pit of the necropolis of Thebes was sent thither by him: he desired to prevent you from being present at the reunion of the shadowy nations in the cities below. Have you five pieces of gold for my ransom?”
“Alas, no!–my jewels, my rings, my purses of gold and silver, they were all stolen from me,” answered the Princess Hermonthis, with a sob.
“Princess,” I then exclaimed, “I never retained anybody’s foot unjustly;–even though you have not got the five louis which it cost me, I present it to you gladly: I should feel unutterably wretched to think that I were the cause of so amiable a person as the Princess Hermonthis being lame.”
I delivered this discourse in a royally gallant, troubadour tone, which must have astonished the beautiful Egyptian girl.
She turned a look of deepest gratitude upon me; and her eyes shone with bluish gleams of light.
She took her foot–which surrendered itself willingly this time–like a woman about to put on her little shoe, and adjusted it to her leg with much skill.
This operation over, she took a few steps about the room, as though to assure herself that she was really no longer lame.
“Ah, how pleased my father will be!–he who was so unhappy because of my mutilation, and who from the moment of my birth set a whole nation at work to hollow me out a tomb so deep that he might preserve me intact until that last day, when souls must be weighed in the balance of Amenthi! Come with me to my father;–he will receive you kindly; for you have given me back my foot.”
I thought this proposition natural enough. I arrayed myself in a dressing-gown of large-flowered pattern, which lent me a very Pharaonic aspect; hurriedly put on a pair of Turkish slippers, and informed the Princess Hermonthis that I was ready to follow her.
Before starting, Hermonthis took from her neck the little idol of green paste, and laid it on the scattered sheets of paper which covered the table.
“It is only fair,” she observed smilingly, “that I should replace your paper-weight.”
She gave me her hand, which felt soft and cold, like the skin of a serpent; and we departed.
We passed for some time with the velocity of an arrow through a fluid and grayish expanse, in which half-formed silhouettes flitted swiftly by us, to right and left.
For an instant we saw only sky and sea.
A few moments later obelisks commenced to tower in the distance: pylons and vast flights of steps guarded by sphinxes became clearly outlined against the horizon.
We had reached our destination. The princess conducted me to the mountain of rose-colored granite, in the face of which appeared an opening so narrow and low that it would have been difficult to distinguish it from the fissures in the rock, had not its location been marked by two stel34 wrought with sculptures.
Hermonthis kindled a torch, and led the way before me.
We traversed corridors hewn through the living rock: their walls, covered with hieroglyphics and paintings of allegorical processions, might well have occupied thousands of arms for thousands of years in their formation;–these corridors, of interminable length, opened into square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through which we descended by cramp-irons or spiral stairways;–these pits again conducted us into other chambers, opening into other corridors, likewise decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, the symbols of the tau and pedum–prodigious works of art which no living eye can ever examine–interminable legends of granite which only the dead have time to read through all eternity.
At last we found ourselves in a hall so vast, so enormous, so immeasurable, that the eye could not reach its limits; files of monstrous columns streatched far out of sight on every side, between which twinkled livid stars of yellowish flame;–points of light which revealed further depths incalculable in the darkness beyond.
The Princess Hermonthis still held my hand, and graciously saluted the mummies of her acquaintance.
My eyes became accustomed to the dim twilight, and objects became discernible.
I beheld the kings of the subterranean races seated upon thrones–grand old men, though dry, withered, wrinkled like parchment, and blackened with naphtha and bitumen–all wearing pshents of gold, and breastplaces and gorgets glittering with precious stones; their eyes immovably fixed like the eyes of sphinxes, and their long beards whitened by the snow of centuries. Behind them stood their peoples, in the stiff and constrained posture enjoined by Egyptian art, all eternally preserving the attitude prescribed by the hieratic code. Behind these nations, the cats, ibises, and crocodiles contemporary with them–rendered monstrous of aspect by their swathing bands–mewed, flapped their wings, or extended their jaws in a saurian giggle.
All the Pharaohs were there–Cheops, Chephrenes, Psammetichus, Sesostris, Amenotaph–all the dark rulers of the pyramids and syrinxes–on yet higher thrones sat Chronos and Xixouthros–who was contemporary with the deluge; and Tubal Cain, who reigned before it.
The beard of King Xixouthros had grown seven times around the granite table, upon which he leaned, lost in deep reverie–and buried in dreams.
Further back, through a dusty cloud, I beheld dimly the seventy-two pre-Adamite Kings, with their seventy-two peoples–forever passed away.
After permitting me to gaze upon this bewildering spectacle a few moments, the Princess Hermonthis presented me to her father Pharaoh, who favored me with a most gracious nod.
“I have found my foot again!–I have found my foot!” cried the Princess, clapping her little hands together with every sign of frantic joy: “it was this gentleman who restored it to me.”
The races of Kemi, the races of Nahasi–all the black, bronzed, and copper-colored nations repeated in chorus:
“The Princess Hermonthis has found her foot again!”
Even Xixouthros himself was visibly affected.
He raised his heavy eyelids, stroked his mustache with his fingers, and turned upon me a glance weighty with centuries.
“By Oms, the dog of Hell, and Tmei, daughter of the Sun and of Truth! this is a brave and worthy lad!” exclaimed Pharaoh, pointing to me with his scepter, which was terminated with a lotus-flower.
“What recompense do you desire?”
Filled with that daring inspired by dreams in which nothing seems impossible, I asked him for the hand of the Princess Hermonthis;–the hand seemed to me a very proper antithetic recompense for the foot.
Pharaoh opened wide his great eyes of glass in astonishment at my witty request.
“What country do you come from? and what is your age?”
“I am a Frenchman; and I am twenty-
seven years old, venerable Pharaoh.”
“–Twenty-seven years old! and he wishes to espouse the Princess Hermonthis, who is thirty centuries old!” cried out at once all the Thrones and all the Circles of Nations.
Only Hermonthis herself did not seem to think my request unreasonable.
“If you were even only two thousand years old,” replied the ancient King, “I would willingly give you the Princess; but the disproportion is too great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who will last well: you do not know how to preserve yourselves any longer; even those who died only fifteen centuries ago are already no more than a handful of dust;–behold! my flesh is solid as basalt; my bones are bars of steel!
“I shall be present on the last day of the world, with the same body and the same features which I had during my lifetime: my daughter Hermonthis will last longer than a statue of bronze.
“Then the last particles of your dust will have been scattered abroad by the winds; and even Isis herself, who was able to find the atoms of Osiris, would scarce be able to recompose your being.
“See how vigorous I yet remain, and how mighty is my grasp,” he added, shaking my hand in the English fashion with a strength that buried my rings in the flesh of my fingers.
He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, and found my friend Alfred shaking me by the arm to make me get up.
“O you everlasting sleeper!–must I have you carried out into the middle of the street, and fireworks exploded in your ears? It is after noon; don’t you recollect your promise to take me with you to see M. Aguado’s Spanish pictures?”
“God! I forgot all, all about it,” I answered, dressing myself hurriedly; “we will go there at once; I have the permit lying on my desk.”
I started to find it;–but fancy my astonishment when I beheld, instead of the mummy’s foot I had purchased the evening before, the little green paste idol left in its place by the Princess Hermonthis!
____________________
Poetry: The Divine Dance of Allama Muhammad Iqbal
The secret divine my ecstasy has taught (from Baal-i-Jibreel)
The secret divine my ecstasy has taught
I may convey if I have Gabriel’s breath.
What can these stars tell me of my fate?
They are lost themselves in the boundless firmament.
The total absorption of thought and vision is life,
Scattered thought is selfhood’s total death.
Pleasures of selfhood are a blessing of God,
Who makes me lose my awareness of myself.
With a pure heart, a noble aim, a poignant soul.
I care not for Solomon’s wealth or Plato’s thought.
The Prophet’s ‘Mairaj’ has taught me that heaven
Lies within the bounds of human reach.
This universe, perhaps, is yet incomplete,
For I hear repeated sounds of “Be, And It Was.”
Thy mind is ruled by the magic of the West,
Thy cure lies in the Fire of Rumi’s faith.
It is he who has given my eyes a blissful vision,
It is he who has blessed my soul with light.
—
To the Saqi (from Baal-i-Jibreel)
Look! What wonders the spring has wrought!
The river bank is a paradise!
Rose-embowered glades,
Blossoming jasmine and hyacinth,
And violets, the envy of the skies!.
Rainbow colours transformed
Into a chorus of rapturous sounds,
And the harmony of flowers
The hillside is carnation-red;
In the languid haze, the air
Seems drunk with the beauty of life!
The brook, on the heights of the hill,
Dances to its own music.
The world is dizzy in a pageant of colour!
My rosy-cheeked Cup-bearer!
The voice of spring is the voice of life!
But the spring lasts not for ever;
So bring me the cup that tears all veils –
The wine that brightens life –
The wine that intoxicates the world –
The wine in which flows
The music of everlasting life,
The wine that reveals eternity’s secret.
Unveil the secrets, O Saqi.
Look! The world has changed apace!
New are the songs, and new is the music;
The West’s magic has dissolved;
The West’s magicians are bewildered;
Old politics has lost its game;
The world is tired of kings;
Gone are the days of the rich;
Gone is the jugglery of old;
Awake is China’s sleeping giant;
The Himalayas’ torrents are unleashed;
Sinai is riven;
Moses awaits the light divine.
The Muslim says that God is One
But his heart is Still a heathen:
Culture, sufism, rites and rthetoric,
All adore non- Arab idols;
The truth was lost in trifles,
And the nation was lost in conventions.
The speaker’s rhetoric is enchanting,
But is devoid of passion;
It is clothed in logic neat,
But lost in a maze of words;
The sufi, unique in the love of truth,
Unique in the love of God,
Was lost in un-Islamic thought;
Was lost in the hierarchic quest;
The fire of love is extinguished,
And a Muslim is a heap of ashes,
O Saqi! Give me the old wine again!
Let the potent cup go round!
Let me soar on the wings of love;
Make my dust bright-pinioned;
Make wisdom free;
And make the young guide the old;
Thou it is that nourishest. this nation;
Thou it is that canst sustain it;
Urge them to move, to stir;
Give them Ali’s heart; give them Siddiq’s passion;
Let the same old love pierce their hearts;
Awaken in them a burning zeal;
Let the stars throw down their spears,
And let the earth’s dwellers tremble
Give the young a passion that consumes;
Give them my vision, my love of God;
Free my boat from the whirlpool’s grip,
And make it move forward-,
Reveal to me the secrets of life,
For thou knowest them all;
The treasures of a fakir like me
Are suffused, unsleeping eyes,
And secret yearnings of the heart-,
My anguished sighs at night,
My solitude in the world of men,
My hopes and my fears,
My quest untiring,
My nature an arena of thought
A mirror of the world.
My heart a battlefield of life,
With armies of suspicion,
And bastions of certitude;
With these treasures I am
More rich than the richest of all.
Let the young join my throng,
And let them find an anchor of hope.
The sea of life has its ebb and flow-,
In every atom’s heart is the pulse of life;
It manifests itself in the body,
As a flame conceals a wave of smoke;
Contact with the earth was harsh for it,
But it liked the labour;
It is in motion, and not in motion;
Tired of the elements’ shackles;
A unity, imprisoned by plurality;
But always unique, unequalled.
It has made this dome of myriad glass;
It has carved this pantheon.
It does not repeat its craft
For thou art not me, and I am not thou;
It has created the world of men,
And remains in solitude,
Its brightness is seen in the stars,
And in the lustre of pearls-,
To it belong the wildernesses,
The flowers and the thorns;
Mountains sometimes are shaken by its might;
It captures angels and nymphs;
It makes the eagle pounce on a prey,
And leave a blood-stained body.
Every atom throbs with life;
Rest is an illusion;
Life’s journey pauses not,
For every moment is a new glory;
Life, thou thinkest, is a mystery;
Life is a delight in eternal flight;
Life has seen many ups and downs;
It loves a journey, not a goal.
Movement is life’s being;
Movement is truth, pause is a mirage.
Life’s enjoyment is in perils,
In facing ups and downs;
In the world beyond
Life stalked for death,
But the impulse to procreate
Peopled the world of man and beast.
Flowers blossomed and dropped
From this tree of life.
Fools think life is ephemeral;
Life renews itself for ever –
Moving fast as a flash,
Moving to eternity in a breath;
Time, a chain of days and nights,
Is the ebb and flow of breath.
This flow of breath is like a sword,
Selfhood is its sharpness;
Selfhood is the secret of life;
It is the world’s awakening,
Selfhood is solitary, absorbed,
An ocean enclosed in a drop;
It shines in light and in darkness,
Existent in, but away from, thee and me.
The dawn of life behind it, eternity before,
It has no frontiers before, no frontiers behind.
Afloat on the river of time,
Bearing the buffets of the waves,
Changing the course of its quest,
Shifting its glance from time to time;
For it a hill is a grain of sand,
Mountains are shattered by its blows;
A journey is its beginning and end,
And this is the secret of its being.
It is the moon’s beam, the spark in the flint,
Colourless itself, though infused with colours,
No concern has it with the calculus of space,
With linear time’s limits, with the finitude of life.
It manifested itself in man’s essence of dust,
After an eternity of a strife to be born.
It is in thy heart that Selfhood has an abode,
As heaven has its abode in the cornea of thy eye.
To one who guards his Selfhood,
The living that demeans it, is poison;
He accepts only a living,
That keeps his self- esteem;
Keep away from royal pomp,
Keep thy Selfhood free;
Thou shouldst bow in prayer,
Not bow to a human being.
This myriad-coloured world,
Under the sentence of death,
This world of sight and sound,
I Where life means eating and drinking,
Is Selfhood’s initial stage; It is not thy abode, O traveller!
This dust-bowl is not the source of thy fire;
The world is for thee, not thou for the world.
Demolish this illusion of’ time and space;
Selfhood is the Tiger of God, the world is its prey;
The earth is its prey, the heavens are its prey;
Other worlds there are, still awaiting birth,
The earth-born are not the centre of all life;
They all await thy assault,
Thy cataclysmic thought and deed;
Days and nights revolve,
To reveal thy Selfhood to thee;
Thou art the architect of the world.
Words fail to convey the truth;
Truth is the mirror, words its shade;
Though the breath is a burning flame,
The flame has limited bounds.
‘If now I soar any farther,
The vision will sear my wings.’
—
Selfhood can demolish the magic of this world; (from Baal-i-Jibreel)
Selfhood can demolish the magic of this world;
But our belief in The One is not comprehended by all.
Have a seer’s eye, and light will dawn on thee;
As a river and its waves cannot remain apart.
The light of God and knowledge are not in rivalry,
But so the pulpit believes, afraid of Hallaj’s rope.
Contentment is the shield for the pure and the noble
A shield in slavery, and a shield in power.
In the East the soul looks in vain for light;
In the West the light is a faded cloud of dust.
The fakirs who could shatter the power and pelf of kings
No longer tread this earth, in climes far or near.
The spirit of this age is brimful with negations,
And drained to the fast drop is the power of faith.
Muted is Europe’s lament on its crumbling pageant,
Muted by the delirious beats, the clangour of its music.
A sleepy ripple awaits, to swell into a wave
A wave that will swallow up monsters of the sea.
What is slavery but a loss of the sense of beauty?
What the free call beautiful, is beautiful indeed.
The present belongs to him who explores, in their depths,
The fathomless seas of time, to find the future’s pearl.
The alchemist of the West has turned stone into glass
But my alchemy has transmuted glass into flint
Pharaohs of today have stalked me in vain;
But I fear not; I am blessed with Moses’ wand.
The flame that can set afire a dark, sunless wood,
Will not be throttled by a straw afloat in the wind.
Love is self-awareness; love is self-knowledge;
Love cares not for the palaces and the power of kings.
I will not wonder if I reach even the moon and the stars,
For I have hitched my wagon to the star. of all stars.
First among the wise, last of the Prophets,
Who gave a speck of dust the brightness of the Mount.
He is the first and last in the eyes of love;
He is the Word of God. He is the Word of God.
—–
Allama Muhammad Iqbal: A Biography
Muhammad Iqbal was born in Sialkot, Punjab, probably in 1877, although there is some uncertainty about the year of his birth. He graduated from Government College, Lahore, in 1899 with a master’s degree in philosophy. He taught there until 1905, while establishing his reputation as an Urdu poet. During this period his poetry expressed an ardent Indian nationalism, but a marked change came over his views between 1905 and 1908, when he was studying for his doctorate at Cambridge University, visiting German universities, and qualifying as a barrister.
The philosophies of Nietzsche and Bergson influenced Iqbal deeply, while he became extremely critical of Western civilization, which he regarded as decadent. He turned to Islam for inspiration and rejected nationalism as a disease of the West. He argued that Moslems must find their destiny through a pan-Islamic movement that ignored national boundaries. He also denounced the mystical trend of Indian Islam, blaming it for weakening the Moslem community and leading to its political downfall. These ideas found vigorous expression in the long poems Asrar-i-Khudi (The Secrets of the Self) in 1915 and Rumuz-i-Bekhudi (The Mysteries of Selflessness) in 1918. These were written in Persian, not Urdu, presumably to gain his ideas an audience in the Moslem world outside India.
Iqbal was knighted by the British in 1922, and his fame drew him increasingly into public life. Although he was not an active politician, he was elected to the Punjab legislature in 1926, and in 1930 he was made president of the Moslem League. By this time the dream of a pan-Islamic world no longer appealed to him. His statement in his presidential address that the “final destiny” of Indian Moslems was to have a “consolidated Northwest Indian Moslem state” is regarded as one of the earliest expressions of the idea of Pakistan.
Becoming convinced that Moslems were in danger from the Hindu majority if India should become independent, Iqbal gave his powerful support to Mohammad Ali Jinnah as the leader of India’s Moslems. In his last years Iqbal returned to Urdu as his poetic medium, publishing Bal-i-Jibril (Gabriel’s Wing) in 1935 and Zarb-i-Kalim (The Rod of Moses) in 1936. They have been criticized as lacking the energy and inspiration of his early work. He died in Lahore on April 21, 1938.
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The Asteroids Galaxy Tour – The Sun Ain’t Shining No More
___________
The Philosophers’ Stone….
This is a new Mash-UP that I finished this week. You can pick up the print if you like it at: http://gwyllm-arts.com Doing so, you’ll support the artistic community, and help keep this little project going.
It has been over a week since I have posted, and I have to say I am having some problems with motivation. I actually have had this ready to go except for the Beardsley stuff for nearly a week. I have 2 other post that will appear in the next couple of days as well… I just want to say this: “No feedback makes Gwyllm a dull boy, and at times I feel I am thrashing around in the dark.” If you like something, drop me a line. I promise to answer, and if you want a conversation, well, I’m yours! 80)
The magazine is effectively done. We will have a new publisher as soon as I jump through all the hoops.
Snowing here in Portland tonight. It is colder than it has been for 10 years. The Ice Age Cometh. (Rowan hates my saying this. I have suggested that he learns to cross country ski as the Ice Wall will be coming out of Canada in his life time…. 80) )
I have finished the 2009 calendar, but LuLu.com is screwing up… soon my friends, soon. I wrestled with it for a week as they have piss poor instructions and even wonkier software. I will be pleased to be moving stuff soon.
______
This issue has some nice stuff in it. I have thrashed around, and found some delightful Pop, and Poetic items for your enjoyment.
On The Menu:
Aubrey Beardsley Quotes & Poem
Sufi Alchemists and the Grail Myth
The Poetry and The Music: Patti….
That’s it. Enjoy.
Much Love
Gwyllm
Mantram of the Soul
I am soul,
I am light divine,
I am love,
I am will,
I am fixed design.
__________________
Aubrey Beardsley Quotes & Poem:
“No language is rude that can boast polite writers.”
In the present age, alas! our pens are ravished by unlettered authors and unmannered critics, that make a havoc rather than a building, a wilderness rather than a garden. But, a lack! what boots it to drop tears upon the preterit?
“I have one aimthe grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing.”
—-
The Ivory Piece
A fragment of verse
Carelessly coiffed, with sash half slipping down
Cravat mis-tied, and tassels left to stream,
I walked haphazard through the early town,
Teased with the memory of a charming dream.
I recollected a great room. The day,
Half dead, lit faintly on the walls the pale
And sudden eyes that showed the formal play
Of woven actors in some curious tale.
In fabulous gardens, where romantic trees
Perched on the branches birds without a name.
1898. Written in January 1898, shortly before his last illness, this draft of a poemof which both theme and context remain tantalisingly obscuregives an intriguing glimpse into the elliptic flights of Beardsleys imagination.
___________________
Cannabis: The Philosophers Stone
Sufi Alchemists and the Grail Myth
From Green Gold: the Tree of Life, Marijuana in Magic and Religion
by Chris Bennett, Lynn Osburn, and Judy Osburn
Marcel Eliade has commented that there may be a Zoroastrian (here referred to as Parsi) origin for the Grail Myth: In a work published in 1939, the Parsi Scholar Sir Jahangir C. Coyajee has also remarked upon the analogy between the Grail and the Iranian Glory, xvarenah , and the similarities between the legends of Arthur and those of the fabulous King Kay Khorsaw. Interestingly the xvarenah mentioned, is the same substance the sacred Haoma was said to be rich in. Eliade goes on to say that in one of the many forms of the legend, the Grail is found in India: Let us add that in the cycle of compositions posterior to Wolfram Von Eschenbauch, the Grail is won in India by Lohengrin, Parzivals son, accompanied by all the knights .
Barbara Walker tells us that the whole wasteland motif is of an Arab origin, and that the early crusaders brought it back to Europe believing that if the grail were not recovered then the wasteland that befell the Saudi-Arabian dessert would befall their more fertile land.[10] The story about Parzival and his son is closely paralleled in the following account given by Idries Shaw in The Sufis:
The first Sufi record of a teaching journey to Englandsuch is contained in the travels of Najmuddin (Star of Faith) Gwath-ed-Dahar. He was born about 1232, or perhaps earlier. His son followed his fathers footsteps from India to China in 1338. The first Najmuddin was a disciple of the illustrious Nizamuddin Awlia of Delhi, who sent him to Rum (Turkey) to study under Khidr Rumi. Khidr Rumis full name was Sayed Khidr Rumi Khapradri the Cupbearer of Turkestan. It will be remembered that the Khidr order (equated with the Garter) has as its slogan a salutation to the cupbearer. This cup had miraculous qualities.
Idries Shaws comments on the cupbearer and the cups miraculous qualities parallel the Grail myth immensely. Further examination of Shaws comments shed even more illumination on the subject. First, let us look at the name Khidr , which is also spelled Khizr. It is a Moslem name used in reference to the Biblical prophet Elijah. As J.M. Campbell recorded in his classic 1894 essay, On the Religion of Hemp :
In his devotion to bhang , with reverence, not with the worship, which is due to Allah alone, The North Indian Mussulman joins hymning to the praise of bhang. To the follower of the later religion of Islam the holy spirit in bhang is not the spirit of the Almighty, it is the spirit of the great prophet Khizr, or Elijiah. That bhang should be sacred to Khizr is natural, Khizr is the patron saint of water. Still more Khizr means green, the revered color of the cooling water of bhang ;. So the Urdu poet sings When I quaff fresh bhang I liken its color to the fresh light down of thy youthful beard. The prophet Khizr or the green prophet cries May the drink be pleasing to thee.
Peter Lamborn Wilson makes the following comments on the Sufi term, Saki-Khaneh, House of the Cupbearer:
The saki or wine serving boy is a symbol of the Beloved or the spiritual master in Sufi poetry, but in Pakistan saki-khaneh is a slang term for a tea house that serves charas and bhang . Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy
Shaw comments on the connections between the Arab Khidr Order and the famous British group, the Order of the Garter:
The early records of the Order of the Garter are lost. Its patron saint was St. George , who is equated in Syria, where his cult originates, with the mysterious Khidr -figure of the Sufi s. It was in fact called the Order of St. George, which would translate direct into Sufi phraseology as Tarika-i-Hadrat-i-Khidr (the Order of St. Khidr ). It became known as the Order of the Garter. The word garter in Arabic is the same as the word for the Sufi mystical tie or bond.
The modern day Order of the Garter traces its origins to the Knights of the Round Table and is attributed to Saint George, who is by tradition considered to be the patron Saint of England. History provides little factual records of who Saint George was and what his actual exploits were. Folklore named the pagan savior, Green George, a spirit of spring. His image was common in old church carvings, a human head surrounded by leaves.[11] He is probably best remembered as the slayer of the dragon in a story that is found in twelfth century literature.
A Muslim writer in about AD 900 compared St. George with the Mesopotamian God Tammuz. Moslems also identified St. George with the mysterious prophet Khidr , known as the Verdant One and whose footsteps leave a green imprint. Khidr shares his day, 23 April, with the Saint. William Anderson, The Archetype of Our Oneness with the Earth
Scholar Sula Benet made the following comments on a tale that closely resembles that of Saint George : In the Ukraine there is a legend of a dragon who lived in Kiev, oppressing the people and demanding tribute. The dragon was killed and the city liberated by a man wearing a hemp shirt.[12]
In the story of the Grail legend Parzival was sent on a quest for the Grail, the cup Christ drank from at the last supper which was thought to contain the power to heal the ailing King. In medieval times the people believed the state of the land coincided with the health of the king, and since the King was dying, the land in turn was becoming barren.
Comparatively, in Rabelais Pantagruel , which is a parody of the Grail myth, and contains occult references to cannabis, we find the following passage referring to the herb Pantagruel ion, which is now known to be hemp :
…in the season of the great draught, when they were busiest gathering the said herb; to wit, at that time when Icaruss dog, with his fiery balling and barking at the sun, maketh the whole world troglodytic and enforceth people everywhere to hide themselves in the dens and subterranean caves. It is likewise called Pantagruel ion, because of the notable and singular qualities, virtues, and properties thereof; for as Pantagruel[13] hath been the idea, pattern prototype and exemplar of all jovial perfection and accomplishment; so in this Pantagruelion have I found so much efficacy and energy, so much completeness and excellency, so much exquisiteness and rarity, and so many admirable effects and operations of a transcendent nature that if the worth and virtue therof had been known, when those trees, by the relation of the prophet, made election of a wooden king, to rule and govern over them, it without all doubt would have carried away from all the rest the plurality of votes and suffrages.[14]
One could make a modern analogy of the Grail Myth. Mankind represents the dying king who has forgotten his divinity. The polluted and stripped earth is the wasteland caused by this sickness. The rediscovered knowledge of hemp s many uses in the effort to heal ourselves, those around us and the earth,[15] could be said to represent the Grail . And our mission to end marijuana prohibition is the Quest.
There is no mystery why so few references to cannabis can be found in Medieval European literature; while embracing wine as a sacrament, the Inquisition outlawed cannabis ingestion in Spain in the twelfth century and France in the thirteenth. Anyone using hemp spiritually, medicinally, or otherwise was labeled witch.
Saint Joan of Arc, for example, was accused in 1430-31 of using a variety of herbal witch drugs, including cannabis, to hear voices. J. Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes
In keeping with the medieval churchs war on all things Arabic, including bathing, Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal fiat in 1484 condemning the use of cannabis in the satanic mass. A. De Passquale, Farmacognosia della Canape Indiana[16]
So after cannabis prohibitions of the fifth, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, hemp was re-condemned this time as an unholy sacrament of the second and third types of satanic mass.[17] This religious prohibition lasted more than 150 years.
In The Sufi
s, Idries Shaw tells us there is an Arab origin for the European witches: Who brought the witches to the West? In the medieval form, from which most of our information derives, undoubtedly the Aniza tribe. Pointing to evidence like the similarities between the witches circle and the circular dance of the medieval dervishes, Arab words used in witches spells, and the use of hallucinogenic plants in both systems, Shaw puts forth a reasonable argument that modern witches can find at least a part of their origin in a group founded by Abu el-Atahiyya (748828):
His circle of disciples, the Wise Ones, commemorated him in a number of ways after his death. To signify his tribe, they adopted the goat, cognate with his tribal name (Anz, Aniza). A torch between goat horns (the devil in Spain as it later became) symbolized for them the light of illumination from the intellect (head) of the goat, the Aniza teacher. His wasm (tribal brand) was very much like a broad arrow, also called an eagles foot. This sign, known to the witches as the goosefoot, became the mark for their places of meeting. After Atahiyyas death before the middle of the ninth century, tradition has it that a group from his school migrated to Spain, which had been under Arab rule for over a century at that time. I. Shaw, The Sufis
FOOTNOTES
[10] The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets.
[11] Barbara Walker, The Womans Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. In this book, Barbara Walker offers the following origin for the story: St. George the Dragon-slayer apparently evolved from a mythic meld of Green George with an Arian Bishop of Alexandria who opposed St. Athnasius, and put to death an orthodox master of the mint named Dracontius, Dragon.
[12] Sula Benet, Early Diffusion and Folk Uses of Hemp.
[13] Here referring to the storys hero, a giant who was named after the herb.
[14] Rabelais also states that his heroes drank as heartily as the Templars.
[15] See the Emperor Wears No Clothes, by J. Herer; also Hemp, Lifeline to the Future, by C. Conrad.
[16] In Estratto dai Lavori dell, Institute di Farmacognosia della Universita di Messina, Italy, no. 5.(1967) p. 24.
[17] The Emperor Wears No Clothes.
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Patti….
my blakean year
In my Blakean year
I was so disposed
Toward a mission yet unclear
Advancing pole by pole
Fortune breathed into my ear
Mouthed a simple ode
One road is paved in gold
One road is just a road
In my Blakean year
Such a woeful schism
The pain of our existence
Was not as I envisioned
Boots that trudged from track to track
Worn down to the sole
One road is paved in gold
One road is just a road
Boots that tread from track to track
Worn down to the sole
One road is paved in gold
One road is just a road
In my Blakean year
Temptation but a hiss
Just a shallow spear
Robed in cowardice
Brace yourself for bitter flack
For a life sublime
A labyrinth of riches
Never shall unwind
The threads that bind the pilgrim’s sack
Are stitched into the Blakean back
So throw off your stupid cloak
Embrace all that you fear
For joy will conquer all despair
In my Blakean year
Patti Smith – Asti & My Blakean Year
People Have the Power
I was dreaming in my dreaming
of an aspect bright and fair
and my sleeping it was broken
but my dream it lingered near
in the form of shining valleys
where the pure air recognized
and my senses newly opened
I awakened to the cry
that the people / have the power
to redeem / the work of fools
upon the meek / the graces shower
it’s decreed / the people rule
The people have the power
The people have the power
The people have the power
The people have the power
Vengeful aspects became suspect
and bending low as if to hear
and the armies ceased advancing
because the people had their ear
and the shepherds and the soldiers
lay beneath the stars
exchanging visions
and laying arms
to waste / in the dust
in the form of / shining valleys
where the pure air / recognized
and my senses / newly opened
I awakened / to the cry
Patti Smith – People Have The Power
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Into the Red Earth….
So… we took off and out of Portland for an extended time over the Thanks Giving Holiday down to spend time with our friends the Nixon’s up above Medford Oregon… about a thousand or so feet up from the valley floor at their home on the north rim.
clicky-clicky
We were often treated to a view of rising and falling fog… one moment, the whole valley below looked as if it were a sea, with tumbling whiteheads, and then in just a few minutes the fog would rush up the hill and we’d be enveloped, and you could only see a few yards at the most. Truly lovely.
Being with Randy and De though was the best. Good friends, company and time. We also were joined by Julie and Mike who live about 3 miles from us in Portland, and although it is such a short distance, months have passed. We had plenty of time to catch up, have a glass together, and just to quietly hang out.
—
I have been working on an article on Mescaline/Peyote. Some of what follows are bits and pieces of what I have looked at lately. Grandfather Peyote has always been a subject of much fascination… It changes civilizations…. And now is greatly endangered. Time to protect the peyote fields! Time to spread its cultivation!
—-
So there is lot to look at and listen… This is a pretty full edition, so sit back, get a cup of tea or coffee, and relax into this one!
On The Menu:
Havelock Ellis Quotes
Solar Fields – Third Time (A-version)
The Peyote Eaters: A Visit With the Native American Church
Arena: Philip K. Dick
The Random Quotes
Poetry: A short walk with Mr. Ginsberg
Solar Fields – Leaving Home
Hope You Enjoy!
Blessings,
Gwyllm
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Havelock Ellis Quotes:
“Civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution
Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.
Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life?
Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex.
The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a Wilderness.
Pain and death are part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself.
_________________
Solar Fields – Third Time (A-version)
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The Peyote Eaters: A Visit With the Native American Church
-Peter Gorman
The way the ceremony started was this: An Indian Woman got separated from her family while they were in the desert. She was ready to gove birth and she was lost, hungry and thirsty and when she found a tree she fell asleep in the shade beneath it. Above the tree the buzzards circled, waiting for her to die. But while she slept a voice began talking to her. It told her to eat the plant she saw when she woke. That plant was the peyote cactus. It was very bitter but she age it and she was no longer hungry or thirsty, and when she gave birth her breasts were full of sweet milk.
When she fell asleep again the spirit of that medicine told her some songs and how to conduct the ceremony. When she woke she kept eating the cctus. She got her strength back and began to look for her family. When she found them she told them about the medicine. Its a blessing, they said. We must give it to all our people.
The version told to me of How Peyote Came to be the Indian Medicine
We dont know how long the medicine, the peyote, has been used. We do know that the religion came from the South, from Huichol country in Mexico. But it has become the heart, the very heart of the Indian nation. There is a great spirit about these meetings. Were privileged to be guests here.
I was listening to Duke White, a member of the Ghost Clan and a man with some Shoshone blood running through his veins. It was an early Spring evening and cold in the high Rockies. With us were two friends of mine, Larry Lavalle and Chuck Dudell. We were awaiting the start of a Native American Church meeting, a peyote ceremony. Of the four of us, only Duke had attended previously. It was through his friendship with the people running this service that wed been invited. Even then it had taken some time to get the approval to attend: Because the Native American Church uses peyote, it is often wrongly thought of a drug-church, and the appearance of a story about it in High Times magazine was thought to be a bad political move as it might reinforce the idea of the Church being pro-drugs. Nothing could be further from the truth. The most basic beliefs of the Church forbid the frivolous use of peyote and most members Ive spoken with also oppose the frivolous use of other medicines, including cannabis.
This is really their story, the Native Americans, so I shouldnt say too much, said Duke. Its hard to describe a peyote meeting. Its a very solumn thing, but its also full of warmth. Its a time for shoring up relations and renewing ties. This meeting is being held for a young boy, a birthday meeting. Well go into the lodge singing.
The lodge was a tee-pee. It had been erected earlier in the day on the same place these Southern Utes have held ceremonies for four generations. All through the afternoon people had arrived, some from as far away as New Jersey and Western Canada. All meetings were important, wed been told, but this one perhaps even more so than usual: The boy, Joe, was turning 13 and so this was a manhood initiation. Joes parents were both out of the picture and the courts had decided it was better to place him with a white foster family than allow him to be raised by a peyote eating grandmother. The meeting then, was not only an initiation into manhood, it was a reminder of his roots, of his real family and thier ancient traditions.
We were still standing outside the tee-pee when the altar-fire was set: The burning cottonwood illuminated the canvas and silhouetted the lodge poles. As the flame grew the tee-pee began to take on a life of its own, something altogether removed from 1990 and the confines of reservation life, a strange beast whose ribs heaved with the pulse of the fire within.
Around us the Church members began to congregate. There were murmurings in Indian dialects and someone began to sing. A line formed and we were given places in it. It moved clockwise around the outside of the lodge, pausing at each of the four directions: West, the place where water comes from and the direction of the Thunderbird; North, the direction from which man comes; East, the direction of the sun and all illumination; and South, the direction of the Good Red Road, the path the spirit takes when we die.
When we finished circling the line formed at the door, which faced East. We entered and moved in the same direction, between the fire and the tee-pee wall, to places on the ground wed been addigned earlier. Larry was seated next to me. Opposite us, Chuck sat next to Duke. Of the others, seven were women, some with small children; the rest were men. There were 26 of us in the circle altogether. Some people sat on pillows, some on couch cushions, others on the floor. We were told to sit cross-legged and given blankets to wrap around out shoulders to ward off the cold.
In the center of the tee-pee was the altar, a semi-circle of packed sand perhaps six inches high and wide, and eight feet in diameter. It was square-edged and flat-topped, with a thin line etched down its center, which represented the road we are on. Its two open ends pointed to either side of the tee-pee door. The centerpoint of the altar pointed due West. At its head sat the Roadman, the one who shows the road. It was he who would run the meeting. To his right sat his Drummer, the man who would construct the water drum and play while the Roadman sang. To the left of the Roadman sat his woman companion, the Water Bearer who would bring us water during the night-long ceremony and provide us with food at dawn. Opposite the Roadman, to the right of the tee-pee door, sat the Fireman, the man who tended the fire and who would arrange the coals into the shape of a Thunderbird within the confines of the semi-circle of the altar. His assistant sat on the opposite side of the door.
In the center of the altars circle the fire burned. The flames rose toward the heaves, drawn by the natural draft of the tee-pees top-flap opening. On those flames the prayers of the congregation would rise.
Once we were seated conversations began: One man apologized for the way his wife had spoken about another mans woman. Someone else wanted to know why his uncle had instructed a best friend to sever ties with him. Some of the conversations were in English, others in Ute. All of them rang of clearing the air of things which had been said or done so that the meeting would have no ill will impeding its progress.
While people spoke the Drummer made his drum: He stretched elk hide across the top of a cast iron cooking pot half-filled with water and laced it tight with thongs. When the drum was ready the Roadman, Junior, stood. He was a huge man of about 40, with thick black hair and an aura of strength about him. Deep lines were etched into his face.
I want to thank you all for coming to this meeting, he started, to show your affection for my nephew, Joe. You know, its important for him to understand his place in this world, both as a man and as an Indian, like that. I want to ask you all to think of him in your prayers tonight. This is a good time for him.
When hed finished he sat and opened his medicine box. He took out eagle feather fans and a bone whistle and lay them by the altar. He tossed cedar chips into the fire, filling the space with the sweet and cleansing incense. He made a bed of sage on the flat top of the altar and on it he lay his Grandfather Peyote, an unusually large and perfect button. It was the button hed used for years, the button which had been instructed in teaching the Road by other Roadmens Grandfather Peyotes, so that the line of peyote, like the ceremony itself, retains a vital connection from one generation to the next.
A pouch of loose tobacco and a packet of dried corn husks was passed; we rolled cigarettes and shared a ceremonial smoke. The corn husk cigarettes were the only ones permitted within the tee-pee and they were brought out on several occasions. When we finished smoking the harsh tobacco the husks were arranged around the altar so that their burned ends pointed toward the fire.
While we were still smoking someone brought out the peyote to be used during the ceremony and put it by the altars head. It was kept in three jars: A quart jar full of fried, ground buttons, and two gallon jars of peyote tea, both of which were fill with chopped peyote. One of the teas was made from dried buttons and was dark brown. The other, made from fresh peyote, was a beautiful, luminous glue-green. The water in the clear glass jar seemed to almost shimmer with a life of its own.
Junior made an invocation over the jars, blessing them with cedar and cleansing them with his one of his eagle-feather fans. Then he opened the lid of the jar full of dried peyote and took a spoonful with his right hand, poured it into his left, and ate. He drank three large swallows from each of the two teas, then passed the jars to his Drummer, who did the same. Once the Drummer had finished, the jars were passed to the left, in the direction of the Road. One by one each person helped themselves to the peyote. While they did, Junior picked up a ceremonial staffa simple stick dressed in beads, feathers and incenseand a gourd rattle and began to sing. The Drummer played an accompaniment on the water drum using a short, flat stick worn smooth by use.
The drumming was quick and rhythmic; the sound of the rattle lending an insistence to the beat. The song itself was low and droning, its words unrecognizable, its power unmistakable. Instantly there was a kind of magic in the air, a riveting electricity. The Roadmans song was short and ended abruptly. Moments later he began a second song, then a third and fourth, before he passed the staff and rattle to his Drummer, took the water-drum and reversed their rolls.
By the time he too had finished four soung and the rattle and drum had been passed to the next two men in the circlethe women did no singing or drumming; neither did we gueststhe peyote jars had made their way to me. Id only eaten peyote twice before, neither time in sufficient quantity to feel an effect. Now, with a large tablespoon of dried buttons in my hand, I had a moments hesitation: While I knew that this was the right time and place for the experience, I still found myself questioning whether I should go through with it or leave the ceremony. I didnt know these people, after all, and they owed me nothing. What if I embarrassed myself by acting crazy, or worse, ruined their sacred ceremony?
I closed my eyes, felt the air in the tee-pee, knew that no harm would come from something as sacred as this, and ate. The peyote was hard and bitter and I had to fight to keep myself from spitting it out, and force myself to swallow it. When I was sure it was down I reached for the first tea and gulped the water and soft peyote bits. It was bitter beyond imagining. I remember thinking that anyone whyoo could imagine that the Native American Church members would indulge in this frivolously need only try it once to realize the absurdity of the idea.
The luminous tea was not nearly as bitter as the first had been. There was a kind of sweetness about it, though sweet was only relative to the other tea. There was something refreshing, quenching in it and as I swallow it I felt as though my insides were becoming as beautiful and luminous as the tea itself.
The peyote was passed to everyone and everyone but the small children took part. When it had finished the circle the jars were recapped and help near the altars head. The drum, staff and rattle, however, contined to circle among us. Each man sang four songs before passing on the staff, ancient songs handed down by grandmothers and grandfathers and some said to have been taught by Peyote itself. Some of the men were beautiful singers, others merely mumbled, but as the evening grew late the quality of the singers voices became less distinguishable than the strength and beauty of the intent of tier soings. Most were sung in Ute or Comanche, but there were occasional phrases dung in English for those of us who couldnt understand. God bless our little childrn, keep them safe and guide them, someone sang, and Duke, sitting cross-legged across the tee-pee, Duke who had begun to almost glow, sang a birthday song, calling on Father Peyote to bless Joe and make his year one full of good things.
The stongs seemed to focus my attention on the fire and I sat staring at it for hours. The fire burned like no fire Id ever seen; it pulsed with the rhythm of the singing, changing as each new singer tok the staff and shook the rattle. It became a consuming object of interest: Within its flames animals danced and leapt skywarddeer and beaver and buffalo alal dancing to the rhythms of the drum and rattle, cecoming eagles and hawks and lifting their wings skyward, flying through the teep-pee flaps for the heavens. These were the animals of these Plains People, and they were here with us as spirits, crowding in with us, making the tee-pee close and warm. And after the eld and buffalo and coyotes left, my own friendly spirit, an anaconda, apeared and moved about the flames in flame itself. It came to teach me things Id never known and remind me of others Id forgotten: The quality of spirit, gentleness, the strength to look within myself and see where courage had fallen short or been ignored. I felt those things well up within me and knew that I had not come this far to simply eat peyote, that this was not what this meeting was about at all. It was about having a glimpse at a tradition which had helped heal a people who had suffered indignities beyond imagination at the hands of invaders bent on genocide. It was about the recovery of their spirit and a reminder of their strength and resiliency. It was about their oral traditions, their music, their songs, thier spirit.
These were the things I saw and felt when I looked into the fire. What others saw or felt Ive no idea. No one spoke then or since about what the fire showed them; even my friends and I have never discussed it.
Some time after the drum had made its way around the circle twice the peyote was passed again. I found it even more difficult to swallow the second time and had to excuse myself and leave the tee-pee to keep from vomiting. Outside the air was crisp. Ov
erhead the stars dressed the midnight sky. The ire threw the shadows of the celebrants against the canvas and for a moment it might have been 100 years ago. On another night I would have liked nothing better than to have spent a few hours alone; as it was I saw the circle of shadows was broken where Id been sitting and hurried back inside.
I made my way around the altar in the direction of the Road and took my seat again. Tobacco was being passed for those who wanted it. I passed, wanting to let myself go into the flames again.
The Fireman and his assistant had kept the fire bright and even all night, working the cottonwood coals away from the flame with firesticks and shaping them into the image of a huge thunderbird, the outline of which defined the interior circle of the altar. The shape of the Thunderbird the Fireman had created glowed red and powerful, always renewing itself with fresh coals. The rhythm of the fidderent songs became one rhythm and our breating one breath. Somewhere far away and yet as close as here the drumming focused us and our breathing became one breath which the fire danced to. It was a fire like none Ive seen, a thunderbird flying to the heavens.
When the staff had reached the Roadman for the fourth time, he stopped singing. He tossed cedar onto the fire and again the sweet smell filled the air. His companion, the Water Bearer left the tee-pee. While she was gone the peyote was put away. When she returned it was with a bucket of water. Junio blessed the bucket with his eagle-feather fan, drank, then passed the bucket so that each of us drank, and when the circle was completed he glr3ew his bone whistle four short times. We stood and left the tee-pee as a group, leaving Junior alone inside to say his private invocations.
Outisde again, I was suddenly aware that I was not in my normal state of consciousness, something I hadnt realized before. The ground moved beneath my feet, the trees around us swayed despite the absence of wind or leaves. Chuck and Larry seemed to feel the same way as I: they mentioned that they too hadnt been aware of the effects of the peyote while inside.
Within a few minutestime enough to stretch and grab a cigaretteJunior joined us outside. We formed the same line wed used at the beginning of the ceremony, made our way around the lodge, filed in and moved around the altar to our seats.
After we were seated and Junior had said some prayers, the singing and drumming began again, and the peyote was passed for the last time. I hadnt noticed it while were were coming in, but Joe had joined us for the first time and sat with his Grandmother, Bertha Grove, a medicine woman in her own right. When the peyote came to him she had him take a token amount. I too only took a small portion the third time, knowing I wouldnt be able to keep a large one down.
The remainder of the night, until false dawn, was deep and moving. Nothing had changed about the meeting physicallythe singing continued, the frum and staff were passed from hand to hand, the fire burned and the beautiful thunderbird of colals was renewed again and aain. Still, something about the character of the meeting seemed to change. It became impossible to identify my own thoughts from those of the others. The songs, while still in native languages, began to be intelligible. It was as though the single breath wed breathed earlier had become a single mind and we were no longer ourselves but the sum of our parts. I dont know how else to describe it. I think that part of the night was the heart of the ceremony. The air itself grew dense with spirits.
I had no visions or dreams, no hallucinations. I was simply part of a larger organism than usual, not thinking, just being.
By false dawn, the first change in the night sky, the communal spirit had taken its toll. My back ached and I was suddenly hungry and cranky. Ti was as though the unwitting effort Id made to subdue my ego had suddenly failed and I came roaring back, wanting my own identity, with my own petty concerns. I wanted the ceremony to be over. I wanted to stretch, smoke cigarettes, drink coffee and I wanted to do them all at once. I struggled to keep quiet and maintain myself.
I looked around the tee-pee: I was not alone in my feeling that the center of the single-mindedness was over. The other participants seemed to be recovering their identities as well. People had begun shifting, yawning, stretching and a few began talking quietly. Junior blew his whistle, stood and threw cedar onto the Thunderbird. The peyote was put out of sight.
The Water Bearer stood and she and some of the other women present left the tee-pee. While they were gone the drumming and singing continued. By now the songs wed heard repeated all night were so familiar that I found myself beginning to sing along with them. Others began to sing along as well, so that they began to take on a renewed sense of powers. Several voices echoed across the fire and the words resounded. Whatever my petty concerns, the music diminished them with its sense of urgency,. The last of the songs were near and no one wanted the spell broken. The rattle was shaken more and more feverishly, the drum and staff were passed, it seemed, faster and faster. The singing grew louder and the fire danced higher. My blood raced, my heart pounded. The focus of the meeting, broken by that first light of false dawn, had become clear again. More than that, it had become a point of catharsis. And then, unexpectedly, the first light of real dawn glanced off the top of the lodge poles and a beam of sawn burst through the tee-pees fire flaps into the very heart of the fire. The stinging stopped abruptly, the last notes flying up that shaft of light and into the morning sky.
Just then the women returned. All except the Water Bearer made their way back to their seats. She entered last and brought with her water, three pots of food and a birthday cake for Joe. She arranged the food in a line, facing into the fire from the East, then sat behind them so that she sat with her back to the tee-pee door, opposite the Roadman. She called for a corn husk and tobacco and rolled a cigarette, lit it and spoke.
I bring food and water, the things of life. I want to thank our Father in heaven for providing them to us, so that we may live. I want to thank thee, oh heavenly father, for all of the blessings you have bestowed on us, for allowing Joe to be here to learn, so that he may grow up to be strong enough to face the challenges he will meet. For the Medicine, peyote you have given us so that we may learn the right Road. For the beauty of this land you have given us so that we may have a good place, oh heavenly Father, in which to raise our children.
She named the things that were important to her and prayed for things important to all of us. She prayed for the health of sick relatives unable to attend the meeting and the spiritual health of those unable to see the light. She prayed for many thing and when she had finished she passed the food around the circle in the direction of the Road.
Everyone ate from the pots of traditional food: a corn gruel, a dish of meat and pine nuts and a sweet syrup drink, and when we had finished others began to speak. They prayed for their families who were already on the Good Red Road, and for health and for the health of crops and farm animals. And when they had finished Joes grandmother, Bertha, lit a cigarette and began to speak. She was a beautiful, elderly woman of immense compassion and heart.
I dont have many requests for myself, she started. I think you all named the things I want, so Ill concentrate on my grandson here, snd do some things I wanted to do when I called this meeting.
She turned to Joe. Joe, you dont have it easy, what with your parents gone, but the Indian way has always been a big family, so m going to give you some family now. This is real family, Joe, because Im giving them to you like this, in this meeting here, and I hope you like them. because theyre going to be looking out for you, like that, whether you want it or not.
She laughed and her laughter was infectious. Om going to give you my brother first, as a godfather. He can teach you many things. Hes a sundance warrior from his mothers side and thats another good medicine, like our peyote. Theres a lot of power in that. You listen to him and you go to him when you have questions about what it means to be a man. Hell tell you right, Joe, set you on the right Road.
After shed given him a godfather, she gave him a brother, uncles, cousins and assigned specific duties each would perform in his life. Some were blood relations, others were not. It was the creation of an extended family were were witnessing, something Id never been part of before.
When she finished, she and Joe stood and began to make their way around the circle. Joe received gifts from each of us, and his grandmother, in turn, gave something to each of us.
When they had finished, Junior spoke. He thanked each of us for coming, then thanked the peyote for making the meeting strong. When he was done he blew his bone whistle to the four directions, then put it, along with his feather fans and Grandfather Peyote, back into his medicine box. The meeting was over.
The morning was fresh and clear, the sun bright and warm. The women made a traditional breakfast feast while the men dismantled the lodge. While we ate I spoke with Bertha.
Its good you came with your friends to be in this meeting, she said. Its good Joe got to see white fellows come here and show respect for our traditions.
I told her that it was we who were thankful for having been invited.
A lot of people think we have these meeting just so we can use drugs. But you saw thats not true. They think were bad for having these meeting. But our medicine is good. Its one of gods creations. The Grandfathers have been teaching us a lot of things for a long time.
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Arena: Philip K. Dick
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The Random Quotes:
– George Burns | “I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.”
– Tom Robbins | “If little else, the brain is an educational toy.”
– Andy Warhol | “I am a deeply superficial person.”
– Samuel Johnson | “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”
– Paul Johnson | “The word ‘meaningful’ when used today is nearly always meaningless.”
– Robert X. Cringely | “If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.”
– Arthur C. Clarke | “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
– Alexandre Dumas | “Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.”
– Thomas Merton | “The least of learning is done in the classrooms.”
– Ernest Benn | “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”
– Albert Camus | “Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.”
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Poetry: A short walk with Mr. Ginsberg
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
—
Haiku (Never Published)
Drinking my tea
Without sugar-
No difference.
The sparrow shits
upside down
–ah! my brain & eggs
Mayan head in a
Pacific driftwood bole
–Someday I’ll live in N.Y.
Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.
Winter Haiku
I didn’t know the names
of the flowers–now
my garden is gone.
I slapped the mosquito
and missed.
What made me do that?
Reading haiku
I am unhappy,
longing for the Nameless.
A frog floating
in the drugstore jar:
summer rain on grey pavements.
(after Shiki)
On the porch
in my shorts;
auto lights in the rain.
Another year
has past-the world
is no different.
The first thing I looked for
in my old garden was
The Cherry Tree.
My old desk:
the first thing I looked for
in my house.
My early journal:
the first thing I found
in my old desk.
My mother’s ghost:
the first thing I found
in the living room.
I quit shaving
but the eyes that glanced at me
remained in the mirror.
The madman
emerges from the movies:
the street at lunchtime.
Cities of boys
are in their graves,
and in this town…
Lying on my side
in the void:
the breath in my nose.
On the fifteenth floor
the dog chews a bone-
Screech of taxicabs.
A hardon in New York,
a boy
in San Fransisco.
The moon over the roof,
worms in the garden.
I rent this house.
—
First Party At Ken Kesey’s With Hell’s Angels
Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.
December 1965
—-
Song
The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction
the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.
Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human–
looks out of the heart
burning with purity–
for the burden of life
is love,
but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.
No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love–
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
–cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:
the weight is too heavy
–must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.
The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye–
yes, yes,
that’s what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.
San Jose, 1954
_________
Solar Fields – Leaving Home
___________