Author: Gwyllm

Wednesday. It is incredibly beautiful in Portland today. Clear skies, crisp air… Wish you were here! (if ya aren’t already)
My friend Rik should be arriving this afternoon, and this edition of Turfing is dedicated to him. It has been a long 3 years!
I hope you enjoy the selection today, it was lots of fun putting it together….
Blessings,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Links

Sacred Intentions: Inside The Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Studies

Fotheringay (Sandy Denny) – Banks of the Nile

Orgies Of The Hemp Eaters

Arthur Rimbaud Poetry….

Fairport Convention – White Dress

Art: Alexander Cabanel

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Alexandre Cabanel (28 September 1823–23 January 1889) was a French painter.
Cabanel was born in Montpellier, Hérault. He painted historical, classical and religious subjects in the academic style. He was also well-known as a portrait painter. According to Diccionario Enciclopedico Salvat, Cabanel is the best representative of the L’art pompier and Napoleon III’s preferred painter.
He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of seventeen. Cabanel studied with François-Édouard Picot and exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time in 1844, and won the Prix de Rome scholarship in 1845 at the age of twenty two. Cabanel was elected a member of the Institute in 1863 and appointed professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in the same year.
Cabanel won the Grande Médaille d’Honneur at the Salons of 1865, 1867, and 1878.
He was closely connected to the Paris Salon: “He was elected regularly to the Salon jury and his pupils could be counted by the hundred at the Salons. Through them, Cabanel did more than any other artist of his generation to form the character of belle époque French painting” . His refusal together with William-Adolphe Bouguereau to allow the impressionist painter Édouard Manet and other painters to exhibit their work in the Salon of 1863 lead to the establishment of the Salon des Refusés.
A successful academic painter, his 1863 painting Birth of Venus is one of the best known examples of 19th century academic painting. The picture was bought by the emperor Napoleon III; there is also a smaller replica (painted in 1875 for a banker, John Wolf) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was gifted to them by Wolf in 1893.

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The Links:

The Entrances To Hell…

Designed?

Jericho may hold the key to treatment of tuberculosis

Worlds’ Oldest Temple?

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Sacred Intentions: Inside The Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Studies

An article from our friend Michael Hughes. I do hope you get a chance to read it. Fine article on important matters!

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Fotheringay (Sandy Denny) – Banks of the Nile (1970)

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Orgies Of The Hemp Eaters

Hashish Dreamers’ Festival in Northwestern Syria Occurs at the Time of the Full Moon.
Women Join The Ceremony

Scenes at the Sacred Dance That Surpass the Wildest Ecstasy of Any Opium Dream.
THE DRUG AND ITS EFFECTS

Standing in the outskirts of the little town of Latakieh, in Northwestern Syria, famous everywhere for the excellent tobacco which takes its name from the otherwise obscure and insignificant place – and turning his back on the ramshackle houses the flea infested caravansary, the malodorous bazaar and garbage strewn streets, where the scavenger dogs lie stretched out [in the] noonday sun – the traveller sees in the distance, beyond a wide stretch of green slope and alternate level, a low range of hills, on which a soft purple haze seems always to linger. These hills lie between the Lebanon, where the fierce Druses dwell in their highland fastnesses, and the Nahr-el-kebir, “The Mighty River.” They are known nowadays as the Nosairie Mountains, the home of the so-called Nosairiyeh tribesmen, the modern “Assassins,” or “Hemp Eaters,” as they should be designated from their ceremonial use of hemp, in Arabic “hashish.”
AT THE TIME OF THE FULL MOON.

The festival or gathering of the hemp eaters is celebrated monthly, at the time of the full moon, the moon being then supposed to exert a specific influence upon human beings. The sectaries meet under a sacred oak tree growing upon a hill, about equidistant from Latakieh and the valley of the Orontes, and close to a tiny village inhabited by some twenty families of the tribe.
There is an enormous drum, some three feet in diameter, standing at the entrance to the village, a couple of hundred yards off, and as soon as it begins to darken and the westering sun appears to have fairly sunk in the waters of the Mediterranean, which is clearly visible from the elevated hilltop on which the Nosarriyeh are gathered, a deafening boom comes from the instrument and rolls over the mountain tops like the rumble of thunder, rousing the tribesmen to activity, and in a moment they are on the alert. Lamps are quickly lit and suspended to the branches of the sacred oak among the dangling rags and buttons and feathers and metal scraps that decorate it. A square heap of wood is built up in front of the tree about a dozen yards from it. A sheep is brought forward by one of the men, and the rest of the tribesmen then gather around, the lamps throwing a dim light on their picturesque figures and grim countenances. The Sheikh puts his hand gently on the head of the bleating animal, it is thrown down, its throat cut, after the fashion of the Moslems, and in little more time than it takes to write the words the fleece is off, the carcass is divided and placed on the wood heap, to which fire is applied and kept up till all flesh as well as timber is utterly consumed. Now the Nosarriyeh seat themselves in a circle upon the earth, the Shiekh in the centre, with an attendant on either hand, one holding a large earthenware bowl containing a liquid, the other a bundle of stems to which leaves are attached – the leaves of the sacred hemp plant. The chief takes the stems in his left and the bowl in his right hand and slowly walks around the circle, stopping in front of each man present, who takes from him, first the greenery, at which he sniffs gently, then the bowl, the contents of which he sips. The vessel contains a sweetened infusion of hemp, strong and subtle in its action.
WHAT THE DECOCTION IS LIKE

The taste of the decoction is sweet, nauseously so, not unlike some preparations of chloroform, and its first effects are anything but pleasant, for it produces a distict tendency to vomit, not unlike a strong dose of ipecacuahna. As soon as all have in succession partaken of the drink, which is termed “homa”, big horns are produced containing spirits, for the Nosarriyeh are great dram drinkers. The horns of liquor are passed about and in a few moments the effects are apparent, following upon the hemp. The eyes brighten, the pulse quickens, the blood seems to bound more actively in the veins, and a restlessness takes possession of the whole body. At this moment the booming of a giant drum is heard again, giving the signal for the sacred dance which is the next item in the ceremonial of the evening. From each of the dozen parties or so into which the clansmen are divided one steps out, and the dozen individuals so designated form up against a gentle declivity in rear of them. Two of the tribe with a “reba,” one string fiddle, and a tambourine, seat themselves and start a peculiar air in a minor key, which all those around take up, clapping their hands the while rhythmically, and to this rhythm the dancers, joining hands as they stand, begin to move gently to and fro.
The moonlight is full on them, showing up their white nether garments, but leaving the dusky faces and dark upper garments in a semi-shadow. First the dancers move slowly, a few steps to the right and further to the left they go each time, till the movement becomes a positive allegro. Faster goes the music, faster the dancers, until with a finale furioso the men stop, panting and out of breath, at the signal of the Sheikh. He claps his hands and twelve others step out, and the figure begins as before. When these are exhausted a fresh set take their place, and this is continued until each of the clansmen has taken part in the dance. In conclusion all join hands and go seven times round the sacred oak in the direction left to right.
A CRAZY FESTIVAL

The solemn supper is now ready, and is served by the wives of the tribesmen, who have been busy preparing it in huge earthernware dishes placed upon the ground in the middle of each group. And the moonlight meal in the shade of the sacred oak is none the less striking by reason of its being dished up by women who wear in their shash-bands a sharp yataghan, of which the handle shows clearly, and a brace of pistols in the girdle. The plates are peculiar. First there is fried liver, eaten to the accompaniment of fiery arrack – the favorite spirit of the hemp eaters. Then comes “leben” – a species of sour cooked cream, with more “arak;” afterward the “kibabs” of mutton, in slices on little wooded sticks, like the familiar ware of the cat’s meat man; eggs filled with a force meat of rice, tomato, mutton and onions and “pillau.” Each person has a wooden spoon to eat with, and the etiquette of the table requires one to eat much and eat quickly, and to drink as much as one eats. The appetites of the Nosairiyeh are proverbial in Syria, the usual allowance of meat being a sheep or two. I can vouch for their tippling powers. Scores of them finish their pint horn of arrack in a couple of draughts, taking a couple of quarts in the course of their supper. The meal is really a match against time, and, with such good trencher men as the hemp eaters, is quickly finished.
The real business of the evening now begins. The hemp, powdered and mixed with sirup, is brought round in bowls, together with the decoction of the leaves well sweetened. Each of the tribesmen secures a vessel of arrack – for it quickens and heightens the action of the drugs – and disposes himself in the most comfortable attitude he can think of. Then, taking a good spoonful of the hemp, and washing it down with an equally good drink from the liquor receptable, he lies or leans back to allow it to operate. I take a reasonable allowance of the compound (it tastes very much like raw tea leaves flavored with sugar water), and then lie back to note the action on my own person, and watch, so far as I can, its effects upon the modern assassins whose systems are seasoned and more accustomed to the drug. Five, ten minutes pass, and there is no sensation; the men around me, with closed eyes, look like waxwork figures. Another ten minutes, and the pulse begins to beat rapidly, the heart commences to thump against the sides of the chest, the blood seems to rush to the head, and there is a sensation of fullness, as if the skull would be burst asunder at the base. There is a roaring in the ears, and strange lights, blurred and indistinct, pass before the eyes. In a moment and quite suddenly all of this passes off, leaving a feeling of delicious languor, and an idea that one is rising from the ground and floating in space. Little things assume an enormous size, and things seem far off.
EFFECTS OF THE DRUG.

The oak tree close by appears to be a mile off, and the cup of drink looks a yard across, the size of a big barrel. One’s hands and feet feel heavy and cumbersome, and then feel as if they were dropping off, leaving one free to soar away from the earth skyward, where the clouds seem to open to receive one, and one long perspective of light shines before the eyes. The feeling is one of estactic restfulness, contented unconsciousness, suggesting the “ninirvana” of the Buddhist. This marks always the end of the first stage of hemp eating. The aphrodisiac effects, the visions of fair faces and beauteous forms, the voluptuous dreams and languishing fancies which the Easterns experience – these are the results of larger and oft repeated doses of the drug.
Already the larger quantities of the compound, repeated many times in the meantime and stimulated by frequent draughts of arrack, are beginning to show their results upon the hitherto immobile figures of the Nosiariyeh round the sacred oak. Again and again they seize the spoon and convey it to their mouths, until the hemp craze is fully upon them. One or two stir uneasily; then another screams for “Ali, Ali!” (their founder Ali), who is identical, they say with Allah. A half a dozen respond lustily, “Ali hu Allah!” then empty the arrack cups beside them. A few move about with outstretched arms as though they were in the clouds trying to clutch the houris, whose imaginary forms they see, and disappointed, sink back, after a fresh supply of the drug has been swallowed. From the extremity beyond, where the women are located, come the sound of singing and of laugher and the rhythmic patter of feet upon the ground. The ladies have been indulging on their own account, and the noise they make rouses the men from their dreams. Three or four jump up from the floor at a single bound, and, seized by the dance mania, begin capering away as for very life. They jig here and there, they twine and twist, and writhe and wriggle and distort themselves, awakening […fragment missing…] blows off his matchlock as he capers merrily round, while his neighbor stretches out his fingers for the arrack.
END OF THE HASHISH DEBAUCH

In the distance we hear the sound of the women’s voices as they scream and sing and dance in a noisy whirl under the influence also of the intoxicating hemp. Again and yet again the tribesmen quaff from the hashish bowl, and the riot grows wilder and madder than before. It becomes a veritable saturnalia. Flushed and inflamed, they fly from side to side, tear to and fro, whirl round on the heels, skipping in the air and jumping feet high above the ground, to the banging of the great drum in the village; the shouting of those unable to move, the screeching of the “Reba,” or fiddle, which still plays on, and the crackling of the guns as they go off. Scimitars are drawn, yataghans flourished, half a dozen engage in mimic combat, slashing and cutting at each other with an all too earnest resolve to draw blood – a result speedily obtained – while yet another batch dance round and round on their heels spinning like tops in play. Faster and furious grows the corybantic rout, and in their mad excitement the men tear the garments from their bodies, throw away their weapons, fling the turbans from their heads and, naked to the waist, with dishevelled hair and eyes ablaze and extended arms, they continue their mad antics, until foaming at the mouth and bleeding from the nostrils, they sink to the earth and lie huddled in heaps, hopelessly and helplessly intoxicated with the hemp.

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Arthur Rimbaud Poetry….

Sensation
On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,

Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:

In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.

I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.
I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:

But endless love will mount in my soul;

And I shall travel far, very far, like a gipsy,

Through the countryside – as happy as if I were with a woman.

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Ophelia
I
On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping

White Ophelia floats like a great lily;

Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils…

– In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.
For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia

Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.

For more than a thousand years her sweet madness

Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.
The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath

Her great veils rising and falling with the waters;

The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,

The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.
The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her;

At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,

Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings;

– A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.
II
O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow!

Yes child, you died, carried off by a river!

– It was the winds descending from the great mountains of Norway

That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom.
It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair,

Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind;

It was your heart listening to the song of Nature

In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights;
It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,

That shattered your child’s heart, too human and too soft;

It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman

Who one April morning sate mute at your knees!
Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl!

You melted to him as snow does to a fire;

Your great visions strangled your words

– And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eye!
III
– And the poet says that by starlight

You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked

And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils

White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.

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Sun and Flesh (Credo in Unam)

Birth of Venus
I
The Sun, the hearth of affection and life,

Pours burning love on the delighted earth,

And when you lie down in the valley, you can smell

How the earth is nubile and very full-blooded;

How its huge breast, heaved up by a soul,

Is, like God, made of love, and, like woman, of flesh,

And that it contains, big with sap and with sunlight,

The vast pullulation of all embryos!
And everything grows, and everything rises!
– O Venus, O Goddess!

I long for the days of antique youth,

Of lascivious satyrs, and animal fauns,

Gods who bit, mad with love, the bark of the boughs,

And among water-lilies kissed the Nymph with fair hair!

I long for the time when the sap of the world,

River water, the rose-coloured blood of green trees

Put into the veins of Pan a whole universe!

When the earth trembled, green,beneath his goat-feet;

When, softly kissing the fair Syrinx, his lips formed

Under heaven the great hymn of love;

When, standing on the plain, he heard round about him

Living Nature answer his call;

When the silent trees cradling the singing bird,

Earth cradling mankind, and the whole blue Ocean,

And all living creatures loved, loved in God!
I long for the time of great Cybele,

Who was said to travel, gigantically lovely,

In a great bronze chariot, through splendid cities;

Her twin breasts poured, through the vast deeps,

The pure streams of infinite life.

Mankind sucked joyfully at her blessed nipple,

Like a small child playing on her knees.

– Because he was strong, Man was gentle and chaste.
Misfortune! Now he says: I understand things,

And goes about with eyes shut and ears closed.

– And again, no more gods! no more gods! Man is King,

Man is God! But the great faith is Love!

Oh! if only man still drew sustenance from your nipple,

Great mother of gods and of men, Cybele;

If only he had not forsaken immortal Astarte

Who long ago, rising in the tremendous brightness

Of blue waters, flower-flesh perfumed by the wave,

Showed her rosy navel, towards which the foam came snowing

And , being a goddess with the great conquering black eyes,

Made the nightingale sing in the woods and love in men’s hearts!

—
My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)
I went off with my hands in my torn coat pockets;

My overcoat too was becoming ideal;

I travelled beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal;

Oh dear me! what marvellous loves I dreamed of!
My only pair of breeches had a big whole in them.

– Stargazing Tom Thumb, I sowed rhymes along my way.

My tavern was at the Sign of the Great Bear.

– My stars in the sky rustled softly.
And I listened to them, sitting on the road-sides

On those pleasant September evenings while I felt drops

Of dew on my forehead like vigorous wine;
And while, rhyming among the fantastical shadows,

I plucked like the strings of a lyre the elastics

Of my tattered boots, one foot close to my heart
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Fairport Convention – White Dress

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You Know Who You Are….

The Stones at Carnac…

I have been playing with this entry for a couple of days…
Our good friends Rik and Christel are coming for a visit starting Wednesday, and we are all very excited at Caer Llwydd. Rik and I go back 40 years, having been in High School together in Mt. Shasta. He and Christel live in Cathar country in the South of France in a 1000 year old house. They are state side visiting friends family, and newly arrived babies.
Rik and I share a passion for folk music, especially the British Folk Tradition. Whereas, I tended towards Pentangle he tended towards Fairport Convention. Anyway, I am going to run some selections from both over the next few days, including side projects, solo careers etc.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:

Emma Goldman Quotes

‘Bert Jansch – Black Waterside’

Folk Tale From Britanny: The Changeling

Moonshine – Bert Jansch

Bert Jansch Lyrics

Travelling Song – Pentangle

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Emma Goldman Quotes

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.
Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony
Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.
No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.
No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

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‘Bert Jansch – Black Waterside’

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Folk Tale From Britanny: The Changeling

MARIANNIK and her husband lived in a thatched cottage. It was hidden in a lonely heath like a bird’s nest in a tree. In the summer the thatch was covered with flowers and matched the heath itself. in winter it looked like a rough, furry coat thrown over the cottage’s shoulders to keep it warm.
Within, the cottage danced in firelight. Here was an ancient linen press on which were carved curious figures. In the corner stood the box bed, its sliding doors cut in fanciful lace patterns. The chest, the table, and the benches were polished till they shone in the light from the burning logs. Near the fireplace was the cradle, also of carved wood, and in the cradle was Mariannik’s and her husband’s treasure, the darling of the cottage, Loik, their little son.
One day Loik was sleeping peacefully, the fire was crackling merrily, and the cat seated on the warm hearthstone was purring and washing her face. Mariannik got up and looked out of the window.
“The sun is shining now,” she said, “but I know it is going to rain, because pussy is washing behind her ears; that is a sure sign. I’ll go and fetch a bucket of water before the rain muddies the spring.”
She kissed Loik and set out for the fountain where she filled her bucket. As she was coming back she saw a tiny, crested bird singing on a hawthorn bush, and this is what he sang:
“Mariannik, be quick, be quick,

For in the cradle is no Loik.”
“You silly bird!” exclaimed Mariannik, “Loik cannot walk,” but all the same with a flutter at her heart she hurried across the heath to the cottage.
She opened the door and felt at once that something terrible had happened. The fire had gone out. The cat’s back was bristling. She hastened to the cradle where, instead of seeing Loik’s round and rosy face, Oh, lack-a-day! she beheld a hideous dwarf with a dark and spotted face. He had a huge and gaping mouth; his hands and feet were evil, threatening, jagged claws.
“Merciful heavens!” cried Mariannik. “Who, are you? What have you done with my blessed child?”
The dwarf answered never a word, but grinned a wicked grin.
When Mariannik’s husband came in from the fields he found her weeping, the baby gone, the dwarf howling, the cat spitting, and the cottage cold.
They took counsel together and decided that Mariannik must go back to the hawthorn bush where the bird had sung to her.
So back she went and when she got there, sure enough, there sat the crested bird perched on a swinging twig.
“Little bird, little bird,” cried Mariannik, “my Loik is lost, and a wicked dwarf is in his cradle. Pray tell me what to do.”
“Mariannik, Mariannik,” chirped the little bird, “your Loik is not lost, he has been stolen by the Queen of the Dwarfs. Before he can be rescued you must make the changeling speak. Now mark well what I say. Go home and in an eggshell prepare a meal for ten strong ploughmen. Then will the dwarf demand of you what you are doing. Quickly, Mariannik, seize him and beat him with all your strength. Beat him till he screams for help. His mother, the Queen of the Dwarfs, will come and give you back your Loik.”
So Mariannik hurried to the cottage, and without a word she took an eggshell and in it began to prepare a meal for ten strong ploughmen.
“What are you doing, mother, what are you doing? shrieked the ugly dwarf, sitting upright in the cradle.
“What am I doing, hideous creature, what am I doing? I am preparing a meal for ten ploughmen in an eggshell.”
“A meal for ten ploughmen in an eggshell, mother? I saw the egg before I saw the white hen. I saw the acorn before I saw the oak tree. I saw the tree in the enchanted woods, but I never saw a sight such as this.”
“You have seen too many things, thou hideous one. Thou son of evil, I have you now!” And Mariannik beat him with all the power of her arm.
“Help! help!” screeched the creature, calling for his mother, the Queen of all the Dwarfs.
“Mariannik, Mariannik! Forbear from beating of my son,” cried a shrill, excited voice. “Behold I give you Loik!”
Breathless, Mariannik stopped. The yells had ceased. She looked at the cradle in amazement. The ugly dwarf had disappeared and Loik, her beloved child Loik, was there again. As Mariannik bent over him to kiss him he stretched out his arms to her and said:
“Mother, mother, dear little mother, what a long sleep I have had.”

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Moonshine – Bert Jansch

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Bert Jansch Lyrics

Some of these Bert wrote, and some he added on to. A coulple of these, well they are absolutely ancient.
Reynardine
One evening as I rambled

Among the leaves so green

I overheard a young woman

Converse with Reynardine
Her hair was black, her eyes were blue

Her lips as red as wine

And he smiled to gaze upon her

Did that sly old Reynardine
She said, “Kind sir, be civil

My company forsake

For in my own opinion

I fear you are some rake”
“Oh no,” he said, “no rake am I

Brought up in Venus’ train

But I’m seeking for concealment

All along the lonesome plane”
“Your beauty so enticed me

I could not pass it by

So it’s with my gun I’ll guard you

All on the mountains high”
“And if by chance you should look for me

Perhaps you’ll not me find

For I’ll be in my castle

Inquire for Reynardine”
Sun and dark, she followed him

His teeth did brightly shine

And he led her up a-the mountains

Did that sly old Reynardine
Sylvie
As Sylvie was walking down by the riverside

As Sylvie was walking down by the riverside

And looking so sadly

looking so sadly

looking so sadly

All upon the swift tide
She thought on her lover that left her in pride

She thought on her lover that left her in pride

On the banks of the meadow

On the banks of the meadow

On the banks of the meadow

She sat down and cried
And as she sat weeping a young man came by

And as she sat weeping a young man came by

What ails you my jewel

What ails you my jewel

What ails you my jewel

And makes you to cry
Well I once had a sweetheart and now I have none

I once had a sweetheart and now I have none

He’s gone and leave me

Gone and leave me

Gone and leave me

In sorrow to mourn
Last night in sweet slumber I dreamed that I did see

Last night in sweet slumber I dreamed that I did see

Mine own dearest true love

Mine own dearest true love

Mine own dearest true love

Come smiling to me
But when I awokened I found it not so

But when I awokened I found it not so

Mine eyes were like fountains

Mine eyes were like fountains

Mine eyes were like fountains

Where the waters do flow
I’ll set sail of silver and steer towards the sun

I’ll set sail of silver and steer towards the sun

And my false love will weep

My false love will weep

My false love will weep

For me after I’m gone.

—-
Rosemary Lane
When I was in service in Rosemary Lane

I won the goodwill of my master and did I

Till a sailor came there one night to lay

And that was the beginning of my misery
He called for a candle to light him to bed

And likewise a silk handkerchief to tie up his head

To tie up his head as sailors will do

And he said my Pretty Polly will you come too
Now this maid being young and foolish she thought it no harm

For to lie into bed to keep herself warm

And what was done there I will never disclose

But I wish that short night had been seven long years
Next morning this sailor so early arose

And into my apron three guineas did throw

Saying take this I will give and more I will do

If you’ll be my Polly wherever I go
Now if it’s a boy he will fight for the king

And if it’s a girl she will wear a gold ring

She will wear a gold ring and a dress all aflame

And remember my service in Rosemary Lane
When I was in service in Rosemary Lane

I won the goodwill of my master and did I

Till a sailor came there one night to lay

And that was the beginning of my misery

—
Tree Song
I wish I had a photograph

To let you see the way you smile

Upon my foolish heart
The words I do not know enough

I hope that you will find my song

A pleasing to your ear
You step beneath the midnight moon

To gather dewdrops for the sun

A Waiting until morn
Oh if I was a branched tree

I’d be the oak tree fast and strong

To win your gentle heart
And If I was one grain of corn

I’d wait till you did come along

To throw me to the wind
And if I was one silken thread

Embroidered all in cherry red

Upon your breast I’d lie
And if I was the alder tree

I’d burn it fiercely over thee

Our love would surely last
And if I was the hawthorn bush

And you did shelter under me

I would not do you harm
And if I was one glass of wine

One sip from you would give me time

To take you by the hand
And all across the hills we’d go

In search of what no-one does know

Except for you and I

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Travelling Song – Pentangle

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Thirty Years On
So… Thirty years on. Mary and I were wed at Chelsea-Kensington Registry Office (since closed by the Thatcherite Gov’t a couple of years later) on this day in 1978 at about 11:45 in the morning. It seems so long ago, and then just yesterday. I can’t tell you all the details, but it was a smashing time. Our bridesmaids all wore motorcycle jackets, but then again they were all guys, Mary’s ex-roomates. You can see Fernley with the champagne bottle over our heads, His partner Tony is taking the photo as I remember. The girl next to Fernley is Fizzle, who at that time was Jake Rivera’s assistant over at Stiff Records. On the far left is Philip, who was a member of the Golden Dawn, his father a black GI during the war, his mum a young lady from Golders Green. On the far right is Jim Doherty, who went to school with Mary in Glasgow.
There are so many stories on those stairs. People who grew up with Mary, friends who lived in the flats all over London… and they adored her. I was a shock to their system, but I was accepted in time.
Shortly after this photo in a month and a half we would hop on a jet and fly to L.A. to seek our fortunes together in the new world. (Fleeing the bread strike, the sugar strike, and dossing on friends floors) We arrived in L.A. to start up a press and start publishing books together within a year, then moved on to form a band to record music and perform together, and still are at it in some way or another all these years on. Along the way we moved back and forth to Britain, up and down the west coast of the USA somehow taking time to bring in to the world and raise a fine son.
Little Details: Mary was wearing part of a womans’ tuxedo, and my ties’ pattern was the Jacobite Plaid of the 1845 uprising. (Small gestures, nods and winks) With Mary, I discovered our place in the his-her/storical context~continuum. Everything she did was and is to this day art. She made the dreams real.
She was, and is the most beautiful woman I have had the privilege of knowing & loving, I swear. Count me blessed many times over.
Much Love,
Gwyllm
Mary and I sharing a joke with friends after the ceremony…
Just before the wedding party headed out to The Green Room, the winebar across from The Young Vic near Waterloo Station (Mary and I had both worked there together)

Mary with that incredible smile… 80)

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Okay… every couple seems to have a song when they are courting. This was ours:
Because The Night: Patti Smith Group

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Our First Shared Poet: Hugh MacDiarmid

‘Facing The Chair’
Here under the rays of the sun

Where everything grows so vividly

In the human mind and in the heart,

Love, life, and all else so beautifully,

I think again of men as innocent as I am

Pent in a cold unjust walk between steel bars,

Their trousers slit for the electrodes

And their hair cut for the cap

Because of the unconcern of men and women,

Respectable and respected and professedly Christian,

Idle-busy among the flowers of their gardens here

Under the gay-tipped rays of the sun.

And I am suddenly completely bereft

Of la grande amitié des choses créés,

The unity of life which can only be forged by love

—
The Outlaw
I am the outlawed conscience of Scotland,

The voice that must not be heard,

The bane of all time-servers and trimmers,

Helot-usurpers of the true aristocracy of awareness.
Full of the confidence that is the cure

For cowardice and its twin, conceit.

‘De gustibus…’ means that properly probed

There can be no two minds; pressed au fond, all men agree.

—
“The little white rose”
The rose of all the world is not for me.

I want for my part

Only the little white rose of Scotland

That smells sharp and sweet – and breaks the heart

—
“A Vision of Scotland”
I see my Scotland now, a puzzle

Passing the normal of her sex, going erect

Unscathed through fire, keeping her virtue

Where temptation works with violence, walking bravely,

Offering loyalty and demanding respect.

Every now and again in a girl like you,

Even in the streets of Glasgow or Dundee,

She throws her headsquare off and a mass

Of authentic flaxen hair is revealed,

Fine spun as newly-retted fibres

On a sunlit Irish bleaching field.

—
The Watergaw

One wet, early evening in the sheep-shearing season

I saw that occasional, rare thing–

A broken shaft of a rainbow with its trembling light

Beyond the downpour of the rain

And I thought of the last, wild look you gave

Before you died.
The skylark’s nest was dark and desolate,

My heart was too

But I have thought of that foolish light

Ever since then

And I think that perhaps at last I know

What your look meant then.

Listen To Hugh Speak Here…

Venice Beach, Lysergic Morning? 1978

Milarepa – “Hasten slowly and ye shall soon arrive.”

Fighting a cold, along with Mary. Someone gifted us all with it this week… ack. Anyway, went out last night for Mary’s B’day! and had a delightful meal at Vindaho over on Clinton & 20th. Try it out! Great place.
Rowan is getting into his college work, doing art and generally settling in to the new regime.
I think you may enjoy this edition, it took quite a bit of work, (been plugging away for a couple of days) but each section has some real treasures!
More later, so stay tuned.
Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm
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On The Menu:

Dale & Laura’s Visit

The Buddha’s Words on Kindness (Metta Sutta)

Grant Morrison at DisInfo Conference, circa 1999

The Questions of King Milinda

Nagarjuna’s Poetry…

Eyestorm – Are You For Real?
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Dale & Laura’s Visit

Our friend Jan who runs the spoken word events at Powell’s Hawthorne introducing Dale.

We have known Jan for some 16 years! Her daughter is visiting this weekend with her husband and their new baby!
It was a quick but very fun day and a half. Dale was up in Portland with Laura to promote his new book: ‘Walking with Nobby (Conversations with Norman O. Brown) -Mercury House Publishers… It was a great reading, and the largest crowd yet I have seen for one of Dales presentations. It lasted some 2 hours, and he read extensively from the book, with commentary. I have cracked “Nobby”, and found it to be a true delight. The format is really great. I recommend it.
After the speaking event, there was a small gathering at Caer Llwydd. Some of the usual suspects, but pretty much a new crowd in many ways.
Just click on the pictures for a larger version…!
Dale presenting his reading at Powell’s.
Lynzee and young Solomon before the reading!
Andrew & Ethan at the reading, giving their best smiles…. 80)
Dale & Jan
Dale & Victor at the gathering at Caer Llwydd later…
Gordon & Gayle hanging out…
Tom, Dale & Ethan talking…
Rowan & Dale watching the action…
The Caer Llwydd Absinthe Fountain…

Carlie & Ethan…
Ray Soulard, editor of ‘The Cenacle’ taking his leave from the evening’s proceedings…
Mo, Laura & Dale. Mo creates Zines, CD’s and various other media around her experiences of fishing in Alaska! (Great bear stories!)

Gwyllm, Mary, Dale & Laura… The next day before Dale & Laura took off Arcata on Thursday. We had earlier gone to Anita’s shop: Dava Bead & Trade now at 21st & NE Broadway. (Anita is Lynzee’s mum) We had a great time with Dale & Laura, hopefully on our trip south this year we’ll get to spend some time with them again.
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The Buddha’s Words on Kindness (Metta Sutta)

This is what should be done

By one who is skilled in goodness,

And who knows the path of peace:

Let them be able and upright,

Straightforward and gentle in speech.

Humble and not conceited,

Contented and easily satisfied.

Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.

Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,

Not proud and demanding in nature.

Let them not do the slightest thing

That the wise would later reprove.

Wishing: In gladness and in saftey,

May all beings be at ease.

Whatever living beings there may be;

Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,

The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,

The seen and the unseen,

Those living near and far away,

Those born and to-be-born,

May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another,

Or despise any being in any state.

Let none through anger or ill-will

Wish harm upon another.

Even as a mother protects with her life

Her child, her only child,

So with a boundless heart

Should one cherish all living beings:

Radiating kindness over the entire world

Spreading upwards to the skies,

And downwards to the depths;

Outwards and unbounded,

Freed from hatred and ill-will.

Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down

Free from drowsiness,

One should sustain this recollection.

This is said to be the sublime abiding.

By not holding to fixed views,

The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,

Being freed from all sense desires,

Is not born again into this world.
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I recommend you view this after you read the rest of Turfing. It is 45 minutes long, but extremely captivating. Grant Morrison is a unique talent! Worth the time I do believe!
Grant Morrison at DisInfo Conference, circa 1999

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The Questions of King Milinda

Translated from the Milindapañha

As a consequence of the conquest of the Persian empire, the Greeks gained control of Bactria, modern Afghanistan, together with northern India. The local Greek rulers managed to establish their independence from the Seleucid empire which first held control over the area. Greek rule of Bactria continued until about 165 BC when the Shakas destroyed the Bactrian kingdom. Greeks continued to rule, however, in southern Afghanistan and northwestern India for another 150 years. The most important of these kings was Menander, known as Milinda in Buddhist sources, who ruled about 115-90 BC. Buddhism had reached the area as a consequence of the missionaries which the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka had sent more than a century earlier.
There Is No Self
Then drew near Milinda the king to where the venerable Nagasena was; and having drawn near, he greeted the venerable Nagasena, and having passed the compliments of friendship and civility, he sat down respectfully at one side. And the venerable Nagasena returned the greeting, by which, verily, he won the heart of king Milinda.
And Milinda the king spoke to the venerable Nagasena as follows:—
“How is your reverence called? Bhante, what is your name?”
“Your majesty, I am called Nagasena, my fellow-monks, your majesty, address me as Nagasena: but whether parents give one the name Nagasena, or Surasena, or Virasena, or Sihasena, it is, nevertheless, your majesty, but a way of counting, a term, an appellation, a convenient designation, a mere name, this Nagasena, for there is no self here to be found.”
Then said Milinda the king,—
“Listen to me, my lords, you five hundred Yonakas, and you eighty thousand monks! Nagasena here says thus: ‘There is no self here to be found.’ Is it possible, pray, for me to assent to what he says?”
And Milinda the king spoke to the venerable Nagasena as follows:—
“Bhante Nagasena, if there is no self to be found, who is it then furnishes you monks with the monkly requisites, —robes, food, bedding, and medicine, the reliance of the sick? who is it makes use of the same? who is it keeps the precepts? who is it applies himself to meditation? who is it realizes the Paths, the Fruits, and Nirvana? who is it destroys life? who is it takes what is not given him? who is it commits immorality? who is it tells lies? who is it drinks intoxicating liquor? who is it commits the five crimes that constitute ‘proximate karma?’1 In that case, there is no merit; there is no demerit; there is no one who does or causes to be done meritorious or demeritorious deeds; neither good nor evil deeds can have any fruit or result. Bhante Nagasena, neither is he a murderer who kills a monk, nor can you monks, bhante Nagasena, have any teacher, preceptor, or ordination. When you say, ‘My fellow-monks, your majesty, address me as Nagasena,’ what then is this Nagasena? Pray, bhante, is the hair of the head Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is the hair of the body Nagasena ? “
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Are nails . . . teeth . . . skin . . . flesh . . . sinews . . . bones . . . marrow of the bones . . . kidneys . . . heart . . . liver . . . pleura . . . spleen . . . lungs . . . intestines . . . mesentery . . . stomach . . . faeces . . . bile. .. phlegm . . . pus . . . blood . . . sweat . . . fat . . . tears . . . lymph . . . saliva . . . snot . . . synovial fluid . . .urine . . . brain of the head Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is now, bhante, form Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is sensation Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is perception Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Are the psychic constructions Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is consciousness Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Are, then, bhante, form, sensation, perception, the psychic constructions, and consciousness unitedly Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is it, then, bhante, something besides form, sensation, perception, the psychic constructions, and consciousness, which is Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Bhante, although I question you very closely, I fail to discover any Nagasena. Verily, now, bhante, Nagasena is a mere empty sound. What Nagasena is there here? Bhante, you speak a falsehood, a lie: there is no Nagasena.”
Then the venerable Nagasena spoke to Milinda the king as follows:—
“Your majesty, you are a delicate prince, an exceedingly delicate prince; and if, your majesty, you walk in the middle of the day on hot sandy ground, and you tread on rough grit, gravel, and sand, your feet become sore, your body tired, the mind is oppressed, and the body-consciousness suffers. Pray, did you come afoot, or riding?”
“Bhante, I do not go afoot: I came in a chariot.”
“Your majesty, if you came in a chariot, declare to me the chariot. Pray, your majesty, is the pole the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is the axle the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Are the wheels the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is the chariot-body the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is the banner-staff the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is the yoke the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Are the reins the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is the goading-stick the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Pray, your majesty, are pole, axle, wheels, chariot-body, banner-staff, yoke, reins, and goad unitedly the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is it, then, your majesty, something else besides pole; axle, wheels, chariot-body, banner-staff, yoke, reins, and goad which is the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Your majesty, although I question you very closely, I fail to discover any chariot. Verily now, your majesty, the word chariot is a mere empty sound. What chariot is there here? Your majesty, you speak a falsehood, a lie: there is no chariot. Your majesty, you are the chief king in all the continent of India; of whom are you afraid that you speak a lie? Listen to me, my lords, you five hundred Yonakas, and you eighty thousand monks! Milinda the king here says thus: ‘I came in a chariot;’ and being requested, ‘Your majesty, if you came in a chariot, declare to me the chariot,’ he fails to produce any chariot. Is it possible, pray, for me to assent to what he says?”
When he had thus spoken, the five hundred Yonakas applauded the venerable Nagasena and spoke to Milinda the king as follows:—
“Now, your majesty, answer, if you can.”
Then Milinda the king spoke to the venerable Nagasena as follows:—
“Bhante Nagasena, I speak no lie: the word ‘chariot’ is but a way of counting, term, appellation, convenient designation, and name for pole, axle, wheels, chariot-body, and banner-staff.”
“Thoroughly well, your majesty, do you understand a chariot. In exactly the same way, your majesty, in respect of me, Nagasena is but a way of counting, term, appellation, convenient designation, mere name for the hair of my head, hair of my body . . . brain of the head, form, sensation, perception, the psychic constructions, and consciousness. But in the absolute sense there is no self here to be found. And the priestess Vajira, your majesty, said as follows in the pr
esence of The Blessed One:—
Even as the word of “chariot” means

That members join to frame a whole

So when the Groups appear to view,

We use the phrase, “A living being.”
“It is wonderful, bhante Nagasena! It is marvelous, bhante Nagasena! Brilliant and prompt is the wit of your replies. If The Buddha were alive, he would applaud. Well done, well done, Nagasena! Brilliant and prompt is the wit of your replies.”
1Translated from the Sarasangaha, as quoted in Trenckner’s note to this passage:
“By proximate karma is meant karma that ripens in the next existence. To show what this is, I [the author of the Sarasangaha] give the following passage from the Atthanasutta of the first book of the Anguttara-Nikaya:—”It is an impossibility, O monks, the case can never occur, that an individual imbued with the correct doctrine should deprive his mother of life, should deprive his father of life, should deprive a saint of life, should in a revengeful spirit cause a bloody wound to a Tathagata, should cause a schism in the church. This is an impossibility.”’

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Nagarjuna’s Poetry…

Body
I have no body apart

From parts which form it.

I know no parts

Apart from a “body.”
A body with no parts

Would be unformed,

A part of my body apart from my body

Would be absurd.
Were the body here or not,

It would need no parts.

Partless bodies are pointless.

Do not get stuck in the “body.”
I cannot say,

“My body is like its parts.”

I cannot say,

“It’s something else.”
Feelings, perceptions,

Drives, minds, things

Are like this body

In every way.
Conflict with emptiness

Is no conflict;

Objections to emptiness,

No objections.

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Change
If something has an essence–

How can it ever change

Into anything else?
A thing doesn’t change into something else–

Youth does not age,

Age does not age.
If something changed into something else–

Milk would be butter

Or butter would not be milk.
Were there a trace of something,

There would be a trace of emptiness.

Were there no trace of anything,

There would be no trace of emptiness.
Buddhas say emptiness

Is relinquishing opinions.

Believers in emptiness

Are incurable.

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Space
No trace of space

Is there before

The absence of obstruction

Which describes it.
With no obstruction,

How can there be

Absence of obstruction?

Who distinguishes between them?
Space is not obstruction

Or an absence of it,

Nor is it a description

Or something to describe.
Fluidity and heat,

Energy and gravity

Are just like space.
In seeing things

To be or not to be

Fools fail to see

A world at ease.

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and some of his thoughts….
What is never cast off, seized, interrupted, constant, extinguished, and produced–this is called Nirvana.

Indeed, Nirvana is not strictly in the nature of ordinary existence for, if it were, there would wrongly follow the characteristics of old age and death. For, such an existence cannot be without those characteristics.
If Nirvana is strictly in the nature of ordinary existence, it would be of the created realm. For, no ordinary existence of the uncreated realm ever exists anywhere at all.
If Nirvana is strictly in the nature of ordinary existence, why is it non-appropriating? For, no ordinary existence that is non-appropriating ever exists.
If Nirvana is not strictly in the nature of ordinary existence, how could what is in the nature of non-existence be Nirvana? Where there is no existence, equally so, there can be no non-existence.
If Nirvana is in the nature of non-existence, why is it non-appropriating? For, indeed, a non-appropriating non-existence does not prevail.
The status of the birth-death cycle is due to existential grasping [of the skandhas] and relational condition [of the being]. That which is non-grasping and non-relational is taught as Nirvana.
The Teacher has taught the abandonment of the concepts of being and non-being. Therefore, Nirvana is properly neither [in the realm of] existence nor non-existence.
If Nirvana is [in the realm of] both existence and non-existence, then liberation will also be both. But that is not proper.
If Nirvana is [in the realm of] both existence and non-existence, it will not be non-appropriating. For, both realms are always in the process of appropriating.
How could Nirvana be [in the realm of] both existence and non-existence? Nirvana is of the uncreated realm while existence and non-existence are of the created realm.
How could Nirvana be [in the realm of] both existence and non-existence? Both cannot be together in one place just as the situation is with light and darkness.
The proposition that Nirvana is neither existence nor non-existence could only be valid if and when the realms of existence and non-existence are established.
If indeed Nirvana is asserted to be neither existence nor non-existence, then by what means are the assertions to be known?
It cannot be said that the Blessed One exists after nirodha (release from worldly desires). Nor can it be said that He does not exist after nirodha, or both, or neither.
It cannot be said that the Blessed One even exists in the present living process. Nor can it be said that He does not exist in the present living process, or both, or neither.
Samsara (the empirical life-death cycle) is nothing essentially different from Nirvana. Nirvana is nothing essentially different from Samsara.
The limits of Nirvana are the limits of Samsara. Between the two, also, there is not the slightest difference whatsoever.
The various views concerning the status of life after nirodha, the limits of the world, the concept of permanence, etc., are all based on [such concepts as] Nirvana, posterior and anterior states of existence.

Since all factors of existence are in the nature of Emptiness (sunya), why assert the finite, the infinite, both finite and Infinite, and neither finite nor infinite?
Why assert the identity, difference, permanence, impermanence, both permanence and impermanence, or neither permanence nor impermanence?

All acquisitions [i.e., grasping] as well as play of concepts [i.e., symbolic representation] are basically in the nature of cessation and quiescence. Any factor of experience with regards to anyone at any place was never taught by the Buddha.

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Eyestorm – Are You For Real?

Are you for Real? from eyestorm on Vimeo.
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Yesterday was pretty busy… Andy stopped by with his books for Dale to sign, and we got to hang out for awhile, which doesn’t happen. I went out and did some prints at Doran & Sue’s, who are rearranging the house now that Katherine has moved out with her young gentleman.
Victor and his lady friend stopped by, bringing his books for Dale to sign, and we sat around for awhile catching up. I tried to convince him to come in from the Dalles for the talk, but he starts work at 4:30AM (Ack!)
Later on I went and helped my sister get a bed with the assistance of Andrew, and we got to spend some time on the road going up above PSU to venture down a road that more resembled a road in a mountain pass in the Siskiyous than in the heart of Portland. I am always surprised to find new locations in Portland. What a fine city!
Rowan came by from his house-sitting (for Trish & Kyle) for dinner, and to talk about his first day at Art School. This seems like a deal made in heaven for him. He was positively Glowing. It makes my heart happy to see that!
Mary has been performing her special magick around the house. I love the atmosphere she gives a place.
Dale and Laura will be arriving today. Everyone is pretty excited!
See ya all tonight!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
PS: Radio Free Earthrites is back up! Thanks Doug!

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On The Menu:

Dale Pendell in Portland

The Links

Guy Debord Quotes

The Stranglers: Get A Grip On Yourself

Dale Pendell: Green Flames – Thoughts on Burning Man, the Green Man, and Dionysian Anarchism, with Four Proposals

The Poetry of Laura Pendell

The Stranglers – No More Heroes

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Dale Pendell in Portland

So… Dale and Laura will be arriving in Portland today for Dales’ talk.
Here is the info again:

Dale Pendell October 8th 2008 07:30 PM

(at Powell’s Hawthorne)

In Walking with Nobby (Mercury House), retired professor Norman O. Brown and author Dale Pendell, during walks taken along the coast of California, discuss many concepts and characters, including paganism and world religions, Dionysus, Marx, and Freud, presented as footnoted conversations.
We hope to see you. This will a great event, free, and will give you an opportunity to meet with Dale & Laura.
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The Links:

Spider eats snake

Payday….

Possession….

ATT Shenanigans…

You’ve Been Left Behind…

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Guy Debord Quotes

Boredom is always counter-revolutionary. Always.
Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.
Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit.
Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs. 80)
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Changes are coming… I suggest you –Get A Grip On Yourself–

The Stranglers… of course.

>
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Dale Pendell: Green Flames – Thoughts on Burning Man, the Green Man, and Dionysian Anarchism, with Four Proposals

(originally posted on Turfing last year)

Burning Man as a “temporary autonomous zone.”
Burning Man was born in free and visionary revelry, and matured on the Black Rock Desert into a great gathering of the tribes, from the cyber-freaks to the lushy rednecks to the altered-consciousness pentathletes to the nasty punks to the fuckin’ hippies. And everything in between. This alone, from a historical perspective, is a matter of wonder and for rejoicing.
There was another big event, not as big as Burning Man in numbers, but also historically important, in Golden Gate Park, forty years ago, that was called “Gathering of the Tribes.” Gary Snyder spoke at that event, as did Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, and others.
Such gatherings often take place in what Hakim Bey calls a “temporary autonomous zone,” in cracks and hidden openings overlooked by the guardians of the State. Bey was careful to refrain from defining TAZ rigorously, but it is clear that TAZ is applicable to the free spirit and the festive excesses of Burning Man:
The TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it.

–Hakim Bey
Other forces besides the State can quell a temporary autonomous zone: it can be co-opted by the market; it can exhaust its imagination and good will; or it can compromise itself into a more acceptable form. All of these forces continue to exert tremendous pressure on Burning Man.
Many burners feel that the “true TAZ” aspect of Burning Man peaked in the mid-1990s, and has declined ever since. Others, of course, say “stop complaining and party.” Whatever the truth, Burning Man is still a vibrant force with far-reaching social, political, and artistic potential.

Dionysian Anarchism

There has been a debate going on in philosophy for 2500 years about human nature. In fact, it is the only really crucial question of philosophy. At stake is the rationalization for a hierarchical, oppressive state. Before philosophers, religion imputed that human society should be like that of the gods, usually with a top god, and with the others doing their respective parts. These early state religions stressed that the kings on earth, if not divine themselves, were reflections of the order of heaven.
Plato, in the Republic, introduced the “Noble Lie,” that the wise should tell the commoners lies and myths to keep them in their place. A corollary is that if you don’t assist this process, you are not one of the wise, and you will be punished, if not with death or imprisonment, at least with marginalization.
Thomas Hobbes said that people were rapacious beasts, who would start killing and eating each other if it weren’t for an armed police force. Our mainstream culture seems desperate to maintain this viewpoint. During Hurricane Katrina, while the self-organizing cooperative efforts of thousands and tens of thousands of citizens to help each other went largely unreported, a scene of looting was replayed over and over. The clear message is “see, people can’t be trusted. We need the police.” In fact, police (or private security goons) broke up, and even fired on, the emerging cooperatives.
So who is on the other side? Many, actually. First off, we have the evidence of anthropology and human prehistory, which is overwhelmingly cooperative. We have the core teachings of deep mystical traditions.
Jean Jacques Rousseau offered that much of the sickness, the antisocial, and criminal behavior in society was not the result of our intrinsic natures, but of the society itself. Many are quick to dismiss Rousseau with a put-down—“ahh, the Noble Savage.” Rousseau never talked about any noble savage. The term was invented by a mid-nineteenth century pro-slavery American anthropologist, and has been an astoundingly effective little lie to cut off discussion on this topic.
Dionysian anarchism sides with the mystics and with anthropology. It sides with the way that people carry on their affairs most of the time: that is, cooperatively, and generally with a sense of good will. It sides with the spirit of DIY: do-it-yourself. Dionysian anarchists stress that means and ends have to be in accord, and if we can just stop things from getting worse, society will spontaneously realign itself towards freedom. That is our nature. As long as we have free horizons, as long as we are headed towards freedom and not away from it, we can relax a little with a long term view.
Forty years ago poet Gary Snyder, in answer to those who say that cooperative, non-coercive living is against human nature, wrote that we must patiently remind such people that they must know their own true natures first, before they can say that. That those who have gone furthest into deep mind, into deep nature–mystics, meditators, and visionary explorers—have been reporting for several thousand years that we have nothing to fear.
Gary’s solution included Buddhism and other inward-looking spiritual traditions, working within the context of tribal community, and opening to the radical teachings of the wild: wild places, wild animals, and wild plants—the true sources of our culture from our earliest beginnings. Timothy Leary stressed psychedelic visioning. Alan Watts talked about a philosophical sensualism. Ginsberg modeled the ecstatic spontaneity of the dancing bhakti.
But let’s look briefly at where we are.
Despite the pervasive rhetoric of progress from our politicians and media, for most people in the United States, for most plant and animal species, things are not getting better.
Real wages have been declining for over a generation. Measures of the quality of life have been declining. How much someone has to work to get by has been increasing. Infant mortality has been increasing. The percentage of the population in poverty has been increasing. Both the number of people and the percentage of the population in prison has risen dramatically. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, both in numbers and by percentage. Plants, animals, and habitat are being consumed at an ever increasing rate by global corporations which, by their definition and legal charter, can never have enough.
There is of course an upside—for those near the top of the heap, things are better than ever. There is sort of a choice here, aristos vs. demos. One can get with the program, stop complaining, and with some smarts and a good birth you can join the winners.
The Aztecs had a pathway for the commoners to gain entrance to the elite by becoming warriors and capturing sacrificial victims in the “flower wars”—wars maintained not for conquest of territory but for just that reason of providing victims. (One had to capture five victims to gain the highest ranking, with its attendant privileges, such as the right to drink chocolate.)

Freeing the Imagination
The first anarchist act is to free the imagination, to cut through our years of conditioning about what is “unthinkable.” By imagination, we do not mean mere reverie, but our imaging of the world, our mental picturing of who we are and the fundamental nature of existence, of reality. This is imagination in the sense that Blake used the word: the fire of consciousness, the fire of mind. Freeing the imagination means that you can act spontaneously in the world, not only artistically but in all of your interactions.
This is not as easy as it sounds. How to do that?
For poets, artists, musicians, dancers, meditators, and visionaries, it is a matter of continuing practice: plumbing the depths of mind, learning how to listen, and then sharing our insights through performance. This is the ancient wisdom of all gift economies.

Ecology and Deep Ecology
The Black Rock Desert was one of Gary Snyder’s favorite places to come and camp long before Burning Man ever came here, and it is one of the major inspirations for his poem “Mountains and Rivers without End.”
On the Black Rock, the environment is impossible to ignore: it fills our eyes and tents and drinking cups with every dust storm. It roasts us or freezes us. On the Playa, the spirit of place is never far away, even for newbies who have never heard of Lake Lahontan.
At first glance, Burning Man, with its penchant for fire, excess, inebriation, celebration, sexuality, radical self-expression, and generators, hardly seems a candidate for greenness. But there is a connection—a connection in mythopoesis, at a deeper level than our laudable efforts at recycling and solar electricity and “leave no trace.”
This connection relates to the difference between management ecology and deep ecology. Management ecology we need, desperately, but deep ecology we need even more. The Green Man is deep ecology—his leafy speaking is animistic. Plant intelligence, with its sense of place, and wild intelligence, with its sense of freedom, speak through his mouth.
The Green Man is the bridge, and the Green Man is madness. Ecstatic madness. Madness that recognizes that the earth is alive. What do we mean by that? Not that the earth is composed of cells with a DNA library, but that the earth is not a separate thing, distinct from our own living minds. Buddhists state that, ultimately, the seeming objectivity of the “external” world, is an illusion, that our own true nature and the salt of the playa are not separate. This is the message that mystics and yogis and shamans have maintained for millennia. Once this is realized, the problems don’t go away, but cutting away a hillside, building a house or factory, putting explosives into the earth, are all recognized as having a transgressive nature. We then have a tendency to try to ask permission—what does the earth have to say about what we are doing, the hillside, the animal that we are going to eat? And then we try to make things right, with a sense of gratitude and perhaps a bit of shame, or even guilt, to bring things back into harmony with the spirits. We recognize that we are being gifted, that countless generations of effort, sacrifice, and imagination make possible our birth and our sustenance. So we want to give something back. Snyder states: “Performance is currency in the deep world’s gift economy.”
The Green Man, Dionysus, and Divine Madness
In his last published essay, “Dionysus in 1990,” philosopher Norman O. Brown extended ideas of Georges Bataille and Marcel Mauss and others to invert the Marxist focus on production to that of consumption–more to the point, “wasteful consumption.” The idea of wasteful consumption is anathema to conservationists (and to all sane and rational people). The idea is, frankly, madness. Brown bets all with Socrates that if the madness is inspired by a god, that is, divine madness, it is the source of our greatest blessings. We might say that divine madness is the “wild” of consciousness.
The name of the god, for Brown, is Dionysus. Iconographically, it is easy to recognize Dionysus in the Green Man, the one whose very speech is wild nature.
Now Brown is not expecting people to actually bow down and worship Dionysus. For Brown, Dionysus is a shorthand for an irrepressible wild and joyful energy. The opposite of this energy is the Grand Inquisitor, with his benevolent lies. Success or failure seems to pivot on the issue of passive entertainment—Blake’s “spectral enjoyment.” The Inquisitor is betting that circuses will satisfy the masses. The Dionysian bets he is wrong. That is the idea behind “no spectators.”
The traditional manifestation of Dionysian energy has always been through festivals. Barbara Ehrenreich points out that in medieval Spain a third of the days of the year were holidays for festivals. There was a backwards day, a Feast of Fools when a donkey was led into the cathedral and the bishop’s miter placed on his head. Blasphemies were uttered, echoes of the Dionysian festivals of Greece. The Greeks were wise enough to recognize that although Dionysus meant trouble, the suppression of Dionysus was even worse—that trying to suppress the Dionysian spirit entirely, to end all licentiousness, all blasphemy, all risk, led to false madness, profane madness, and the sacrifice of children. Moloch. That is the true idolatry, when the blasphemies of art are petrified into literalism. The Romans, by the way, an Apollonian people, suppressed the Bacchanalia with much bloodshed—perhaps the first “War on Drugs.”
The church made occasional attempts to suppress the festivals—these moves mostly coming from Rome. The local priests generally resisted this suppression, saying that without the festivals they would have no congregation. Festivals, it should not surprise us, were sometimes the springboards for political rebellion.
A hardier force against the festival was the Enlightenment, along with mercantilism, and the Industrial Revolution. “Reason,” remember. Lenin even went so far as to praise the capitalists for disciplining the working classes.
We must remember that anytime large groups of people can get together cooperatively, it puts the lie to the Hobbesian thesis that people are innately irresponsible and dangerous. That is the real reason that the government insists on police presence—even though they are clearly unnecessary. Free festivals are a threat to the whole rationalization for the existence of the armed, coercive forces of “internal security.” Such a free festival would be a light to the world for centuries: proof that cooperative living, free from armed coercion, is not “unthinkable,” but the way things should be. Free the imagination!
In Brown’s system (which I go into more deeply in my Inspired Madness, The Gifts of Burning Man, published last year by North Atlantic Books), the rites of Dionysus, with their attendant licentiousness, danger, fire, blasphemy, and wasteful consumption (combustion for its own sake), must be seen as prophylactic: they protect us from calamity—the Greeks certainly understood them thus. I like to joke that in a more enlightened age Burning Man would be given a grant from the Defense Department, in gold. The alternative worship, as Brown clearly stated, is war.
There is, alas, no proof for this thesis. The mythopoetic foundation is very strong, but in the end it comes down to a wager. Everyone must choose a square.
A Few Proposals for Burning Man, LLC.
1. Stop the undercover stings by police. If you can’t stop them, at least speak out against them, LOUDLY and PUBLICLY. This violation of trust and goodwill is the opposite of everything that Burning Man stands for. Smoking cannabis may be illegal, but lying and violating another’s trust—“hey man, you got any weed you can share?”—is immoral and despicable. It is a poison that spreads distrust and division. It is the worst model of civic behavior. In the face of such behavior for Burning Man to state “we have an excellent relationship with law enforcement” amounts to collusion.
Personally, I believe that all police presence should be reduced. And reduced again. Let’s free our imaginations and not dismiss this possibility as “impossible.” Why do we let police strut through the dance clubs? It’s time to push back. Tell the BLM we’ll take the festival somewhere else—see what they say then. (The High Sierra Music Festival had some remarkable success with this tactic.)
2. Stop the car searches. This one is easy. It’s wrong that the very first encounter upon arriving at Burning Man is someone demanding to search one’s car, someone who tells me “I can’t take your word for it.” That’s “spectator” thinking.
How big a problem would it be if a few people who can’t afford a ticket sneak in? Maybe they should be there. Maybe they have something important to contribute. How many would there be? Three percent?
Five percent? I’ll pay five percent more to cover them, until they can get their acts together. Isn’t our way to educate by example? Let’s see if we can make it work through the peer pressure of responsibility and good citizenship. Spirit of giving, anyone?
3. Consider dropping charges against Paul Addis (the man who set fire to the Man on Monday night). Perhaps such a benevolent act of clemency could bring him back into the fold. Make him do community service at Camp Arctica to cool him off and help him make some new friends. At least talk to the guy—he clearly wants to say something.
4. Wouldn’t ”Dreaming America” or just “Dreaming” be a better theme for 2008 than “The American Dream.” Consider the contradictions in the theme announcement.
Beneath a background of red, white, and blue (originally the flag of the East India Company, the English-speaking world’s first transnational corporation), Burning Man has announced that next year’s theme will be “about patriotism.” While one might pledge some allegiance to “the soil of Turtle Island,” the Burning Man theme is presented entirely in a nationalistic context. This kind of patriotism is one of the greatest diseases of civilization, responsible not only for the deaths of many millions of persons, but for wide scale scorching of the earth.
While waving a flag, Burning Man says this theme is not about flag worship (and, as well, that “flag burning [will] play no part in this year’s theme,” a rather ironic proscription). Presenting us with ideology, they say “leave ideology at home.” They seem to think that politics has to do with “the blue states and the red,” politics only in its most myopic and degenerate condition.
Astonishingly, beneath this banner of patriotism and the American Dream, we are given a (misquoted) fragment of Robinson Jeffers’ poem “Shine, Perishing Republic.” Jeffers, a wise man, is not turning in his grave, but, rather, “sadly smiling.” The point is the next line of the poem (not quoted):
“But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption Never has been compulsory.”
Time for a regional?
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The Poetry of Laura Pendell

– Originally published in ‘The Invisible College’ 1st edition

MASK of SHARDS
I have been broken and crushed.

I am tired of closing my eyes.

I am tired of closing my mouth.
I think life is a series of steps.

I think the sky is a compass of remedies.

I think water overflows with offers,

and the river is fringed with answers.
Perhaps the answer is too deep

the river’s banks are muddy

the weeds work their way between.
Then it is time to be still.

Then it is time to sit with the earth.

Let the days stretch beyond shadow

and into a season of light.
This is the practice of self-reflection.

This is the practice of not following

the illusive thread of suffering.
Do not stray.

—-
INNER ALCHEMY
reddened reflection

of time before space

and cycles

transformed
semen of cinnabar

sulfur sentience

meditation

and breath
cavernous sky doors

pour dimensions

of purple ichor

gold and jade
Eight Gems soar

elixir flows

and flowers breathe

the Dragon Fetus
finds its secret place

lunar liquor

the spiritual feather

of a Phoenix flown
peruse the pattern

follow the mandala

and glow

—
GRATITUDE
the gold film

that washes across vision

the shimmer that swims

across time

whispers or shouts

the only language

o carillon of color

spinning/swirling

across the ceiling of infinity

with the geometric precision

of ancient arabian cupolas

crescents squares and triangles

all iridescence and incense

space roils around us

billowing howls

and exclamations of rainbow

premonitions of the sacrament

of bedlam and insight

both amplitudes and maxitudes

wonderment and wows
whirring extremities

of shape shifters

rosewood and cordwood

and myrrh

and waves of time

sense thickened
and spherical

swelling and thrusting

and white capped

the blinding broth

of unimagined horizons
and then finally

the sunrise

well traveled and bright

its innocence

cruising and actual

precarious and enough
I am drowsy, irrational,

sated by the singular beauty

of the earth

birdsong and wonder

all that green

the long swell into daylight

the long spell of you

everything still a sparkle

rippling and lyrical

relinquished

remembering

festooned in mirth

scattered and gleaming
miseries unfamiliar

at least for this day

this life conjectured

imagined, the illusion

complete/so sweet.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
No More Heroes… The Stranglers

_______________________

In fact, let us not mince words… The Management is terrible! We’ve had a string of embezzelers, frauds, liars and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact. But who elected them? It was you! You who elected these people! You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you! While I’ll admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate. You have encouraged these malicious incompetents, who have made your working life a shambles. You have accepted without question their senseless orders. You have allowed them to fill your workspace with dangerous and unproven machines. You could have stopped them. All you had to say was ‘No’….

V, in V for Vendetta.

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Radio Free EarthRites will be down for awhile. Whilst changing out phone lines in the UK, our server was cut off, and due to the British mindset, it isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon. I will keep you posted for when it will be back up.
Rowan starts school today at The Art Institute of Portland. We went out and picked up 3 books, to the tune of close to 300 dollars! Not a hardback to be found among them! Amazing….Anyway, he has had a hard time of it over the last few days, catching a stomach bug along with his Mom that I gifted them from who knows where. I think he is on the mend now…
Worked much of the weekend on the magazine. It is finally taking shape. It seemed to take longer to develop the theme for this edition. I have been sidelined frequently with other projects at this point…
Anyway, looking forward to this Wednesday!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Dale Pendell Will Be In Portland at Powells’ Hawthorne

The Links

Bells & Robes…

H.U.V.A Network live at Les Dominicains 2/6-07

Drag the Archaic into our Present for the sake of a Future

The Poetry Of The Dao Te Ching

h.u.v.a. network / time circles / distant system rmx

Art: John Duncan
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Be There Or Be Square:

Dale Pendell Will Be In Portland at Powells’ Hawthorne Wednesday, October 8th 2008 07:30 PM

In Walking with Nobby (Mercury House), retired professor Norman O. Brown and author Dale Pendell, during walks taken along the coast of California, discuss many concepts and characters, including paganism and world religions, Dionysus, Marx, and Freud, presented as footnoted conversations.
This should be a good one! If you haven’t heard Dale speak, you are in for a treat. Some of the most stimulating subject matter, and entertaining ideas I have come across… I am very excited to have Dale back in Portland. This is a must see event!
So we will see you there, right? Mary, Rowan & I will see ya there

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The Links:

Blue Light Info….!

It helps if your a bit toasted…

Make Believe Maverick…

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Bells and Robes
Ummon asked: `The world is such a wide world, why do you answer a bell and don ceremonial robes?’
Mumon’s Comment: When one studies Zen one need not follow sound or colour or form. Even though some have attained insight when hearing a voice or seeing a colour or a form, this is a very common way. It is not true Zen. The real Zen student controls sound, colour, form, and actualizes the truth in his everyday life.
Sound comes to the ear, the ear goes to the sound. When you blot out sound and sense, what do you understand? While listening with ears one never can understand. To understand intimately one should see sound.
When you understand, you belong to the family;

When you do not understand, you are a stranger.

Those who do not understand belong to the family,

And when they understand they are strangers.
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H.U.V.A Network live at Les Dominicains 2/6-07

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Drag the Archaic into our Present

for the sake of a Future

-jesse mabus
We Irish, born into that ancient sect

But thrown upon this filthy modem tide

And by its formless spawning fury wrecked

Climb to our proper dark, that we may trace

The lineaments of a plummet measured face

– W.B. Yeats, ‘The Statues’
Since we have been given the admonition to avoid the conquest, as there will be sorra’ galore soon enough, I will instead contain myself to elucidating the archaic qualities of the Irish, which for me represent examples of a world-view worth conserving and transplanting. First we will look at the Megalithic culture of the Atlantic coast of Europe and contrast it with the Iron age Celtic culture as seen in the Táin Bó Cuailnge. The most vital bit of information I discovered in Every Earthly Blessing relates how the saints were associated with the Druidic and Poetic schools, and consequently often used the leitmotifs, of these ancient ‘technicians of the sacred’ in their own hagiographic constructions. This consequently makes the Irish church and its patrons much closer to the Indo-European Paganism eradicated on the Continent by the Roman Church. The survival of this religious caste and its corpus into the 17th century, in both the manuscripts of the Irish Monasteries and the poetics of the Bardic Order, gives us an opportunity to reconstruct aspects of the Gaelic world-view prior to it being tossed in the boiling cauldron of the European Nation States. Much of the material we have on the religious castes of Ireland comes through the less then objective lens of their conquerors and would-be conquerors. Consequently we have a shadowy and biased view of them, especially the much-maligned final leg of their tripartite organization, the Vates or Seers. Yet in looking at them we can discern both the reason for their dismissal and their importance in the transition from archaic shamanism.
I
Isle a ho boys, let her go boys

swing her head round into the weather

Isle a ho boys, let her go boys

sailing homeward to Mingulay

-traditional (Casey Neill Trio), ‘Mingulay Boat Song’
Along the Atlantic seaboard of the European continent from Ireland to the Mediterranean islands of Malta are megalithic structures, which mark the steps of a migration of people from the cradle of civilization to the very periphery of the farthest Western shores. The purpose of these monuments, often described as communal burial tombs, remains an ambiguous assertion. Some call attention only to their contents of bones and material remains and maintain they were tombs for an elite social order. While others interpret their placement and architecture and suggest they are astronomical observatories designed to measure the solar year and thus act as an agricultural calendar. Some suggest that their purpose was more religious and the Winter Solstice ritual at Newgrange, or Brugh na Bóinne, in the interaction of dark and light, cave and sunbeam, the sacred marriage of the chthonic: feminine earth and the luminescent masculine sky is enacted.
In the film The Atlanteans, there is a concerted attempt to draw a connection between the North African and Mediterranean cultures with Ireland through the vehicle of maritime trade routes and cultural similarities. With only a brief mention of these megalithic structures, it is no wonder that the effort comes off as incomplete. These megaliths point to a cultural source for the ancient Irish not solely in the Celtic world of the European heartland, but in the wine-dark sea of the Mediterranean and the north coast of Africa. I see an important linguistic point to address in the argument; how long has the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language tree been separated from the main trunk, or from the branch associated with Greek and Italic? The American Heritage Dictionary suggests that Proto Indo-European was likely spoken around 5th millennia BCE, which fits approximately with the time this migration of the megalithic builders began. Perhaps this is also around the time of the first Kurgan invasions of the Indo-European lands, which began a major cultural shift from the matrilineal or kin relations to patriarchal or power relations, from an egalitarian to a domination model of social interaction.
In the Bronze Age the mythic template was the Goddess and her consort, the Dying God of Vegetation. This is itself an overlay on the Hymn to Demeter, or the relations between a Mother and Daughter, the major trope in Eavan Boland’s ‘Pomegranate’ (or see ‘Brugh na Bóinne and the Triple Irish Goddess’ by the author). It represents the turning of the agricultural round and the connectivity of life’s cycles, from birth to death and back again ? letting go and embracing change (a salmon leap?!). In the Iron Age the myth becomes the hero’s individual fame or infamy in cattle raids and the subjugation of women as possessions, whether in the battle for the Brown Bull in the Táin or the capture of Helen in the Trojan War. This is a move from the agency of being as seen in the Gaelic “ag”, to the subordination of having, not a descent of godhead into the individual as the hero’s birth represents, but the original fall from our connection to the universal.
Ironically even though the Táin is a heroic saga for an audience of prepubescent boys, being at its heart misogynist, it contains elements that point out the path this shift traversed. Deirdre, the self-possessed Maiden refusing to be a sacrifice to a vainglorious king’s pride and desire, and likewise the curse on Ulster by Macha’s “A mother bore each one of you,” in the film A Celtic Trilogy are examples of the agency and respect women had. As is the connection of Medb with the Goddess of Sovereignty and her claims of preeminence over Aillil’s in the ‘Pillow Talk’ section of the Táin. The agency of these women directly contradicts the image of women as chattel and the cause of men’s struggle for honor or infamy found in the Táin. In addition to these triune Goddesses, the story of Nes, mother of Conchobor, and her maneuvers to get her and the Druid Cathbad’s son on to her husband Fergus’ throne at Emain Macha, illustrates the agency women had in the political sphere. In fact without Lugh, who some sources suggest is actually a British solar deity not indigenous to Ireland, the only aspects of the divine present would be the triune Goddesses Nemain, Badb, and (as the) Morrigan; albeit their function is confined to the masculine arts of warfare. Morrigan is likely another manifestation of a Goddess of Sovereignty, her name being mor ‘great’ and rigan ‘queen(s)’. So why weren’t there queens in Ireland? Was it this masculine overlay that turns the maiden into “a sheep between two rams”, the pregnant mother into a horse race contestant, and the crone, as the sacred hills of Ath Lúain and Brugh na Bóinne, into the mutilated body of the Goddess of Sovereignty? If these stories are propaganda for the patriarchy, why are these remnants of a matrilineal culture where wisdom, inspiration, and agency, as seen in the blood which is not Gods, but instead belongs to thee all of creation, still remaining so prominently in the text? What lesson is learned by the juxtaposition of these starkly different foci in the tales, the misogyny of the warrior’s deeds of exploitation and honor, and the Goddess with her daughter a salmon’s leap up the great yew tree teaching the power of the Gae Bolga, to the hero?
II
I am the God who created in head the fire

Who is it that throws light into the meeting on the mountain?

Who announces the ages of the moon?

Who teaches the place where couches the sun? (If not I?)

– Amergin the Milesian, ‘The Mystery’
The first references we have to Druids, which is also concurrent with the first notice of the Keltoi is around the 4th century BCE, well into the Iron Age. The Indo-European root of Druid is deru – meaning tree (concrete), and solid, strong or true (abstract). The definition given for Druid is ’strong seer’ in turn points to the IE root weid – meaning to see (concrete) and wisdom or knowledge (abstract) (AmHer, 2099, 2131). Druids were part of the tripartite priestly class made up of themselves, the Poets or Bards, and the Vates or Seers. They encompassed the powers of the other two, with the additional responsibility of being king’s council and natural philosophers. Much of the lore we have of their function is seen through the occluded lens of their Roman adversaries and Christian commentators, for they were doubly damned by being the priestly class of the Pagan Celtic culture. As the Táin is a repository for certain elements of the pre-patriarchal, or matrilineal, so too the Christianity of Erigeana contains remnants of the Pagan cultural tradition of the Druids, Poets and Seers.
There is an argument in Indo-European studies that these ‘technicians of the sacred’ were the inheritors of a shamanism itself as old as the Neolithic. In effect the Oral Traditional material contains many references to the activity of this priestly class as mediators between the divine and the temporal, from the Indus to the Sinann. One of the common motifs of the Druidic references, and by default, due to the absorption of the Druidic/Bardic colleges, many of the lives of the Irish Saints, which points to this shamanism, is the shape changing and close association with animal totems. Whether it be Patrick’s transformed deer escaping the king’s insult and anger, Kevin’s mothering a nest of blackbirds, or Bede’s otter moccasin walk across the strand, these suggest not so much a connection to the “family of things” as the ages old accretion of Paganism. The frequency with which the early saints are associated, both with “animal presence”, and with or as Poets suggests that infiltration might be a more apt description of the process of Ireland’s conversion of Christianity.
An example of this difference between the animism of Druidry and the appropriation of animal motifs by the Irish saints is the fox. The fox is the original animal totem of a Poet named Crimthamn, who would later change that totem to a dove when he took the name Colm Cille. Likewise the fox is imaged in the stories of saints in Every Earthly Blessing as malicious and in need of forgiveness because of its innate tendencies. Is it these innate tendencies of cunning and wiliness that made them appropriate totems for a Poet or Druid? Oddly enough, the cat Pangur Ban is neither a vegetarian, nor criticized for cruelty towards the mouse. This need to ‘tame’ the wildness of these trickster animals is in essence an ongoing manichaeism between order and chaos. “That academic dichotomy gone forever/It is not that they are tame/But that we become wild.” And that was what was feared most and hence required eradication, the wildness of it all.
Another important indicator of Druidical residue is the frequency with which monasteries are associated with Oaks or dairí, which is most likely a cognate of the IE root daru Kildare or ‘Oak Church’ and Derry being the most obvious examples. In European Paganism it is suggested that the reason the Oak was singled out as sacral is its inability to ground lightning, often described as being ‘lightning-blasted’, showing the favor of the sky Gods. It is possible that the Oak is consequently to be associated with the Iron Age gods of “displaced responsibility”, and that a likely candidate for an earlier pre-Celtic world tree is the Yew. It is associated both with death and immortality, and its relative placement at burial sites, suggests use by Saxons, Celts or even the enigmatic Megalith builders of the late Neolithic.
III

Mise Rafteraí an file

Lán dóchais is grá

Le súil gan solas

Le ciúnas gan crá

Dul siar m’aistir

Le solas mo chroí
I am Raftery the poet

Full of hope and love

Eyes without light

Calm without sorrow

Going west on my journey

With light in my heart
Fán agus tuirseach

Go deireads mo shlí

Féach anois mé

Is m’agaith ar balla

Ag senim ceoil

Da phócaí folarnh
Wandering and weary

To the end of my way

Look at me now

With my face to the wall

Playing music

For empty pockets
– Anthony Raftery, ‘Mise Rafteraí’
A certain irony can be seen in the way that the Irish monks and many of the saints have affiliations with, were trained as, or maintain the traditions of the Poets. This further points to the possibility that the Druidic and Poetic functions of the Pagan religious caste infiltrated the Christian clergy in Celtic Ireland and consequently mediated the form it took there. Because of the power of this caste, whereas elsewhere in Europe the Church was bringing a destruction to Pagan venerated wells, sacred trees and groves, Pagan Ireland maintained these sacred spaces by converting their activities to Christian use; thereby preserving their ability to inform us of their earlier connections. In the same way that we can see the residue of Druidic shamanism in the use of animal totems by saints, the close connection between the Poets and the saints and monks highlights how thin the veneer of Christianity was on the Pagan practices of Celtic Ireland.
The Poets and the Bards were the information technology of their time because of their ability to encode and preserve the Oral Traditional material of Ireland. In their stories and songs we get a picture, although incomplete, of the Gaelic world-view. Their preservation of the Gaelic language made it possible for us to look back past the Greek and Roman models of social organization and see vestiges of an earlier Indo-European culture in the “psycholinguistics” of its syntax. Their destruction is illustrated in both the Raftery poem above, and in the Brian Friel play Translations, where the Gaelic names from the Dindshenchas are being Anglicized by the English. The repartee between the Hedge School master and his students could be taken as an example of how their academic discourse carried on. Before the monks copiously reproduced the classics, these Poetic students were trained to have the Greek, Latin and Celtic cultures all present and interacting in their education. Their importance to a conception of a national culture (which they were on the verge of birthing before the English exiled the Wild Geese), as well as the continued destruction of these sages of ages past is suggested in a poem by Ted Hughes ‘Hear it Again’ excerpt here:
Tyrants know where to aim/As Hitler poured his petrol and tossed his matches

Stalin collected the bards … /In other words the mobile and only libraries…

of all those enslaved peoples from the Black to/the Bering Sea

And made a bonfire/ Of the mainsprings of national identities to melt

the folk into one puddle/And the three seconds of the present moment

By massacring those wordy fellows whose memories were/bigger than armies.
Their colleges had to have been seats of great learning, for “invaders and conquerors don’t easily admit to the existence of admirable qualities”, and the tendency for Irish monks to establish monasteries and colleges as far afield as Russia is well established. Anytime one of these Poets or Bards passed into the West without transmitting their songs and stories what was lost amounted to an entire library being incinerated. A library, not simply filled with dusty old tomes and colorful manuscripts constructed by monks, but a multi-media collection, made up of poetry, song, and stories, covering history, genealogy, geography, and religion (a religion not based on the received and mediated word, but the manifest living word). These were not mere artifacts from a golden age long past, they were the living and breathing cultural traditions, which continued to interact with the people and shape their world-view; even in the face of outside attempts at cultural conquest from Roman Catholicism and the English.
IV

Sun’s in the mirror, red and gold

in the sky behind me,

one huge crimson blazing globe –

Glas Gaibhneach’s heart milk through a sieve

her drops of blood strained out

like a picture of the Sacred Heart.

Three scarlet brightnesses are there

and pain so sharp, and sob so short.

I stared at the drops

afraid but almost unaware –

like Sleeping Beauty when she gazed

at her thumb pricked by the wheel,

she turned it over, and over once more

as if her actions were unreal.

When Deirdre saw the blood on the snow

did she know the raven’s name?
Then I realize I drive towards you

my dearest friend and lovely man

(may nothing keep me from your bed tonight

but miles of road and truffic lights)

and your impatience like a stone

falls upon us from the skyand adds to our uneasiness

the awkward weight of my hurt pride.

And more great loads will fall on us

if the omen comes to pass

much greater than the great sun’s globe

that lately bled into glass

And so, Great Mother, cave of awe –

since it’s towards you we race –

is it the truth? Is your embrace

and kiss more fine

than honey, beer, or Spanish wine?

– Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, ‘An Rás’ (The Race)
Another aspects of the tripartite Indo-European religious caste, the vates, Ovates, or alternately in the Gaelic Literature, Seers, were incorporated in the new religious system, this is seen in the frequency with which saints prophecy. It is well known that the Romans made slander of these Seers, particularly the form of their prophecy, by the continual discussion of reading omens in the spilt organs of animals (and humans, if we can believe their claim to ubiquity in that). As European Paganism shows not only was this haruspicy practiced among the Romans, but human sacrifice was something they were familiar with as well. They had of course long since abandoned such barbarity, although this didn’t stop them from using their knowledge of it as political and religious propaganda to discredit the Celts. Prophecy and Seership is common among Indo-European cultures, including the Greek and Roman, the Pythian oracle at Delphi is one of the most well known examples.
This brings up another point, which illuminates the bias of the Roman historiographers. Many of the Celtic cultures, like the Romans and Greeks, had female Seers, yet few appear in their descriptions of this religious caste. Both genders were allowed access to their schools and women functioned within the caste as Seers, Poets, as well as Druids, yet few examples exist. One of the most powerful envisioning of a female Seer, or any seer for that matter is Fedelm the poet-seer who warns Medb of the disaster she was embarking on in the Táin. I am struck as much by her description as I am by the line “I am Fedelm. I hide nothing,” Is this perchance recognition of another role of these caste members responsibilities to, not only speak honestly, but to witness, or act as Brehons? The similarity between the functions of the Druids, Poets, and Seers, the tendency of these functions to overlap, and the close relationship with power, suggests in those words, not so much truth in prophecy as it does her responsibility to tell power of its would-be folly. The weaving-rod, which according to the notes is associated with prophecy, points to the potentiality that these traditions, particularly of prophecy being originally the purview of women. Weaving is perhaps one of the oldest arts and to my mind it is exclusively feminine. It is directly connected in numerous cultures with magick and the occult, or to use the Gaelic phrase, contact with the Otherworld.
This heightens the discrepancy we are given in the Táin with regard to the Iron Age Celtic culture, where women’s role, though still evident, are generally being eroded and replaced by the power of men, might, and kings. The Brehon laws suggest that this patrician attitude was not indigenous to Ireland, and is likely therefore a derivation from Greeco-Roman influence or the Continental Celtic culture. The ability of women to participate at the highest levels of the Indo-European religious caste in Ireland, at a time when Roman women were viewed as possessions, which had no place in the business of power, suggests that perhaps we lost something when we accepted the consolidation of power at the hands of European national interests and the Roman Church. Fedelm’s ability to face a Queen, if not The Queen of Ireland in the guise of Sovereignty, and to tell her that the course of action she was about to undertake would be disastrous, is representative of the degree of agency women once had in their relations with power. An agency we stepped away from in the twist of the matrilineal to the patriarchal, from the blood-line of a Mother, to the blood-sacrifice by the Father.
V

“We are merely restoring to the corpse buried in a manuscript

the soul that once animated it.”

– Kevin Collins, Cultural Conquest of Ireland
The title of this paper is my own personal raison d’être, it informs much of my academic work. I look for the connections, which point towards a world-view that is not dissimilar from that expressed among the Archaic Gael. This is a place where gender and ethnic considerations are moot in light of the concerns of the tribe or tuatha. A world-view invested in the place and space, in time and tide, of our spinning, hurtling spaceship earth. Where the realm of the Otherworld has as much importance and function as the boiling cauldron of the daily grind. The Archaic is manifest for me in the connection and connectivity of the blood, which is not God’s, from which we all spring. It is invoked and evoked by the efforts of various ‘technicians of the sacred’ who are “priests of the eternal imagination transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life” in poetry, in ritual, or in prophecy. They are the pontifex maximus the bridge builders who cross the boundaries others only see as obstacles and limitations. They are the bridges between the world-views of Pagan Ireland and Roman Christianity, because of them we have a fuller view of what Christianity could and should have been, and yet may be. My task is not to escape into the mists of prehistory in some fantastic transcendence of our ‘filthy modern tide’. It is to strive in hope of re-visioning a whole and healthy story which lives and breathes, and which is a model for right livelihood for all in this great tide of pulsing and throbbing life.
I hope that this has elucidated some of the differences I see between the early Indo-European Megalithic Builders and the Iron Age Continental Celts, and why they are important in relation to the change in gender focus seen in the Táin. Likewise, the discussion of how the Indo-European religious castes were instrumental in the adoption and adaptation of Christianity in Ireland. I realize that there is little of the I you might have been seeking in this paper, these are issues which are highly significant to me and the work I have done and will continue to do. They are not merely mediated through the obfuscating lens of academia, which has become my primary mode of discourse they are a passion. I still write poetry and sing and chant, participating in the living and breathing of these ideas as much as I dissect and reintegrate them for the academy’s gristmill. I leave you with a poem about the Patriarchs of the Old Testament:
Jacobite

That’s right sheep & goats, you too cows,

Eat the grass, eat it down to the ground.

Damnit I want sand I tell ya, sand.

The more sand there is, the more sons I get.

One day all this sand will be mine, & my sons.

We’ll destroy the cities, & take their goods,

All the old oaks and shrines in the hills,

We’ll build altars to YHVH and burn the animals,
It’ll be a great big party for all the family,

Everyone will talk about it for days, forever;

Because we have a blessing especially from God.

____________________
The Poetry Of The Dao Te Ching

Whoever is planted in the Tao

will not be rooted up.

Whoever embraces the Tao

will not slip away.

Her name will be held in honor

from generation to generation.
Let the Tao be present in your life

and you will become genuine.

Let it be present in your family

and your family will flourish.

Let it be present in your country

and your country will be an example

to all countries in the world.

Let it be present in the universe

and the universe will sing.
How do I know this is true?

By looking inside myself.

—
He who is in harmony with the Tao

is like a newborn child.

Its bones are soft, its muscles are weak,

but its grip is powerful.

It doesn’t know about the union

of male and female,

yet its penis can stand erect,

so intense is its vital power.

It can scream its head off all day,

yet it never becomes hoarse,

so complete is its harmony.
The Master’s power is like this.

He lets all things come and go

effortlessly, without desire.

He never expects results;

thus he is never disappointed.

He is never disappointed;

thus his spirit never grows old.

—
Those who know don’t talk.

Those who talk don’t know.
Close your mouth,

block off your senses,

blunt your sharpness,

untie your knots,

soften your glare,

settle your dust.

This is the primal identity.
Be like the Tao.

It can’t be approached or withdrawn from,

benefited or harmed,

honored or brought into disgrace.

It gives itself up continually.

That is why it endures.

—
If you want to be a great leader,

you must learn to follow the Tao.

Stop trying to control.

Let go of fixed plans and concepts,

and the world will govern itself.
The more prohibitions you have,

the less virtuous people will be.

The more weapons you have,

the less secure people will be.

The more subsidies you have,

the less self-reliant people will be.
Therefore the Master says:

I let go of the law,

and people become honest.

I let go of economics,

and people become prosperous.

I let go of religion,

and people become serene.

I let go of all desire for the common good,

and the good becomes common as grass.

___________________

h.u.v.a. network / time circles / distant system rmx

___________________

“Nothing is true, everything is permitted”

Dear Friends,
Recovering from being down for a couple of days with a stomach bug, or massive sinus/allergies. Hard to tell the diff… A different entry today, including a speech from Tony Benn, one of my favourite Labour Party Members.

Some new music from Sophie and Ives…

And Art and Poetry from William Blake (a hero, a true star!)
We have moved into October, a wonderful time of the year. I love the changes, but I feel the grief of summer passing… ah.
Much Love,

Gwyllm

________________
On The Menu:

Sophie & Ives

TONY BENN ON SLAVERY, RELIGION AND JUSTICE

The Poetry Of William Blake

Sophie & Ives – Clouds
_________________

Sophie & Ives – Awaken

__________________
TONY BENN ON SLAVERY, RELIGION AND JUSTICE

Tony Benn’s talk at the Victoria & Albert museum, May 2007
Thank you very much indeed for inviting me. May I just begin by describing how my interest in the abolition of slavery began? I learned to fly during the war in Zimbabwe, they sent RAF pilots there because it was safer than learning to fly there, than in Britain where you might be shot down.
When Zimbabwe was an English colony, Rhodesia, not a single black was allowed to vote. Cecil Rhodes was shown a land in the 1890s and seized all the land, handed it to the white farmers and in 1937, Southern Rhodesia, and laws of assembly, made it a criminal offence for an African to have a skilled job. So that interested me in the African cause and all my life I’ve worked with all the people that were involved in it.
And I’ve been interested in all the people we locked up. I met Gandhi once, we locked him up; I met Nehru, he was locked up, Mandela was locked up. I think Nicoma was locked up, certainly Kenneth Kaunda from Zambia was locked up, we locked up Nkrumah, and all the people we locked up ended their lives having tea with the Queen as head of Commonwealth countries. And so historical perspective helps a little bit.
Then I became a Member of Parliament for Bristol and, of course, Bristol was one of the great slave cities and the interesting thing about going to Bristol was it wasn’t discussable, oh no you couldn’t talk about slavery, they had all the statues of the benefactors, huge statues, who’d given money to churches and schools, who made all their money out of the slave trade. There was a very bright, black Bristolian called Paul Stevenson who led a boycott because they wouldn’t let blacks drive the buses and now he’s persuaded Bristol to have a Museum of Slavery and they’re coming to terms with what’s happened, and it’s quite a difficult thing because you don’t like finding you did the awful things, that you always assumed foreigners did [laughter].
And, of course, you musn’t think it’s so very long ago because I knew the son of a slave, his name will be familiar to you – Paul Robeson, he came to London in 1958, gave him tea at the House of Commons with my dad. He’d had his passport taken away because he was supporting the colonial freedom movement, so it’s living issue, it’s not just the past and I think that’s worth remembering. Then the other thing too, is to look at Wilberforce.
Now Wilberforce very interesting man, he was a Conservative, he supported Pitt, he voted for the Combination Act which made it a criminal offence for more than three people to get together to call for a trade union or political reform, and then he became a Christian and he was stirred by the injustice of it and campaigned, and that’s what we’re celebrating this year, the abolition of the slave trade. And, might I add, not the abolition of slavery, don’t think that Wilberforce brought about the abolition of slavery but only the slave trade.
And the funny thing is somebody sent me a leading article from The Economist the other day about the slave trade. Now as you know The Economist is a very responsible newspaper that everybody should read [laughter] and what it said was this – this is an edition from 1848, two years before my grandfather was born. The Economist said you can’t abolish the slave trade, ’cause there are all these ignorant blacks in Africa with nothing whatever to do and they’re needed on the plantations of America, so said The Economist, you should regulate the slave trade. And I thought of an organisation called Ofslave, headed by Chris Woodhead which would name and shame slave ships where the sanitary arrangements fell below acceptable standards.
But I mention it all because, you see, we are a bit Anglo oriented. Ten million Africans were shipped, ten million of them, many died on the way, were thrown overboard and we now claim the credit for ending it. I think that the denial of the role of the Africans themselves in ending the slave trade is something we really do have to take much more seriously. All sorts of people supported the slave trade, of course, at one time the churches thought the slave trade could be justified because the Africans could be converted to Christianity when they were slaves. It was interesting idea: you imprison them and then you persuade them that Jesus brought a message of love, but they were still slaves.
The other thing that interests me about Wilberforce and the slave trade was when slavery was abolished, which was a bit later, the Government compensated the slave owners but not the slaves. So if you’d had slaves like some bishops had, you got money from the Government for giving up your slave but the guys who’d been slaves got absolutely nothing at all.
It is, of course, a very old tradition, slavery’s as old as history because rich and powerful people, land owners, owned the land and they owned the workers on the land. The brutality of it was horrific, slaves who escaped were crucified. Slaves who had been made slaves were branded with the name of their owner and–, and when you bring it right up to date, because you have to, there are – according to the definition of slavery, which is that you lose the right to control your own life – there are 27 million slaves, still many of them, of course, women bought and trafficked. And that is part of the slave trade, and all sorts of bondage and indebtedness makes you a slave.
But just to come back for a moment to the question of how it ended. There were strikes by slaves in British colonies. In the 1730s, the 1760s, 1780s and the 1800s. When we talk about the role of Wilberforce – now I’m not belittling him in anyway because he was dedicated man who fought a wonderful parliamentary campaign. But in the 1780s, 27 years before that, the northern states in the United States abolished slavery. In 1787, as you’ve heard, there was the first British campaign against slavery, the Danes banished the slave trade in 1792, in 1794, after the French revolution, the revolutionary French abolished slavery and Haiti in 1804 was liberated by slaves, they just went against their owners and took over the country and liberated it from the slave trade. And so that’s the background against which you have to look at the achievements of Wilberforce, and I don’t belittle him at all. But you mustn’t think that every good thing comes from our race because we have been responsible for some of the things we now claim to have abolished.
The other thing to remember is this, it wasn’t just the black slaves, we sold white slaves to Ireland. We took convicted people and criminals and so on, and we shipped them off to Ireland as slaves. When Michael Manley, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, whom I knew very well, came to London I was asked to introduce him, which I did, and I gave a lot of examples of the slave trade and he said to me afterwards, “I’d like you to tell me more about this because I got a museum of slavery in Jamaica on black slavery.” And I said, “Oh Michael that wasn’t black slavery, that was slavery in Britain and Medieval times of slavery.” And so you have to think of slavery as being broader than colour though, of course, it’s identified very largely–, very largely in those terms. It was therefore an economic phenomenon, not just phenomenon of lack of political democracy. And remember this, that Africa, which is still rich in gold and copper and oil, was conquered for economic reasons. Indeed Bush is now following it out with his own version of the empire, he goes to the Middle East ’cause he wanted oil, and that’s quite straight forward.
Sir John Boyd-Orr a very, very famous Nobel prize winner, once said most empires conquer for physical resources, and that was why we went there. And there’s a very interesting aspect of this that links to the movement Make Poverty History. I think they asked the wrong question, they always say why are the poor poo
r? Right question to ask is why are the rich rich? This–, well you come to totally different conclusions, ’cause the rich are rich ’cause they live off the backs of the poor and if that sounds very controversial to you, Adam Smith said the rich are the pensioners of the poor, the rich live off the backs of the poor, so it’s not just a racial, it’s a class, in the economic sense, a class issue, and has always been that.
In this country, I come back to the Combination Act which made trade unionism illegal. Until 1834, it was illegal for people to form a union and if you were a worker in on a farm in Britain, the land owner owned the land, and he also owned the cottage. If you went to him and said, “I can’t live on the money, you’re treating me badly.” he’d get you off the farm and pinch your cottage, so you were homeless and poor. So they thought if we get together we might be able to solve it and, of course, trade unionism was illegal. So when the unions tried to be formed they were sent to Australia as convicts.
I’ve got an American friend who’s just been in Australia and I said, “How did you get on?” “Oh Tony,” he said, “the Oz’s were great but by God,” he said, “they’re really tough.” Said, “What do you mean?” “Well,” he said, “when I applied for a visa they asked me if I had any previous convictions and I said ‘no’, is it still required?”
So, you see, it all comes together it’s all part of a bigger picture and this is what happens whenever you take an issue, it seems very narrow, you suddenly find it explodes into a million other issues which are equally interesting and important.
Now the other thing that interests me very much is the role of religion in all this, and I know the question ‘am I my brother’s keeper’ has been raised. On the internet, from which, I get a lot of very useful information, I got the other day a summary of what all the religions of the world say. The Judaism, ‘what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow men’, that is the entire law, all the rest is commentary. Then Christianity, ‘all things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them’. Mohammed, where are we, yes, ‘no one of you is a believer until he desires to his brother what he desires for himself’. And the same with Brahmans, the same with Buddhists, the same with the Confucians, and that’s also what’s on every trade union banner, ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’.
So you can see it all coming together as a recognition that you cannot build a society on other than on a moral basis. And that I find very, very interesting because nowadays, you see, religion is being used as a way of dividing us, you only have to look at what’s said now about Islam and the use of God. Bush said God told him to go to Iraq, I didn’t know God worked in the White House, but apparently he did, and then they say Moses went up Mount Siani and got Palestine allocated to the Jews, I didn’t know God was an estate agent. But the way in which you use religion to justify your power is a tremendously important question.
If you now look at it in a cultural sense, all the religions apart from people who control them, all the religions are part of our culture. I was brought up as a Christian and when I go to church I like the churches, I like seeing bishops in funny outfits. I sing hymns like ‘onward Christian soldiers marching as to war with the cross of Jesus going on before’,
Now if anyone sang ‘onward Muslim soldiers going as to war’ with Mohammed’s banner going’…., they’d all be locked up at once by John Reid and so you have to recognise that there is, in every religion, a culture. There’s nothing whatsoever in the culture of religion to divide one from another. The people I’m nervous of are the people who use religion to get control of us, and that is the difference.
I mentioned that I was bought up as a Christian, my mother taught me that the story in the bible was the story of the conflict between the kings who had power and the prophets who preached riotousness, and she taught me to support the prophets against the kings. It’s got me into a lot of trouble in my life but it explained so much. Because it’s one thing to be told love your neighbours as yourself, it’s another thing to be told be a bishop, “If you don’t do what I tell you, you will rot in hell.”
Using religion to get control of people is an abuse, I think, of religious teaching and to rediscover Moses and Jesus, Carpenter – of Nazareth and Mohammed, rediscover what they were saying gives you some opportunity to learn how to live your life in peace, but it has to relate to the present. You can’t just have some dream of the future because in the old days you went to a bishop and you said, “Bishop it’s a very unfair world.” And the bishop would say, “I know my child, but if only the rich were kind and the poor are patient, we shall all be rewarded in heaven.” And people said, “That’s wonderful news bishop, but could we possibly have it while we’re still alive?” And out of that came a political movement, where heaven on earth is what people want.
And so that is a conflict and that’s why I think the use of religion for political purposes is such a desperately dangerous thing to do and it goes on all the time. One of the ways in which you control people of course is to frighten them, divide them and demoralise them and those are instruments of control that have been used from the time the slavery right through to the present time. And so then you say, well what did this lead to?
And, of course, it led to a demand for justice. When I look back is in every period of history, two flames have always been burning in the human heart, the flame of anger against injustice and the flame of hope that you can build a better world and those two flames are really material by which we make progress and to understand that is very, very important, because if you don’t have some aspiration then you find yourself in a position, which I think about most of the time now – and that is how the human race is going to cope with its problems.
We live in a very remarkable period, quite unlike any other in history, when the human race has the capacity to destroy itself, and you can kill one man with a spear, a few more with a bayonet, one or two with a machine gun or a plane, but with chemical, nuclear and biological weapons it is possible to destroy the human race, that has never, ever been true before.
But it’s also the first generation in history which has the technology and the know-how and the money to solve the problems of the human race. And that’s where you really come right into the contemporary political scene, because a fraction of the cost of the war now would see that everyone in Africa with Aids would have free drugs. A fraction of the cost of the war would see everyone in America has a health service, would protect New Orleans from the Katrina Hurricane and that is the choice.
So the question then you have to ask yourself is, well how do you change the situation? ‘Cause there are only three interesting questions in politics, what’s going on? Which is not always easy to find out, why is it going on? Which is harder to find out and the third question is, what are you going to do about it? And if you look at the way in which it all developed, it developed really with the greatest revolution of all, far more revolutionary than the French or Russian or American revolution, it was the revolution of democracy and the reason.
I mention it is because throughout the 19th Century a huge change in power occurred, in the olden days all the power was in the hands of the rich and if you were rich you didn’t need a school, you hired tutors, you didn’t have a mortgage from a local authority for your castle because you owned it, you didn’t have to bother about anything else, if you were ill you hired a doctor, when you were old you were okay, you were never unemployed because you never did any work anyway, and that was the basis of society and what happened
during the 19th Century explains everything, I think, including the national independence movements.
Power, when people had the vote power was transferred from the people with money to the people who didn’t have money. In 1837 when the Birmingham Corporation became law the people of Birmingham, or some of them anyway, had the vote, so how did they use the vote? They used to the vote to buy with their vote what they couldn’t afford personally, municipal hospitals, municipal schools, municipal fire brigade, municipal museums, municipal art gallery and what democracy did was to transfer power from the market place to the polling station, from the wallet to the ballot.
What then happened was the whole prospect changed, that’s how the welfare state came about, of course, in the end, the idea of a national health service, idea of state education, the idea, even, of a fire brigade, in the olden days there was no fire brigade, you–, you–, you insured your own house was an insurance company. So if your neighbours house burned down they didn’t bother to put that out ’cause he wasn’t insured and that would obviously threaten your house and this idea of–, of welfare, which is looked down on in mockery, is on the basis that actually the interest of all of us are in the interests of all of us.
If you meet a diseased person your health is threatened, if you work with an uneducated person your work is threatened and so the recognition of the common interests we have in survival and prosperity was a product of democracy, and nobody really likes democracy very much, nobody in power likes democracy very much. I mean, Hitler didn’t like it, Stalin didn’t like it, the Pope doesn’t allow the clergy to elect the Pope, it’s all done by shares of cardinals whom he appoints. I can’t say I find all that much enthusiasm for democracy even in a capitalist society of where the market is everything, because the thing about having a market society is that you don’t have systems, you only have consumers. Now to be a consumer you have to have some money, I mean homeless people in the streets of London need homes more than anybody else but as they can’t afford them they’re not consumers, and the language used to belittle collective activity is very noticeable.
Now when I look again at the future I think of what’s called ‘cultural diversity’, when I was born it was terribly boring, everybody–, they were all white, they had fish and chips, they watched cricket, a little bit of ballroom dancing, and now we’ve got such a fantastic cultural diversity in Britain. Two of my granddaughters are at a primary school in London with 77 nationalities in the school and a refugee centre in the school, so when I go and talk at the school it’s like addressing a meeting of the General Assembly [of the United Nations]. My granddaughters have got Russian friends, American friends, Malaysian friends, West Indian, for them that’s normal, that is the world we live in. It’s complete generational change because I think younger people understand it, very often, much, much better than older people who were brought up in a different tradition.
That’s really what we have to try and–, and utilise, which is why I think the internet is very, very valuable because you get access to things which you wouldn’t necessarily find described in The Sun or The Mail and the information you get allows you to reach a judgement of your own which is independent and probably puts you in the category of the prophets against the king. So I warn you don’t use the internet too loosely or you’ll be in trouble yourself.
I mentioned the trade unions and apartheid. I spoke in Trafalgar Square in 1964 in support of a very, very well known terrorist and I got denounced in the tabloids, I didn’t meet him for a bit, next time I met him he had an Nobel peace prize and was president of South Africa. Well look at the suffragettes who were locked up for just wanting votes for women.
The way I think progress occurs, you see, is this: to begin with is you’ve got a sensible idea like abolishing slavery or votes for women or trade unions or end apartheid, and they ignore you. Then if you go on you’re stark staring bonkers, I’ve had a touch of that myself, then if you go on after that you’re dangerous, then there’s a pause and then you can’t find anyone at the top who doesn’t claim to have thought of it in the first place – and that is how progress is made.
It’s made by movements, by people who understand the world, who feel a sense of commonality with other people and say, “Why don’t we get together and do it ourselves”. In order for that to succeed you need to have encouragement and I think encouragement is the most important quality in political leadership, because they do try, all the time, to put you down. I don’t know what you feel but the league tables in schools, this idea that a school has failed, well I know schools have problems, but a school has failed.
I went the other day to a failed school, they were utterly demoralised and I had an example of it myself which I might mention. I went to the Labour conference 18 months ago and the Prime Minister made a speech which I listened to and I got up to go to the loo and I collapsed, and I was taken to the Brighton hospital and given a pacemaker. I had a letter from the Prime Minister saying “hope my speech didn’t cause it” and I was too polite to reply.
The interesting thing was this, when I left I discovered that was the worst hospital in Britain under the league tables. Well what if you’re the nurse or a sister or a doctor or porter, what do you make of it if you’re told you work in the worst hospital in Britain?
People want encouragement and that’s what they don’t always want to give you, but if we encourage each other, my God there’s nothing you cannot do. And so that’s how the slave trade really ended, people got together and saw the truth and realised we’re brothers and sisters and then we made an advance.
But one final warning, every generation has to do it for themselves again, there is no railway station called justice that if you catch the right train you get there, every generation has to fight for their rights because rights are taken away. They concede what they have to, and then when the pressure’s off, they try and recapture the territory they’ve lost. So it’s an ongoing struggle and at my age, I’m 82 now, (and its wonderful, if I’d known what fun it was to be 80 I’d have done it years ago) because you have a bit of experience and you don’t want anything. And when I speak, as I do tonight to you, I say you can relax, I am not asking you to vote for me and there’s a great sigh of relief and people saying, “Well if he doesn’t want anything we may as well listen to him.” So that is really the function of the old, I think it’s to encourage people and understand. So thank you for asking me and I do hope we have some questions, and as I’m a bit deaf [to V&A staff] you’re going to tell me what the questions are otherwise you’ll all say typical politician he doesn’t answer the questions. Thank you very much.

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The Poetry Of William Blake

Ah! Sun-Flower

Ah, Sun-flower! weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the Sun,

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the traveller’s journey is done:
Where the Youth pined away with desire

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow

Arise from their graves, and aspire

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

—
A Song

Sweet dreams, form a shade

O’er my lovely infant’s head!

Sweet dreams of pleasant streams

By happy, silent, moony beams!
Sweet Sleep, with soft down

Weave thy brows an infant crown

Sweet Sleep, angel mild,

Hover o’er my happy child!
Sweet smiles, in the night

Hover over my delight!

Sweet smiles, mother’s smile,

All the livelong night beguile.
Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,

Chase not slumber from thine eyes!

Sweet moan, sweeter smile,

All the dovelike moans beguile.
Sleep, sleep, happy child!

All creation slept and smiled.

Sleep, sleep, happy sleep,

While o’er thee doth mother weep.
Sweet babe, in thy face

Holy image I can trace;

Sweet babe, once like thee

Thy Maker lay, and wept for me:
Wept for me, for thee, for all,

When He was an infant small.

Thou His image ever see,

Heavenly face that smiles on thee!
Smiles on thee, on me, on all,

Who became an infant small;

Infant smiles are his own smiles;

Heaven and earth to peace beguiles.

—
To The Accuser Who is The God of This World

Truly My Satan thou art but a Dunce

And dost not know the Garment from the Man

Every Harlot was a Virgin once

Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan
Tho thou art Worship’d by the Names Divine

Of Jesus & Jehovah thou art still

The Son of Morn in weary Nights decline

The lost Travellers Dream under the Hill

—
The Angel

I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?

And that I was a maiden Queen

Guarded by an Angel mild:

Witless woe was ne’er beguiled!
And I wept both night and day,

And he wiped my tears away;

And I wept both day and night,

And hid from him my heart’s delight.
So he took his wings, and fled;

Then the morn blushed rosy red.

I dried my tears, and armed my fears

With ten-thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again;

I was armed, he came in vain;

For the time of youth was fled,

And grey hairs were on my head.

—
Love’s Secret

Never seek to tell thy love,

Love that never told can be;

For the gentle wind does move

Silently, invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love,

I told her all my heart;

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,

Ah! she did depart!
Soon as she was gone from me,

A traveler came by,

Silently, invisibly

He took her with a sigh.

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Sophie & Ives – Clouds

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Well, I had all kinds of things to say last night when I finished this up, but I left it for this morning to write, and I am absolutely empty of thoughts. Odd.
Anyway, just a couple of points. Watching the inception of the new Republican ‘Trickle Up Theory‘ of Economics is exciting beyond belief. I always feel privileged to insure that the shackles of Capitalism stay in place and I am honoured to do my bit to keep someone else in guccis’, penthouses, lear jets and cocaine. I feel it is our patriotic duty to keep that boot on our neck and pass it on to our posterity, don’t you? You too can do your part to keep the inequality going by not commenting on this to your local gov’t rep (who probably is in on this little dance), and to top it off kids, the Democrats capitulated on drilling for oil off our coast! Wow, both sides of the corporate party are dancing to this tune!
On our front: Sophie was found, and she is home. Rowan’s friends have all headed off to college, the leaves are falling, the cat is staying in for the night and the garden has reached it’s peak.
May your day be filled with love….
More Later!

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Where the hell is Matt?

The Fairy Dance

The Bard Of Ireland: William Butler Yeats

Jette – Ives: Darker than You

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Now… this is a bit of loveliness. Major Loveliness. We need lunacy. I mean real Lunacy. Dancing in water lunacy, digging for ponies in horse manure lunacy. Lunacy to transform the world. Lunacy, that dares to live beautifully with all the crushing weight of the madness of civilization bearing down on you lunacy. Matt, has that gift of Divine Lunacy, yeah, now that is the type that gets it done.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
Thanks to Graham St. John for sharing this! Here is some info:Matt Dancing!

Here is some more! Where The Hell Is Matt?

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The Fairy Dance

The following story is from the Irish, as told by a native of one of the Western Isles, where the primitive superstitions have still all the freshness of young life.
One evening late in November, which is the month when spirits have most power over all things, as the prettiest girl in all the island was going to the well for water, her foot slipped and she fell, it was an unlucky omen, and when she got up and looked round it seemed to her as if she were in a strange place, and all around her was changed as if by enchantment. But at some distance she saw a great crowd gathered round a blazing fire, and she was drawn slowly on towards them, till at last she stood in the very midst of the people; but they kept silence, looking fixedly at her; and she was afraid, and tried to turn and leave them, but she could not. Then a beautiful youth, like a prince, with a red sash, and a golden band on his long yellow hair, came up and asked her to dance.
“It is a foolish thing of you, sir, to ask me to dance,” she said, “when there is no music.”
Then he lifted his hand and made a sign to the people, and instantly the sweetest music sounded near her and around her, and the young man took her hand, and they danced and danced till the moon and the stars went down, but she seemed like one floating on the air, and she forgot everything in the world except the dancing, and the sweet low music, and her beautiful partner.
At last the dancing ceased, and her partner thanked her, and invited her to supper with the company. Then she saw an opening in the ground, and a flight of steps, and the young man, who seemed to be the king amongst them all, led her down, followed by the whole company. At the end of the stairs they came upon a large hall, all bright and beautiful with gold and silver and lights; and the table was covered with everything good to eat, and wine was poured out in golden cups for them to drink. When she sat down they all pressed her to eat the food and to drink the wine; and as she was weary after the dancing, she took the golden cup the prince handed to her, and raised it to her lips to drink. Just then, a man passed close to her, and whispered–
“Eat no food, and drink no wine, or you will never reach your home again.”
So she laid down the cup, and refused to drink. On this they were angry, and a great noise arose, and a fierce, dark man stood up, and said–
“Whoever comes to us must drink with us.”
And he seized her arm, and held the wine to her lips, so that she almost died of fright. But at that moment a red-haired man came up, and he took her by the hand and led her out.
“You are safe for this time,” he said. “Take this herb, and hold it in your hand till you reach home, and no one can harm you.” And he gave her a branch of a plant called the Athair-Luss (the ground ivy). [a]
This she took, and fled away along the sward in the dark night; but all the time she heard footsteps behind her in pursuit. At last she reached home and barred the door, and went to bed, when a great clamour arose outside, and voices were heard crying to her–
“The power we had over you is gone through the magic of the herb; but wait–when you dance again to the music on the hill, you will stay with us for evermore, and none shall hinder.”
However, she kept the magic branch safely, and the fairies never troubled her more; but it was long and long before the sound of the fairy music left her ears which she had danced to that November night on the hillside with her fairy lover.
[a] In Ancient Egypt the ivy was sacred to Osiris, and a safeguard against evil.

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The Bard Of Ireland: William Butler Yeats

THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG
The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears

Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,

And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries

Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.

We who still labour by the cromlec on the shore,

The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,

Being weary of the world’s empires, bow down to you,

Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.

—
THE SECRET ROSE
Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,

Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those

Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,

Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir

And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep

Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep

Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold

The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold

Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes

Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise

In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;

Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him

Who met Fand walking among flaming dew

By a grey shore where the wind never blew,

And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;

And him who drove the gods out of their liss,

And till a hundred morns had flowered red,

Feasted and wept the barrows of his dead;

And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown

And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown

Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;

And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,

And sought through lands and islands numberless years,

Until he found with laughter and with tears,

A woman, of so shining loveliness,

That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,

A little stolen tress. I, too, await

The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.

When shall the stars be blown about the sky,

Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?

Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,

Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

—
HE TELLS OF A VALLEY FULL OF LOVERS
I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,

For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;

And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood

With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:

I cried in my dream, O women, bid the young men lay

Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair,

Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair

Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away.

—
THE BLESSED
Cumhal called out, bending his head,

Till Dathi came and stood,

With a blink in his eyes at the cave mouth,

Between the wind and the wood.

And Cumhal said, bending his knees,

“I have come by the windy way

To gather the half of your blessedness

And learn to pray when you pray.
“I can bring you salmon out of the streams

And heron out of the skies.”

But Dathi folded his hands and smiled

With the secrets of God in his eyes.
And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke

All manner of blessed souls,

Women and children, young men with books,

And old men with croziers and stoles.
“Praise God and God’s mother,” Dathi said,

“For God and God’s mother have sent

The blessedest souls that walk in the world

To fill your heart with content.”
“And which is the blessedest,” Cumhal said,

“Where all are comely and good?

Is it these that with golden thuribles

Are singing about the wood?”
“My eyes are blinking,” Dathi said,

“With the secrets of God half blind,

But I can see where the wind goes

And follow the way of the wind;
“And blessedness goes where the wind goes,

And when it is gone we are dead;

I see the blessedest soul in the world

And he nods a drunken head.
“O blessedness comes in the night and the day

And whither the wise heart knows;

And one has seen in the redness of wine

The Incorruptible Rose,
“That drowsily drops faint leaves on him

And the sweetness of desire,

While time and the world are ebbing away

In twilights of dew and of fire.”

—
THE POET PLEADS WITH THE ELEMENTAL POWERS
The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows

Have pulled the Immortal Rose;

And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,

The Polar Dragon slept,

His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:

When will he wake from sleep?
Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,

With your harmonious choir

Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,

That my old care may cease;

Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight

The nets of day and night.
Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be

Like the pale cup of the sea,

When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim

Above its cloudy rim;

But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow

Whither her footsteps go.
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Jette – Ives
Darker than You Promo Video

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The Moorish Orthodox Catechism consists of no rules or dogmas, but only of adherance to the “Five Pillars” of Moorish Science as listed by Noble Drew: LOVE, TRUTH, PEACE, FREEDOM, JUSTICE to which we add a sixth, “Beauty.”—History & Catechism of the Moorish Orthodox Church of America

Come now, luxuriant Graces, and beautiful-haired Muses – Sappho
Well… this has been the longest with posting in quite awhile. Turfing went down, (the updating with photos etc., earlier last week. So, I had to pull a few things out of the hat and deal with providers to get it back up. I have been playing with this entry since Sunday. Sometimes it takes awhile to get it going. There are a couple of smaller entries before this that I didn’t notify people of… short and sweet, check them out.
Busy weekend; Rowan was filming at our house off and on from 10-6 on Saturday with a full crew, and then he hosted a D&D session on Sunday here. The house was packed for the whole weekend, it was nice, but loud.
Worked on the new system, and the house over the weekend. The change in weather here is nothing if not melodramatic! The cat stays in all night, I want to sleep and when awake just sit and read.
Deep Peace to You all.
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Raoul Vaneigem Quotes

Erik Satie – Away – Monkmus

Account of Sappho

Poems Of Sappho….

Satiemania, by Zdenkó Gasparovich

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Raoul Vaneigem Quotes
Raoul Vaneigem & Guy Debord
“Everything has been said yet few have taken advantage of it. Since all our knowledge is essentially banal, it can only be of value to minds that are not.”
“In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.”
“In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption. The dictatorship of consumer goods has finally destroyed the barriers of blood, lineage and race.”
“Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.”

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Erik Satie – Away – Monkmus

Account of Sappho

Sappho, whom the ancients distinguished by the title of the Tenth Muse, was born at Mytilene in the island of Lesbos, six hundred years before the Christian era. As no particulars have been transmitted to posterity, respecting the origin of her family, it is most likely she derived by little consequence from birth of connection. At an early period of her life she was wedded to Cercolus, a native of the isle of Andros; he was possessed of considerable wealth, and though the Lesbian Muse is said to have been sparingly gifted with beauty, he became enamoured of her, more perhaps on account of mental, than personal charms. By this union she is said to have given birth to a daughter; but Cercolus leaving her, while young, in a state of widowhood, she never after could be prevailed on to marry. The Fame which her genius spread even to the remotest parts of the earth, excited the envy of some writers who endeavoured to throw over her private character, a shade, which shrunk before the brilliancy of her poetical talents. Her soul was replete with harmony, that harmony which neither art nor study can acquire; she felt the intuitive superiority, and to the Muses she paid unbounded adoration. The Mytilenians held her poetry in such high veneration, and were so sensible of the hour conferred on the country which gave her birth, that they coined money with the impression of her head; and at the time of her death, paid tribute to their memory, such as was offered to sovereigns only. The story of Antiochus has been related as an unequivocal proof of Sappho’s skill in discovering, and powers of describing the passions of the human mind. That prince is said to have entertained a fatal affection for his mother-in-law Stratonice; which, though he endeavoured to subdue it’s influence, preyed upon his frame, and after many ineffectual struggles, at length reduced him to extreme danger. His physicians marked the symptoms attending his malady, and found them so exactly correspond with Sappho’s delineation of the tender passion, that they did not hesitate to form a decisive opinion of the cause, which had produced so perilous an effect. That Sappho was not insensible to the feelings she so well described , is evident in her writings but it was scarcely possible, that a mind so exquisitely tender, so sublimely gifted, should escape those fascinations which even apathy itself has been awakened to acknowledge. The scarce specimens now extant, from the pen of the Grecian Muse, have by the most competent judges been esteemed as the standard for the pathetic, the glowing, and the amatory. The ode, which has been so highly estimated, is written in a measure distinguished by the title of the Sapphic. Pope made it his model in his juvenile production, beginning—
“Happy the man—whose wish and care”—
Addison was of opinion, that the writings of Sappho were replete with such fascinating beauties, and adorned with such a vivid glow of sensibility, that, probably, had they been preserved entire, it would have been dangerous to have perused them. They possessed none of the artificial decorations of a feigned passion; they were the genuine effusions of a supremely enlightened soul, laboring to subdue a fatal enchantment; and vainly opposing the conscious pride of illustrious fame, against the warm susceptibility of a generous bosom. Though few stanzas from the pen of the Lesbian poetess have darted through the shades of oblivion: yet, those that remain are so exquisitely touching and beautiful, that they prove beyond dispute the taste, feeling, and inspiration of the mind which produced them. In examining the curiosities of antiquity, we look to the perfections, and not the magnitude of those relics, which have been preserved amidst the wrecks of time: as the smallest gem that bears the fine touches of a master, surpasses the loftiest fabric reared by the labours of false taste, so the precious fragments of the immortal Sappho, will be admired, when the voluminous productions of inferior poets are mouldered into dust. When it is considered, that the few specimens we have of the poems of the Grecian Muse, have passed through three and twenty centuries, and consequently through the hands of innumerable translators: and when it is known that Envy frequently delights in the base occupation of depreciating merit which it cannot aspire to emulate; it may be conjectured, that some passages are erroneously given to posterity, either by ignorance or design. Sappho, whose fame beamed round her with the superior effulgence which her works had created, knew that she was writing for future ages; it is not therefore natural that she should produce any composition which might tend to tarnish her reputation, or lessen that celebrity which it was the labour of her life to consecrate. The delicacy of her sentiments cannot find a more eloquent advocate than in her own effusions; she is said to have commended in the most animated panegyric, the virtues of her brother Lanychus; and with the most pointed and severe censure, to have contemned the passion which her brother Charaxus entertained for the beautiful Rhodope. If her writings were, in some instances, too glowing for the fastidious refinement of modern times; let it be her excuse, and the honour of her country, that the liberal education of the Greeks was such, as inspired them with an unprejudiced enthusiasm for the works of genius: and that when they paid adoration to Sappho, they idolized the Muse, and not the Woman. I shall conclude this account with an extract from the works of the learned and enlightened Abbé Barthelemi; at once the vindication and eulogy of the Grecian Poetess. “Sappho undertook to inspire the Lesbian women with a taste for literature; many of them received instructions from her, and foreign women increased the number of her disciples. She loved them to excess, because it was impossible for her to love otherwise; and she expressed her tenderness in all the violence of passion: your surprize at this will cease, when you are acquainted with the extreme sensibility of the Greeks; and discover, that amongst them the most innocent connections often borrow the impassioned language of love.” A certain facility of manners, she possessed; and the warmth of her expressions were but too well calculated to expose her to the hatred of some women of distinction, humbled by her superiority; and the jealousy of some of her disciples, who happened to be the objects of her preference. To this hatred she replied by truths and irony, which completely exasperated her enemies. She repaired to Sicily, where a statue was erected to her; it was sculptured by Silanion, one of the most celebrated staturists of his time. The sensibility of Sappho was extreme! she loved Phaon, who forsook her; after various efforts to bring him back, she took the leap of Leucata, and perished in the waves!
“Death has not obliterated the stain imprinted on her character; for Envy, which fastens on Illustrious Names, does not expire; but bequeaths her aspersions to that calumny which Never Dies. “Several Grecian women have cultivated Poetry, with success, but none have hitherto attained to the excellence of Sappho. And among other poets, there are few, indeed, who have surpassed her.”
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The moon shone full

And when the maidens stood around the altar…

Poems Of Sappho….

HYMN TO APHRODITE
Throned in splendor, immortal Aphrodite!

Child of Zeus, Enchantress, I implore thee

Slay me not in this distress and anguish,

Lady of beauty.

Hither come as once before thou camest,

When from afar thou heard’st my voice lamenting,

Heard’st and camest, leaving thy glorious father’s Palace golden,

Yoking thy chariot. Fair the doves that bore thee;

Swift to the darksome earth their course directing,

Waving their thick wings from the highest heaven

Down through the ether.

Quickly they came. Then thou, O blessed goddess,

All in smiling wreathed thy face immortal,

Bade me tell thee the cause of all my suffering,

Why now I called thee;

What for my maddened heart I most was longing.

“Whom,” thou criest, “dost wish that sweet Persuasion

Now win over and lead to thy love, my Sappho?

Who is it wrongs thee?

“For, though now he flies, he soon shall follow,

Soon shall be giving gifts who now rejects them.

Even though now he love not, soon shall he love thee

Even though thou wouldst not.”

Come then now, dear goddess, and release me

From my anguish. All my heart’s desiring

Grant thou now. Now too again as aforetime,

Be thou my ally.
—
THE MOON
The stars about the lovely moon

Fade back and vanish very soon,

When, round and full, her silver face

Swims into sight, and lights all space.

—
ODE TO A LOVED ONE
Blest as the immortal gods is he,

The youth who fondly sits by thee,

And hears and sees thee, all the while,

Softly speaks and sweetly smile.

‘Twas this deprived my soul of rest,

And raised such tumults in my breast;

For, while I gazed, in transport tossed,

My breath was gone, my voice was lost;

My bosom glowed; the subtle flame

Ran quick through all my vital frame;

O’er my dim eyes a darkness hung;

My ears with hollow murmurs rung;

In dewy damps my limbs were chilled;

My blood with gentle horrors thrilled:

My feeble pulse forgot to play;

I fainted, sunk, and died away.

—
TO ONE WHO LOVED NOT POETRY
Thou liest dead, and there will be no memory left behind

Of thee or thine in all the earth, for never didst thou bind

The roses of Pierian streams upon thy brow; thy doom

Is now to flit with unknown ghosts in cold and nameless gloom.

—
SONG OF THE ROSE
If Zeus chose us a King of the flowers in his mirth,

He would call to the rose, and would royally crown it;

For the rose, ho, the rose! is the grace of the earth,

Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it!

For the rose, ho, the rose! is the eye of the flowers,

Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair,

Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowers
On pale lovers that sit in the glow unaware.

Ho, the rose breathes of love! ho, the rose lifts the cup

To the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest!

Ho, the rose having curled its sweet leaves for the world

Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up,

As they laugh to the wind as it laughs from the west.

—

Satiemania, by Zdenkó Gasparovich 1978

Zdenko Gasparovich’s 1978 film, Satiemania, set to the music of Eric Satie. Part of the Zagreb animation school. Presumably copywritten by Mr Gasparovich..
You can find the full version on rapidshare, with some searching.