Author: Gwyllm

(Edmond-Francois Aman-Jean – Hesiod Listening to the Inspiration of the Muse)

10,000

Ten thousand flowers in spring,

the moon in autumn,

a cool breeze in summer,

snow in winter.

If your mind isn’t clouded

by unnecessary things,

this is the best season of your life.

Wu-Men

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Arcana – Le Serpent Rouge…

Visit their site here: Arcana Home Page…

Check out their free music section to get an idea of the sound that they produce. Quite interesting in Euro kinda way. They owe a debt to DCD, but seem to be gathering steam on their own.

I discovered them by accident, by running ‘Arcana’ into google. Never know where one word will take ya…

If you are travelling this holiday, take care, have a pleasant time, ‘kay?

Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Links

Strange Kind Of Love

The Cow of Plenty

Poetry: Love Poems of Rumi

Art: Edmond-Francois Aman-Jean (French Artist/Fin de Siècle Period)

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The Links

Cosmonaut to hit golf ball in space

The Scottish Lord with the elixir of life

Teen creates nuclear fusion in basement

William Upski Wimsatt: Youth Vote Did it for Dems

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Strange Kind Of Love

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One Instant

One Instant is eternity;

eternity is the now.

When you see through this one instant,

you see through the one who sees.

Wu-Men

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(Edmond-Francois Aman-Jean – Girl With Peacock)

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The Great Way

The Great Way has no gate;

there are a thousand paths to it.

If you pass through the barrier,

you walk the universe alone.

Wu-Men

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The Cow of Plenty

Gobniu, the Smith, had the Cow of Plenty. She walked all over Ireland in a day’s grazing and gave milk to every one that came to her: there was no one hungry or sorrowful in Ireland in those days!

Balor of the Evil Eye set his heart on the Cow. He had the grasping hand that is never filled, and there was nothing good in his country. He sent the best man he had to steal the Cow of Plenty.

The man stole her, but as he was taking her away Gobniu saw him and let out a battle-roar that shook stars from the sky. The man made a leap into the darkness and got off. Gobniu had the Cow, but the Fomorian had the halter. Now, the luck of the world was in the halter, and wherever the halter was the Cow would follow it. Gobniu got little good of the Cow after that! He had to keep his eyes on her, morning, noon, and night, for fear she would go into Balor’s country. He had to tramp behind her when she took her day’s grazing all over Ireland, and the days seemed long to Gobniu the Wonder-Smith.

One day a young champion in a red clock fringed with gold came to him and stood outside his door and saluted him:

“O Wonder-Smith, O Gobniu! will you make a sword for me? It must be long, and keen-edged, and a death-biter–a sword for a champion. Will you make it, Gobniu? No Smith in Ireland can make a sword for champion-feats but yourself!”

“It’s little trouble I would have with the sword, young champion, but I must follow my Cow from morning till night. If once I took my eyes off her, she would go to Balor in the land of the Fomor.”

“If you make the sword for me I will follow the Cow from morning till night and never take my eyes off her once.”

“If you do that, Cian, son of Dian-Cecht, I will make the sword.”

It was agreed between them, and the Smith set to the making of the sword while Cian followed the Cow. She walked all over Ireland that day, and Cian was not sorry when she came at night to the house of Gobniu. There was light within, and some men stood at the door. They said to Cian:

“The Wonder-Smith has made the sword for you, and waits to put the tempering on it: he can’t do that till you go within and hold the sword hilt.”

It was a joy to Cian to hear this, and he ran in quickly.

“Where is the Cow? ” said the Smith.

“She is without,” said Cian; “my head to you if she is not!”

“She is not without,” said the Smith, “she is with Balor!” and he ran to the door. The Cow was gone!

“I have only my head to give you now, O Gobniu!”

“I will not take your head, Cian, son of DianCecht, but I will take another eric from you. Go now in search of the halter; it is with Balor in the land of the Fomorians. The road is hard to find that leads there and the dark waters are ill to cross, but do not turn back or leave off seeking till you get the halter of the Cow.”

I will not come back to Ireland,” said Cian, “without the halter of the Cow.”

Cian set out and he travelled and travelled till he came to the dark waters, and when he came to them he could find no boat to cross. He waited there for three days and nights searching for a boat, and then he saw a small poor-looking boat with an old man in it. Cian looked at the boat, but, although he was a good champion and had cleverness, he did not know that he was looking at the Ocean-Sweeper, the boat that could carry any one in a moment to whatever place they wished to be; and he did not know that the old man was the Tawny Mananaun, the Son of Lear, who rules all the oceans of the world.

“Old man,” said Cian, “will you row me across the waters to the land of Balor? “

“I will row you, young champion, if you swear to give me half of what you gain there.”

“I will share everything with you but the halter of Gobniu’s Cow.”

I will not ask for that,” said the boatman.

“Be it so,” said the other. They stepped into the boat, and in a moment they touched the land of the Fomor.

“You have helped me in need, old man,” said Cian. “I have a gold ring, and my cloak is rich–I pray you keep them both.”

“I will change cloaks,” said the old man, “but I will not take the ring.” He put his hand on Cian’s fingers. “I leave you a gift,” he said, “whatever lock you touch will open before you. He put his cloak on Cian’s shoulders. “It covers you as night covers the earth–beneath it you are safe, for no one can see you.”

The cloak fell about Cian in long folds; he knew there was magic in it and turned to look closely at the old man, but he could not see him and the boat was gone.

Cian was in a strange country, all cold, and desolate, and death-looking; he saw fierce warriors of the Fomor, but the cloak sheltered him and he reached the court of Balor without mishap.

“What seek you of me? ” said Balor.

“I would take service with you,” said Cian.

“What can you do?”

“Whatever the De Danaans can do,” said Cian. “I could make grass grow in this land, where grass never grew.”

Balor looked pleased when he heard that, for he had the greatest desire in the world for a garth of apple trees like the apple trees Mananaun had in the Island of Avilion, that were so beautiful people made songs about them.

“Can you make apple trees grow? ” said he to Cian.

“I can,” said Cian.

“Well,” said Balor, “make me a garth of apple trees like the garth Mananaun has; and when I see apples on the trees I will give you your own asking of reward.”

“I have only one reward to ask,” said Cian, “and I will ask for it at the beginning; it is the halter of Gobniu’s Cow.”

“I will give you that,” said Balor, “without deceit.”

Cian was glad when he made the bargain, and he began to work; he had his sufficiency of trouble over the grass, for every blade that grew for him in the morning was withered by Balor’s breath at night. After a while he had apple trees, and as he used to be minding them he often looked at a great white dun that was near. Warriors of the Fomorians were always guarding it, and one day he asked who it was lived there.

“Ethlinn, Balor’s daughter, lives there,” said the man he asked. “She is the most beautiful woman in the world, but no one may see her, and she is shut in the dun lest she should marry, for it is said that a son born of her will slay Balor.”

Cian kept thinking of this, and there was a wish on him to see the beautiful woman. He put the magic cloak on him and went to the dun. When he laid his hand on the door it opened, because of the enchantment on his fingers. He went in and found Balor’s daughter. She was sitting at a loom, weaving a cloth that had every colour in it, and singing as she wove. Cian stood awhile looking at her till she said:

“Who is here that I cannot see?”

Then he dropped the cloak. Balor’s daughter loved him when she saw him, and chose him for her man. He came to her many times after that, and they took oaths of faithfulness to one another. There was a child born to them, and he was so beautiful that whatever place he was in seemed to be full of sunshine. Ethlinn, his mother, called him Lugh, which means Light, but Cian, his father, used to call him the Sun-God; and both names stuck to him, but Lugh was the name he was best known by.

Now Balor was watching the apple trees, and when he saw apples on them he brought the halter of Gobniu’s Cow to his daughter, and said: “Hide this, and when I am asked for it, it will be gone from me.”

Balor’s daughter took the halter, and a little afterwards Cian came to her with a branch of apples.

“The first apples for you!” he said.

She gave him the halter.

“Take it–and the child, and go away to the land you came from.”

“That is a hard saying!” said Cian.

“There is nothing else to do,” said she.

Cian took the child and the halter, and wrapped his cloak about him. He said farewell to Balor’s daughter and went till he came to the dark waters. A boat was there before him and the old man in it. Cian thought they were a short time in crossing.

“Do you remember our bargain? “said the old man.

“I do,” said Cian, “but I have nothing but the halter and this child–I will not make two halves of him.”

“I had your word on it!” said the old man.

“I will give you the child,” said Cian.

“You will never be sorry for it,” said the old man, “for I will foster him and bring him up like my own son.”

The boat touched the land of Ireland.

“Here is your cloak,” said Cian, “and take the child.”

Mananaun took the little child in his arms, and Cian put the cloak about him, and when he shook it out it had every colour of the sea in it and a sound like the waves when they break on a shore with the music of bells. The old man was beautiful and wonderful to look at, and Cian cried out to him:

“I know you now, Mananaun Mac Lear, and it was in a lucky hour I gave my son to you, for he will be brought up in Tir-nan-Oge, and will never know sorrow or defeat!”

Mananaun laughed and lifted the little Sun-God high up in his two hands.

“When you see him again, Cian, son of Dian-Cecht, he will be riding on my own white horse and no one will bar his way on land or sea. Now, take farewell of him, and may gladness and victory be with you!”

Mananaun stepped into the boat; it was shining with every colour of the rainbow as clear as crystal, and it went without oars or sails with the water curling round the sides of it and the little fishes of the sea swimming before and behind it.

Cian set his face towards the house of Gobniu, the Smith. He came to it, and he had the halter in his hand, and when he came the Cow was there before him and Gobniu came out to meet him.

“A welcome before you, young champion, and may everything you undertake have a happy ending!”

“The same wish to yourself!” said Cian, and gave him the halter. The Smith gave Cian the sword then, and there was gladness and friendship between them ever after.

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(Edmond-Francois Aman-Jean – Portrait of Thadee Caroline Jacquet)

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Love Poems: Rumi

Confused and Distraught

Again I am raging, I am in such a state by your soul that every

bond you bind, I break, by your soul.

I am like heaven, like the moon, like a candle by your glow; I am all

reason, all love, all soul, by your soul.

My joy is of your doing, my hangover of your thorn; whatever

side you turn your face, I turn mine, by your soul.

I spoke in error; it is not surprising to speak in error in this

state, for this moment I cannot tell cup from wine, by your soul.

I am that madman in bonds who binds the “divs”; I, the madman,

am a Solomon with the “divs”, by your soul.

Whatever form other than love raises up its head from my

heart, forthwith I drive it out of the court of my heart, by your soul.

Come, you who have departed, for the thing that departs

comes back; neither you are that, by my soul, nor I am that, by your soul.

Disbeliever, do not conceal disbelief in your soul, for I will recite

the secret of your destiny, by your soul.

Out of love of Sham-e Tabrizi, through wakefulness or

nightrising, like a spinning mote I am distraught, by your soul.

—

This is to Love

This is love: to fly to heaven, every moment to rend a hundred veils;

At first instance, to break away from breath –

first step, to renounce feet;

To disregard this world, to see only that which you yourself have seen I said, “Heart, congratulations on entering the circle of lovers,

“On gazing beyond the range of the eye,

on running into the alley of the breasts.”

Whence came this breath, O heart?

Whence came this throbbing, O heart?

Bird, speak the tongue of birds: I can heed your cipher!

The heart said, “I was in the factory whilst the home of water and clay was abaking.

“I was flying from the workshop whilst the workshop was being created.

“When I could no more resist, they dragged me; how shall I

tell the manner of that dragging?”

—

A New Rule

It is the rule with drunkards to fall upon each other,

to quarrel, become violent, and make a scene.

The lover is even worse than a drunkard.

I will tell you what love is: to enter a mine of gold.

And what is that gold?

The lover is a king above all kings,

unafraid of death, not at all interested in a golden crown.

The dervish has a pearl concealed under his patched cloak.

Why should he go begging door to door?

Last night that moon came along,

drunk, dropping clothes in the street.

“Get up,” I told my heart, “Give the soul a glass of wine.

The moment has come to join the nightingale in the garden,

to taste sugar with the soul-parrot.”

I have fallen, with my heart shattered –

where else but on your path? And I

broke your bowl, drunk, my idol, so drunk,

don’t let me be harmed, take my hand.

A new rule, a new law has been born:

break all the glasses and fall toward the glassblower.

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(Edmond-Francois Aman-Jean – Telling Secrets)

very brightly coloured, very irridescent…deep sheens and very highly reflective surfaces. Everything is machine-like and polished, and throbbing with energy – but that is not what immediately arrests my attention. What arrests my attention, is the fact that this space is…inhabited.

Terence McKenna (discussing DMT)

Dear Reader,

Reading the above reminded me of a wonderful 5meo-DMT report that I read yesterday… It makes one nostalgic for one of those wondrous moments that the allies can lend to you. This report dealt with an insufflated dosage, which does seem to be one of the ancient tried and true methods. The person in the report had a most favourable time, enjoyable enough to go back in to that sacred space a second time an hour or so later.. I have seen these miracle molecules change so many peoples lives to the positive…

Unfortunately, our ever present protectors, the DEA are out to make this and a variety of other Tryptamines illegal. For some reason, they feel people are not sovereign unto themselves. Why is it the government insists on playing nanny to everyone?

—

Have become submerged again in the works of Bill Nelson, famed British Guitarist/Full Time Occultist. Through the kindness of acquaintances, I am coming up to speed with his voluminous output. At one time I collected his works but fell out of touch with it all when we moved from L.A. and changed our living habits. It is nice to discover that his creative drive is still running at the maximum. Stay tuned when Radio Free EarthRites gets off the ground. (we are testing it daily give it a checking out!) We will feature some of Bill’s more recent works…

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In case you haven’t noticed The Holidays Are Looming

Thanksgiving (a form of Harvest Home) in the US of A is fast approaching. Loads of people going multiple places. We are spending it with a host of friends, which is always a dear delight. Looking forward to some good laughs, food and conversation.

Much Love,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Links

The Giver Should Be Thankful

Finding a Diamond on a Muddy Road

Poetry: The Buddhist Moment…

Art: Black & White: Rick Griffin (pen and ink!)

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The Links:

This Passes For Journalism in Kentucky…

Edible cotton breakthrough may help feed the world

The real prehistoric religion of Malta?

Natural Wonders!

Who the Mona Lisa IS, within a shadow of a doubt..

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The Giver Should Be Thankful

While Seisetsu was the master of Engaku in Kamakura he required larger quarters, since those in which he was teaching were overcrowded. Umezu Seibei, a merchant of Edo, decided to donate five hundred pieces of gold called ryo toward the construction of a more commodious school. This money he brought to the teacher.

Seisetsu said: “All right. I will take it.”

Umezu gave Seisetsu the sack of gold, but he was dissatisfied with the attitude of the teacher. One might live a whole year on three ryo, and the merchant had not even been thanked for five hundred.

“In that sack are five hundred ryo,” hinted Umezu.

“You told me that before,” replied Seisetsu.

“Even if I am a wealthy merchant, five hundred ryo is a lot of money,” said Umezu.

“Do you want me to thank you for it?” asked Seisetsu.

“You ought to,” replied Uzemu.

Why should I?” inquired Seisetsu. “The giver should be thankful.”

—

Finding a Diamond on a Muddy Road

Gudo was the emperor’s teacher of his time. Nevertheless, he used to travel alone as a wandering mendicant. Once when he was on his way to Edo, the cultural and political center of the shogunate, he approached alittle village named Takenaka. It was evening and a heavy rain was falling. Gudo was thoroughly wet. His straw sandals were in pieces. At a farmhouse near the village he noticed four or five pairs of sandals in the window and decided to buy some dry ones.

The woman who offered him the sandals, seeing how wet he was, invited him in to remain for the night in her home. Gudo accepted, thanking her. He entered and recited a sutra before the family shrine. He was then introduced to the women’s mother, and to her children. Observing that theentire family was depressed, Gudo asked what was wrong.

“My husband is a gambler and a drunkard,” the housewife told him. “When he happens to win he drinks and becomes abusive. When he loses he borrows money from others. Sometimes when he becomes thoroughly drunk he does not come home at all. What can I do?”

“I will help him,” said Gudo. “Here is some money. Get me a gallon of fine wine and something good to eat. Then you may retire. I will meditate before the shrine.”

When the man of the house returned about midnight, quite drunk, he bellowed: “Hey, wife, I am home. Have you something for me to eat?”

“I have something for you,” said Gudo. “I happened to be caught in the rain and your wife kindly asked me to remain here for the night. In return I have bought some wine and fish, so you might as well have them.”

The man was delighted. He drank the wine at once and laid himself down on the floor. Gudo sat in meditation beside him.

In the morning when the husband awoke he had forgotten about the previous night. “Who are you? Where do you come from?” he asked Gudo, who was still meditating.

“I am Gudo of Kyoto and I am going on to Edo,” replied the Zen master.

The man was utterly ashamed. He apologized profusely to the teacher of his emperor.

Gudo smiled. “Everything in this life is impermanent,” he explained.”Life is very brief. If you keep on gambling and drinking, you will have no time left to accomplish anything else, and you will cause your family to suffer too.”

The perception of the husband awoke as if from a dream. “You are right,” he declared. “How can I ever repay you for this wonderful teaching! Let me see you off and carry your things a little way.”

“If you wish,” assented Gudo.

The two started out. After they had gone three miles Gudo told him to return. “Just another five miles,” he begged Gudo. They continued on.

“You may return now,” suggested Gudo.

“After another ten miles,” the man replied.

“Return now,” said Gudo, when the ten miles had been passed.

“I am going to follow you all the rest of my life,” declared the man.

Modern Zen teachings in Japan spring from the lineage of a famous master who was the successor of Gudo. His name was Mu-nan, the man who never turned back.

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Poetry: The Buddhist Moment…(or non-moment as the case may be)

Jnanachandra – Princess Moon

Long ago in an age before which

there was nothing else,

the Victorious One, the Tathagata Dundubhisvara

came into existence and was known as the Light

of the Various Worlds.

The Princess “Moon of Wisdom”

had the highest respect for his teaching,

and for ten million, one hundred thousand years,

made offerings to this Enlightened One,

to his attendant Sravakas,

and to countless members of the Sangha of Bodhisattvas.

The offerings she prepared each day

were in value comparable to all the precious things

which filled a distance of twelve yojanas

in each of the ten directions,

leaving no intermediate spaces unfilled.

Finally after all this

she awoke to the first concepts of Bodhi-Mind.

At that time some monks said to her:

“It is as a result of these,

your roots of virtuous actions,

that you have come into being in this female form.

If you pray that your deeds accord with the teachings,

then indeed on that account you will change your form

to that of a man, as is befitting.”

After much discourse she finally replied,

“In this life there is no such distinction

as “male” and “female,”

neither of “self-identity,”

a “person”

nor any perception,

and therefore attachment to ideas

of “male” and “female”

is quite worthless.

The weak-minded are always deluded by this.”

And so she vowed:

“There are many who wish to gain enlightenment

in a man’s form,

and there are but few who wish to work

for the welfare of living beings

in a female form.

Therefore may I, in a female body,

work for the welfare of beings

right until Samsara has been emptied.”

– by Tibetan Lama Taranatha (b 1573 CE)

(Jnanachandra was an early name for Tara – A Buddhist Deity)

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Enlightenment – Huang Po

When practitioners of Zen fail to transcend

the world of their senses and thoughts,

all they do has no value.

Yet, when senses and thoughts are obliterated

all the roads to universal mind are blocked

and there is no entrance.

The primal mind has to be recognised along with the senses and thoughts.

It neither belongs to them nor is independent of them.

Don’t build your understanding on your senses and thoughts,

yet don’t look for the mind separate from your senses and thoughts.

Don’t attempt to grasp Reality by pushing away your senses

and thoughts.

Unobstructed freedom is to be neither attached not detached.

This is enlightenment.

—

Endless Ages – Bodhidharma

Through endless ages, the mind has never changed

It has not lived or died, come or gone, gained or lost.

It isn’t pure or tainted, good or bad, past or future.

true or false, male or female. It isn’t reserved for

monks or lay people, elders to youths, masters or

idiots, the enlightened or unenlightened.

It isn’t bound by cause and effect and doesn’t

struggle for liberation. Like space, it has no form.

You can’t own it and you can’t lose it. Mountains.

rivers or walls can’t impede it. But this mind is

ineffable and difficult to experience. It is not the

mind of the senses. So many are looking for this

mind, yet it already animates their bodies.

It is theirs, yet they don’t realize it.

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My friend Mike H. stopped by and dropped of a copy of Graham Hancocks’ “Supernatural” for me to check out.

Really enjoying the read. He heads right in with a tale of Iboga, and then on to Pech Merle. He touches on some great subjects. Highly Recommended. I will have a review of sorts when I am done. Funny how books drop into your life at the right moment.

I once had a book jump off of the shelf, “The White Goddess” by Robert Graves. Walked into a bookshop in Santa Monica, and walked towards some shelves. As I went to reach for a poetry book, The White Goddess leapt off a higher shelf into my hands… I took the hint.

—

Absinthe Decadent… Combining Champagne with Absinthe. A successful experiment on Saturday night with Tomas C, Paulo, & Paul R, Mary and yours truly. Quite tasty! Recommended. See the recipe on Saturdays’ entry…

On The Menu

Cities In The Dust

The Quotes

The Links

Vision Quest / Shamanism vs. capitalism: the politics of ayahuasca

Poetry: Nibbles

Art: Pablo Amaringo

Have a good week!

Gwyllm

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A short visit down Nostalgia Lane…

Cities in Dust – Siouxsie and The Banshees

Water was running; children were running

You were running out of time

Under the mountain, a golden fountain

Were you praying at the Lares shrine?

But ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

We found you hiding, we found you lying

Choking on the dirt and sand

Your former glories and all the stories

Dragged and washed with eager hands

But ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

your city lies in dust

Water was running; children were running

We found you hiding, we found you lying

Water was running; children were running

We found you hiding, we found you lying

your city lies in dust

ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

Hot and burning in your nostrils

Pouring down your gaping mouth

Your molten bodies blanket of cinders

Caught in the throes …….

Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

Your city lies in dust

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The Quotes:

“It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.”

“I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”

“How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.”

“A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.”

“Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.”

“I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.”

“I’m kind of jealous of the life I’m supposedly leading.”

“Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.”

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”

“Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.”

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The Links:

Is There A Dragon In That Sausage Mr.?

In Certain Circles, Two Is a Crowd

Qi – the energy of life

Where Were You Before The Tree of Life? Volume 1

Apparent Voice Of Dead Woman Heard On Audiotape

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Vision Quest / Shamanism vs. capitalism: the politics of ayahuasca

by Martin A. Lee

WANDER long enough through the bustling passageways of any crowded village marketplace in the northwest Amazon and you’ll come upon herbalist stands with dried plants, hanging animal parts, and lots of bottled medicines. Among the local offerings you’ll inevitably find “ayahuasca,” a fearsome, foul-tasting, jungle brew sold by the liter.

Pronounced “ah-yah-waska,” the word is from the Quechua language; it means “vine of the soul,” “vine of the dead,” or “the vision vine.” Known by various names among 72 native ayahuasca-ingesting cultures in Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador, this legendary, industrial-strength hallucinogen is used by curanderos, or witch doctors, to heal the sick and communicate with spirits. Many rainforest shamans simply refer to ayahuasca as el remedio, “the remedy.”

Revered by indigenous people as a sacred medicine, a master cure for all diseases, it is without a doubt the most celebrated hallucinogenic plant concoction of the Amazon. But it’s also under threat from both anti-narcotics agencies and corporations that want to patent it and corner the market on its use.

Plant Teachers

Long ago, South American Indian medicine men and medicine women became adept at manipulating an array of ingredients that were mixed and boiled into ayahuasca, or “yagé,” as it is often called. An elaborate set of rituals governed every step of the process, from gathering leaves, roots, and bark to cooking and administering the intoxicant.

Ayahuasca is unique in that its powerful psychopharmacological effect is dependent on a synergistic combination of active alkaloids from at least two plants–the Banisteriopsis caapi vine containing the crucial harmala alkaloids, along with the leafy plant Psychotria viridis or some other hallucinogenic admixture that contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT) alkaloids.

Most curious is the fact that when taken orally, DMT is metabolized and deactivated by a particular gastric enzyme. But certain chemicals in the yagé vine counter the action of this stomach enzyme, thereby allowing the DMT to circulate through the bloodstream and into the brain, where it triggers intense visions and supernatural experiences.

Contemporary researchers marvel at what chemist J. C. Callaway describes as “one of the most sophisticated drug delivery systems in existence.” Just how the Amazon Indians managed to figure out this amazing bit of synergistic alchemy is one of the many mysteries of yagé.

The ayahuasqueros, the native healers who use yagé, will tell you that their knowledge comes directly from “the plant teachers” themselves. Hallucinogenic botanicals are viewed as the embodiments of intelligent beings who become visible only in special states of consciousness and who function as spirit guides and sources of healing power and knowledge.

According to indigenous folklore, ayahuasca is the fount of all understanding, the ultimate medium that reveals the mythological origins of life. To drink yagé, anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff once wrote, is to return to the cosmic uterus, the primordial womb of existence, “where the individual ‘sees’ the tribal divinities, the creation of the universe and humanity, the first couple, the creation of the animals, and the establishment of the social order.”

The Great Cleansing

Ayahuasca was never used casually or for recreational purposes in traditional societies. Only a ritually clean person who maintained a strict dietary regimen (low on spices, sugars, and animal fat) for several weeks or months was deemed ready to partake of the experience. Shamanic initiation rites entailed a lengthy period of preparation, which included social isolation and sexual abstinence, before novices got to ingest yagé with the curandero.

A connoisseur of the chemically induced trance state, the curandero provides guidance to those who wish to embark upon a “vision quest.” But rainforest shamans typically “resist the heroic mold into which current Western image-making would pour them,” says anthropologist Michael Taussig. Instead, they often exude a bawdy vitality and a funny, unpretentious, down-to-earth manner.

More of a trickster than a guru or saint, the curandero is unquestionably the master of ceremonies, the key figure in the ayahuasca drama. After nightfall, the bitter brew is passed around a circle from mouth to mouth, and the shaman starts to sing about the visions they will see. Listening to his chant, the novices feel some numbness on their lips and warmth in their guts.

A vertiginous surge of energy envelops them. And then all hell breaks loose: retching, vomiting, diarrhea–an unstoppable high colonic that penetrates the innards, sweeping through the intestinal coils like liquid Drano of the soul, cleansing the body of parasites, emotional blockages, long-held resentments. It is for good reason that Amazonian natives refer to la purga when speaking of yagé.

“One cannot help being impressed by the remarkable health-enhancing effects attributed to the purging action of the vine,” writes Sonoma-based psychologist Ralph Metzner, editor of Ayahuasca, an anthology of scholarly and first-person accounts of the yagé experience. Metzner notes that there have been anecdotal reports of the complete remission of some cancers after one or two ayahuasca sessions. The rejuvenating impact of la purga would help explain the exceptional health of the ayahuasqueros, even those of advanced ages.

“Space/Time Travel”

After the unavoidable episode of purging, the senses liven up and the initiate experiences a kind of “magnetic release from the world,” as Wade Davis, author and explorer in residence with the National Geographic Society, puts it. This is followed by an onslaught of spectacular visions, a swirling pandemonium of kaleidoscopic imagery that changes faster than the speed of thought.

While under the influence of ayahuasca, it is not uncommon for people to feel as though they have been lifted out of their bodies and catapulted into a strange, aerial excursion. During this voyage to far-off realms, they see gorgeous vistas and enchanted landscapes that suddenly give way to harrowing encounters with fierce jaguars, huge iridescent snakes, and other predatory beasts intent on devouring the novice.

William Burroughs described the sensation of long-distance flying when he took ayahuasca during an expedition in South America in 1953. “Yagé is space time travel,” he wrote in a letter to Allen Ginsberg. “The blood and substance of many races, Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mongol, Desert Nomad, Polyglot Near East, Indian–new races as yet unconceived and unborn, combinations not yet realized pass through your body. Migrations, incredible journeys through deserts and jungles and mountains . . . A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum.”

It is not known why the visions provoked by ayahuasca often involve Amazon jungle animals, even when people from other continents swallow the acrid tonic. Stories of anacondas the length of rivers and electric eels that light up the night sky are classical elements of the yagé experience. Heinz Kusel, a trader living among the Chama natives of northeastern Peru in the late 1940s, recounted how an Indian once told him that whenever he drank ayahuasca, he had such beautiful visions that he “put his hands over his eyes for fear that someone might steal them.”

Drug Wars in the New World

Indeed, there was a time when people did try to steal the visions. Ever since the European invaders came to the New World more than 500 years ago, they scorned and demonized ayahuasca and other hallucinogenic substances that were employed by native peoples in their healing rituals.

Western knowledge of yagé ceremonies was first recorded in the 17th century by Jesuit missionaries who condemned the use of “diabolical potions” prepared from jungle vines. The ruthless attempt to eradicate such practices among the colonized inhabitants of the Americas was part of an imperialist effort to impose a new social order that stigmatized the ayahuasca experience as a form of devil worship or possession by evil spirits. But the ingestion of yagé for religious and medicinal purposes continued, despite the genocidal campaigns of the conquistadors.

It wasn’t until the 1930s that Richard Evans Schultes, director of Harvard University’s Botanical Museum, provided a scientific analysis of the complex ethnobotany of yagé and many other psychoactive plants in the Amazon region. By this time, the shamanic use of ayahuasca had spread from remote jungle areas to South American urban centers, where mestizo curanderos added a Christian gloss to archaic Indian ceremonies. Several Brazilian churches started to administer ayahuasca as a sacrament in a syncretic fusion of Catholicism and shamanism.

The two largest of these church movements–Santo Daime and União de Vegetal–utilized yagé in their religious services without interference by the Brazilian government until the mid-1980s, when U.S. officials pressured Brazil’s Federal Council on Narcotics to put the Banisteriopsis caapi vine on a list of controlled substances. The ayahuasca churches protested, and a government committee was appointed to investigate the matter. After examining the churches’ use of yagé and testing it on themselves, the members of this committee recommended that the ban on ayahuasca be lifted.

The Brazilian government acted upon this recommendation and legalized the sacramental use of yagé in 1987, much to the dismay of the U.S. Embassy.

Resurgent Shamanism

The revival of shamanic rituals found a fertile ground, particularly in areas where wealthy plantation owners and multinational corporations displaced peasants from the land. For these poor and desperate people, ayahuasca was a gift that helped them cope with the expansion of the market economy into the frontier. As their subsistence society unraveled, so, too, did their sense of sanity and well-being.

Consequently, a growing number of mentally ill individuals and uprooted wage laborers sought out curanderos, who were forced into a new role. In addition to curing the sick and communicating with the spirit world, many witch doctors began using ayahuasca to mediate class conflict. As one Putumayo medicine man told Michael Taussig, “I have been teaching people revolution through my work with plants.”

The more big business encroached upon native turf, the greater the resurgence of shamanism. And in another ironic twist of globalization, the sacred beverage of the Amazon made its way to Europe and the United States, sending law enforcement into a tizzy.

The Santo Daime religion has taken root in Hawaii and the Bay Area, where yagé sessions are held in secret. This ayahuasca church also has branches in several other countries, including Great Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Japan.

In October 1999, successive police raids targeted Santo Daime members in the Netherlands, France, and Germany. The crackdown prompted church representatives throughout Europe to mobilize. They are seeking official recognition of their religion, and they want the sacramental use of ayahuasca to be legalized.

Predictably, U.S. narcotics control officials are opposed to ending the prohibition against yagé, despite Peruvian medical studies that indicate ayahuasca can be an effective treatment for cocaine addiction. The fact that yagé tastes so awful–to the point where some people can’t even bring themselves to swallow it–provides an additional safeguard against those who might use it in a cavalier fashion.

Who Owns Yagé?

The U.S. pharmaceutical industry has also taken an interest in ayahuasca. Loren Miller of the International Plant Medicine Corporation received a sample of the yagé vine from a tribal elder in Ecuador. In 1986, Miller obtained a U.S. patent for a specific type of Banisteriopsis caapi with the hope of profiting from the plant’s medicinal properties. The patent, which gave Miller’s company exclusive rights in the United States to breed and sell a new variety of the plant, is due to expire in 2003.

Upon learning what had transpired, the Ecuador-based Coordinating Committee of Native Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) accused Miller of committing “an offense against indigenous peoples” by patenting a sacred plant for his own benefit. “Commercializing an ingredient of the religious ceremonies and of healing for our people is a real affront for the over four hundred cultures that populate the Amazon basin,” declared COICA General Coordinator Antonio Jacanamijoy. COICA proclaimed that Miller and his company were unwelcome in indigenous territories. The State Department considered this warning a death threat against Miller and interceded on his behalf.

The controversy over ayahuasca spilled into the diplomatic arena when the Ecuadorian government refused to sign a bilateral agreement on intellectual property rights with the United States in 1996. Washington countered by threatening Ecuador with economic sanctions. Thus far, the U.S. Senate has refused to ratify the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity that recognizes the property rights of native people. More than 100 countries have signed this treaty, including Ecuador.

While multinational corporations seek to exploit the natural treasures of the Amazon, the destruction of the rainforest continues at an accelerated pace and indigenous ways of life are being threatened. “I feel a great sorrow when trees are burned, when the forest is destroyed,” explained Peruvian shaman and painter Pablo Cesar Amaringo, co-author of Ayahuasca Visions. “I feel sorrow because I know that human beings are doing something very wrong. When one takes ayahuasca, one can sometimes hear how the trees cry when they are going to be cut down. They know beforehand, and they cry. And the spirits have to go to other places, because their physical part, their house, is destroyed.”

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Martin A. Lee is the author of ‘The Beast Reawakens’ and ‘Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion.’ He can be reached at martinalee117@yahoo.com.

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Addendum

In an earlier version of this article, Martin Lee wrote that Loren Miller of the International Plant Medicine Corporation “had pulled out a yagé plant from the garden of an Ecuadorian family without asking permission, hurried back to the United States with the vine, and then applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.” This statement, which was based on previously published sources, is incorrect. Mr. Miller was given a sample of the yagé vine in 1974 by a tribal leader in the Ecuadoran Amazon. In 1981 he applied for a patent on a particular variety of Banisteriopsis caapi. Mr. Lee erred in stating that Miller’s patent was denied by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The patent was granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) in 1986, but was challenged in 1999 by the Washington-based Center for International Environmental Law on behalf of COICA. This triggered a see-saw legal battle that culminated in a decision by the PTO to confirm Miller’s patent on January 26, 2001. Mr. Miller maintains that the International Plant Medicine Corporation, which engages in pharmaceutical research, has never commercialized or profited from the yagé vine or the patent. He states that “this patent has been sitting harmlessly in a drawer gathering dust, and that it does not affect the natives’ use of their plants in any way, shape or form.” Mr. Lee apologizes to Mr. Miller and his company for any errors in the original version of this article and regrets any problems that this may have caused.

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Poetry: Nibbles….

SHAMAN SONG – Uvavnuk

The great sea has set me in motion,

Set me adrift,

And I move as a weed in the river.

The arch of sky

And mightiness of storms

Encompass and stir me,

And I am left

Trembling with joy.

—

The Shulammite (Song 5:2-6 of The Song Of Songs)

I was asleep but my heart stayed awake.

Listen!

My lover knocking:

“Open, my sister, my friend,

My dove, my perfect one!

My hair is wet, drenched

with the dew of the night.”

“But I have taken off my clothes,

How can I dress again?

I have bathed my feet,

Must I dirty them?”

My love reached in for the latch

And my heart

Beat wild.

I rose to open to my love,

My fingers wet with myrrh,

Sweet flowing myrrh

On the doorbolt.

I opened to my love

But he had slipped away.

How I wanted him when he spoke! . . .

—

Sabina Lampadius

As a symbol

of sacred mysteries,

I Sabina,

daughter of Lampadius

and so of an honorable person,

here erected

to Attis and Rea

an altar forever.

Deo’s orgies

and the terrifying

Hekate nights

I experienced.

—

From The Tempest – William Shakespeare

Be cheerful, sir:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

—

Old Pond – Basho

Old pond,

frog jumps in — splash.

“Expect Saint Martin’s summer, halcyon days,

Since I have entered into these wars.

Glory is like a circle in the water,

Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself

Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.”

— William Shakespeare —

On The Menu:

Preparing Absinthe…

Absinthe Decadent…

Absinthe Quotations

Absinthe Poetry

Absinthe Posters from The Fin de siècle

A Saturday Edition… I must get everything done now, so I can relax, watch the sun go down and have a Drink!

Celebrate the Beauty…!

Cheers,

Gwyllm

_______

Preparing Absinthe…

________

Absinthe Decadent:

Instead of ice water, champagne can be used as the mixer (the slightly decadent option!). In Italy, Franciacorta or Prosecco are often used instead of champagne.

_________

Absinthe Quotations

“After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were.

After the second, you see things as they are not.

Finally, you see things as they really are,

which is the most horrible thing in the world.”

Oscar Wilde

—

“Let me be mad…

mad with the madness

of Absinthe, the wildest, most

luxurious madness in the world.”

Marie Corelli

—

“Art is the soul of life and the Old Absinthe House

is heart and soul of the old quarter of New Orleans.”

Aleister Crowley

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_________

Poetry: Absinthe

Absinthe – Glenn MacDonough

I will free you first from burning thirst

That is born of a night of the bowl,

Like a sun ’twill rise through the inky skies

That so heavily hang o’er your souls.

At the first cool sip on your fevered lip

You determine to live through the day,

Life’s again worth while as with a dawning smile

You imbibe your absinthe frappé.

—

Get Drunk! – by Charles-Pierre Baudelaire

One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters;

that’s our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time’s

horrible burden one which breaks your shoulders and bows

you down, you must get drunk without cease.

But with what?

With wine, poetry, or virtue

as you choose.

But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on steps of a palace,

in the green grass of a ditch,

in the bleak solitude of your room,

you are waking and the drunkenness has already abated,

ask the wind, the wave, the stars, the clock,

all that which flees,

all that which groans,

all that which rolls,

all that which sings,

all that which speaks,

ask them, what time it is;

and the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock,

they will all reply:

“It is time to get drunk!

So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,

get drunk, get drunk,

and never pause for rest!

With wine, poetry, or virtue,

as you choose!”

—

Even When She Walks…” – by Charles-Pierre Baudelaire

Even when she walks she seems to dance!

Her garments writhe and glisten like long snakes

obedient to the rhythm of the wands

by which a fakir wakens them to grace.

Like both the desert and the desert sky

insensible to human suffering,

and like the ocean’s endless labyrinth

she shows her body with indifference.

Precious minerals are her polished eyes,

and in her strange symbolic nature

angel and sphinx unite,

where diamonds, gold, and steel dissolve into one light,

shining forever, useless as a star,

the sterile woman’s icy majesty.

—

Five o’clock Absinthe – By Raoul Ponchon

When sundown spreads its hyacinth veil

Over Rastaquapolis

It’s surely time for an absinthe

Don’t you think, my son?

It’s especially in summer, when thirst wears you down

– Like a hundred Dreyfus gossips –

That it’s fitting to seek a fresh terrace

Along the boulevards

Where one finds the best absinthe

That of the sons of Pernod

Forget the rest! They’re like a sharp by Gounod:

mere illusion.

I say along the boulevards, and not in Rome,

Nor at the home of the Bonivards;

To be an absinthier is not to be any less a man.

And on our boulevards

One sees pass the sweetest creatures

With the gentlest manners:

You’re drinking, they rouse your nature,

They are exquisite… but let it pass.

You have your absinthe, it’s all about preparation

This is not, believe me,

As the cynics think, a small matter

Banal and without emotion

The heart should not be elsewhere

For the moment at least.

Absinthe wants first, beautiful ice water

The gods are my witness!

Tepid water, none of that: Jupiter condemns it.

Yourself, what say you?

Might as well, my faith, drink donkey piss

Or enema broth

And don’t come on like a German,

And scare her,

With your carafe; she would think, poor dear!

That you want to drown her.

Always rouse her from the first drop …

Like so … and so … very gently

Then behold her quiver, all vibrant

With an innocent smile;

Water must be for her like dew,

You must be certain about that:

Awaken the juices of which she is made

Only little by little.

Such as a young wife hesitates, startled

When, on her wedding night,

Her husband brusquely invades her bed

Thinking only of himself…

But wait: your absinthe has bloomed in the meantime,

See how she flowers,

Iridescent, passing through every shade of the opal

With a rare spirit.

You may sniff now, she is made;

And the beloved liquor

In the same instant brings joy to your head

And indulgence to your heart …

—

Sonnet de l’Absinthe – by Raoul Ponchon

Absinthe, oh my lively liquor

It seems, when I drink you,

I inhale the young forest soul

During the beautiful green season.

Your perfume disconcerts me

Aand in your opalescence,

I see the heavens of yore

Aas through an open gate.

What matter, O refuge of the damned,

That you a vain paradise be,

If you appease my need;

And if, before I enter the gate,

You make me put up with life,

By accustoming me with death

____________

On The Music Box: Patti Smith – “Ghandi” (From the album “Trampin”)

On the Menu:

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

The Links

Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara…

Stories of Our First Arrivals

Poetry: Robinson Jeffers

Art: Rick Griffin

(more of his works coming soon… Rick was a major influence on my paintings…)

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Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Some of my thoughts on my times in Big Sur… (apologies to Henry!)

“The one thing about this universe of ours which intrigues me, which makes me realize that it is divine and beyond all knowing, is that it lends itself so easily to any and all interpretations.”

© Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

So years ago back in the winter of 67-68, I fled the Haight, trailing a string of encounters with the authorities, a semi-shattered psyche from too much too soon, utopian yearnings collapsing under the weight of media and social assualts… Yet at the same time, there was an emerging fire that one would call a spiritual drive. Arriving in Lime Kiln Creek, I found community where food and drink were shared, and I received wonderful gifts that sustain me to this day. I discovered Wizards living along the shore and in the canyons. Wise beyond my then meager years.

Every weekend, the crowds from the Haight and other parts of the Bay Area would descend on us. Camp fires would spring up the canyon, song and dance. All would collapse away on Sunday night… and the stars and mist would again appear…

It was the perfect antedote to the life I had lived previously. Many of the dwellers and wanderers on that part of the coast had been there since the 50′s, some had lived their whole lives in the area. I discovered that the Esselen Indians had buried their dead at the juncture of the creek running into the Pacific after an event one night where 5 or so of us around a fire saw a spirit of one of the ancient ones walk out of the ocean and up the trail by the stream, hesitating at our fire and walking on up the canyon…

In my mind and heart Big Sur will always be… a place of deep, deep earth & sea magick…

—

I cannot adequately describe the beauty of Big Sur or the Western Shore that kisses the Pacific, it would take too long, and others have certainly done it better… but in my heart of hearts there are crafted epics telling of all I have known and seen on this edge of pure delight.

There is the ocean and the mountains tumbling together in sweet embrace… that wonderous joy of chaos and beauty… Big Sur awoke in me longings for the wild that still thrum through me to this day. From her foggy mornings to star pierced nights with my ramblings from the shores up through her canyons to her heights…

For years when I drove up and down California, I never took IS5 or 101… Highway 1 or nothing. Adding days on the trip from LA to Mt. Shasta, I would find myself drawn back camping by the shore. I would be refreshed, renewed and blessed for days, weeks after.

—

So years later, I sat reading “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch”, this work of Henry’s brought smiles and such deep longings to my heart. It was often a point of discussion with my friend Michael. We sometimes read passages to each other after a few drinks or a bit of hash in LA late at night. I had a different fire burning then, chasing spirits that led me to other worlds and other joys…

—

20 years on, I brought Mary to the Big Sur Inn for a weeks stay. A sweet, sweet memory!

Tripping together by the Little Sur River… drinks on the veranda with the racoons prowling around for treats, up to the Henry Miller Library, Emil White kissing Mary’s hand and telling her she was like a flower.

We had driven up from Los Angeles in our 1966 Ford Anglia that we had shipped over from the UK… a slow winding trip, 55-60 miles an hour (tops it seemed) up, up up the coast.

She was touched by the beauty and the magick, confirming for me that I wasn’t mistaken about the spell of it all…

Hopefully, more soon about these times.

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The Links:

Humans almost identical to Neanderthals

Plan to create human-cow embryos

Stone Age Twins Discovered Buried Under Mammoth’s Shoulder Blade

Myth Debunking & Storage:LSD Purity

___________

Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara

The vault of rock is painted with hands,

A multitude of hands in the twilight, a cloud of men’s palms, no more,

No other picture. There’s no one to say

Whether the brown shy quiet people who are dead intended

Religion or magic, or made their tracings

In the idleness of art; but over the division of years these careful

Signs-manual are now like a sealed message

Saying: “Look: we also were human; we had hands, not paws. All hail

You people with cleverer hands, our supplanters

In the beautiful country: enjoy her a season, her beauty, and come down

And be supplanted; for you also are human.”

— Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962

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Stories of Our First Arrivals

by Chris Loren

After matins at the hermitage I carry toast and tea down to a secret perch I know, through the brush and beneath sprawling live oak, to watch the coast and idle in the morning sun. I think of Jaime de Angulo’s character Esteban Berenda, who fled the Portolá expedition in 1769 for these mountains, married an Esselen woman, and when she died would sit out against the wall of his cabin and doze in the sun as I do now. He would dream of the Spanish galleons that would drift by each year on their way to Acapulco, carrying porcelain and spices and silk above all, to be offered in return for the silver they would carry back across the Pacific to Manila.

I come here again and again to this spot where the Pacific stretches out before me just as dreamily, and where any writing upon it is as delible as a voyage, since in the end she always takes all things back; Chinese coins, the mast of a forgotten junk, olivella shells, fishing baskets, the rumor of five Buddhist monks who walked this shore fifteen hundred years ago — a text I love, since so few know it.

We love myths of our origins. They help to locate us in the world. By telling us who we were, they tell us what we might become. On one hand creation stories, and on the other, allied with them, but not identical, are the stories of our first arrivals. Lovers know by heart the story of the moment they first met, and each of us who love this coast can tell the story of how, in one way or another, we first came here, too. Not a bad evening would be spent around a campfire in the backcountry, sharing those stories. Every poet has them. Robinson Jeffers tells his in the form of his first trip down the old coast road with Una in Corbett Grimes’ mail stage in December 1914. Jaime de Angulo describes riding on horseback below Post’s with Roche Castro around Christmas in 1915, where the coast trail becomes so narrow and dizzyingly steep, a thousand foot sheer drop to the Pacific, that de Angulo had to dismount, steady himself, and stand in awe.

These myths of creation and the stories of our first arrivals here: the first exist in a dateless, cyclic, mythopoetic time. The latter, by definition, begin with a date since they mark the first moment in a personal history, the arrival of a discrete “I” upon this shore. We find the fragments of creation stories in all the first peoples of this coast, the Rumsen and Esselens and Salinans and Chumash. In fact, the evidence points to a vast, integrated, epic culture wheel of myth so that what remains to us as fragments only appears so because our own recovery and understanding has become fragmentary itself. But to my incomplete understanding, there aren’t stories among these fragments that depict the arrival of the first people here. Perhaps someone can enlighten us otherwise, someone like Joe Freeman working with the earliest Salinan stories. But so far the origin stories all seem to be about how the human being was created anew in this very place after the flood, when eagle and coyote – with perhaps hummingbird or kingfisher – perched on a height somewhere like Pico Blanco and succeeded in riddling out the complexity of human existence once again.

For arrival stories we have had to wait for the Europeans. Juan Rodríquez Cabrillo made the first European voyage along the coast in 1542, then Sebastián Vizcaíno landed in Monterey Bay for three days in 1602. And perhaps most consequential of all, the Portolá land expedition of 1769, when history walked up this coast in the apparently meager form of a few Spanish officers, two Franciscans, a group of Catalan volunteers, leather-jacketed soldiers from New Spain, and neophyte indios from Baja California. Together they stood for an historical consciousness, a scientific mind in the form of engineering and cartography, a written script that appeared in four separate journals, and the story of a personal salvation and a personal aggrandisement, the cross and sword together. And meager as they might be, they would be enough.

But that alone should’ve been enough to warn us from the easy myth of a western movement, as if we could ever have had more in common with the eastern seaboard than we do with the vast and imponderable Pacific stretching beyond us like a dream towards the western islands of the dead and then beyond even them, the only western movement of any last import, the inevitable movement beyond the limitations of the self.

And then there is that other story that I love so much because it appears so incidental and so rare. In the year of Everlasting Origin – 499 AD in western reckoning – a Buddhist priest named Hui-Shen appeared in the Chinese court and said he had just returned from a land he called Fu-Sang, named for a plant we would later call the agave or maguey or yucca, and which the Spanish would call Our Lord’s Candle and which native peoples all along the coast used for food and cordage. You can follow Hui-Shen’s descriptions and distances from the Ainu in Japan to Kamkatcha to Fu-Sang, which measures out to California although the culture resembles people further south since the people of Fu-Sang had a form of writing and parchment made from the fu-sang plant. There is no iron in Fu-Sang, but plenty of copper, which like gold and silver, is not prized in trade. There are no tariffs or fixed prices or citadels or walled cities or warfare or implements of war. Houses are made with wooden beams and mats are made of reeds. Criminals are judged in excavated places and if guilty are strewn with ash. If the offender was a person of rank, the stigma could remain for generations.

Hui-Shen says that forty years before his journey five Buddhist monks from Kabul first brought the dharma to Fu-Sang, along with images of the Buddha. They introduced monasticism and, Hui-Shen says, “reformed the manners of the entire land.”

Czeslaw Milosz imagined a similar case, a Japanese survivor from a shipwreck washed up upon this shore, perhaps a fisherman or merchant or even a poet. The story is not only likely, but inevitable, since it is a straight line from Japan to here following the Kuroshiro current right along the coast. Then if the castaway moved upcanyon and found a group of brownskinned inhabitants, what would have happened then, Milosz wonders, since no rumor of the castaway would ever return home.

This is the perspective of an exile, of course. This coast appears in Milosz as a vanishing point, a kind of pure space that swallows history. Milosz partly took the idea from Jeffers; the beauty and violence intermingled in a wilderness like this, and also from a Jeffers’ poem he borrowed the idea that the only trace of the first inhabitants here was a cave of painted hands near Tassajara whereas the mountains are full of middens and bedrock mortars and birthing stones and jimsonweed marking ritual sites, the fit signs of people who moved in small groups, loved their children, knew the plants and animals and every nuance of the watersheds that fed them and were their calendars as they passed through the seasons like the deer they also followed, a son taking a kill from the herd his family knew for centuries in an elaborate and familiar dance between the hunter and the sacred prey. And while there are no relics of cathedrals or ramparts, they had poetry, too, those epic culture cycles that we only hold fragmented notes to, notes that only an eccentric few would even bother to attend to. Poetry and dance and visions and night-fears and hunger and intimacy and love. Hui-Shen and Esteban Berenda stand for a word coming back out of the wilderness, which is the only place the word ever comes from, and they allow us to affix a date to the dateless, that precious intersection, which perhaps relieves us a moment from the anxiety, or even terror, we feel when we enter this pure space for ourselves.

But that is the other story we know so well and tell around our campfires, if we are honest enough, the panic terror we have felt at the footfall of our own abandonment and aloneness and confrontation with what we love and fear and which will inevitably consume us, alienation or communion, the guise dependent only on the habit of mind we have come to trust, grace upon grace, carrying us beyond even this beloved coast, beyond even the impeccable sunset islands of the dead.

In the year of Everlasting Origin, Hui-Shen appeared in court. In 1769 the Portolá expedition walked up this coast…

_________________

Notes

Esteban Berenda is a character in Jaime de Angulo’s brilliant novella The Lariat.

Jeffers tells of his first trip downcoast in his preface to Jeffers Country: The Seed Plots of Robinson Jeffers’ Poetry, with photographs by Horace Lyon. That preface was reprinted in Not Man Apart.

Jaime de Angulo describes his first visit to Big Sur, on horseback with Roche Castro, in “La Costa del Sur,” which appears in A Jaime de Angulo Reader, edited by Bob Callahan.

Hui-Shen’s narrative of his travels to Fu-Sang are re-printed, with commentary, in Fu-Sang, or the Discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist Priests in the Fifth Century, by Charles G. Leland. This ancient chronicle is also discussed by historian Charles Chapman in his chapter “The Chinese Along the Pacific Coast in Ancient Times” from A History of California: the Spanish Period, and also by Sandy Lydon in Chinese Gold: the Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region.

Nobel poet Czeslaw Milosz imagines the Japanese castaway and discusses Jeffers’ poem “Hands” in “The Edge of the Continent” in Road-Side Dog. Milosz is one of the most perceptive readers of Jeffers, who figures prominently in Milosz’s Visions from San Francisco Bay, most directly in “Carmel.” Cf. in particular Milosz’s poem “To Robinson Jeffers.”

I am grateful to Jeffers’ scholar Rob Kafka for our correspondence on “panic terror in the Santa Lucias,” a theme that recurs in Jeffers’ poetry, in de Angulo’s writings, and in Steinbeck’s short story “Flight.”

___________

Poetry: Robinson Jeffers

Carmel Point

The extraordinary patience of things!

This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-

How beautiful when we first beheld it,

Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;

No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,

Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-

Now the spoiler has come: does it care?

Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide

That swells and in time will ebb, and all

Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty

Lives in the very grain of the granite,

Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:

We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;

We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident

As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

—

Fire On The Hills

The deer were bounding like blown leaves

Under the smoke in front the roaring wave of the brush-fire;

I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.

Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror

Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned

Down the back slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle

Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,

Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders

He had come from far off for the good hunting

With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless

Blue, and the hills merciless black,

The sombre-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.

I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,

The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than men.

—

1941

For Una

I built her a tower when

I was young –

Sometime she will die.

I built it with my hands.

I hung stones in the sky.

Old, but still strong, I climb

The stone –

Sometime she will die

Climb the steep rough steps

Alone,

And weep in the sky.

Never weep, never weep.

Never be astonished, dear

Expect change.

Nothing is strange

We have seen the human race

Capture all its dreams,

All except peace.

Tonight dear,

Let’s forget all that, that and the war,

And enisle ourselves a little beyond time

You with this Irish whiskey. I with red wine.

While the stars go over the sleepless ocean.

And sometime after midnight I’ll pluck you a wreath.

Of chosen ones; we’ll talk about love and earth,

Rock solid themes, old and deep as the sea

Admit nothing more timely. Nothing less real.

While the stars go over the timeless ocean.

And when they vanish we’ll have spent this night well.

—

The Excesses Of God

Is it not by his high superfluousness we know

Our God? For to be equal a need

Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling

Rainbows over the rain

And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows

On the domes of deep sea-shells,

And make the necessary embrace of breeding

Beautiful also as fire,

Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom

Nor the birds without music:

There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,

The extravagant kindness, the fountain

Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise

If power and desire were perch-mates.

—

The Summit Redwood

Only stand high a long enough time your lightning

will come; that is what blunts the peaks of

redwoods;

But this old tower of life on the hilltop has taken

it more than twice a century, this knows in

every

Cell the salty and the burning taste, the shudder

and the voice.

The fire from heaven; it has

felt the earth’s too

Roaring up hill in autumn, thorned oak-leaves tossing

their bright ruin to the bitter laurel-leaves,

and all

Its under-forest has died and died, and lives to be

burnt; the redwood has lived. Though the fire

entered,

It cored the trunk while the sapwood increased. The

trunk is a tower, the bole of the trunk is a

black cavern,

The mast of the trunk with its green boughs the

mountain stars are strained through

Is like the helmet-spike on the highest head of an

army; black on lit blue or hidden in cloud

It is like the hill’s finger in heaven. And when the

cloud hides it, though in barren summer, the

boughs

Make their own rain.

Old Escobar had a cunning trick

when he stole beef. He and his grandsons

Would drive the cow up here to a starlight death and

hoist the carcass into the tree’s hollow,

Then let them search his cabin he could smile for

pleasure, to think of his meat hanging secure

Exalted over the earth and the ocean, a theft like a

star, secret against the supreme sky.

Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap, lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.—Alan Watts

“There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, `Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’ (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well.

Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed; it was labelled `ORANGE MARMALADE’, but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear of killing somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it.”

________

On The Menu

The Links

Mash Up: Alice Amphibian

INTERBEING – Thich Nhat Hanh

The Poetry Of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

Bio of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson…

Enjoy!

Gwyllm

_________

The Links:

Signs of Intelligent Life?

‘YOU BELONG IN HELL’

Faux News Fau Paux…

Feline Reactions to Bearded Men

Chimpan News Channel SP

_________

Mash Up: Alice Amphibian…

_________

INTERBEING – Thich Nhat Hanh

Through mindfulness we experience Interbeing

which means everything is in everything else.

Therefore, one should know that Perfect Understanding

is a great mantra, is the highest mantra,

is the unequalled mantra, the destroyer of all suffering,

the incorruptible truth. This is the mantra:

“Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.”

A MANTRA IS something that you utter when your body, your mind and your breath are at one in deep concentration. When you dwell in that deep concentration, you look into things and see them as clearly as you see an orange that you hold in the palm of your hand. Looking deeply into the five skandhas, Avalokitesvara (the Buddha) saw the nature of inter- being and overcame all pain. He became completely liberated. It was in that state of deep concentration, of joy, of liberation, that he uttered something important. That is why his utterance is a mantra.

When two young people love each other, but the young man has not said so yet, the young lady may be waiting for three very important words. If the young man is a very responsible person, he probably wants to be sure of his feeling, and he may wait a long time before saying it. Then one day, sitting together in a park, when no one else is nearby and everything is quiet, after the two of them have been silent for a long time, he utters these three words. When the young lady hears this, she trembles, because it is such an important statement. When you say something like that with your whole being, not just with your mouth or your intellect, but with your whole being, it can transform the world. A statement that has such power of transformation is called a mantra. Alokitesvara’s mantra is

“Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.”

Gate means gone. Gone from suffering to the liberation of suffering. Gone from forgetfulness to mindfulness. Gone from duality into non-duality. Gate gate means gone, gone. Paragate means gone all the way to the other shore. So this mantra is said in a very strong way. Gone, gone, gone all the way over. In Parasamgate sammeans everyone, the sangha, the entire community of beings. Everyone gone over to the other shore. Bodhi is the light inside, enlightenment, or awakening. You see it and the vision of reality liberates you. And svaha is a cry of joy or excitement, like “Welcome!” or “Hallelujah!” “Gone, gone, gone all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore, enlightenment, svaha !”

THAT IS WHAT the bodhisattva uttered. When we listen to this mantra, we should bring ourselves into that state of attention, of concentration, so that we can receive the strength emanated by Avalokitesvara. We do not recite the Heart Sutra like singing a song, or with our intellect alone. If you practise the meditation on emptiness, if you penetrate the nature of interbeing with all your heart, your body, and your mind, you will realize a state that is quite concentrated. If you say the mantra then, with all your being, the mantra will have power and you will be able to have real communication, real communion with Avalokitesvara, and you will be able to transform yourself in the direction of enlightenment.

This text is not just for chanting, or to be put on an altar for worship. It is given to us as a tool to work for our liberation, for the liberation of all beings. It is like a tool for farming, given to us so that we may farm. This is the gift of Avalokita.

There are three kinds of gift. The first is the gift of material resources. The second is the gift of know-how, the gift of the Dharma. The third, the highest kind of gift, is the gift of non-fear. Avalokitesvara is someone who can help us liberate ourselves from fear.

TheHeart Sutra gives us solid ground for making peace with ourselves, for transcending the fear of birth and death, the duality of this and that. In the light of emptiness, everything is everything else, we inter-are, everyone is responsible for everything that happens in life. When you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace for the whole world. With the smile that you produce in yourself, with the conscious breathing you establish within yourself, you begin to work for peace in the world.

To smile is not to smile only for yourself, the world will change because of your smile. When you practise sitting meditation, if you enjoy even one moment of your sitting, if you establish serenity and happiness inside yourself, you provide the world with a solid base of peace. If you do not give yourself peace, how can you share it with others? If you do not begin your peace work with yourself, where will you go to begin it? To sit, to smile, to look at things and really see them, these are the basis of peace work.

Yesterday, we had a tangerine party. Everyone was offered one tangerine. We put the tangerine on the palm of our hand and looked at it, breathing in a way that the tangerine became real. Most of the time when we eat a tangerine, we do not look at it. We think about many other things. To look at a tangerine is to see the blossom forming into the fruit, to see the sunshine and the rain. The tangerine in our palm is the wonderful presence of life. We are able to really see that tangerine and smell its blossom and the warm, moist earth. As the tangerine becomes real, we become real. Life in that moment becomes real.

Mindfully we began to peel our tangerine and smell its fragrance. We carefully took each section of the tangerine and put in on our tongue, and we could feel that it was a real tangerine. We ate each section of the tangerine in perfect mindfulness until we finished the entire fruit. Eating a tangerine in this way is very important, because both the tangerine and the eater of the tangerine become real. This, too, is the basic work for peace.

In Buddhist meditation we do not struggle for the kind of enlightenment that will happen five or ten years from now. We practise so that each moment of our life becomes real life. And, therefore, when we meditate, we sit for sitting; we don’t sit for something else. If we sit for twenty minutes, these twenty minutes should bring us joy, life. If we practise walking meditation, we walk just for walking, not to arrive. We have to be alive with each step, and if we are, each step brings real life back to us.

The same kind of mindfulness can be practised when we eat breakfast, or when we hold a child in our arms. Hugging is a Western custom, but we from the East would like to contribute the practice of conscious breathing to it. When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, breathe in and out three times and your happiness will be multiplied by at least tenfold. And when you look at someone, really look at them with mindfulness, and practise conscious breathing.

At the beginning of each meal, I recommend that you look at your plate and silently recite, “My plate is empty now, but I know that it is going to be filled with delicious food in just a moment.”While waiting to be served or to serve yourself, I suggest you breathe three times and look at it even more deeply, “At this very moment many, many people around the world are also holding a plate but their plate is going to be empty for a long time.” Forty thousand children die each day because of the lack of food. Children alone. We can be very happy to have such wonderful food, but we also suffer because we are capable of seeing. But when we see in this way, it makes us sane, because the way in front ofus is clear – the way to live so that we can make peace with ourselves and with the world.

When we see the good and the bad, the wondrous and the deep suffering, we have to live in a way that we can make peace between ourselves and the world. Understanding is the fruit of meditation. Understanding is the basis of everything.

Each breath we take, each step we make, each smile we realize, is a positive contribution to peace, a necessary step in the direction of peace for the world. In the light of interbeing, peace and happiness in your daily life mean peace and happiness in the world.

Thank you for being so attentive. Thank you for listening to Avalokitesvara. Because you are there, the Heart Sutra has become very easy.

_________

The Poetry Of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

OETA FIT, NON NASCITUR

“How shall I be a poet?

How shall I write in rhyme?

You told me once ‘the very wish

Partook of the sublime.’

Then tell me how! Don’t put me off

With your ‘another time’!”

The old man smiled to see him,

To hear his sudden sally;

He liked the lad to speak his mind

Enthusiastically;

And thought “There’s no hum-drum in him,

Nor any shilly-shally.”

“And would you be a poet

Before you’ve been to school?

Ah, well! I hardly thought you

So absolute a fool.

First learn to be spasmodic –

A very simple rule.

“For first you write a sentence,

And then you chop it small;

Then mix the bits, and sort them out

Just as they chance to fall:

The order of the phrases makes

No difference at all.

‘Then, if you’d be impressive,

Remember what I say,

That abstract qualities begin

With capitals alway:

The True, the Good, the Beautiful –

Those are the things that pay!

“Next, when you are describing

A shape, or sound, or tint;

Don’t state the matter plainly,

But put it in a hint;

And learn to look at all things

With a sort of mental squint.”

“For instance, if I wished, Sir,

Of mutton-pies to tell,

Should I say ‘dreams of fleecy flocks

Pent in a wheaten cell’?”

“Why, yes,” the old man said: “that phrase

Would answer very well.

“Then fourthly, there are epithets

That suit with any word –

As well as Harvey’s Reading Sauce

With fish, or flesh, or bird –

Of these, ‘wild,’ ‘lonely,’ ‘weary,’ ‘strange,’

Are much to be preferred.”

“And will it do, O will it do

To take them in a lump –

As ‘the wild man went his weary way

To a strange and lonely pump’?”

“Nay, nay! You must not hastily

To such conclusions jump.

“Such epithets, like pepper,

Give zest to what you write;

And, if you strew them sparely,

They whet the appetite:

But if you lay them on too thick,

You spoil the matter quite!

“Last, as to the arrangement:

Your reader, you should show him,

Must take what information he

Can get, and look for no im-

mature disclosure of the drift

And purpose of your poem.

“Therefore, to test his patience –

How much he can endure –

Mention no places, names, or dates,

And evermore be sure

Throughout the poem to be found

Consistently obscure.

“First fix upon the limit

To which it shall extend:

Then fill it up with ‘Padding’

(Beg some of any friend):

Your great SENSATION-STANZA

You place towards the end.”

“And what is a Sensation,

Grandfather, tell me, pray?

I think I never heard the word

So used before to-day:

Be kind enough to mention one

‘EXEMPLI GRATIA.’”

And the old man, looking sadly

Across the garden-lawn,

Where here and there a dew-drop

Yet glittered in the dawn,

Said “Go to the Adelphi,

And see the ‘Colleen Bawn.’

‘The word is due to Boucicault –

The theory is his,

Where Life becomes a Spasm,

And History a Whiz:

If that is not Sensation,

I don’t know what it is.

“Now try your hand, ere Fancy

Have lost its present glow – “

“And then,” his grandson added,

“We’ll publish it, you know:

Green cloth – gold-lettered at the back –

In duodecimo!”

Then proudly smiled that old man

To see the eager lad

Rush madly for his pen and ink

And for his blotting-pad –

But, when he thought of PUBLISHING,

His face grew stern and sad.

—

MELANCHOLETTA

WITH saddest music all day long

She soothed her secret sorrow:

At night she sighed “I fear ’twas wrong

Such cheerful words to borrow.

Dearest, a sweeter, sadder song

I’ll sing to thee to-morrow.”

I thanked her, but I could not say

That I was glad to hear it:

I left the house at break of day,

And did not venture near it

Till time, I hoped, had worn away

Her grief, for nought could cheer it!

My dismal sister! Couldst thou know

The wretched home thou keepest!

Thy brother, drowned in daily woe,

Is thankful when thou sleepest;

For if I laugh, however low,

When thou’rt awake, thou weepest!

I took my sister t’other day

(Excuse the slang expression)

To Sadler’s Wells to see the play

In hopes the new impression

Might in her thoughts, from grave to gay

Effect some slight digression.

I asked three gay young dogs from town

To join us in our folly,

Whose mirth, I thought, might serve to drown

My sister’s melancholy:

The lively Jones, the sportive Brown,

And Robinson the jolly.

The maid announced the meal in tones

That I myself had taught her,

Meant to allay my sister’s moans

Like oil on troubled water:

I rushed to Jones, the lively Jones,

And begged him to escort her.

Vainly he strove, with ready wit,

To joke about the weather –

To ventilate the last ‘ON DIT’ –

To quote the price of leather –

She groaned “Here I and Sorrow sit:

Let us lament together!”

I urged “You’re wasting time, you know:

Delay will spoil the venison.”

“My heart is wasted with my woe!

There is no rest – in Venice, on

The Bridge of Sighs!” she quoted low

From Byron and from Tennyson.

I need not tell of soup and fish

In solemn silence swallowed,

The sobs that ushered in each dish,

And its departure followed,

Nor yet my suicidal wish

To BE the cheese I hollowed.

Some desperate attempts were made

To start a conversation;

“Madam,” the sportive Brown essayed,

“Which kind of recreation,

Hunting or fishing, have you made

Your special occupation?”

Her lips curved downwards instantly,

As if of india-rubber.

“Hounds IN FULL CRY I like,” said she:

(Oh how I longed to snub her!)

“Of fish, a whale’s the one for me,

IT IS SO FULL OF BLUBBER!”

The night’s performance was “King John.”

“It’s dull,” she wept, “and so-so!”

Awhile I let her tears flow on,

She said they soothed her woe so!

At length the curtain rose upon

‘Bombastes Furioso.’

In vain we roared; in vain we tried

To rouse her into laughter:

Her pensive glances wandered wide

From orchestra to rafter –

“TIER UPON TIER!” she said, and sighed;

And silence followed after.

—

ATALANTA IN CAMDEN-TOWN

AY, ’twas here, on this spot,

In that summer of yore,

Atalanta did not

Vote my presence a bore,

Nor reply to my tenderest talk “She had

heard all that nonsense before.”

She’d the brooch I had bought

And the necklace and sash on,

And her heart, as I thought,

Was alive to my passion;

And she’d done up her hair in the style that

the Empress had brought into fashion.

I had been to the play

With my pearl of a Peri –

But, for all I could say,

She declared she was weary,

That “the place was so crowded and hot, and

she couldn’t abide that Dundreary.”

Then I thought “Lucky boy!

‘Tis for YOU that she whimpers!”

And I noted with joy

Those sensational simpers:

And I said “This is scrumptious!” – a

phrase I had learned from the Devonshire shrimpers.

And I vowed “‘Twill be said

I’m a fortunate fellow,

When the breakfast is spread,

When the topers are mellow,

When the foam of the bride-cake is white,

and the fierce orange-blossoms are yellow!”

O that languishing yawn!

O those eloquent eyes!

I was drunk with the dawn

Of a splendid surmise –

I was stung by a look, I was slain by a tear,

by a tempest of sighs.

Then I whispered “I see

The sweet secret thou keepest.

And the yearning for ME

That thou wistfully weepest!

And the question is ‘License or Banns?’,

though undoubtedly Banns are the cheapest.”

“Be my Hero,” said I,

“And let ME be Leander!”

But I lost her reply –

Something ending with “gander” –

For the omnibus rattled so loud that no

mortal could quite understand her.

___________

Lewis Carroll is the pseudonym of the English writer and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, b. Jan. 27, 1832, d. Jan. 14, 1898, known especially for ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (1865) and THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (1872), children’s books that are also distinguished as satire and as examples of verbal wit. Carroll invented his pen name by translating his first two names into the Latin “Carolus Lodovicus” and then anglicizing it into “Lewis Carroll.”

The son of a clergyman and the firstborn of 11 children, Carroll began at an early age to entertain himself and his family with magic tricks, marionette shows, and poems written for homemade newspapers. From 1846 to 1850 he attended Rugby School; he graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1854. Carroll remained there, lecturing on mathematics and writing treatises and guides for students. Although he took deacon’s orders in 1861, Carroll was never ordained a priest, partly because he was afflicted with a stammer that made preaching difficult and partly, perhaps, because he had discovered other interests.

Among Carroll’s avocations was photography, at which he became proficient. He excelled especially at photographing children. Alice Liddell, one of the three daughters of Henry George Liddell, the dean of Christ Church, was one of his photographic subjects and the model for the fictional Alice.

Carroll’s comic and children’s works also include The Hunting of the Snark (1876), two collections of humorous verse, and the two parts of Sylvie and Bruno (1889, 1893), unsuccessful attempts to re-create the Alice fantasies.

As a mathematician, Carroll was conservative and derivative. As a logician, he was more interested in logic as a game than as an instrument for testing reason. In his diversions as a photographer and author of comic fantasy, he is most memorable and original–the man who, for example, contributed, in “Jabberwocky,” the word chortle, a portmanteau word that combines “snort” and “chuckle,” to the English language. (Donald J. Gray)

Here Tis… Hope you enjoy!

G

On The Menu

The Links

Oscar Wilde…

The Field of Boliauns

Poetry: The Fae…

Art: John Millais

______________

The Links:

Sea Urchin Genome Reveals Striking Similarities to Humans

Save Walmart!

My Half-Year of Hell With Christian Fundamentalists

The Air Ship of 1896

Rock n Roll Stocking Stuffer!

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Oscar Wilde…

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The Field of Boliauns

One fine day in harvest–it was indeed Lady-day in harvest, that everybody knows to be one of the greatest holidays in the year–Tom Fitzpatrick was taking a ramble through the ground, and went along the sunny side of a hedge; when all of a sudden he heard a clacking sort of noise a little before him in the hedge. “Dear me,” said Tom, “but isn’t it surprising to hear the stonechatters singing so late in the season?” So Tom stole on, going on the tops of his toes to try if he could get a sight of what was making the noise, to see if he was right in his guess. The noise stopped; but as Tom looked sharply through the bushes, what should he see in a nook of the hedge but a brown pitcher, that might hold about a gallon and a half of liquor; and by-and-by a little wee teeny tiny bit of an old man, with a little motty of a cocked hat stuck upon the top of his head, a deeshy daushy leather apron hanging before him, pulled out a little wooden stool, and stood up upon it, and dipped a little piggin into the pitcher, and took out the full of it, and put it beside the stool, and then sat down under the pitcher, and began to work at putting a heel-piece on a bit of a brogue just fit for himself. “Well, by the powers,” said Tom to himself, “I often heard tell of the Lepracauns, and, to tell God’s truth, I never rightly believed in them–but here’s one of them in real earnest. If I go knowingly to work, I’m a made man. They say a body must never take their eyes off them, or they’ll escape.

Tom now stole on a little further, with his eye fixed on the little man just as a cat does with a mouse. So when he got up quite close to him, “God bless your work, neighbour,” said Tom.

The little man raised up his head, and “Thank you kindly,” said he.

“I wonder you’d be working on the holiday!” said Tom.

“That’s my own business, not yours,” was the reply.

“Well, may be you’d be civil enough to tell us what you’ve got in the pitcher there?” said Tom.

“That I will, with pleasure,” said he; ”it’s good beer.”

“Beer!” said Tom. “Thunder and fire! where did you get it?”

“Where did I get it, is it? Why, I made it. And what do you think I made it of?”

“Devil a one of me knows,” said Tom; but of malt, I suppose, what else?”

“There you’re out. I made it of heath.”

“Of heath!” said Tom, bursting out laughing; “sure you don’t think me to be such a fool as to believe that?”

“Do as you please,” said he, “but what I tell you is the truth. Did you never hear tell of the Danes.”

“Well, what about them?” said Tom.

“Why, all the about them there is, is that when they were here they taught us to make beer out of the heath, and the secret’s in my family ever since.”

“Will you give a body a taste of your beer?” said Tom.

“I’ll tell you what it is, young man, it would be fitter for you to be looking after your father’s property than to be bothering decent quiet people with your foolish questions. There now, while you’re idling away your time here, there’s the cows have broke into the oats, and are knocking the corn all about.”

Tom was taken so by surprise with this that he was just on the very point of turning round when he recollected himself; so, afraid that the like might happen again, he made a grab at the Lepracaun, and caught him up in his hand; but in his hurry he overset the pitcher, and spilt all the beer, so that he could not get a taste of it to tell what sort it was. He then swore that he would kill him if he did not show him where his money was. Tom looked so wicked and so bloody-minded that the little man was quite frightened; so says he, “Come along with me a couple of fields off, and I’ll show you a crock of gold.”

So they went, and Tom held the Lepracaun fast in his hand, and never took his eyes from off him, though they had to cross hedges and ditches, and a crooked bit of bog, till at last they came to a great field all full of boliauns, and the Lepracaun pointed to a big boliaun, and says he, “Dig under that boliaun, and you’ll get the great crock all full of guineas.”

Tom in his hurry had never thought of bringing a spade with him, so he made up his mind to run home and fetch one; and that he might know the place again he took off one of his red garters, and tied it round the boliaun.

Then he said to the Lepracaun, “Swear ye’ll not take that garter away from that boliaun.” And the Lepracaun swore right away not to touch it.

“I suppose,” said the Lepracaun, very civilly, “you have no further occasion for me?”

“No,” says Tom; “you may go away now, if you please, and God speed you, and may good luck attend you wherever you go.”

“Well, good-bye to you, Tom Fitzpatrick,” said the Lepracaun; “and much good may it do you when you get it.”

So Tom ran for dear life, till he came home and got a spade, and then away with him, as hard as he could go, back to the field of boliauns; but when he got there, lo and behold! not a boliaun in the field but had a red garter, the very model of his own, tied about it; and as to digging up the whole field, that was all nonsense, for there were more than forty good Irish acres in it. So Tom came home again with his spade on his shoulder, a little cooler than he went, and many’s the hearty curse he gave the Lepracaun every time he thought of the neat turn he had served him.

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Poetry: The Fae…

The Elve’s Dance

anon.

Round about, round about,

In a fair ring-a,

Thus we dance, thus we dance,

And thus we sing-a,

Trip and go, to and fro

Over this green-a,

All about, in and out,

For our brave Queen-a.

Invocation to the Fairies

By F.D. Browne-Hemans

Fays and fairies haste away!

This is Harriet’s holiday:

Bring the lyre, and bring the lute,

Bring the sweetly-breathing flute;

Wreaths of cowslips hither bring,

All the honours of the spring;

Adorn the grot with all that’s gai,

Fays and fairies haste away

Bring the vine to Bacchus dear,

Bring the purple lilac here,

Festoons of roses, sweetest flower,

The yellow primrose of the bower,

Blue-ey’d violets wet with dew,

Bring the clustering woodbine too

Bring the baskets made of rush,

The cherry with it’s ripen’d blush,

The downy peach, so soft so fair,

The luscious grap, the mellow pear:

These to Harriet hither bring,

And sweetly in return she’ll sing

Be the brilliant grotto scene

The palace of the Fairy Queen

Form the sprightly circling dance,

Fairies here your steps advance;

To harp’s soft dulcet sound

Let your footsteps lightly bound

Unveil your forms to mortal eye;

Let Harriet view your revelry

Faery Song

By John Keats

Ah ! Woe is me ! poor silver-wing !

That I must chant they lady’s dirge,

And death to this fair haunt of spring,

Of melody, and streams of flowery verge –

Poor silver-wing ! ah ! woe is me !

That I must see

These blossoms snow upon thy lady’s pall !

Go, pretty page ! and in her ear

Whisper that the hour is near !

Softly tell her not to fear

Such calm Favonian burial !

Go, pretty page ! and softly tell –

The blossoms hang by a melting spell,

And fall they must, ere a star wink thrice

Upon her closed eyes,

That now in vain are weeping in their last tears,

At sweet life leaving, and these arbors green –

Rich dowry from the spirit of the spheres

alas ! poor queen !

Green Rain

by Mary Webb

Into the scented woods we’ll go,

And see the blackthorn swim in snow.

High above, in the budding leaves,

A brooding dove awakes and grieves;

The glades with mingled music stir,

And wildly laughs the woodpecker.

When blackthorn petals pearl the breeze,

There are the twisted hawthorne trees

Thick-set with buds, as clear and pale

As golden water or green hail–

As if a storm of rain had stood

Enchanted in the thorny wood,

And, hearing fairy voices call,

Hung poised, forgetting how to fall.

Here We Come A-Piping

anon.

Here we come a-piping,

In springtime and in May;

Green fruit a-ripening,

And Winter fled away.

The Queen she sits upon the strand,

Fair as lily, white as wand;

Seven billows on the sea,

Horses riding fast and free,

And bells beyond the sand.

Trudell The Movie…

Mary rented “Trudell” from Netflix… we watched it last night. I have seen John perform a couple of times, and have long loved his poetry. Sadly, his poetry and lyrics are not easily available on the net, so we will not have the pleasure of sharing them with you at this time. (Hopefully John will put some of his stuff out there so people can get a taste of his work….)

His story is a strong one, with many twist and turns. Much is tragedy, and I ask you to rent or buy this film and share it with friends. It is very moving.

I have never met John but I did know his first music partner, Jesse Ed Davis. I met Jesse in Venice Ca, back in the 70′s, and talked to him off and on over several years. A gentle soul, and a wicked guitar player.

Lots of good stuff this time around,

Gwyllm

—

On The Menu:

The Links

Trudell Speaks

Super Kim!

The War on Drugs is a War on Consciousness

Navajo Country Poetry..

(All Photos of John Trudell from TrudellTheMovie.com)

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The Links:

Indigenous Environmental Network

Free Leonard…

Axis of Justice

link tv

Trudell the movie…

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John Trudell Speaks…

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A little game being played…

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The War on Drugs is a War on Consciousness

by Carol Moore

I believe that a prime motivation of those waging the current “war on drugs” is to discredit and destroy any “counterculture” before it becomes the dominant culture. Religious fundamentalists have not forgotten the religious upheavals of the 1960s when millions of young people, often after using marijuana and other psychedelics, reading Timothy Leary or Alan Watts, or listening to “psychedelic” music by the Beatles or the Jefferson Airplane, rejected Christianity and Judaism. Even ministers, priests, nuns and rabbis abandoned their callings! Consciousness, altered consciousness, and higher consciousness rather than obedience, duty, and sacrifice became the prime concern of the new spirituality.

The response of Catholic, conservative and fundamentalist religious groups was to feverishly expand their efforts to enforce more fundamentalist views among their members and to gain greater political influence. While fundamentalists have lost many battles over abortion, prayer and pornography, they have found the government a willing ally in the “war on drugs”. For just as drugs, the counterculture and “consciousness” undermine faith in hierarchical religious authority, so do they undermine faith in political authority.

John Lennon’s “Imagine”, an anthem of the counter culture, asks us to imagine “no religion” and “no countries”. Lennon, a drug use advocate, was murdered by a fundamentalist Christian, a former fan, who knew how subversive and powerful this message is. In 1990, on Lennon’s 50th birthday radio stations worldwide played “Imagine” simultaneously to a billion people. All heard Yoko Ono say, “The dream we dream alone is just a dream, but the dream we dream together is reality.” The message is that we are not subjects of an authoritarian god or even natural law, but that we consciously co-create reality. Implied is the possibility of a diversity of realities.

Despite the crackdown on drug use, the belief that consciousness is not only the purpose, but perhaps even the very nature, of reality has spread through writings and practices of “new physics” aficionados, humanistic psychologists, and the new age, eastern religion, wiccan, and eco-spirituality movements. Their millions of advocates still lack a coherent and motivating philosophical synthesis or organizational focus. And while many of these individuals have used drugs, and still do, decriminalization of drugs is not yet a major focus of their thought or action.

However, as the horrors of the drug war mount and the injustices spread to all of us, the uneasy feeling that there is some hidden agenda behind the “war on drugs” grows among more aware and conscious individuals. Some of these agendas are scapegoating drug users for larger ills, excuses for racial repression and expanding government power, an outlet for militarism, and the desire of tobacco and liquor producers to squash potential competition.

However, a prime hidden agenda remains the suppression of an alternate religious view—that consciousness is the nature and purpose of reality, that humans freely create their realities. Because psychoactive drugs are a means of quickly and effectively initiating individuals into this view they must be suppressed—even if it means punishment, incarceration and death for hundreds of thousands of people. But such is the nature of all religious wars.

Excerpts from Intoxication The “Fourth Drive” by Dr. Ronald K. Siegel. Article in the September/October 1990 Humanist magazine. (Later made into a book.)

History shows that we have always used drugs. In every age, in every part of this planet, people have pursued intoxication with plant drugs, alcohol, and other mind-altering substances…Almost every species of animal has engaged in the natural pursuit of intoxicants. This behavior has so much force and persistence that it functions like a drive, just like our drives of hunger, thirst and sex. This “fourth drive” is a natural part of biology, creating the irrepressible demand for drugs. In a sense, the war on drugs is a war against ourselves, a denial of our very nature…

Legalization is a risky proposal that would cut the drug crime connection and reduce many social ills, yet it would invite more use and abuse…Making some dangerous drugs illegal while keeping others (like alcohol and cigarettes) legal is not the solution. Out-lawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing sex in order to win the war against AIDS.

In order to solve the drug problem, we must recognize that intoxicants are medicines, treatments for the human condition. Then we must make them as safe and risk-free and, yes, as healthy as possible.

Dream with me for a moment. What would be wrong if we had perfectly safe drugs? It mean drugs that delivered the same effects as our most popular ones but never caused dependency, disease, dysfunction, or death?… Such intoxicants are available right now that are far safer than the ones we currently use…We must begin by recognizing that there is a legitimate place in our society for intoxication.

Excerpts from The Natural Mind—An Investigation of Drugs and the Higher Consciousness by Dr. Andrew Weil, 1985.

Human beings are born with a drive to experiment with ways of changing consciousness…The desire to alter consciousness periodically is an innate, normal drive analogous to hunger or the sexual drive…

The root of the drug problem is the failure of our culture to provide for a basic human need. Once we recognize the importance and value of other states of consciousness, we can begin to teach people, particularly the young, how to satisfy their needs without drugs. The chief advantage of drugs is that they are quick and effective, producing desired results without requiring effort. Their chief disadvantage is that they fail us over time; used regularly and frequently, they do not maintain the experiences sought and, instead, limit our options and freedom…

Altered states of consciousness…appear to be the ways to more effective and fuller use of the nervous system, to development of creative and intellectual faculties, and to attainment of certain kinds of thought that have been deemed exalted by all who have experienced them…(They) may even be a key factor in the present evolution of the human nervous system…To try to thwart (their) expression in individuals and society might be psychologically crippling for people and evolutionarily suicidal for the species.

Excerpt from book Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna, 1992.

The suppression of the natural human fascination with altered states of consciousness and the present perilous situation of all life on earth are intimately and causally connected. When we suppress access to shamanic ecstasy, we close off the refreshing waters of emotion that flow from having a deeply bonded, almost symbiotic relationship to the earth. As a consequence, the maladaptive social styles that encourage overpopulation, resource mismanagement, and environmental toxification develop and maintain themselves.

Copyright 1998 by Carol Moore. Permission to reprint freely granted, provided the article is reprinted in full and that any reprint is accompanied by this copyright statement and the URL http://www.carolmoore.net.

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Navajo Country Poetry…

Onion and Fried Potatoes

by Nia Francisco

My grandmother, my Nali

she always made us herd

our sheep and goats

before the sun rose high

over the highest mountain peak

We herd them towards

the mountain slopes

Cool summer mornings

birds chirping

goats nibbling at leaves

along our trail

My grandfather

he would hitch the dark horses

to his working wagon

I remember the dark horses

they were his best working team

They haul wood drag timber for him

He named one horse Bidi

and the other Liil’zhiin

Some summer morning

My nali man he would hitch them

and say we are going to lumber jack

up there in the mountain

where the pines are tall and straight

Those mornings

my grandmother she gathers

her pots and the food

Our grandparents would designate

where they would be

and we’d herd to that place

when we’re getting close

grandfather’s steady chopping

echoed into the mountains

When we’re getting close

the smell of the spicy aroma

of onions and potatoes frying

and in the distance

the cooking fire

would welcome us

My grandmother patting out

goatmilk bread over red hot coal

My grandfather he’d be sharpening

his axe sitting on pine needles

in the lacy shadow of oak leaves

and blue spruce trees

there beside him

he’d have several feet of pine bark

He’d diligently scrape the thin white

lining of the pine tree bark

and give it to me to chew on

the sinew like strings

tasted sweet

I’d chew it herding home

walking behind

the slowest ewes

I’d chew until I fell asleep at twilight

—

Moonrise, Hernandez

by

Jane Candia Coleman

(For Ansel Adams)

It is not night yet

but we stand waiting

for the moon to come

for the first thin slice

to deepen dark places.

Its quick leap

its sudden light

do nothing to dispel

our solitude.

There are needs in us

for which we have only silence.

If someone would photograph

this moonrise

we would show in the foreground,

head stones, sorrowing,

side by side.

—

She Had Some Horses

by Joy Harjo

She had some horses.

She had horses who were bodies of sand.

She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.

She had horses who were skins of ocean water.

She had horses who were the blue air of sky.

She had horses who were fur and teeth.

She had horses who were clay and would break.

She had horses who were splintered red cliff.

She had some horses.

She had horses with long, pointed breasts.

She had horses with full, brown thighs.

She had horses who laughed too much.

She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.

She had horses who licked razor blades.

She had some horses.

She had horses who danced in their mothers’ arms.

She had horses who thought they were the sun and their bodies shone and burned like stars.

She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.

She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet in stalls of their own making.

She had some horses.

She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs.

She had horses who cried in their beer.

She had horses who spit at male queens who made them afraid of themselves.

She had horses who said they weren’t afraid.

She had horses who lied.

She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped bare of their tongues.

She had some horses.

She had horses who called themselves, “horse.”

She had horses who called themselves, “spirit.” and kept their voices secret and to themselves.

She had horses who had no names.

She had horses who had books of names.

She had some horses.

She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.

She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.

She had horses who waited for destruction.

She had horses who waited for resurrection.

She had some horses.

She had horses who got down on their knees for any savior.

She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.

She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her bed at night and prayed as they raped her.

She had some horses.

She had some horses she loved.

She had some horses she hated.

These were the same horses

—

Canyon de Chelly – White House Trail

by Donald Levering/ for Chip Goodrich

snow at the rim

but our eyes’ descent

through millenia

of stone

to the river’s thread

below

catches the breath

being beneath the body

the feet can only follow

the steep trail

down

yet gravity

cannot keep Chip’s eyes

from rising

to eddies of sandstone

cliffs

as we achieve

perfect vertigo

at each switch-

back

near the bottom

the trail turns

fearful

melted snow

has muddied the path

through a tunnel

that banishes sunlight

and turns thoughts back

to de Chelly

in the garb of an

unclaimed ancestor

sergeant in Carson’s army

pursuing Navajos

between these steep faces

torching hogans and orchards

but finding no indians

until dusk

when a thousand campfires

mock us from the rim we walk away

from a billion years

of stone overhead

afternoon light

spills onto the canyon floor

cookstove smoke rises

through a survivor’s hogan

a million water-shoots

the winter’s growth

of willows

shimmer

the glint of water

seen from the rim

stretches before us

a frozen stream

imagine a freshet

with the verve

to cut such a canyon

its surface gleams

tenative crystals

winter lightning

in the ice

under feet

sliding above the current

by the grace of the gods

my eyes

people the pockets

of sandstone cliffs

with rooks

impossible

fossils

dinosaur eggs

how surprising

and how natural

the pueblo called

White House

appears

under a massive overhang

of red rock

like the nest

of mud daubers

a thousand years ago

Anasazi women

ground corn here

children played cat’s cradle

with willow withes

men smoked and watched

the falling of the daily

shadow from the south wall

across the plaza

what a place

for a human hive

the snowy rim

a season behind

this sun-facing adobe

my friend

meditates

I peel off layers of clothes

orange rind

and brush away

mid-winter flies

sheep bells

float through my drowse

the Navajo herder’s

clicking tongue

signals his sheep

from this house of ghosts

Chip

seems to

quit breathing

all solar plexus

he leans toward

the convex

overhang

under a hawk

hitching thermals

finally discerning

footholds

in the rock

to the rim

where the ghost

of a Navajo sorcerer

conjured apparitions

before the Spanish captain

camped below

who turned his troops back something calls

shepherd

or

swallow leaving the ruins

by the same trail

of armies

in dazed retreat upstream

past the looming monolith

s

p

i

d

e

r

r

o

c

k

where the weaver’s mentor

spider-woman

dwells

resting at the rim

we enter the long thoughts

of sheer rock faces

where swallow-nesting peoples

have hewn footholds

between worlds

the one a repeating

chronicle

of futile conquest

of the other

hidden in de Chelly’s

stone vaults

glimpsed in petroglyphs

where deer

imps

flute-players

dance

Lost Power for several hours last night due to the winds… This put a stop to getting Turfing out on regular time… so here it is, late but pretty intact. We lost all the links!

G

On The Music Box: Omnia – Pagan Folk…

(nice stuff! Finding all kinds of Euro-Pagan Music, which will be on Radio Free EarthRites!)

In the North Woods…

We rambled a bit up the road a bit over the week-end; visiting family and friends in the north country. Along the way we had sometime to visit a rare creature: Wizard of North Cascadia. Generally shy, never found in urban areas they perform their acts of magick and kindness behind the green curtain of the sylvan highlands… Rare sitings are made from time to time, but little has been verified about these creatures… We actually have a picture of one of them…!

Saturday brought us to this lovely spot in the woods….

Rowan taking a break from all the travelling, playing on the dulcimer…

Somewhere along the line we ran into an Absinthe Fountain…

An absolute joy to behold, and to indulge in….

This of course led to sampling several different varieties….

On The Menu:

Faun – Sigil

Ace Of Cups

The Tale of the Hoodie

Poetry: Stewart Conn

Links Returning Tomorrow! Radio Testing Almost Done As Well!

Have a good one!

Gwyllm

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More of that Euro-Pagan Musizk….

Faun – Sigil

________________

A personal symbol… Must be that Cancer Rising…

Ace Of Cups….

TRADITION: Table, first as the symbol of the bearer of food, alimentation, etc., then also as ‘table of the law’; catalogue, tabulation; the Holy Table. Meal, feast, gala, and invitation for the same. Hotel, restaurant, etc. Picture, painting, image, description. Production, fertility, abundance. Stability, fixity, constancy, etc. Reversed: Mutation, change, transmutation, inconstancy, etc. Buying and selling. Metamorphosis, reversal, revolution, translation, interpretation. Another version says: “House of the true heart, joy, contentment . . .” (W.) Reversed: “House of the false heart . . .”

THEORY: The Cups, representing the element of Water, Jovian and lunar by nature, start their cycle on the Ninth house, the house of Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, the lawgiver. The element Water has its two polar effects in the soul, so we need not look for particular ‘weak cases’ to demonstrate a more or less benefic and malific effect at the same time. The house of Sagittarius, however, does not bring much evil to the soul and is generally uplifting, inviting, pushing towards progress and development, journeying and hospitable reception of strangers. There is little or no stability or fixity in it, but on the contrary always a good deal of ‘mutation’; also the magic power of the true transmutation. Further we find a tendency to teach, to translate, guide, interpret. It may, too, lead to extravagance as regards dissipation or at least spending. There is sanction or even holiness in it, inspiration, idealism. The latter, of course, may lead to more or less well-directed actions.

CONCLUSION: Sanction, permission, inspiration, idealism, enthusiasm, blessing. May denote a leader, teacher, guide or any influence of this nature. Legislation, direction, instruction; hospitality and sympathetic reception. Driving, hunting, travelling; planning for the future. Invitation, convocation, appeal. Mutation and transmutation. Translation and interpretation.

________________

THE TALE OF THE HOODIE.

From Ann MacGilvray, Islay.–April 1859.

There was ere now a farmer, and he had three daughters. They were waulking (1) clothes at a river. A hoodie (2) came round and he said to the eldest one, ’M-POS-U-MI, “Wilt thou wed me, farmer’s daughter?” “I won’t wed thee, thou ugly brute. An ugly brute is the hoodie,” said she. He came to the second one on the morrow, and he said to her, “M-POS-U-MI, wilt thou wed me?” “Not I, indeed,” said she; “an ugly brute is the hoodie.” The third day he said to the youngest, M-POS-U-MI, “Wilt thou wed me, farmer’s daughter?,” “I will wed thee,” said she; “a pretty creature is the hoodie,” and on the morrow they married.

The hoodie said to her, “Whether wouldst thou rather that I should be a hoodie by day, and a man at night; or be a hoodie at night, and a man by day?” “I would rather that thou wert a man by day, and a hoodie at night,” says she. After this he was a splendid fellow by day, and a hoodie at night. A few days after they married he took her with him to his own house.

At the end of three quarters they had a son. In the night there came the very finest music that ever was heard about the house. Every man slept, and the child was taken away. Her father came to the door in the morning, and he asked how were all there. He was very sorrowful that the child should be taken away, for fear that he should be blamed for it himself.

At the end of three quarters again they had another son. A watch was set on the house. The finest of music came, as it came before, about the house; every man slept, and the child was taken away. Her father came to the door in the morning. He asked if every thing was safe; but the child was taken away, and he did not know what to do for sorrow.

Again, at the end of three quarters they had another son. A watch was set on the house as usual. Music came about the house as it came before; every one slept, and the child was taken away. When they rose on the morrow they went to another place of rest that they had, himself and his wife, and his sister-in-law. He said to them by the way, “See that you have not forgotten any thing.” The wife said, “I FORGOT MY COARSE COMB.” The coach in which they were fell a withered faggot, and he went away as a hoodie.

Her two sisters returned home, and she followed after him. When he would be on a hill top, she would follow to try and catch him; and when she would reach the top of a hill, he would be in the hollow on the other side. When night came, and she was tired, she had no place of rest or dwelling; she saw a little house of light far from her, and though far from her she was not long in reaching it.

When she reached the house she stood deserted at the door. She saw a little laddie about the house, and she yearned to him exceedingly. The housewife told her to come up, that she knew her cheer and travel. She laid down, and no sooner did the day come than she rose. She went out, and when she was out, she was going from hill to hill to try if she could see a hoodie. She saw a hoodie on a hill, and when she would get on the hill the hoodie would be in the hollow, when she would go to the hollow, the hoodie would be on another hill. When the night came she had no place of rest or dwelling. She saw a little house of light far from her, and if far from her she, was not long reaching it. She went to the door. She saw a laddie on the floor to whom she yearned right much. The, housewife laid her to rest. No earlier came the day than she took out as she used. She passed this day as the other days. When the night came she reached a house. The housewife told her to come up, that she knew her cheer and travel, that her man had but left the house a little while, that she should be clever, that this was the last night she would see him, and not to sleep, but to strive to seize him. She slept, he came where she was, and he let fall a ring on her right hand. Now when she awoke she tried to catch hold of him, and she caught a feather of his wing. He left the feather with her, and he went away. When she rose in the morning she did not know what she should do. The housewife said that he had gone over a hill of poison over which she could not go without horseshoes on her hands and feet. She gave her man’s clothes, and she told her to go to learn smithying till she should be able to make horse shoes for herself.

She learned smithying so well that she made horseshoes for her hands and feet. She went over the hill of poison. That same day after she had gone over the hill of poison, her man was to be married to the daughter of a great gentleman that was in the town.

There was a race in the town that day, and every one was to be at the race but the stranger that had come over to poison hill. The cook came to her, and he said to her, Would she go in his place to make the wedding meal, and that he might get to the race.

She said she would go. She was always watching where the bridegroom would be sitting.

She let fall the ring and the feather in the broth that was before him. With the first spoon he took up the ring, with the next he took up the feather. When the minister came to the fore to make the marriage, he would not marry till he should find out who had made ready the meal. They brought up the cook of the gentleman, and he said that this was not the cook who made ready the meal.

They brought up now the one who had made ready the meal. He said, “That now was his married wife.” The spells went off him. They turned back over the hill of poison, she throwing the horse shoes behind her to him, as she went a little bit forward, and he following her. When they came, back over the hill, they went to the three houses in which she had been. These were the houses of his sisters, and they took with them the three sons, and they came home to their own house, and they were happy.

Written down by Hector Maclean, schoolmaster at Ballygrant, in Islay, from the recitation of “Ann MacGilvray, a Cowal woman, married to a farmer at Kilmeny, one Angus Macgeachy from Campbelltown.” Sent April 14, 1859.

The Gaelic of this tale is the plain everyday Gaelic of Islay and the West Highlands. Several words are variously spelt, but they are variously pronounced–falbh, folbh, tigh, taighe, taighean.

There is one word, Tapaidh, which has no English equivalent; it is like Tapper in Swedish.

HECTOR MACLEAN.

2. I have a great many versions of this tale in Gaelic; for example, one from Cowal, written from memory by a labourer, John Dewar. These are generally wilder and longer than the version here given.

This has some resemblance to an infinity of other stories. For example–Orpheus, Cupid and Psyche, Cinderella’s Coach, The Lassie and her Godmother (Norse tales), East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon (ditto), The Master Maid (ditto), Katie Wooden Cloak (ditto), The Iron Stove (Grimm), The Woodcutter’s Child (ditto), and a tale by the Countess d’Aulnoy, Prince Cherie.

If this be history, it is the story of a wife taken from an inferior but civilized race. The farmer’s daughter married to the Flayer “FEANNAG,” deserted by her husband for another in some distant, mythical land, beyond far away mountains, and bringing him back by steady, fearless, persevering fidelity and industry.

If it be mythology, the hoodie may be the raven again, and a transformed divinity. If it relates to races, the superior race again had horses–for there was to be a race in the town, and every one was to be at it, but the stranger who came over the hill; and when they travelled it was in a coach, which was sufficiently wonderful to be magical, and here again the comb is mixed up with the spells.

There is a stone at Dunrobin Castle, in Sutherland, on which a comb is carved with other curious devices, which have never been explained. Within a few hundred yards in an old grave composed of great slabs of stone, accidentally discovered on a bank of gravel, a man’s skeleton was found with teeth worn down, though perfectly sound, exactly like those of an old horse. It is supposed that the man must have ground his teeth on dried peas and beans–perhaps on meal, prepared in sandstone querns. Here, at least, is the COMB near to the grave of the farmer. The comb which is so often found with querns in the old dwellings of some pre-historic race of Britons; the comb which is a civilized instrument, and which in these stories is always a coveted object worth great exertions, and often magical.

——-

Footnotes

Postadh. A method of washing clothes practised in the Highlands–viz., by dancing on them barefoot in a tub of water.

Hoodie–the Royston crow–a very common bird in the Highlands; a sly, familiar, knowing bird, which plays a great part in these stories. He is common in most parts of Europe.

_______

Poetry: Stewart Conn

Visitation

In pride of place on my work-surface

are an ink-well of weighted glass

and a black quill-pen, presented to me

when I left long-term employ:

a discarded life I heed less

and less, as the years pass.

But every so often with a hoarse kraaa

there squats on the sill a hoodie crow,

a gap in one wing where a primary

feather is missing. Teetering raggedly

it fixes me with a bloodshot eye

then flops, disgruntled, away.

Whether bent on repossessing

what belongs to it, or chastising

me for treating its lost quill

as simply a glossy symbol,

I see in it the beast

of conscience come home to roost.

The cat meantime sits by the fireplace,

content that nothing is amiss.

—

Stolen Light

A shiver crosses Loch Stenness

as of thousands of daddy-long-legs

skittering on the surface.

In total stillness

thunderheads close in.

Lead-shot from a blunderbuss

the first flurries come.

The elements have their say;

the depths riven

as by some monster.

The impulse to run

hell-for-leather

lest this a prelude

to one of the Great Stones

clumping to the water.

A friend is writing

a book on poetry

and inspiration.

Brave man – imagine him

in flippers and wet-suit

poised on the edge:

a charging of nerve-ends

too rapid to track,

or underwater treasure

you hold your breath and dive for?

—

Angel with Lute

High on the vaulting as though levitating,

for five centuries I have gazed down

at a blur of straining adam’s apples,

gaping nostrils and goggle-eyes focusing

on the frescoes for long enough to take in

my soft colour tones, my wings’ pale

transparency, my fingers on the strings.

Against the hair-line cracks in the sky,

faded through the ages, only traces remain

of my halo’s gilding. But no disruption

of my features, thanks to my master

having properly prepared his pigments

before drawing my curls and straight nose-line,

the powdery red and green of my costume.

Not just the fee (though that filled his belly),

or religious conviction. I’ll tell you a secret.

Invisible from ground level is a small smudge

on my cheek. His last brush-stroke complete

and before they dismantled the scaffolding

my master leaned up and kissed me gently.

After all those years, that still sustains me.

________

Stewart Conn was born in Glasgow, but moved shortly afterwards to Kilmarnock, in 1942, where his father had taken up the ministry of St. Marnock’s Church in the town. In 1948 Conn enrolled at Kilmarnock Academy secondary school. During his six years at the school he became active in the school magazine, Goldberry.

After school Conn took a degree at Glasgow University before doing his National Service in the RAF. He then became a producer with BBC Radio and in 1977, when he moved to Edinburgh, he became Senior Drama Producer for BBC Radio Scotland; a post he kept until 1992.

Conn is a prolific writer of poetry and a distinguished playwright. His first collection of poems, Thunder in the Air, was largely based on his Ayrshire upbringing and was published in 1967. His latest collection, Ghosts at Cockrow, being published in 2005. His first play, The Burning, was performed in 1971 and since then he has penned numerous others.

Conn is the Honorary President of the Shore Poets Society and was the inaugural winner of the Institute for Contemporary Scotland’s Iain Crichton Smith Award for services to literature in 2006. In May of 2006 he gave a talk and reading of his work in Lithuania, in conjunction with the British Council.

From 2002 until 2005 Conn was the Poet Laureate for Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Makar. He is also Honorary President of the Shore Poets Society, who will be hosting a 70th Birthday Party in honour of him in November 2006.

Wizard & Gwyllm

Isn’t Here By 10:00 AM PST Monday… We had high winds, and lost power…

If these events came to pass, fear not Dear Reader, we shall be back with tales and stories for all, with a bit of poetry as well…