Pachacutec & Changes on Turfing

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Yep, Changes.

Turfing is sometimes an all day affair. I usually put in at the very minimum of at least an hour, but usually far longer.

I have decided to put some advertising on, to cover bandwidth etc, and to try to tempt people to purchase (and therefore) support some of my favourite writers, poets, musicians (we will be putting up albums as well that get played on Radio Free EarthRites) and Films that we find moving… Earthrites/Turfing of course gets something out of this.

I will never put up something for the heck of it. I have to read it, view it, or listen to it for it to be sold on Earthrites/Turfing.

If nothing else, it will be an experiment in capitalism as far as it goes. If it drives ya batty, let me know.

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As to todays entry: We will be continuing close to the theme from the last couple of days, but moving south into Peru for a day or so, visiting the peoples of the High Andes.

Enjoy your day!

Gwyllm

Wot’s On The Grill:

The Links!

Todays’ Story: THE SHEPHERD AND THE DAUGHTER OF THE SUN

Poetry: The Sacred Hymns of Pachacutec – Ancient Inca Poetry

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The Links:

The Gay Agenda (old but funny…!)

Dating to Save People from Hell

King Tut’s Penis Rediscovered!!!

Goin’ at it like rabbits.. 8o]

Hyperactive….

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THE SHEPHERD AND THE DAUGHTER OF THE SUN

from “The Incas of Peru” by Sir Clements Markham, London, Smith Elder & Co. 1910 pp. 408-415.

IN THE SNOW-CLAD CORDILLERA above the valley of Yucay, called Pitu-siray, a shepherd watched the flock of white llamas intended for the Inca to sacrifice to the Sun. He was a native of Laris, named Acoya-napa, a very well disposed and gentle youth. He strolled behind his flock, and presently began to play upon his flute very softly and sweetly, neither feeling anything of the amorous desires of youth, nor knowing anything of them.

He was carelessly playing his flute one day when two daughters of the Sun came to him. They could wander in all directions over the green meadows, and never failed to find one of their houses at night, where the guards and porters looked out that nothing came that could do them harm. Well! the two girls came to the place where the shepherd rested quite at his ease, and they asked him about his llamas.

The shepherd, who had not seen them until they spoke, was surprised, and fell on his knees, thinking that they were the embodiments of two out of the four crystalline fountains which were very famous in those parts. So he did not dare to answer them. They repeated their question about the flock, and told him not to be afraid, for they were children of the Sun, who was lord of all the land, and to give him confidence they took him by the arm. Then the shepherd stood up and kissed their hands. After talking together for some time the shepherd said that it was time for him to collect his flock, and asked their permission. The elder princess, named Chuqui-llantu, had been struck by the grace and good disposition of the shepherd. She asked him his name and of what place he was a native. He replied that his home was at Laris and that his name was Acoya-napa. While he was speaking Chuqui-llantu cast her eyes upon a plate of silver which the shepherd wore over his forehead, and which shone and glittered very prettily. Looking closer she saw on it two figures, very subtilely contrived, who were eating a heart. Chuqui-llantu asked the shepherd the name of that silver ornament, and he said it was called utusi. The princess returned it to the shepherd, and took leave of him, carrying well in her memory the name of the ornament and the figures, thinking with what delicacy they were drawn, almost seeming to her to be alive. She talked about it with her sister until they came to their palace. On entering, the doorkeepers looked to see if they brought with them anything that would do harm, because it was often found that women had brought with them, hidden in their clothes, such things as fillets and necklaces. After having looked well, the porters let them pass, and they found the women of the Sun cooking and preparing food. Chuqui-llantu said that she was very tired with her walk, and that she did not want any supper. All the rest supped with her sister, who thought that Acoya-napa was not one who could cause inquietude. But Chuqui-llantu was unable to rest owing to the great love she felt for the shepherd Acoya-napa, and she regretted that she had not shown him what was in her breast. But at last she went to sleep.

In the palace there were many richly furnished apartments in which the women of the Sun dwelt. These virgins were brought from all the four provinces which were subject to the Inca, namely Chincha-suyu, Cunti-suyu, Anti-suyu and Colla-suyu. Within, there were four fountains which flowed towards the four provinces, and in which the women bathed, each in the fountain of the province where she was born. They named the fountains in this way. That of Chincha-suyu was called Chuclla-puquio, that of Cunti-suyu was known as Ocoruro-puquio, Siclla-puquio was the fountain of Anti-suyu, and Llulucha-puquio of Colla-suyu. The most beautiful child of the Sun, Chuqui-llantu, was wrapped in profound sleep. She had a dream. She thought she saw a bird flying from one tree to another, and singing very softly and sweetly. After having sung for some time, the bird came down and regarded the princess, saying that she should feel no sorrow, for all would be well. The princess said that she mourned for something for which there could be no remedy. The singing bird replied that it would find a remedy, and asked the princess to tell her the cause of her sorrow. At last Chuqui-llantu told the bird of the great love she felt for the shepherd boy named Acoya-napa, who guarded the white flock. Her death seemed inevitable. She could have no cure but to go to him whom she so dearly loved, and if she did her father the Sun would order her to be killed. The answer of the singing bird, by name Checollo, was that she should arise and sit between the four fountains. There she was to sing what she had most in her memory. If the fountains repeated her words, she might then safely do what she wanted. Saying this the bird flew away, and the princess awoke. She was terrified. But she dressed very quickly and put herself between the four fountains. She began to repeat what she remembered to have seen of the two figures on the silver plate, singing:

“Micuc isutu cuyuc utusi cucim.”

Presently all the fountains began to sing the same verse.

Seeing that all the fountains were very favourable, the princess went to repose for a little while, for all night she had been conversing with the checollo in her dream.

When the shepherd boy went to his home he called to mind the great beauty of Chuqui-llantu. She had aroused his love, but he was saddened by the thought that it must be love without hope. He took up his flute and played such heart-breaking music that it made him shed many tears, and he lamented, saying: “Ay! ay! ay! for the unlucky and sorrowful shepherd, abandoned and without hope, now approaching the day of your death, for there can be no remedy and no hope.” Saying this, he also went to sleep.

The shepherd’s mother lived in Laris, and she knew, by her power of divination, the cause of the extreme grief into which her son was plunged, and that he must die unless she took order for providing a remedy. So she set out for the mountains, and arrived at the shepherd’s hut at sunrise. She looked in and saw her son almost moribund, with his face covered with tears. She went in and awoke him. When he saw who it was he began to tell her the cause of his grief, and she did what she could to console him. She told him not to be downhearted, because she would find a remedy within a few days. Saying this she departed and, going among the rocks, she gathered certain herbs which are believed to be cures for grief. Having collected a great quantity she began to cook them, and the cooking was not finished before the two princesses appeared at the entrance of the hut. For Chuqui-llantu, when she was rested, had set out with her sister for a walk on the green slopes of the mountains, taking the direction of the hut. Her tender heart prevented her from going in any other direction. When they arrived they were tired, and sat down by the entrance. Seeing an old dame inside they saluted her, and asked her if she could give them anything to eat. The mother went down on her knees and said she had nothing but a dish of herbs. She brought it to them, and they began to eat with excellent appetites. Chuqui-llantu then walked round the hut without finding what she sought, for the shepherd’s mother had made Acoya-napa lie down inside the hut, under a cloak. So the princess thought that he had gone after his flock. Then she saw the cloak and told the mother that it was a very pretty cloak, asking where it came from. The old woman told her that it was a cloak which, in ancient times, belonged to a woman beloved by Pachacamac, a deity very celebrated in the valleys on the coast. She said it had come to her by inheritance; but the princess, with many endearments, begged for it until at last the mother consented. When Chuqui-llantu took it into her hands she liked it better than before and, after staying a short time longer in the hut, she took leave of the old woman, and walked along the meadows looking about in hopes of seeing him whom she longed for.

We do not treat further of the sister, as she now drops out of the story, but only of Chuqui-llantu. She was very sad and pensive when she could see no signs of her beloved shepherd on her way back to the palace. She was in great sorrow at not having seen him, and when, as was usual, the guards looked at what she brought, they saw nothing but the cloak. A splendid supper was provided, and when every one went to bed the princess took the cloak and placed it at her bedside. As soon as she was alone she began to weep, thinking of the shepherd. She fell asleep at last, but it was not long before the cloak was changed into the being it had been before. It began to call Chuqui-llantu by her own name. She was terribly frightened, got out of bed, and beheld the shepherd on his knees before her, shedding many tears. She was satisfied on seeing him, and inquired how he had got inside the palace. He replied that the cloak which she carried had arranged about that. then Chuqui-llantu embraced him, and put her finely worked lipi mantles on him, and they slept together. When they wanted to get up in the morning, the shepherd again became the cloak. As soon as the sun rose, the princess left the palace of her father with the cloak, and when she reached a ravine in the mountains, she found herself again with her beloved shepherd, who had been changed into himself. But one of the guards had followed them, and when he saw what had happened he gave the alarm with loud shouts. The lovers fled into the mountains which are near the town of Calca. Being tired after a long journey, they climbed to the top of a rock and went to sleep. They heard a great noise in their sleep, so they arose. The princess took one shoe in her hand and kept the other on her foot. Then looking towards the town of Calca both were turned into stone. To this day the two statues may be seen between Calca and Huayllapampa.

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The Sacred Hymns of Pachacutec – Ancient Inca Poetry

The Sacred Hymns:

Oh Creator, root of all,

Wiracocha, end of all,

Lord in shining garments

who infuses life and sets all things in order,

saying, “Let there be man! Let there be woman!”

Molder, maker,

to all things you have given life:

watch over them,

keep them living prosperously, fortunately

in safety and peace.

Where are you?

Outside? Inside?

Above this world in the clouds?

Below this world in the shades?

Hear me!

Answer me!

Take my words to your heart!

For ages without end

let me live,

grasp me in your arms,

hold me in your hands,

receive this offering

wherever you are, my Lord,

my Wiracocha.

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2: Prayer that the people may multiply

Creator

Lord of the Lake,

Wiracocha provider,

industrious Wiracocha

in shining clothes:

Let man live well,

let woman live well,

let the peoples multiply,

live blessed and prosperous lives.

Preserve what you have infused with life

for ages without end,

hold it in your hand.

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3: To all the huacas

Creator, end of all things

root of all

Lord of the Lake

active diligent Wiracocha,

Lord of Mountains

Lord of Prayers

Lord of Rituals

Lord without measure,

Creator, end of all,

who rewards and grants:

Let the communities and peoples prosper

and also those who journey outside or within.

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The hymns of Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui, composed for the Situa ceremony around 1440-1450, are among the world’s great sacred poetry.

The eleven hymns, or jaillis, in Quechua verse, were sung to the accompaniment of instruments during the annual Inca ceremony of the Situa Raymi, held at the first new moon after the Spring equinox.

Pachacutec, considered by many to be the greatest Inca emperor, transformed Manco Capac’s vision into Tawantinsuyu, Land of the Four Directions, the Inca empire. One can compare Manco Capac – legendary Inca demiurge, mythical founder and bringer of civilization – with King Arthur, Prometheus or Quetzalcóatl; one can compare Pachacutec – historical leader of an expanding new socio-political world order, a new Weltanschauung – with Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, Napoleon or Mao Tse Tung (another extraordinary poet).

In appreciation of the sacred Inca hymns, the great Quechua scholar Jesus Lara writes, “Among the hymns… there are fragments of profound beauty, interpreters of a high level of spirituality reached by the Inca people. Many of them seduce by their transparent simplicity, for the elemental gratitude in them for the deity who creates and governs, who grants sustenance, peace and happiness. Many captivate by their elevation contiguous with metaphysic. All by the emotional force that palpitates in them.”

More on the Mayan Theme…

Continuing on the Mayan Theme… We have a couple of stories… more poetry and the lot. Beautiful days here in Portland.

Had a nice night with Andrew (my nephew) and with Mix Master Morgan who stopped by for a chat. It ended in everyone having a great meal together (Thanks to Mary!) of Shepards’ Pie, and fresh baked bread…. ummmmmm.

We have been battling a rodent infestation, killing 2 rats in the garden on Monday, and setting traps on the roof for the ones we hear up there. The whole neighborhood is affected by the little blighters. I really dislike having to kill them, but they trash a place. They got into my garage and ate up T-shirts, silk screens and the lot. It took several hours to clean up after them….

The Garden is looking good. Changing things out, getting the plantings in…. I love this time of the year!

G

What’s on the Grill

The Links

The Coyote and the Hen

Vukub-Cakix, the Great Macaw (From The Creation Cycle)

The Mayan Poetry of Ah Bam -The Songs of Dzitblaché Part 2

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The Links:

Endgame for the Constitution

Breast Cancer Has Made Me A Criminal

Sorry old Bean, the apes got there first

$50.00 Reward for Terrorist…

Bumps in the night spook workers

Mexican police shoot at striking miners

Police shoot and kill two striking workers in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, Mexico

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The Coyote and the Hen

Once upon a time a hen was up in the branches of a tree, and a coyote came up to her:

“I’ve brought some good news for you. Do you want to hear it?” asked the coyote.

“Do you really have some good news?” the hen asked.

The coyote answered: “It’s about the two of us.” Hear this, the coyote and the hen have made peace. Now we’re going to be friends and you can come down from the tree. We’ll hug each other as a sign of good will.”

The hen kept asking if it was true what the coyote was saying: “Where was the peace treaty approved, brother coyote?” The coyote answered:

“Over there by the hunting grounds on the other side of the mountain. Hurry up and come down so that we can celebrate this moment of peace.”

The hen asked: “Over there on the other side of the mountain?”

“May God witness that I am telling the truth. Come on down from the tree,” insisted the coyote.

“Maybe you are telling the truth, brother. I see that the dog is coming to celebrate the fiesta with us, because you and he are also going to make peace. I see him coming near, I hear him coming. He’s coming fast and he’s going to grab me, now that you and he have made peace. Do you hear, brother coyote, do you hear?” asked the hen. She was very happy and came down from the branches of the tree.

The coyote accepted this explanation and ran away. As the hen said, the dog was coming, that’s why he left. The hen didn’t want to come down from the tree. She didn’t fall in front of the coyote; if she had, he would have eaten her. She realized he was just telling her lies.

Thus ends the story of the coyote and the hen.

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Vukub-Cakix, the Great Macaw (From the Mayan Creation Cycle)

Ere the earth was quite recovered from the wrathful flood which had descended upon it there lived a being orgulous and full of pride, called Vukub-Cakix (Seventimes-the-colour-of-fire-the Kiche name for the great macaw bird). His teeth were of emerald, and other parts of him shone with the brilliance of gold and silver. In short, it is evident that he was a sun-and-moon god of prehistoric times. He boasted dreadfully, and his conduct so irritated the other gods that they resolved upon his destruction. His two sons, Zipacna and Cabrakan (Cockspur or Earth-heaper, and Earthquake), were earthquake-gods of the type of the Jotuns of Scandinavian myth or the Titans of Greek legend. These also were prideful and arrogant, and to cause their downfall the gods despatched the heavenly twins Hun-Apu and Xbalanque to earth, with instructions to chastise the trio.

Vukub-Cakix prided himself upon his possession of the wonderful nanze-tree, the tapal, bearing a fruit round, yellow, and aromatic, upon which he breakfasted every morning. One morning he mounted to its summit, whence he could best espy the choicest fruits, when he was surprised and infuriated to observe that two strangers had arrived there before him, and had almost denuded the tree of its produce. On seeing Vukub, Hun-Apu raised a blow-pipe to his mouth and blew a dart at the giant. It struck him on the mouth, and he fell from the top of the tree to the ground. Hun-Apu leapt down upon Vukub and grappled with him, but the giant in terrible anger seized the god by the arm and wrenched it from the body. He then returned to his house, where he was met by his wife, Chimalmat, who inquired for what reason he roared with pain. In reply he pointed to his mouth, and so full of anger was he against Hun-Apu that he took the arm he had wrenched from him and hung it over a blazing fire. He then threw himself down to bemoan his injuries, consoling himself, however, with the idea that he had avenged himself upon the disturbers of his peace.

Whilst Vukub-Cakix moaned and howled with the dreadful pain which he felt in his jaw and teeth (for the dart which had pierced him was probably poisoned) the arm of Hun-Apu hung over the fire, and was turned round and round and basted by Vukub’s spouse, Chimalmat. The sun-god rained bitter imprecations upon the interlopers who had penetrated to his paradise and had caused him such woe, and he gave vent to dire threats of what would happen if he succeeded in getting them into his power.

But Hun-Apu and Xbalanque were not minded that Vukub-Cakix should escape so easily, and the recovery of Hun-Apu’s arm must be made at all hazards. So they went to consult two great and wise magicians, Xpiyacoc and Xmucane, in whom we see two of the original Kiche creative deities, who advised them to proceed with them in disguise to the dwelling of Vukub, if they wished to recover the lost arm. The old magicians resolved to disguise themselves as doctors, and dressed Hun-Apu and Xbalanque in other garments to represent their sons.

Shortly they arrived at the mansion of Vukub, and while still some way off they could hear his groans and cries. Presenting themselves at the door, they accosted him. They told him that they had heard some one crying out in pain, and that as famous doctors they considered it their duty to ask who was suffering.

Vukub appeared quite satisfied, but closely questioned the old wizards concerning the two young men who accompanied them.

“They are our sons,” they replied.

“Good,” said Vukub. ” Do you think you will be able to cure me?”

“We have no doubt whatever upon that head.”

answered Xpiyacoc. “You have sustained very bad injuries to your mouth and eyes.”

“The demons who shot me with an arrow from their, blow-pipe are the cause of my sufferings,” said Vukub. “If you are able to cure me I shall reward you richly.”

“Your Highness has many bad teeth, which must be removed,” said the wily old magician. “Also the balls of your eyes appear to me to be diseased.”

Vukub appeared highly alarmed, but the magicians speedily reassured him.

“It is necessary,” said Xpiyacoc, “that we remove your teeth, but we will take care to replace them with grains of maize, which you will find much more agreeable in every way.”

The unsuspicious giant agreed to the operation, and very quickly Xpiyacoc, with the help of Xmucane, removed his teeth of emerald, and replaced them by grains of white maize. A change quickly came over the Titan. His brilliancy speedily vanished, and when they removed the balls of his eyes he sank into insensibility and died.

All this time the wife of Vukub was turning Hun-Apu’s arm over the fire, but Hun-Apu snatched the limb from above the brazier, and with the help of the magicians replaced it upon his shoulder. The discomfiture of Vukub was then complete. The party left his dwelling feeling that their mission had been accomplished.

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The Mayan Poetry of Ah Bam -The Songs of Dzitblaché Part 2

THE MOURNING SONG OF THE POOR MOTHERLESS ORPHAN DANCE TO DRUMBEATS

I was very small when my mother died,

when my father died.

Ay ay, my Lord!

Raised by the hands of friends,

I have no family here on earth.

Ay ay, my Lord!

Two days ago my friends died,

and left me insecure

vulnerable, alone. Ay ay!

That day I was alone

and put myself

in a stranger’s hand.

Ay ay, my lord!

Evil, much evil passes here

on earth. Perhaps

I will never stop crying.

Without family,

alone, very lonely I walk,

crying day and night

only cries consume my eyes and soul.

Under evil so hard.

Ay ay, my Lord!

Take pity on me, put an end

to this suffering.

Give me death , my Beautiful Lord,

or give my soul transcendence!

Poor, poor

alone on earth

pleading insecure lonely

imploring door to door

asking every person I see to give me love.

I who have no home, no clothes,

no fire.

Ay my lord! Have pity on my!

Give my soul transcendence

to endure.

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THE SONG OF THE MINSTREL

This day there is a feast in the villages.

Dawn streams over the horizon,

south north east west,

light comes to the earth, darkness is gone.

Roaches, crickets, fleas and moths

hurry home.

Magpies, white doves, swallows,

partridges, mockingbirds, thrushes, quail,

red and white birds rush about,

all the forest birds begin their song because

morning dew brings happiness.

The Beautiful Star

shines over the woods,

smoking as it sinks and vanishes;

the moon too dies

over the forest green.

Happiness of fiesta day has arrived

in the villages;

a new sun brings light

to all who live together here.

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Just One Of Those Days (after one of those Nights…)

Listen To:The Beltaine Celebration on Radio Free EarthRites

Argh. Insomnia. Up until 5AM this morning than I just forced, forced myself to sleep. Don’t expect great coherency from me for the rest of the day….

This happens once in awhile, has all my life. I get to contemplate it all, in the silence of the night…

Some nice stuff today, all based on the Maya…

On the Grill:

The Links

The Story: A Mayan Tale/The Jaguar and the Little Skunk

The Poetry: The Songs of Dzitbalché / by Ah Bam

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The Links:

One of those Days…

A little something from my friend Tomas!

Nude, but Artistic…?

Best Buy…

Xian Birthing Fun… Do the numbers!!!

and least we forget… “The Advice Bunny”!

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The Jaguar and the Little Skunk

Once there was a gentleman jaguar and a lady skunk. Mrs. Skunk had a son, who was baptized by Mr. Jaguar, so Mrs. Skunk became his comadre. And as Mr. Jaguar had baptized the little skunk, he was Mrs. Skunk’s compadre.

Mr. Jaguar decided to go looking for food and came to Mrs. Skunk’s house. “Well, compadre, what are you looking for? What have you come here for?” the skunk asked the jaguar.

“Comadre, what I have come to do is to look for some food,” said Mr. Jaguar. “Oh,” said Mrs. Skunk.

“I want my godson to come with me so that he can learn to hunt,” said Mr. Jaguar. “I don’t think your godson ought to go; he’s still very small and something could happen to him. He better not go, compadre,” said Mrs. Skunk. But the little skunk protested: “No, mother, I had better go. What my godfather says is true. I need to get some practice, if I’m going to learn to hunt,” said the little skunk.

“But if you go, you’ll be so far away,” said Mrs. Skunk. “I’m going, I’m going. Come on, let’s go.” So they set off on a long walk. “We’re going to where there’s a river. That’s where we’re going,” Mr. Jaguar explained to the little skunk, his godson.

“When are we going to get there?” asked the little skunk. “We’re getting close. Follow me so you won’t get lost,” said Mr. Jaguar. “All right,” answered the little skunk. They finally came to the river. “This is where we’re going to eat,” said Mr. Jaguar to the little skunk. “All right,” said the little skunk.

“Come on over here. I’m going to sharpen my knife,” said Mr. Jaguar. “All right,” said the little skunk, looking at his godfather. Mr. Jaguar sharpened his claws, which he called his “knife.”

“I sharpened my knife. Now you’re going to be on guard, because I am going to sleep. When you see them come, wake me up,” said Mr. Jaguar.

“All right,” said the little skunk, “all right, godfather.” Then Mr. Jaguar told him: “Don’t shout. Just scratch my belly when they come. Scratch my belly, so I won’t alarm them. But don’t wake me up if just any little old animals without antlers come along, only when the one with big antlers gets here. That’s when you’ll wake me up.”

“All right,” said the little skunk. Then the one with the big antlers came, and the skunk awakened Mr. Jaguar. He scratched his belly, and pointed out the deer to Mr. Jaguar, who attacked the animal with big antlers. He went after him and seized him.

“All right, my godson, let’s eat. We’re going to eat meat,” said the jaguar. “All right,” said the little skunk. And so they ate and ate. “Now we’re going to take whatever leftovers there are to your mother,” said the jaguar. “Since we are full, we can take something to your mother. Your mother will have meat to eat, just as we did. We will take some to your mother,” said the jaguar. When they came back to the mother’s house, he told the lady:

“Look at the food here. Look, we’ve brought you some food, the food that we hunted. Eat your fill of the meat, comadre,” the jaguar said to Mrs. Skunk.

“All right,” said the skunk, and ate the meat. “I’m full,” she said. “It’s good that you’re satisfied. I’ve seen that you are, so I’ll be leaving now,” said Mr. Jaguar to Mrs. Skunk. And so he left. After the jaguar left, the little skunk stayed with his mother. When they ran out of meat, Mrs. Skunk said to her son: Dear, our meat is all gone.” “Yes, the meat is all gone. I better go and get us some more food,” said the little skunk. “How can you, son? Do you think you’re big enough? You’re very small. Don’t you think you’ll be killed?” asked Mrs. Skunk.

“No, mother, I already know how to hunt, my godfather taught me how,” replied the little skunk. “I’m leaving now.”

He left, and Mrs. Skunk was very worried. Her son came once more to the river, the place to which he had come with his godfather to get the meat.

“This is how my godfather did it. Why shouldn’t I be able to do the same thing?” said the little skunk. “This is how you sharpen a knife,” said the little skunk. He sharpened his “knife.” “This is the way my godfather did it. I’m not going to hunt the little animals, I’m just going to hunt the one with the great big antlers. I’m going to hunt one for myself just like the one I ate with my godfather. I have my knife here and I’m going to sleep for a little while.” The little skunk lay down to sleep, but then he awakened. He was waiting for the one with the big antlers, and when he came, he attacked him, thinking he was as strong as his godfather. But he just hung from the neck of the one with big antlers. His claws had dug into his skin. He was hanging from his neck and was carried far away and fell on his back. He was left with his mouth wide open.

Since he had not come home to his mother, she wondered: “What could have happened to my son? Why hasn’t he come back yet? Something must have happened to him. I better go and look for him.” And so Mrs. Skunk went as far as the bank of the river. She was looking everywhere for her son, but couldn’t find him. She began to cry when she found the tracks where the one with the big antlers had come by running. “They must have come by here,” said Mrs. Skunk, and began to follow the tracks. She came to the place where her son had been left lying on his back. When the mother caught sight of him, she noticed that his teeth were showing and shouted at him:

“Son, what are you laughing at? All your teeth are showing,” she said to him before she had gotten very close. When she did get close she told him:

“Give me your hand. I’ve come to get you, but you’re just laughing in my face.” She put her hand on him, thinking that he was still alive, but when she noticed that he was already dead, she began to cry.

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Ancient Mayan Poetry: The Songs of Dzitbalché / by Ah Bam

I WILL KISS YOUR MOUTH

I will kiss your mouth

between the plants of the milpa.

Shimmering beauty,

you have to hurry.

BIN IN TZ’UUTZ’ A CHI

Bin in tz’uutz’ a chi

Tut yam x cohl

X ciichpam zac

Y an y an a u ahal

————

TO KISS YOUR LIPS BESIDE THE FENCE RAILS

Put on your beautiful clothes;

the day of happiness has arrived;

comb the tangles from your hair;

put on your most attractive clothes

and your splendid leather;

hang great pendants in the lobes of

your ears; put on

a good belt; string garlands

around your shapely throat;

put shining coils

on your plump upper arms.

Glorious you will be seen,

for none is more beautiful here

in this town, the seat of Dzitbalché.

I love you, Beautiful Lady.

I want you to be seen; in

truth you are very alluring,

I compare you to the smoking star

because they desire you up to the moon

and in the flowers of the fields.

Pure and white are your clothes, maiden.

Go give happiness with your laugh,

put goodness in your heart, because today

is the moment of happiness; all people

put their goodness in you.

————

LET US GO TO THE RECEIVING OF THE FLOWER

Let us sing

flowing with joy

because we are going to

the Receiving of the Flower.

All the maidens

wear a smile on their pure faces;

their hearts

jump in their breasts.

What is the cause?

Because they know

that they will give

their virginity to those they love.

Let the Flower sing!

Accompanying you will be the Nacom

and the Great Lord Ah Kulel

present on the platform.

Ah Kulel sings:

“Let us go, let us go

lay down our wills before the Virgin

the Beautiful Virgin and Lady

the Flower of the Maidens

on the high platform,

the Lady Suhay Kaak,

the Pretty X Kanleox,

the Lovely X Zoot

and the Beautiful Lady Virgin X Tootmuch.

They are those who give goodness

to life here in this Region,

on the Plains and in the district

here in the Mountains.”

Let us go, let us go,

let us go, youths;

we will give perfect rejoicing

here in Dzitill Piich,

Dzitbalché.

———–

FLOWER SONG

The most alluring moon

has risen over the forest;

it is going to burn

suspended in the center

of the sky to lighten

all the earth, all the woods,

shining its light on all.

Sweetly comes the air and the perfume.

Happiness permeates all good men.

We have arrived inside the woods

where no one will see what we have

come here to do.

We have brought plumeria flowers,

chucum blossoms, dog jasmines;

we have the copal,

the low cane vine,

the land tortoise shell,

new quartz, chalk and cotton thread;

the new chocolate cup,

the large fine flint,

the new weight,

the new needle work,

gifts of turkeys, new leather,

all new, even our hair bands,

they touch us with nectar

of the roaring conch shell

of the ancients.

Already, already

we are in the heart of the woods,

at the edge of the pool in the stone

to await the rising

of the lovely smoking star

over the forest.

Take off your clothes,

let down your hair,

become as you were

when you arrived here on earth,

virgins, maidens.

Lighting The Baal Fires…

Tune into “The Beltaine Celebration” playing now on Radio Free EarthRites!

Today’s Offerings….

The Links

What’s Coming Up on Earthrites: THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE

The Articles: Maio &

The Poetry: Poetry and Songs of Beltaine…

The Artist: Norman Lindsay

On Norman Lindsay:

Norman Alfred William Lindsay (February 22, 1879 – November 21, 1969) was a prolific artist, sculptor, writer, editorial cartoonist and scale modeler. He is widely regarded as one of Australia’s greatest artists. His sumptuous nudes were highly controversial, and in 1939, several were burned by irate wowsers in the United States who discovered them when the train in which they traveled caught fire. A large body of his work is housed in his former home at Faulconbridge, New South Wales, now the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum, and many works reside in private and corporate collections. His art continues to climb in value today. In 2002, a record price was attained by his oil painting, Spring’s Innocence, which sold to the National Gallery of Victoria for $AU333,900.

Lindsay was associated with a number of poets, such as Kenneth Slessor and Hugh McCrae, influencing them in part through a philosophical system outlined in his book Creative Effort. He also illustrated the cover for the seminal Henry Lawson book, While the Billy Boils. Lindsay’s son, Jack Lindsay, emigrated to England, where he set up Fanfrolico Press, which issued works illustrated by Lindsay.

Lindsay wrote the children’s classic The Magic Pudding and created a scandal when his novel Redheap was banned due to censorship laws. Many of his novels have a frankness and vitality that matches his art.

(Lindsay Self Portrait)

Lindsay also worked as an editorial cartoonist, notably for The Bulletin. Despite his enthusiasm for erotica, he shared the racist and right-wing political leanings that dominated The Bulletin at that time; the “Red Menace” and “Yellow Peril” were popular themes in his cartoons. These views occasionally spilled over into his other work, and modern editions of The Magic Pudding often omit one couplet in which “you unmitigated Jew” is used as an insult.

Lindsay influenced more than a few artists, notably the illustrators Roy Krenkel and Frank Frazetta.

Sam Neill played a fictionalized version of Lindsay in John Duigan’s Sirens (1994), set and filmed primarily at Lindsay’s Faulconbridge home. James Mason and Helen Mirren starred in Age of Consent (1969), Michael Powell’s adaptation of Lindsay’s 1935 novel

________

The Links:

Thanks to Steve F. for this… Wombat.

Balls of Steel – Free Umbrellas!

Water Monster…

Delivering the Message…

________

What’s coming soon to Earthrites: THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE PDF Magazine

It is with great pleasure that we can announce something new under the Sun: The Invisible College, a PDF Magazine we have long dreamed about producing, will soon be ready for publishing.

The current proposed publishing dates will be on or about the Cross Quarter Days: (give or take a week or so)

Beltane (May 1)

Lughnasadh(August 1)

Samhain (November 1)

Imbolc (February 1)

First edition will include articles, artwork, poetry from many of todays’ most forward thinkers and artists.

So keep tuned and watch for its appearance!

________

Article: MAIO

Maio, or Calendi Maggio, a May-Day festival still surviving in rustic Italy, especially in Tuscany and the Roman provinces, as a relic of the old Roman custom of celebrating the kalends of May. Songs called maggiolate are composed, or at ]east sung, by the peasantry on this occasion, trees are festooned with ribbons and garlands and windows decorated with branches, the adornments being known as the Maio. In the heyday of Florentine glory these festivals were celabrated in the city, and dignified by songs, dances, and feastings, which lasted several days; as, for instance, the grand banquet of the 1st of May given in the Portinari palace, where Dante fell in love with Beatrice. Evidence of the former prevalence of these festivals exists in the numerous maggiolate composed by different authors, and among others by the magnificent Lorenzo dei Medici, whose poems are not at all worse than those of a common citizen. One of his songs commences thus:

Ben venga Maggio

El gonfalon salvaggio:

and in another he thus alludes to these festivities:

Se tu v appicare un maggio

A qualcuna che tu ami.

One of the latest celebrations of this festival in Florence was in 1612, when a Maio was planted and sung before the Pitti palace in honor of the Archduchess of Austria.

In Rome it was customary for children on the 1st of May to place upon a chair before the house door a puppet of the Madonna crowned with a garland. Every passenger was then applied to for a donation in the following verse, which was sung by the little beggars:

Belli, belli giovanotti,

Che mangiate pasticiotti

E bevete del buon vino,

Un quattrin’ sull’ altarino.

This custom suggests a curious parallel in the past. On the kalends of May the foundation festival of the altars of the lares praestites was celebrated in all the houses of ancient Rome. The lararium, bearing the small household gods, was decked on this occasion with fresh garlands of flowers and foliage, and modern antiquarians believe that the custom of the Roman children is a relic of the ancient festival.

Curiosities of Popular Customs

And of Rites, Ceremonies, Observances, and Miscellaneous Antiquities

by William S. Walsh.

J.B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia.

Copyrights 1897 and 1925.

_____________

_____________

From Twice-Told Tales, 1836, 1837

By Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864

The May-Pole of Merry Mount

BRIGHT WERE the days at Merry Mount, when the Maypole was the banner

staff of that gay colony! They who reared it, should their banner be

triumphant, were to pour sunshine over New England’s rugged hills, and

scatter flower seeds throughout the soil. Jollity and gloom were

contending for an empire. Midsummer eve had come, bringing deep verdure

to the forest, and roses in her lap, of a more vivid hue than the tender

buds of Spring. But May, or her mirthful spirit, dwelt all the year

round at Merry Mount, sporting with the Summer months, and revelling

with Autumn, and basking in the glow of Winter’s fireside. Through a

world of toil and care she flitted with a dreamlike smile, and came

hither to find a home among the lightsome hearts of Merry Mount.

Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on midsummer

eve. This venerated emblem was a pine-tree, which had preserved the

slender grace of youth, while it equalled the loftiest height of the old

wood monarchs. From its top streamed a silken banner, colored like the

rainbow. Down nearly to the ground the pole was dressed with birchen

boughs, and others of the liveliest green, and some with silvery leaves,

fastened by ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots of twenty

different colors, but no sad ones. Garden flowers, and blossoms of the

wilderness, laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, so fresh and dewy

that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine-tree. Where this

green and flowery splendor terminated, the shaft of the Maypole was

stained with the seven brilliant hues of the banner at its top. On the

lowest green bough hung an abundant wreath of roses, some that had been

gathered in the sunniest spots of the forest, and others, of still

richer blush, which the colonists had reared from English seed. O,

people of the Golden Age, the chief of your husbandry was to raise

flowers!

But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the Maypole?

It could not be that the fauns and nymphs, when driven from their

classic groves and homes of ancient fable, had sought refuge, as all the

persecuted did, in the fresh woods of the West. These were Gothic

monsters, though perhaps of Grecian ancestry. On the shoulders of a

comely youth uprose the head and branching antlers of a stag; a second,

human in all other points, had the grim visage of a wolf; a third, still

with the trunk and limbs of a mortal man, showed the beard and horns of

a venerable he-goat. There was the likeness of a bear erect, brute in

all but his hind legs, which were adorned with pink silk stockings. And

here again, almost as wondrous, stood a real bear of the dark forest,

lending each of his fore paws to the grasp of a human hand, and as ready

for the dance as any in that circle. His inferior nature rose half way,

to meet his companions as they stooped. Other faces wore the similitude

of man or woman, but distorted or extravagant, with red noses pendulous

before their mouths, which seemed of awful depth, and stretched from ear

to ear in an eternal fit of laughter. Here might be seen the Salvage

Man, well known in heraldry, hairy as a baboon, and girdled with green

leaves. By his side, a noble figure, but still a counterfeit, appeared

an Indian hunter, with feathery crest and wampum belt. Many of this

strange company wore foolscaps, and had little bells appended to their

garments, tinkling with a silvery sound, responsive to the inaudible

music of their gleesome spirits. Some youths and maidens were of soberer

garb, yet well maintained their places in the irregular throng by the

expression of wild revelry upon their features. Such were the colonists

of Merry Mount, as they stood in the broad smile of sunset round their

venerated Maypole.

Had a wanderer, bewildered in the melancholy forest, heard their mirth,

and stolen a half-affrighted glance, he might have fancied them the crew

of Comus, some already transformed to brutes, some midway between man

and beast, and the others rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that

foreran the change. But a band of Puritans, who watched the scene,

invisible themselves, compared the masques to those devils and ruined

souls with whom their superstition peopled the black wilderness.

Within the ring of monsters appeared the two airiest forms that had ever

trodden on any more solid footing than a purple and golden cloud. One

was a youth in glistening apparel, with a scarf of the rainbow pattern

crosswise on his breast. His right hand held a gilded staff, the ensign

of high dignity among the revellers, and his left grasped the slender

fingers of a fair maiden, not less gayly decorated than himself. Bright

roses glowed in contrast with the dark and glossy curls of each, and

were scattered round their feet, or had sprung up spontaneously there.

Behind this lightsome couple, so close to the Maypole that its boughs

shaded his jovial face, stood the figure of an English priest,

canonically dressed, yet decked with flowers, in heathen fashion, and

wearing a chaplet of the native vine leaves. By the riot of his rolling

eye, and the pagan decorations of his holy garb, he seemed the wildest

monster there, and the very Comus of the crew.

“Votaries of the Maypole,” cried the flower-decked priest, “merrily, all

day long, have the woods echoed to your mirth. But be this your merriest

hour, my hearts! Lo, here stand the Lord and Lady of the May, whom I, a

clerk of Oxford, and high priest of Merry Mount, am presently to join in

holy matrimony. Up with your nimble spirits, ye morris-dancers, green

men, and glee maidens, bears and wolves, and horned gentlemen! Come; a

chorus now, rich with the old mirth of Merry England, and the wilder

glee of this fresh forest; and then a dance, to show the youthful pair

what life is made of, and how airily they should go through it! All ye

that love the Maypole, lend your voices to the nuptial song of the Lord

and Lady of the May!”

This wedlock was more serious than most affairs of Merry Mount, where

jest and delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continual carnival. The

Lord and Lady of the May, though their titles must be laid down at

sunset, were really and truly to be partners for the dance of life,

beginning the measure that same bright eve. The wreath of roses, that

hung from the lowest green bough of the Maypole, had been twined for

them, and would be thrown over both their heads, in symbol of their

flowery union. When the priest had spoken, therefore, a riotous uproar

burst from the rout of monstrous figures.

“Begin you the stave, reverend Sir,” cried they all; “and never did the

woods ring to such a merry peal as we of the Maypole shall send up!”

Immediately a prelude of pipe, cithern, and viol, touched with practised

minstrelsy, began to play from a neighboring thicket, in such a mirthful

cadence that the boughs of the Maypole quivered to the sound. But the

May Lord, he of the gilded staff, chancing to look into his Lady’s eyes,

was wonder struck at the almost pensive glance that met his own.

“Edith, sweet Lady of the May,” whispered he reproachfully, “is yon

wreath of roses a garland to hang above our graves, that you look so

sad? O, Edith, this is our golden time! Tarnish it not by any pensive

shadow of the mind; for it may be that nothing of futurity will be

brighter than the mere remembrance of what is now passing.”

“That was the very thought that saddened me! How came it in your mind

too?” said Edith, in a still lower tone than he, for it was high treason

to be sad at Merry Mount. “Therefore do I sigh amid this festive music.

And besides, dear Edgar, I struggle as with a dream, and fancy that

these shapes of our jovial friends are visionary, and their mirth

unreal, and that we are no true Lord and Lady of the May. What is the

mystery in my heart?”

Just then, as if a spell had loosened them, down came a little shower of

withering rose leaves from the Maypole. Alas, for the young lovers! No

sooner had their hearts glowed with real passion than they were sensible

of something vague and unsubstantial in their former pleasures, and felt

a dreary presentiment of inevitable change. From the moment that they

truly loved, they had subjected themselves to earth’s doom of care and

sorrow, and troubled joy, and had no more a home at Merry Mount. That

was Edith’s mystery. Now leave we the priest to marry them, and the

masquers to sport round the Maypole, till the last sunbeam be withdrawn

from its summit, and the shadows of the forest mingle gloomily in the

dance. Meanwhile, we may discover who these gay people were.

Two hundred years ago, and more, the old world and its inhabitants

became mutually weary of each other. Men voyaged by thousands to the

West: some to barter glass beads, and such like jewels, for the furs of

the Indian hunter; some to conquer virgin empires; and one stern band to

pray. But none of these motives had much weight with the colonists of

Merry Mount. Their leaders were men who had sported so long with life,

that when Thought and Wisdom came, even these unwelcome guests were led

astray by the crowd of vanities which they should have put to flight.

Erring Thought and perverted Wisdom were made to put on masques, and

play the fool. The men of whom we speak, after losing the heart’s fresh

gayety, imagined a wild philosophy of pleasure, and came hither to act

out their latest day-dream. They gathered followers from all that giddy

tribe whose whole life is like the festal days of soberer men. In their

train were minstrels, not unknown in London streets: wandering players,

whose theatres had been the halls of noblemen; mummers, rope-dancers,

and mountebanks, who would long be missed at wakes, church ales, and

fairs; in a word, mirth makers of every sort, such as abounded in that

age, but now began to be discountenanced by the rapid growth of

Puritanism. Light had their footsteps been on land, and as lightly they

came across the sea. Many had been maddened by their previous troubles

into a gay despair; others were as madly gay in the flush of youth, like

the May Lord and his Lady; but whatever might be the quality of their

mirth, old and young were gay at Merry Mount. The young deemed

themselves happy. The elder spirits, if they knew that mirth was but the

counterfeit of happiness, yet followed the false shadow wilfully,

because at least her garments glittered brightest. Sworn triflers of a

lifetime, they would not venture among the sober truths of life not even

to be truly blest.

All the hereditary pastimes of Old England were transplanted hither. The

King of Christmas was duly crowned, and the Lord of Misrule bore potent

sway. On the Eve of St. John, they felled whole acres of the forest to

make bonfires, and danced by the blaze all night, crowned with garlands,

and throwing flowers into the flame. At harvest time, though their crop

was of the smallest, they made an image with the sheaves of Indian corn,

and wreathed it with autumnal garlands, and bore it home triumphantly.

But what chiefly characterized the colonists of Merry Mount was their

veneration for the Maypole. It has made their true history a poet’s

tale. Spring decked the hallowed emblem with young blossoms and fresh

green boughs; Summer brought roses of the deepest blush, and the

perfected foliage of the forest; Autumn enriched it with that red and

yellow gorgeousness which converts each wildwood leaf into a painted

flower; and Winter silvered it with sleet, and hung it round with

icicles, till it flashed in the cold sunshine, itself a frozen sunbeam.

Thus each alternate season did homage to the Maypole, and paid it a

tribute of its own richest splendor. Its votaries danced round it, once,

at least, in every month; sometimes they called it their religion, or

their altar; but always, it was the banner staff of Merry Mount.

Unfortunately, there were men in the new world of a sterner faith than

these Maypole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of

Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight,

and then wrought in the forest or the corn-field till evening made it

prayer time again. Their weapons were always at hand to shoot down the

straggling savage. When they met in conclave, it was never to keep up

the old English mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to

proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians.

Their festivals were fast days, and their chief pastime the singing of

psalms. Wo to the youth or maiden who did but dream of a dance! The

selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the light-heeled

reprobate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was round the

whipping-post, which might be termed the Puritan Maypole.

A party of these grim Puritans, toiling through the difficult woods,

each with a horseload of iron armor to burden his footsteps, would

sometimes draw near the sunny precincts of Merry Mount. There were the

silken colonists, sporting round their Maypole; perhaps teaching a bear

to dance, or striving to communicate their mirth to the grave Indian; or

masquerading in the skins of deer and wolves, which they had hunted for

that especial purpose. Often, the whole colony were playing at

blindman’s buff, magistrates and all, with their eyes bandaged, except a

single scapegoat, whom the blinded sinners pursued by the tinkling of

the bells at his garments. Once, it is said, they were seen following a

flower-decked corpse, with merriment and festive music, to his grave.

But did the dead man laugh? In their quietest times, they sang ballads

and told tales, for the edification of their pious visitors; or

perplexed them with juggling tricks; or grinned at them through horse

collars; and when sport itself grew wearisome, they made game of their

own stupidity, and began a yawning match. At the very least of these

enormities, the men of iron shook their heads and frowned so darkly that

the revellers looked up, imagining that a momentary cloud had overcast

the sunshine, which was to be perpetual there. On the other hand, the

Puritans affirmed that, when a psalm was pealing from their place of

worship, the echo which the forest sent them back seemed often like the

chorus of a jolly catch, closing with a roar of laughter. Who but the

fiend, and his bond slaves, the crew of Merry Mount, had thus disturbed

them? In due time, a feud arose, stern and bitter on one side, and as

serious on the other as anything could be among such light spirits as

had sworn allegiance to the Maypole. The future complexion of New

England was involved in this important quarrel. Should the grizzly

saints establish their jurisdiction over the gay sinners, then would

their spirits darken all the clime, and make it a land of clouded

visages, of hard toil, of sermon and psalm forever. But should the

banner staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine would break upon the

hills, and flowers would beautify the forest, and late posterity do

homage to the Maypole.

After these authentic passages from history, we return to the nuptials

of the Lord and Lady of the May. Alas! we have delayed too long, and

must darken our tale too suddenly. As we glance again at the Maypole, a

solitary sunbeam is fading from the summit, and leaves only a faint,

golden tinge blended with the hues of the rainbow banner. Even that dim

light is now withdrawn, relinquishing the whole domain of Merry Mount to

the evening gloom, which has rushed so instantaneously from the black

surrounding woods. But some of these black shadows have rushed forth in

human shape.

Yes, with the setting sun, the last day of mirth had passed from Merry

Mount. The ring of gay masquers was disordered and broken; the stag

lowered his antlers in dismay; the wolf grew weaker than a lamb; the

bells of the morris-dancers tinkled with tremulous affright. The

Puritans had played a characteristic part in the Maypole mummeries.

Their darksome figures were intermixed with the wild shapes of their

foes, and made the scene a picture of the moment, when waking thoughts

start up amid the scattered fantasies of a dream. The leader of the

hostile party stood in the centre of the circle, while the rout of

monsters cowered around him, like evil spirits in the presence of a

dread magician. No fantastic foolery could look him in the face. So

stern was the energy of his aspect, that the whole man, visage, frame,

and soul, seemed wrought of iron, gifted with life and thought, yet all

of one substance with his headpiece and breastplate. It was the Puritan

of Puritans; it was Endicott himself!

“Stand off, priest of Baal!” said he, with a grim frown, and laying no

reverent hand upon the surplice. “I know thee, Blackstone! Thou art the

man who couldst not abide the rule even of thine own corrupted church,

and hast come hither to preach iniquity, and to give example of it in

thy life. But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath sanctified this

wilderness for his peculiar people. Wo unto them that would defile it!

And first, for this flower-decked abomination, the altar of thy

worship!”

And with his keen sword Endicott assaulted the hallowed Maypole. Nor

long did it resist his arm. It groaned with a dismal sound; it showered

leaves and rosebuds upon the remorseless enthusiast; and finally, with

all its green boughs and ribbons and flowers, symbolic of departed

pleasures, down fell the banner staff of Merry Mount. As it sank,

tradition says, the evening sky grew darker, and the woods threw forth a

more sombre shadow.

“There,” cried Endicott, looking triumphantly on his work, “there lies

the only Maypole in New England! The thought is strong within me that,

by its fall, is shadowed forth the fate of light and idle mirth makers,

amongst us and our posterity. Amen, saith John Endicott.”

*Did Governor Endicott speak less positively, we should suspect a

mistake here. The Rev. Mr. Blackstone, though an eccentric, is not known

to have been an immoral man. We rather doubt his identity with the

priest of Merry Mount.

“Amen!” echoed his followers.

But the votaries of the Maypole gave one groan for their idol. At the

sound, the Puritan leader glanced at the crew of Comus, each a figure of

broad mirth, yet, at this moment, strangely expressive of sorrow and

dismay.

“Valiant captain,” quoth Peter Palfrey, the Ancient of the band, “what

order shall be taken with the prisoners?”

“I thought not to repent me of cutting down a Maypole,” replied

Endicott, “yet now I could find in my heart to plant it again, and give

each of these bestial pagans one other dance round their idol. It would

have served rarely for a whipping-post!”

“But there are pine-trees enow,” suggested the lieutenant.

“True, good Ancient,” said the leader. “Wherefore, bind the heathen

crew, and bestow on them a small matter of stripes apiece, as earnest of

our future justice. Set some of the rogues in the stocks to rest

themselves, so soon as Providence shall bring us to one of our own

well-ordered settlements, where such accommodations may be found.

Further penalties, such as branding and cropping of ears, shall be

thought of hereafter.”

“How many stripes for the priest?” inquired Ancient Palfrey.

“None as yet,” answered Endicott, bending his iron frown upon the

culprit. “It must be for the Great and General Court to determine,

whether stripes and long imprisonment, and other grievous penalty, may

atone for his transgressions. Let him look to himself! For such as

violate our civil order, it may be permitted us to show mercy. But wo to

the wretch that troubleth our religion!”

“And this dancing bear,” resumed the officer. “Must he share the stripes

of his fellows?”

“Shoot him through the head!” said the energetic Puritan. “I suspect

witchcraft in the beast.”

“Here be a couple of shining ones,” continued Peter Palfrey, pointing

his weapon at the Lord and Lady of the May. “They seem to be of high

station among these misdoers. Methinks their dignity will not be fitted

with less than a double share of stripes.”

Endicott rested on his sword, and closely surveyed the dress and aspect

of the hapless pair. There they stood, pale, downcast, and apprehensive.

Yet there was an air of mutual support, and of pure affection, seeking

aid and giving it, that showed them to be man and wife, with the

sanction of a priest upon their love. The youth, in the peril of the

moment, had dropped his gilded staff, and thrown his arm about the Lady

of the May, who leaned against his breast, too lightly to burden him,

but with weight enough to express that their destinies were linked

together, for good or evil. They looked first at each other, and then

into the grim captain’s face. There they stood, in the first hour of

wedlock, while the idle pleasures, of which their companions were the

emblems, had given place to the sternest cares of life, personified by

the dark Puritans. But never had their youthful beauty seemed so pure

and high as when its glow was chastened by adversity.

“Youth,” said Endicott, “ye stand in an evil case, thou and thy maiden

wife. Make ready presently, for I am minded that ye shall both have a

token to remember your wedding day!”

“Stern man,” cried the May Lord, “how can I move thee? Were the means at

hand, I would resist to the death. Being powerless, I entreat! Do with

me as thou wilt, but let Edith go untouched!”

“Not so,” replied the immitigable zealot. “We are not wont to show an

idle courtesy to that sex, which requireth the stricter discipline. What

sayest thou, maid? Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer thy share of the

penalty, besides his own?”

“Be it death,” said Edith, “and lay it all on me!”

Truly, as Endicott had said, the poor lovers stood in a woful case.

Their foes were triumphant, their friends captive and abased, their home

desolate, the benighted wilderness around them, and a rigorous destiny,

in the shape of the Puritan leader, their only guide. Yet the deepening

twilight could not altogether conceal that the iron man was softened; he

smiled at the fair spectacle of early love; he almost sighed for the

inevitable blight of early hopes.

“The troubles of life have come hastily on this young couple,” observed

Endicott. “We will see how they comport themselves under their present

trials ere we burden them with greater. If, among the spoil, there be

any garments of a more decent fashion, let them be put upon this May

Lord and his Lady, instead of their glistening vanities. Look to it,

some of you.”

“And shall not the youth’s hair be cut?” asked Peter Palfrey, looking

with abhorrence at the love-lock and long glossy curls of the young man.

“Crop it forthwith, and that in the true pumpkin-shell fashion,”

answered the captain. “Then bring them along with us, but more gently

than their fellows. There be qualities in the youth, which may make him

valiant to fight, and sober to toil, and pious to pray; and in the

maiden, that may fit her to become a mother in our Israel, bringing up

babes in better nurture than her own hath been. Nor think ye, young

ones, that they are the happiest, even in our lifetime of a moment, who

mis-spend it in dancing round a Maypole!”

And Endicott, the severest Puritan of all who laid the rock foundation

of New England, lifted the wreath of roses from the ruin of the Maypole,

and threw it, with his own gauntleted hand, over the heads of the Lord

and Lady of the May. It was a deed of prophecy. As the moral gloom of

the world overpowers all systematic gayety, even so was their home of

wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest. They returned to it no

more. But as their flowery garland was wreathed of the brightest roses

that had grown there, so, in the tie that united them, were intertwined

all the purest and best of their early joys. They went heavenward,

supporting each other along the difficult path which it was their lot to

tread, and never wasted one regretful thought on the vanities of Merry

Mount.

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_______________

Corinna’s Going A-Maying

Get up! get up for shame! the blooming morn

Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.

See how Aurora throws her fair

Fresh-quilted colors through the air

Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see

The dew bespangling herb and tree.

Each flower has wept and bowed towards the east

Above an hour since, yet you not dressed;

Nay, not so much as out of bed?

When all the birds have matins said,

And sung their thankful hymns, ’tis sin,

Nay, profanation to keep in,

Whenas a thousand virgins on this day

Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.

Rise, and put on your foliage, and be seen

To come forth, like the springtime, fresh and green,

And sweet as Flora. Take no care

For jewels for your gown or hair;

Fear not; the leaves will strew

Gems in abundance upon you;

Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,

Against you come, some orient pearls unwept;

Come and receive them while the light

Hangs on the dew-locks of the night,

And Titan on the eastern hill

Retires himself, or else stands still

Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying

Few beads are best when once we go a-Maying.

Come, my Corinna, come; and, coming, mark

How each field turns (into) a street, each street a park

Made green and trimmed with trees; see how

Devotion gives each house a bough

Or branch each porch, each door ere this,

An ark, a tabernacle is,

Made up of whitethorn neatly interwove,

As if here were those cooler shades of love.

Can such delights be in the street

And open fields, and we not see ‘t?

Come, we’ll abroad; and let’s obey

The proclamation made for May,

And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;

But, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying.

There’s not a budding boy or girl this day

But is got up and gone to bring in May;

A deal of youth, ere this, is come

Back, and with whitethorn laden home.

Some have dispatched their cakes and cram

Before that we have left to dream;

And some have wept, and wooed, and plighted troth,

And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth.

Many a green-gown has been given,

Many a kiss, both odd and even;

Many a glance, too, has been sent

From out the eye, love’s firmament;

Many a jest told of the keys betraying

This night, and locks picked; yet we’re not a-Maying.

Come, let us go while we are in our prime,

And take the harmless folly of the time.

We shall grow old apace, and die

Before we know our liberty.

Our life is short, and our days run

As fast away as does the sun;

And, as a vapor or a drop of rain

Once lost, can ne’er be found again

So when or you or I are made

A fable, song, or fleeting shade,

All love, all liking, all delight

Lies drowned with us in endless night.

Then while time serves, and we are but decaying

Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying!

By Robert Herrick

——–

——–

THE MAYPOLE

Come, lasses and lads,

Get leave of your dads,

And away to the May-pole hie,

Where every He,

Has got a She,

And the fiddler standing by.

Where Willy has got his Jill,

And Jackey has got his Joan,

And there to jig it, jig it, jig it,

Jig it up and down.

Tol de rol lol, &c.

“Begin,” says Harry,

“Ay, ay,” says Mary,

Let’s lead up Paddington-pound,

“Oh, no,” says Hugh,

“Oh, no,” said Sue,

Let’s dance St. Ledger round.

Then every lad did take

His hat off to his lass;

And every maid did curtsey, curtsey,

Curtsey on the grass.

“You’re out,” says Nick,

“You lie,” says Dick,

“For the fiddler play’d it wrong;”

“And so,” says Sue,

“And so,” says Hugh,

And so says every one.

The fiddler then began

To play it o’er again,

And every maid did foot it, foot it,

Foot it unto the men.

” Let’s kiss,” says Fan,

“Ay, ay,” says Nan,

And so says every she;

“How many?” says Nat,

“‘Why, three,” says Pat,

For that’s a maiden’s fee!”

But instead of kisses three,

They gave them half a score;

The men, then, out of kindness, kindness,

Gave ‘em as many more.

Then, after an hour,

They went to a bower,

To play for ale and cake,

And kisses, too,

Being in the cue,

For the lasses held the stake.

The women then began

To quarrel with the men,

And told ‘em to take their kisses back,

And give them their own again.

Oh, thus they all stay’d

Until it was late,

And tired the fiddler quite,

With fiddling and playing

Without any paying,

From morning until night.

They told the fiddler, then,

They’d pay him for his play,

And every one paid twopence, twopence,

Twopence, and toddled away.

“Good night,” says Bess,

“Good night,” says Jess,

“Good night,” says Harry to Holl;

“Good night,” says Hugh,

“Good night,” says Sue,

“Good night,” says Nimble Nell.

Some ran, some walk’d, some stay’d,

Some tarried by the way,

And bound themselves by kisses twelve,

To meet next holiday!

Source: IN PRAISE OF ALE or Songs, Ballads, Epigrams, & Anecdotes Relating to Beer, Malt, and Hops by W. T. Marchant. London, 1888.

WALPURGISNACHT

A small edition for Saturday. This edition is aptly named WALPURGISNACHT. This would be April 30th, celebrated by Goethe in “Faust”.

Have a great weekend, and happy reading.

Gwyllm

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WALPURGISNACHT

Walpurgis Night which is celebrated on 30th of April is originally a heathen spring festival. The heathen deities Wodan and Freya are said to have conceived Spring that night. It was a feast of sacrifice in which the focus was formed by the drink of love and a green coloured May punch. Traditionally the festival was held on the Brocken the highest mountain in Northern Germany.

A. Dürer, The Witches

In the Middle Ages, during which witch hunting reached its pinnacle, the inquisition declared the 30th of April as the Witches’ Sabbath. It was believed that the witches rubbed a special ointment onto their skin that enabled them to fly. Having done so they mounted their brooms and flew to the Brocken where they met other witches. The farmers tried to protect themselves by hiding their brooms, billy-goats and goats which were also used as a means of transport by the witches. Three crosses over the house- and stable door were believed to keep the witches away. In order to protect sleeping children, stockings were crossed over their beds. In urban areas as much noise as possible was made in order to keep the witches away. On their flight to the Brocken the witches were believed to bite pieces out of every churchbell they passed. The Brocken itself is steeped in legend. Countless tales are recounted about what happened to people who found themselves on the mountain while the witches were meeting.

Walpurgis Night probably received its name during the time of the inquisition. Walburga, born on the 30th April, was an abbess of a very kind and gentle nature. She died in Eichstätt in 788. Even after Christianisation some people did not want to give up their belief in pagan gods. In order to frighten Chrisians they dressed up as devils and witches. The Church on their behalf introduced the gentle Walburga as the counterpart who would protect its followers. Thus Walburga has become the protector from witchcraft and magic.

The night from 30th April to the 1st May is also called “Freinacht” (“free night”). During that night it is very common in Germany to wrap cars in toilet-paper and play others little tricks on people. And not only is it celebrated to drive out the winter, or to protect oneself against witches but also conscripts celebrate it as their last chance to have some fun before their medical inspection for the military service the next day. .

——–

From Faust:

Witches in chorus

The witches t’ward the Brocken strain

When the stubble yellow, green the grain.

The rabble rushes – as ’tis meet –

To Sir Urian’s lordly seat.

O’er stick and stone we come, by jinks!

The witches f…, the he-goat s…

Voice

Old Baubo comes alone, I see;

Astride on farrow sow is she!

Chorus

So honor be where honor is due!

Dame Baubo first! to lead the crew,

A hag upon a sturdy sow!

All witches come and follow now!

Voice

Which way didst thou come here?

Voice

By Ilsenstein crest;

I peered into an owlet’s nest.

Her wild eyes stared at me!

Voice

To hell, I say, with thee!

Why ride so furiously?

Voice

She almost flayed me!

See here, the wounds she made me!

Chorus of Witches

The road is wide, the way is long:

How madly swirls the raving throng

The pitchfork pricks, the broom us hurts;

the infant chokes, its mother bursts.

Wizards. Semi-chorus

We creep as slowly as a snail;

Far, far ahead the witches sail.

When to the Devil’s home they speed,

Women by a thousand paces lead.

The Other Half

Not so precise are we! Perhaps

A woman takes a thousand steps.

Although she hastes as best she can,

One leap suffices for a man.

Voice (above)

Come with us from the rockbound lake!

Voices (below)

We fain would follow in your wake!

We’ve washed, are clean as clean can be;

Yet barren evermore are we.

Both Choruses

The wind is hushed, the starlight pales,

The dismal moon her features veils;

As magic-mad the hosts whiz by,

A myriad sparks spurt forth and fly.

Voice (from below)

Tarry! Tarry!

Voice (from above)

Who calls so loud from rocky quarry?

Voice (from below)

Take me too! Take me too!

Three hundred years I have been striving

To reach the peak – I’m not arriving;

I fain would join my equals too.

Both Choruses

The broomstick carries, so does the stock;

The pitchfork carries, so does the buck;

Who cannot rise on them tonight,

Remains for aye a luckless wight.

________

For Beltaine is Coming…

NOW IS THE MONTH OF MAYING

Now is the month of Maying,

When merry lads are playing,

Fal la Ia la Ia.

Each with his bonny lass

A-dancing on the grass,

Fal Ia la Ia Ia.

The spring, clad all in gladness,

Doth laugh at Winter’s madness,

Fal Ia Ia Ia Ia.

And to the bagpipes’ sound,

The nymphs tread out the ground.

Fal Ia Ia Ia Ia.

Source: IN PRAISE OF ALE or Songs, Ballads, Epigrams, & Anecdotes Relating to Beer, Malt, and Hops by W. T. Marchant. London, 1888.

This Edition is dedicated to all the Earth Rites Clan who are gathering in Northern California this weekend. My heart is with ya, but my body is staying here in Oregon. It was one of those crazy things…

On The Menu:

The Links

Article – Personal Daimons

The Poetry – Li Bai

The Art – Gustave Dore

Have a Good Weekend, and A Brilliant Beltane if we don’t talk soon…

Blessings,

Gwyllm

___________

The Links:

Proof of God!

The Death Of EmoKid21Ohio

Wormwood…

abovegod.com…

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Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld

Personal Daimons

by Patrick Harpur

Guardian angels derived from Neoplatonism and, along with the other classes of angels, became part of Christian dogma at the Council of Nicaea (AD 325). But, long before this, the ancient Greeks believed that individuals were attached at birth to a daimon who determined, wholly or in part, their destiny. Philemon was clearly such a daimon for Jung, who emphasized the crucial part this strange Gnostic figure played in his life and work. Plato’s mentor, Socrates, had a daimon who was famous for always saying “No.” It did not enter into rational discourse with Socrates; it merely warned him when he was about to do something wrong (especially something displeasing to the gods), like the prompting of conscience…

However, Plato in Timaeus identified the individual daimon with the element of pure reason in man and so it became “a sort of lofty spirit-guide, or Freudian super-ego.” This may be true of certain, perhaps exceptional individuals, but is is also true—as we shall see—that daimons are as likely to represent unreason or at least to be equivocal. But meanwhile it is instructive to consider the case of Napoleon. He had a familiar spirit “which protected him. which guided him, as a daemon, and which he called his star, or which visited him in the figure of a dwarf clothed in red that warned him.”

This reminds us that personal daimons favor two forms by which to manifest: the abstract light, globe, oval and (as here) shining sphere, or the personification—angelic, manikin-like or whatever. It confirms, in other words, my speculation … that the two forms are different manifestations of each other, with (in Napoleon’s case) different functions: the star guides, the dwarf warns. Both are images of the soul, which is another way of understanding the daimon.

Indeed, it seems that, next to personification, daimons prefer luminous appearances or “phasmata,” as the Syrian Neoplatonist Iamblichus (d. 326) called them. He was a real expert on daimons, and ufologists could do worse than study the distinctions he makes between phasmata. For instance, while phasmata of archangels are both “terrible and mild,” their images “full of supernatural light,” the phasmata of daimons are “various” and “dreadful.” They appear “at different times … in a different form, and appear at one time great, but at another small, yet are still recognized to be the phasmata of daemons.” As we have seen, this could equally well describe their personifications. Their “operations,” interestingly, “appear to be more rapid than they are in reality” (an observation which might be borne in mind by ufologists). Their images are “obscure,” presenting themselves within a “turbid fire” which is “unstable.”

The first of the great Neoplatonists, Plotinus (AD 204-70), maintained that the individual daimon was “not an anthropomorphic daemon, but an inner psychological principle,” viz:—the level above that on which we consciously live, and so is both within and yet transcendent… Like Jung, he takes it as read that daimons are objective phenomena and thinks to emphasize only that, paradoxically, they manifest both inwardly (dreams, inspirations, thoughts, fantasies) and outwardly or transcendently (visions and apparitions). Plotinus does not, we notice—like the early Jung—speak of daimons as primarily “inner” and as seen outwardly only in “projection.” He seems to agree with the later Jung—that there is a psyche “outside the body.” However, his use of the word “transcendent” also suggests that the real distinction to be made is not between inner and outer, but between personal and impersonal. There is a sense, he seems to be saying, in which daimons can be both at once.

Personal daimons are not fixed but can develop or unfold according to our own spiritual development. Jung might say: in the course of individuation, we move beyond the personal unconscious to the impersonal, collective unconscious, through the daimonic to the divine. Acording to Iamblichus, we are assigned a daimon at birth to govern and direct our lives but our task is to obtain a god in its place.

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Daoist Poetry: Li Bai

Endless Yearning (I)

I am endlessly yearning

To be in Changan,

Insects hum of autumn by the gold brim of the well

A thin frost glistens like little mirrors on my cold mat,

The high lantern flickers, and deeper grows my longing

I lift the shade and, with many a sigh, gaze upon the moon,

Single as a flower, centered from the clouds

Above, I see the blueness and deepness of the sky

Below, I see the greenness and the restlessness of water…

Heaven is high, Earth wide, bitter between them flies my sorrows

Can I dream through the gateway, over the mountain?

Endless longing

Breaks my heart.

Endless Yearning (II)

The sun has set, and a mist is in the flowers

And the moon grows very white and people sad and sleepless,

A Zhao harp has just been laid mute on its phoenix holder

And a Shu lute begins to sound its mandarin-duck strings…

Since nobody can bear to you the burden of my song

Would that it might follow the spirit wind to Yanran Mountain,

I think of you far away, beyond the blue sky

And my eyes that once were sparkling, are now a well of tears,

Oh, if ever you should doubt this aching of my heart

Here in my bright mirror come back and look at me!

——

A Visit to Sky-Mother Mountain in a Dream

So, longing in my dreams for Wu and Yue

One night I flew over Mirror Lake under the moon,

The moon cast my shadow on the water

And traveled with me all the way to Shanxi,

The lodge of Lord Xie still remained

Where green waters swirled and the cry of apes was shrill,

Donning the shoes of Xie

I climbed the dark ladder of clouds,

Midway, I saw the sun rise from the sea

Heard the Cock of Heaven crow,

And my path twisted through a thousand crags

Enchanted by flowers I leaned against a rock

And suddenly all was dark,

Growls of bears and snarls of dragons echoed

Among the rocks and streams,

The deep forest appalled me, I shrank from the lowering cliffs,

Dark were the clouds, heavy with rain

Waters boiled into misty spray,

Lightening flashed, thunder roared

Peaks tottered, boulders crashed,

And the stone gate of a great cavern

Yawned open,

Below me, a bottomless void of blue

Sun and moon gleaming on terraces of silver and gold,

With rainbows for garments, and winds for horses

The lords of the clouds descended, a mighty host,

Phoenixes circled the chariots, tigers played zithers

As the immortals went by, rank upon rank.

—–

On the Way Back to the Old Residence

Traveling to Heaven in dreams

There is another space and dimension in the kettle

Overlook the human Earth,

That is easily withered and rotten.

—–

Ling Xu Mountain

Leaving the human world

Going toward the path to Heaven;

Upon Consummation through cultivation,

Then follow the clouds to Heaven,

Caves hidden under pine trees,

Deep and unseen among the peach blossoms;

——-

Drinking Alone under the Moon (月下獨酌, pinyin Yuè Xià Dú Zhuó)

Amongst the flowers is a pot of wine

I pour alone but with no friend at hand

So I lift the cup to invite the shining moon,

Along with my shadow we become party of three

The moon although understands none of drinking, and

The shadow just follows my body vainly

Still I make the moon and the shadow my company

To enjoy the springtime before too late

The moon lingers while I am singing

The shadow scatters while I am dancing

We cheer in delight when being awake

We separate apart after getting drunk

Forever will we keep this unfettered friendship

Till we meet again far in the Milky Way

__________

Li Bai was the son of a rich merchant; his birthplace is uncertain, but one candidate is Suiye in Central Asia (near modern day Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan). His family moved to Jiangyou, near modern Chengdu in Sichuan province, when he was five years old. He was influenced by Confucian and Taoist thought, but ultimately his family heritage did not provide him with much opportunity in the aristocratic Tang Dynasty. Though he expressed the wish to become an official, he did not sit for the Chinese civil service examination. Instead, beginning at age twenty-five, he travelled around China, enjoying wine and leading a carefree life -very much contrary to the prevailing ideas of a proper Confucian gentleman. His personality fascinated the aristocrats and common people alike and he was introduced to the Emperor Xuanzong around 742.

He was given a post at the Hanlin Academy, which served to provide a source of scholarly expertise and poetry for the Emperor. Li Bai remained less than two years as a poet in the Emperor’s service before he was dismissed for an unknown indiscretion. Thereafter he wandered throughout China for the rest of his life. He met Du Fu in the autumn of 744, and again the following year. These were the only occasions on which they met, but the friendship remained particularly important for the starstruck Du Fu (a dozen of his poems to or about Li Bai survive, compared to only one by Li Bai to Du Fu). At the time of the An Lushan Rebellion he became involved in a subsidiary revolt against the Emperor, although the extent to which this was voluntary is unclear. The failure of the rebellion resulted in his being exiled a second time, to Yelang. He was pardoned before the exile journey was complete.

Li Bai died in Dangtu, or modern day Anhui. Traditionally he was said to have drowned attempting to catch the moon’s reflection in a river; some scholars believe his death was the result of mercury poisoning due to a long history of imbibing Taoist longevity elixirs while others believe that he died of alcohol poisoning. (From Wikipedia)

—————–

The Fairy Child…

Here is the Offering for today! one of my great delights is discovering a new poet (well new to me). This would be Ciaran Carson, from Ulster. Wonderful Stuff! I hope you enjoy.

Gotta head out,

Gwyllm

On The Menu:

Heap o’ Links

Cyber Life Links

Story: The Fairy Child

Poetry: Ciaran Carson

Art: Our Mr. Bosch!

_______

Heap o’ Links…

LEYLA`S CHAYHANE

Second sight

Sion/Plantard Part 1

Sion/Plantard Part 2

—–

Cyber Life Links:

World of Warcraft Memorial Service

Another Clan Shows Up and Slaughters the Funeral Party…

The Video Evidence

Retribution Begins…

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The Fairy Child

There was a sailor that lived up in Grange when he was at home; and one time, when he was away seven or eight months, his wife was brought to bed of a fine boy. She expected her husband home soon, and she wished to put off the christening of the child till he’d be on the spot. She and her husband were not natives of the country, and they were not as much afraid of leaving the child unchristened as our people would be.

Well, the child grew and throve, and the neighbours all bothered the woman to take him to Father M.’s to be baptized, and all they said was no use. “Her husband would be soon home, and then they’d have a joyful christening.”

There happened to be no one sick up in that neighbourhood for some time, so the priest did not come to the place, nor hear of the birth, and none of the people about her could make up their minds to tell upon her, it is such an ugly thing to be informing; and then the child was so healthy, and the father might be on the spot any moment.

So the time crept on, and the lad was a year and a half old, and his mother up to that time never lost five nights’ rest by him; when one evening that she came in from binding after the reapers, she heard wonderful whingeing and lamenting from the little bed where he used to sleep. She ran over to him and asked him what ailed him. “Oh, mammy, I’m sick, and I’m hungry, and I’m cold; don’t pull down the blanket.” Well, the poor woman ran and got some boiled bread and, milk as soon as she could, and she asked her other son, that was about seven years old, when he took sick. “Oh, mother,” says he, “he was as happy as a king, playing near the fire about two hours ago, and I was below in the room, when I heard a great rush like as a whole number of fowls were flying down the chimley. I heard my brother giving a great cry, and then another sound like as if the fowls were flying out again; and when I got into the kitchen there he was, so miserable-looking that I hardly knew him, and he pulling his hair, and his clothes, and his poor face so dirty. Take a look at him, and try do you know him at all.”

So when she went to feed him she got such a fright, for his poor face was like an old man’s, and his body, and legs, and arms, all thin and hairy. But still he resembled the child she left in the morning, and “mammy, mammy,” was never out of his mouth. She heard of people being fairy-struck, so she supposed it was that that happened to him, but she never suspected her own child to be gone, and a fairy child left in its place.

Well, it’s he that kept the poor woman awake many a night after, and never let her have a quiet day, crying for bread and milk, and mashed pitaytees, and stirabout; and it was still “mammy, mammy, mammy,” and the glows and the moans were never out of his mouth. Well, he had like to eat the poor woman out of house and home, and the very flesh off her bones with watching and sorrow. Still nothing could persuade her that it wasn’t her own child that was in it.

One neighbour and another neighbour told her their minds plain enough. “Now, ma’am, you see what it is to leave a child without being christened. If you done your duty, fairy, nor spirit, nor divel, would have no power over your child. That ounkran (cross creature) in the bed is no more your child nor I am, but a little imp that the Duiné Sighe (fairy people)–God between us and harm!–left you. By this and by that, if you don’t whip him up and come along with us to Father M.’s, we’ll go, hot foot, ourselves, and tell him all about it. Christened he must be before the world is a day older.”

So she went over and soothered him, and said, “Come, alanna, let me dress you, and we’ll go and be christened.” And such roaring and screeching as came out of his throat would frighten the Danes. “I haven’t the heart,” says she at last; “and sure if we attempted to take him in that state we’d have the people of the three townlands followinging us to the priest’s, and I’m afeard he’d take it very badly.”

The next day when she came in, in the evening, she found him quite clean and fresh-looking, and his hair nicely combed. “Ah, Pat,” says she to her other son, “was it you that done this?” Well, he said nothing till he and his mother were up at the fire, and the angashore (wretch) of a child in his bed in the room. “Mother,” says he then, in a whisper, “the neighbours are right, and you are wrong. I was out a little bit, and when I was coming round by the wall at the back of the room, I heard some sweet voices as if they were singing inside; and so I went to the crack in the corner, and what was round the bed but a whole parcel of nicely-dressed little women, with green gowns; and they singing, and dressing the little fellow, and combing his hair, and he laughing and crowing with them. I watched for a long time, and then I stole round to the door, but the moment I pulled the string of the latch I hears the music changed to his whimpering and crying, and when I got into the room there was no sign of anything only himself. He was a little better looking, but as cantankerous as ever.” “Ah,” says the mother, “you are only joining the ill-natured neighbours; you’re not telling a word of truth.”

Next day Pat had a new story. “Mother,” says he, “I was sitting here while you were out, and I began to wonder why ‘he was so quiet, so I went into the room to see if he was asleep. There he was, sitting up with his old face on him, and he frightened the life out of me, he spoke so plain. ‘Paudh,’ says he, ‘go and light your mother’s pipe, and let me have a shough; I’m tired o’ my life lying here.’ ‘Ah, you thief,’ ‘says I, ‘wait till you hear what she’ll say to you when I tell her this.’ ‘Tell away, you pick-thanks,’ says he; ‘she won’t believe a word you say.’” “And neither do I believe one word from you,” said the mother.

At last a letter came from the father, that was serving on board the Futhryom (Le Foudroyant?), saying he’d be home after the letter as soon as coaches and ships could carry him. “Now,” says the poor woman, “we’ll have the christening any way.” So the next day she went to New Ross to buy sugar and tay, and beef and pork, to give a grand let-out to welcome her husband; but bedad the long-headed neighbours took that opportunity to gain their ends of the fairy imp. They gathered round the house, and one stout woman came up to the bed, promiskis-like, and wrapped him up in the quilt before he had time to defend himself, and away down the lane to the Boro she went, and the whole townland at her heels. He thought to get away, but she held him pinned as if he was in a vice: and he kept roaring, and the crowd kept laughing, and they never crack-cried till they were at the stepping-stones going to Ballybawn from Grange.

Well, when he felt himself near the water he roared like a score of bulls, and kicked like the divel, but my brave woman wasn’t to be daunted. She got on the first stepping-stone, and the water, as black as night from the turf-mull (mould), running under her. He felt as heavy as lead, but she held on to the second. Well, she thought she’d go down there with the roaring, and the weight, and the dismal colour of the river, but she got to the middlestone, and there down through the quilt he fell as a heavy stone would through a muslin handkerchief. Off he went, whirling round and round, and letting the frightfulest laughs out of him, and showing his teeth and cracking his fingers at the people on the banks. “Oh, yous think yous are very clever, now,” says he. “You may tell that fool of a woman from me that all I’m sorry for is that I didn’t choke her, or do worse for her, before her husband comes home; bad luck to yous all!”

Well, they all came back joyful enough, though they were a little frightened. But weren’t they rejoiced to meet the poor woman running to them with her fine healthy child in her arms, that she found in a delightful sleep when she got back from the town. You may be sure the next day didn’t pass over him till he was baptized, and the next day his father got safe home. Well, I needn’t say how happy they were; but bedad the woman was a little ashamed of herself next Sunday at Rathnure Chapel while Father James was preaching about the wickedness of neglecting to get young babies baptized as soon as possible after they’re born.

Life among the Icelandic elves only partially resembles that among the Celtic fairies. The process of jetting rid of one of them when introduced into a human family is, however, much the same among Celts and Scandinavians. The Breton or Irish housewife being incommoded by a squalling, rickety brat, collects a number of eggs; and after throwing away the contents, places the shells carefully in a pot set over the fire. He looks with wonder on the operation; and when, in reply to his question, she explains that she is going to extract beer from them, he cries out, “I remember when they were building Babel, and never heard before of a brewery of egg-shells.” Being now sure of his quality she summons her relations, and they get rid of him by taking him on a shovel, and landing him comfortably in the middle of the dung-lough at the bottom of the bawn, and letting him cry his fill. His fairy relations come to his rescue with little loss of time, and he vents his rage at not having done more mischief while he had been in such comfortable quarters.

Ión Arnason tells us, in his “Icelandic Legends” lately published by Mr. Bentley, that a Northern woman, under the same circumstances, sets a pot, furnished with some eatable, on the fire; and having fastened many twigs in continuation of a spoon handle till the end of the shank appears above the chimney, she inserts the bowl in the mess. This excites the curiosity of the imp, and he is dislodged in the same way as his far-off brother in Galway. It would be, perhaps, trying the patience of the reader unduly to enlarge on all the ingenious devices practised for the ejectment of different intruders, so we will, using a story-teller’s privilege, surround one case with the circumstances which waited on three or four.

_________

Poetry From Ulster: Ciaran Carson

Belfast Confetti

Suddenly as the riot squad moved in, it was raining

exclamation marks,

Nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys. A fount of broken type. And the

explosion.

Itself – an askerisk on the map. This hyphenated line, a burst

of rapid fire…

I was trying to complete a sentence in my head but it kept

stuttering,

All the alleyways and side streets blocked with stops and

colons.

I know this labyrinth so well – Balaclava, Raglan, Inkerman,

Odessa Street –

Why can’t I escape? Every move is punctuated. Crimea

Street. Dead end again.

A Saracen, Kremlin-2 mesh. Makrolon face-shields. Walkie-

talkies. What is

My name? Where am I coming from? Where am I going? A

fusillade of question- marks.

——–

Eaves

Rain in summer –

It is the sound of a thousand cows

Being milked.

In winter

The eaves are heavy with ice,

Their snowy teats drip silence.

From the Welsh

———

Dresden

Horse Boyle was called Horse Boyle because of his brother Mule;

Though why Mule was called Mule is anybody’s guess. I stayed there once,

Or rather, I nearly stayed there once. But that’s another story.

At any rate they lived in this decrepit caravan, not two miles out of Carrick,

Encroached upon by baroque pyramids of empty baked bean tins, rusts

And ochres, hints of autumn merging into twilight. Horse believed

They were as good as a watchdog, and to tell you the truth

You couldn’t go near the place without something falling over:

A minor avalanche would ensue – more like a shop bell, really,

The old-fashioned ones on string, connected to the latch, I think,

And as you entered in, the bell would tinkle in the empty shop, a musk

Of soap and turf and sweets would hit you from the gloom. Tobacco.

Baling wire. Twine. And, of course, shelves and pyramids of tins.

An old woman would appear from the back – there was a sizzling pan in there,

Somewhere, a whiff of eggs and bacon – and ask you what you wanted;

Or rather, she wouldn’t ask; she would talk about the weather. It had rained

That day, but it was looking better. They had just put in the spuds.

I had only come to pass the time of day, so I bought a token packet of Gold Leaf.

All this time the fry was frying away. Maybe she’d a daughter in there

Somewhere, though I hadn’t heard the neighbours talk of it; if anybody knew,

It would be Horse. Horse kept his ears to the ground.

And he was a great man for current affairs; he owned the only TV in the place.

Come dusk he’d set off on his rounds, to tell the whole townland the latest

Situation in the Middle East , a mortar bomb attack in Mullaghbawn –

The damn things never worked, of course – and so he’d tell the story

How in his young day it was very different. Take young Flynn, for instance,

Who was ordered to take this bus and smuggle some sticks of gelignite

Across the border, into Derry , when the RUC – or was it the RIC? –

Got wind of it. The bus was stopped, the peeler stepped on. Young Flynn

Took it like a man, of course: he owned up right away. He opened the bag

And produced the bomb, his rank and serial number. For all the world

Like a pound of sausages. Of course, the thing was, the peeler’s bike

Had got a puncture, and he didn’t know young Flynn from Adam. All he wanted

Was to get home for his tea. Flynn was in for seven years and learned to speak

The best of Irish. He had thirteen words for a cow in heat;

A word for the third thwart in a boat, the wake of a boat on the ebb tide.

He knew the extinct names of insects, flowers, why this place was called

Whatever: Carrick, for example, was a rock. He was damn right there –

As the man said, When you buy meat you buy bones, when you buy land you buy stones.

You’d be hard put to find a square foot in the whole bloody parish

That wasn’t thick with flints and pebbles. To this day he could hear the grate

And scrape as the spade struck home, for it reminded him of broken bones:

Digging a graveyard, maybe – or better still, trying to dig a reclaimed tip

Of broken delph and crockery ware – you know that sound that sets your teeth on edge

When the chalk squeaks on the blackboard, or you shovel ashes from the stove?

Master McGinty – he’d be on about McGinty then, and discipline, the capitals

Of South America , Moore ‘s Melodies, the Battle of Clontarf, and

Tell me this, an educated man like you: What goes on four legs when it’s young,

Two legs when it’s grown up, and three legs when it’s old? I’d pretend

I didn’t know. McGinty’s leather strap would come up then, stuffed

With threepenny bits to give it weight and sting. Of course, it never did him

Any harm: You could take a horse to water but you couldn’t make him drink.

He himself was nearly going on to be a priest.

And many’s the young cub left the school, as wise as when he came.

Carrowkeel was where McGinty came from – Narrow Quarter, Flynn explained –

Back before the Troubles, a place that was so mean and crabbed,

Horse would have it, men were known to eat their dinner from a drawer.

Which they’d slide shut the minute you’d walk in.

He’d demonstrate this at the kitchen table, hunched and furtive, squinting

Out the window– past the teetering minarets of rust, down the hedge-dark aisle –

To where a stranger might appear, a passer-by, or what was maybe worse,

Someone he knew. Someone who wanted something. Someone who was hungry.

Of course who should come tottering up the lane that instant but his brother

Mule. I forgot to mention they were twins. They were as like two –

No, not peas in a pod, for this is not the time nor the place to go into

Comparisons, and this is really Horse’s story, Horse who – now I’m getting

Round to it – flew over Dresden in the war. He’d emigrated first, to

Manchester . Something to do with scrap – redundant mill machinery,

Giant flywheels, broken looms that would, eventually, be ships, or aeroplanes.

He said he wore his fingers to the bone.

And so, on impulse, he had joined the RAF. He became a rear gunner.

Of all the missions, Dresden broke his heart. It reminded him of china.

As he remembered it, long afterwards, he could hear, or almost hear

Between the rapid desultory thunderclaps, a thousand tinkling echoes –

All across the map of Dresden , store-rooms full of china shivered, teetered

And collapsed, an avalanche of porcelain, slushing and cascading: cherubs,

Shepherdesses, figurines of Hope and Peace and Victory, delicate bone fragments.

He recalled in particular a figure from his childhood, a milkmaid

Standing on the mantelpiece. Each night as they knelt down for the rosary,

His eyes would wander up to where she seemed to beckon to him, smiling,

Offering him, eternally, her pitcher of milk, her mouth of rose and cream.

One day, reaching up to hold her yet again, his fingers stumbled, and she fell.

He lifted down a biscuit tin, and opened it.

It breathed an antique incense: things like pencils, snuff, tobacco.

His war medals. A broken rosary. And there, the milkmaid’s creamy hand, the outstretched

Pitcher of milk, all that survived. Outside, there was a scraping

And a tittering; I knew Mule’s step by now, his careful drunken weaving

Through the tin-stacks. I might have stayed the night , but there’s no time

to go back to that now; I could hardly, at any rate, pick up the thread.

I wandered out through the steeples of rust, the gate that was a broken bed.

——-

Turn Again

There is a map of the city which shows the bridge that was never built.

A map which shows the bridge that collapsed; the streets that never existed.

Ireland’s Entry, Elbow Lane, Weigh-House Lane, Back Lane, Stone-Cutter’s Entry –

Today’s plan is already yesterday’s – the streets that were there are gone.

And the shape of the jails cannot be shown for security reasons.

The linen backing is falling apart -the Falls Road hangs by a thread.

When someone asks me where I live, I remember where I used to live.

Someone asks me for directions, and I think again. I turn into

A side-street to try to throw off my shadow, and history is changed.

——

Hippocrene

Tomato juice, black pepper, Worcester sauce – a dash –

Tabasco, salt, the vodka measured to your taste.

Ice-cubes, ditto. Then sip this freezing balderdash;

Think about it. It is not to be consumed in haste.

Immediately ensanguined, your lips tremble and burn,

As if they’d got a massive intravenous shot

Of haemoglobin, and you’re drinking from a Grecian urn;

The bar you understand you’re in is called The Elfin Grot.

Karaoke singers mouth their lip-synch rhymes.

Tape-loop music tinkles harp arpeggios of ice.

The videos are showing scenes of ancient times:

Here is Moscow burning, horses led to slaughter,

Wandering the snowy waste of martial sacrifice,

Trails of blood emblazoned in the frozen water.

—————

Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast in 1948. His first language was Irish. Until recently he worked as Literature and Traditional Arts Officer in the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. His collections include The New Estate and Other Poems, The Irish for No, Belfast Confetti, First Language and Opera Et Cetera. He is a musician and has published Last Night’s Fun, a book about Irish Traditional Music.

_______________________________________

Beltane Soon…

On The Music Box: Silence….

We were heading south for Beltane Celebrations; but due to business and attending matters we will be lighting the Baal Fire on May Eve at Caer Llwydd.

We have devoted this edition of Turfing to the celebration of Beltane/Beltain, getting it in a bit earlier than usual… Spring is coming to its glorious climax here in the Arboreal North, and May-Eve will see the beginnings of True Summer in.

On the Menu:

The Links

The Article: A Celebration of May Day

The Poetry: The Old Age of Queen Maeve – W.B. Yeats

Here is to the coming celebration, Drink Deeply To The Life!

Gwyllm

__________

The Links

Just A Plant…

Afghan Farmers Fight Ban on Poppy Growing

Bushism as Greek Drama: “Hubris” and “Tragic Flaws”

Hell on Earth

The Enlightenment, Freemasonry, and The Illuminati

__________

A Celebration of May Day

by Mike Nichols

‘Perhaps it’s just as well that you won’t be here…to be offended by the sight of our May Day celebrations.’

– Lord Summerisle to Sgt. Howie from ‘The Wicker Man’

There are four great festivals of the Pagan Celtic year and the modern Witch’s calendar, as well. The two greatest of these are Halloween (the beginning of winter) and May Day (the beginning of summer). Being opposite each other on the wheel of the year, they separate the year into halves. Halloween (also called Samhain) is the Celtic New Year and is generally considered the more important of the two, though May Day runs a close second. Indeed, in some areas — notably Wales — it is considered the great holiday.

May Day ushers in the fifth month of the modern calendar year, the month of May. This month is named in honor of the goddess Maia, originally a Greek mountain nymph, later identified as the most beautiful of the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades. By Zeus, she is also the mother of Hermes, god of magic. Maia’s parents were Atlas and Pleione, a sea nymph. The old Celtic name for May Day is Beltane (in its most popular Anglicized form), which is derived from the Irish Gaelic ‘Bealtaine’ or the Scottish Gaelic ‘Bealtuinn’, meaning ‘Bel-fire’, the fire of the Celtic god of light (Bel, Beli or Belinus). He, in turn, may be traced to the Middle Eastern god Baal.

Other names for May Day include: Cetsamhain (‘opposite Samhain’), Walpurgisnacht (in Germany), and Roodmas (the medieval Church’s name). This last came from Church Fathers who were hoping to shift the common people’s allegiance from the Maypole (Pagan lingham – symbol of life) to the Holy Rood (the Cross – Roman instrument of death).

Incidentally, there is no historical justification for calling May 1st ‘Lady Day’. For hundreds of years, that title has been proper to the Vernal Equinox (approx. March 21st), another holiday sacred to the Great Goddess. The nontraditional use of ‘Lady Day’ for May 1st is quite recent (since the early 1970′s), and seems to be confined to America, where it has gained widespread acceptance among certain segments of the Craft population. This rather startling departure from tradition would seem to indicate an unfamiliarity with European calendar customs, as well as a lax attitude toward scholarship among too many Pagans. A simple glance at a dictionary (‘Webster’s 3rd’ or O.E.D.), excyclopedia (‘Benet’s’), or standard mythology reference (Jobe’s ‘Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore & Symbols’) would confirm the correct date for Lady Day as the Vernal Equinox.

By Celtic reckoning, the actual Beltane celebration begins on sundown of the preceding day, April 30, because the Celts always figured their days from sundown to sundown. And sundown was the proper time for Druids to kindle the great Bel-fires on the tops of the nearest beacon hill (such as Tara Hill, Co. Meath, in Ireland). These ‘need-fires’ had healing properties, and sky-clad Witches would jump through the flames to ensure protection.

Sgt. Howie (shocked): ‘But they are naked!’ Lord Summerisle: ‘Naturally. It’s much too dangerous to jump through the fire with your clothes on!’ –from “The Wicker Man”

Frequently, cattle would be driven between two such bon-fires (oak wood was the favorite fuel for them) and, on the morrow, they would be taken to their summer pastures.

Other May Day customs include: walking the circuit of one’s property (‘beating the bounds’), repairing fences and boundary markers, processions of chimney-sweeps and milk maids, archery tournaments, morris dances, sword dances, feasting, music, drinking, and maidens bathing their faces in the dew of May morning to retain their youthful beauty.

In the words of Witchcraft writers Janet and Stewart Farrar, the Beltane celebration was principly a time of ‘…unashamed human sexuality and fertility.’ Such associations include the obvious phallic symbolism of the Maypole and riding the hobby horse. Even a seemingly innocent children’s nursery rhyme, ‘Ride a cock horse to Banburry Cross…’ retains such memories. And the next line ‘…to see a fine Lady on a white horse’ is a reference to the annual ride of ‘Lady Godiva’ though Coventry. Every year for nearly three centuries, a sky-clad village maiden (elected Queen of the May) enacted this Pagan rite, until the Puritans put an end to the custom.

The Puritans, in fact, reacted with pious horror to most of the May Day rites, even making Maypoles illegal in 1644. They especially attempted to suppress the ‘greenwood marriages’ of young men and women who spent the entire night in the forest, staying out to greet the May sunrise, and bringing back boughs of flowers and garlands to decorate the village the next morning. One angry Puritan wrote that men ‘doe use commonly to runne into woodes in the night time, amongst maidens, to set bowes, in so muche, as I have hearde of tenne maidens whiche went to set May, and nine of them came home with childe.’ And another Puritan complained that, of the girls who go into the woods, ‘not the least one of them comes home again a virgin.’

Long after the Christian form of marriage (with its insistance on sexual monogamy) had replaced the older Pagan handfasting, the rules of strict fidelity were always relaxed for the May Eve rites. Names such as Robin Hood, Maid Marion, and Little John played an important part in May Day folklore, often used as titles for the dramatis personae of the celebrations. And modern surnames such as Robinson, Hodson, Johnson, and Godkin may attest to some distant May Eve spent in the woods.

These wildwood antics have inspired writers such as Kipling:

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,

Or he would call it a sin;

But we have been out in the woods all night,

A-conjuring Summer in!

And Lerner and Lowe:

It’s May! It’s May!

The lusty month of May!…

Those dreary vows that ev’ryone takes,

Ev’ryone breaks.

Ev’ryone makes divine mistakes!

The lusty month of May!

It is certainly no accident that Queen Guinevere’s ‘abduction’ by Meliagrance occurs on May 1st when she and the court have gone a-Maying, or that the usually efficient Queen’s Guard, on this occasion, rode unarmed.

Some of these customs seem virtually identical to the old Roman feast of flowers, the Floriala, three days of unrestrained sexuality which began at sundown April 28th and reached a crescendo on May 1st.

There are other, even older, associations with May 1st in Celtic mythology. According to the ancient Irish ‘Book of Invasions’, the first settler of Ireland, Partholan, arrived on May 1st; and it was on May 1st that the plague came which destroyed his people. Years later, the Tuatha De Danann were conquered by the Milesians on May Day. In Welsh myth, the perenial battle between Gwythur and Gwyn for the love of Creudylad took place each May Day; and it was on May Eve that Teirnyon lost his colts and found Pryderi.

May Eve was also the occasion of a fearful scream that was heard each year throughout Wales, one of the three curses of the Coranians lifted by the skill of Lludd and Llevelys.

By the way, due to various calendrical changes down through the centuries, the traditional date of Beltane is not the same as its astrological date. This date, like all astronomically determined dates, may vary by a day or two depending on the year. However, it may be calculated easily enough by determining the date on which the sun is at 15 degrees Taurus (usually around May 5th). British Witches often refer to this date as Old Beltane, and folklorists call it Beltane O.S. (‘Old Style’). Some Covens prefer to celebrate on the old date and, at the very least, it gives one options. If a Coven is operating on ‘Pagan Standard Time’ and misses May 1st altogether, it can still throw a viable Beltane bash as long as it’s before May 5th. This may also be a consideration for Covens that need to organize activities around the week-end.

This date has long been considered a ‘power point’ of the Zodiac, and is symbolized by the Bull, one of the ‘tetramorph’ figures featured on the Tarot cards, the World and the Wheel of Fortune. (The other three symbols are the Lion, the Eagle, and the Spirit.) Astrologers know these four figures as the symbols of the four ‘fixed’ signs of the Zodiac (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius), and these naturally align with the four Great Sabbats of Witchcraft. Christians have adopted the same iconography to represent the four gospel-writers.

But for most, it is May 1st that is the great holiday of flowers, Maypoles, and greenwood frivolity. It is no wonder that, as recently as 1977, Ian Anderson could pen the following lyrics for the band Jethro Tull:

“For the May Day is the great day,

Sung along the old straight track.

And those who ancient lines did ley

Will heed this song that calls them back.”

__________

THE OLD AGE OF QUEEN MAEVE – W.B. Yeats

MAEVE the great queen was pacing to and fro,

Between the walls covered with beaten bronze,

In her high house at Cruachan; the long hearth,

Flickering with ash and hazel, but half showed

Where the tired horse-boys lay upon the rushes,

Or on the benches underneath the walls,

In comfortable sleep; all living slept

But that great queen, who more than half the night

Had paced from door to fire and fire to door.

Though now in her old age, in her young age

She had been beautiful in that old way

That’s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone,

And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all

But soft beauty and indolent desire. p. 52

She could have called over the rim of the world

Whatever woman’s lover had hit her fancy,

And yet had been great bodied and great limbed,

Fashioned to be the mother of strong children;

And she’d had lucky eyes and a high heart,

And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,

At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,

Sudden and laughing.

O unquiet heart,

Why do you praise another, praising her,

As if there were no tale but your own tale

Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound?

Have I not bid you tell of that great queen

Who has been buried some two thousand years?

When night was at its deepest, a wild goose

Cried from the porter’s lodge, and with long clamour

Shook the ale horns and shields upon their hooks;

But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power

Had filled the house with Druid heaviness;

And wondering who of the many-changing Sidhe

Had come as in the old times to counsel her, p. 53

Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall, being old,

To that small chamber by the outer gate.

The porter slept, although he sat upright

With still and stony limbs and open eyes.

Maeve waited, and when that ear-piercing noise

Broke from his parted lips and broke again,

She laid a hand on either of his shoulders,

And shook him wide awake, and bid him say

Who of the wandering many-changing ones

Had troubled his sleep. But all he had to say

Was that, the air being heavy and the dogs

More still than they had been for a good month,

He had fallen asleep, and, though he had dreamed nothing,

He could remember when he had had fine dreams.

It was before the time of the great war

Over the White-Horned Bull, and the Brown Bull.

She turned away; he turned again to sleep

That no god troubled now, and, wondering

What matters were afoot among the Sidhe,

Maeve walked through that great hall, and with a sigh

Lifted the curtain of her sleeping-room,

Remembering that she too had seemed divine p. 54

To many thousand eyes, and to her own

One that the generations had long waited

That work too difficult for mortal hands

Might be accomplished. Bunching the curtain up

She saw her husband Ailell sleeping there,

And thought of days when he’d had a straight body,

And of that famous Fergus, Nessa’s husband,

Who had been the lover of her middle life.

Suddenly Ailell spoke out of his sleep,

And not with his own voice or a man’s voice,

But with the burning, live, unshaken voice,

Of those that it may be can never age.

He said, “High Queen of Cruachan and Magh Ai,

A king of the Great Plain would speak with you.”

And with glad voice Maeve answered him, “What king

Of the far wandering shadows has come to me?

As in the old days when they would come and go

About my threshold to counsel and to help.”

The parted lips replied, “I seek your help,

For I am Aengus, and I am crossed in love.”

“How may a mortal whose life gutters out

Help them that wander with hand clasping hand, p. 55

Their haughty images that cannot wither,

For all their beauty’s like a hollow dream,

Mirrored in streams that neither hail nor rain

Nor the cold North has troubled?”

He replied:

“I am from those rivers and I bid you call

The children of the Maines out of sleep,

And set them digging under Bual’s hill.

We shadows, while they uproot his earthy house,

Will overthrow his shadows and carry off

Caer, his blue-eyed daughter that I love.

I helped your fathers when they built these walls,

And I would have your help in my great need,

Queen of high Cruachan.”

“I obey your will

With speedy feet and a most thankful heart:

For you have been, O Aengus of the birds,

Our giver of good counsel and good luck.”

And with a groan, as if the mortal breath

Could but awaken sadly upon lips

That happier breath had moved, her husband turned

Face downward, tossing in a troubled sleep;

But Maeve, and not with a slow feeble foot,

Came to the threshold of the painted house,

Where her grandchildren slept, and cried aloud,

Until the pillared dark began to stir p. 56

With shouting and the clang of unhooked arms.

She told them of the many-changing ones;

And all that night, and all through the next day

To middle night, they dug into the hill.

At middle night great cats with silver claws,

Bodies of shadow and blind eyes like pearls,

Came up out of the hole, and red-eared hounds

With long white bodies came out of the air

Suddenly, and ran at them and harried them.

The Maines’ children dropped their spades, and stood

With quaking joints and terror-strucken faces,

Till Maeve called out: “These are but common men.

The Maines’ children have not dropped their spades,

Because Earth, crazy for its broken power,

Casts up a show and the winds answer it

With holy shadows.” Her high heart was glad,

And when the uproar ran along the grass

She followed with light footfall in the midst,

Till it died out where an old thorn tree stood.

Friend of these many years, you too had stood

With equal courage in that whirling rout; p. 57

For you, although you’ve not her wandering heart,

Have all that greatness, and not hers alone,

For there is no high story about queens

In any ancient book but tells of you;

And when I’ve heard how they grew old and died,

Or fell into unhappiness, I’ve said:

“She will grow old and die, and she has wept!”

And when I’d write it out anew, the words,

Half crazy with the thought, She too has wept!

Outrun the measure.

I’d tell of that great queen

Who stood amid a silence by the thorn

Until two lovers came out of the air

With bodies made out of soft fire. The one,

About whose face birds wagged their fiery wings,

Said: “Aengus and his sweetheart give their thanks

To Maeve and to Maeve’s household, owing all

In owing them the bride-bed that gives peace.”

Then Maeve: “O Aengus, Master of all lovers,

A thousand years ago you held high talk

With the first kings of many-pillared Cruachan. p. 58

O when will you grow weary?”

They had vanished;

But out of the dark air over her head there came

A murmur of soft words and meeting lips.

_______

Rabi’a Al-’Adawiyya

Welcome To the Tuesday Installment. Today’s entry is devoted to Rabi’a Al-’Adawiyya, a Sufi Saint and Poet from Basra, Iraq. She is reverred throughout the middle east. I hope you enjoy this one!

Gwyllm

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The Links:

StoneFridge

Swallowed alive in his house…

9th Circuit: Schools Can Ban Racist, Anti-Gay T-Shirts

Honour amongst thieves

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The Article:

Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya, an 8th Century Islamic Saint from Iraq (an extraction from a larger article)

By Kathleen Jenks, Ph.D.

One of the most famous Islamic mystics was a woman: Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya (c.717-801). This 8th century saint was an early Sufi who had a profound influence on later Sufis, who in turn deeply influenced the European mystical love and troubadour traditions. Rabi’a was a woman of Basra, a seaport in southern Iraq. She was born around 717 and died in 801 (185-186). Her biographer, the great medieval poet Attar, tells us that she was “on fire with love and longing” and that men accepted her “as a second spotless Mary”. She was, he continues, “an unquestioned authority to her contemporaries”.

As Cambridge professor Margaret Smith explains, Rabi’a began her ascetic life in a small desert cell near Basra, where she lost herself in prayer and went straight to God for teaching. As far as is known, she never studied under any master or spiritual director. She was one of the first of the Sufis to teach that Love alone was the guide on the mystic path. A later Sufi taught that there were two classes of “true believers”: one class sought a master as an intermediary between them and God — unless they could see the footsteps of the Prophet on the path before them, they would not accept the path as valid. The second class “…did not look before them for the footprint of any of God’s creatures, for they had removed all thought of what He had created from their hearts, and concerned themselves solely with God.

Rabi’a was of this second kind. She felt no reverence even for the House of God in Mecca: “It is the Lord of the house Whom I need; what have I to do with the house?” One lovely spring morning a friend asked her to come outside to see the works of God. She replied, “Come you inside that you may behold their Maker. Contemplation of the Maker has turned me aside from what He has made”. During an illness, a friend asked this woman if she desired anything.

“…[H]ow can you ask me such a question as ‘What do I desire?’ I swear by the glory of God that for twelve years I have desired fresh dates, and you know that in Basra dates are plentiful, and I have not yet tasted them. I am a servant (of God), and what has a servant to do with desire?”

When a male friend once suggested she should pray for relief from a debilitating illness, she said, “O Sufyan, do you not know Who it is that wills this suffering for me? Is it not God Who wills it? When you know this, why do you bid me ask for what is contrary to His will? It is not well to oppose one’s Beloved.”

She was an ascetic. It was her custom to pray all night, sleep briefly just before dawn, and then rise again just as dawn “tinged the sky with gold” (187). She lived in celibacy and poverty, having renounced the world. A friend visited her in old age and found that all she owned were a reed mat, screen, a pottery jug, and a bed of felt which doubled as her prayer-rug (186), for where she prayed all night, she also slept briefly in the pre-dawn chill. Once her friends offered to get her a servant; she replied, “I should be ashamed to ask for the things of this world from Him to Whom the world belongs, and how should I ask for them from those to whom it does not belong?”

A wealthy merchant once wanted to give her a purse of gold. She refused it, saying that God, who sustains even those who dishonor Him, would surely sustain her, “whose soul is overflowing with love” for Him. And she added an ethical concern as well: “…How should I take the wealth of someone of whom I do not know whether he acquired it lawfully or not?”

She taught that repentance was a gift from God because no one could repent unless God had already accepted him and given him this gift of repentance. She taught that sinners must fear the punishment they deserved for their sins, but she also offered such sinners far more hope of Paradise than most other ascetics did. For herself, she held to a higher ideal, worshipping God neither from fear of Hell nor from hope of Paradise, for she saw such self-interest as unworthy of God’s servants; emotions like fear and hope were like veils — i.e., hindrances to the vision of God Himself. The story is told that once a number of Sufis saw her hurrying on her way with water in one hand and a burning torch in the other. When they asked her to explain, she said: “I am going to light a fire in Paradise and to pour water on to Hell, so that both veils may vanish altogether from before the pilgrims and their purpose may be sure…”

She was once asked where she came from. “From that other world,” she said. “And where are you going?” she was asked. “To that other world,” she replied. She taught that the spirit originated with God in “that other world” and had to return to Him in the end. Yet if the soul were sufficiently purified, even on earth, it could look upon God unveiled in all His glory and unite with him in love. In this quest, logic and reason were powerless. Instead, she speaks of the “eye” of her heart which alone could apprehend Him and His mysteries.

Above all, she was a lover, a bhakti, like one of Krishna’s Goptis in the Hindu tradition. Her hours of prayer were not so much devoted to intercession as to communion with her Beloved. Through this communion, she could discover His will for her. Many of her prayers have come down to us:

“I have made Thee the Companion of my heart,

But my body is available for those who seek its company,

And my body is friendly towards its guests,

But the Beloved of my heart is the Guest of my soul.”

Another: “O my Joy and my Desire, my Life and my Friend. If Thou art satisfied with me, then, O Desire of my heart, my happiness is attained.”

At night, as Smith, writes, “alone upon her roof under the eastern sky, she used to pray”:

“O my Lord, the stars are shining and the eyes of men are closed, and kings have shut their doors, and every lover is alone with his beloved, and here I am alone with Thee.”

She was asked once if she hated Satan. “My love to God has so possessed me that no place remains for loving or hating any save Him.”

To such lovers, she taught, God unveiled himself in all his beauty and re-vealed the Beatific Vision. For this vision, she willingly gave up all lesser joys.

“O my Lord,” she prayed, “if I worship Thee from fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me thence, but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, then withhold not from me Thine Eternal Beauty.”

Rabi’a was in her early to mid eighties when she died, having followed the mystic Way to the end. By then, she was continually united with her Beloved. As she told her Sufi friends, “My Beloved is always with me”.

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Poetry: Rabi’a Al-’Adawiyya

Love

I have loved Thee with two loves –

a selfish love and a love that is worthy of Thee.

As for the love which is selfish,

Therein I occupy myself with Thee,

to the exclusion of all others.

But in the love which is worthy of Thee,

Thou dost raise the veil that I may see Thee.

Yet is the praise not mine in this or that,

But the praise is to Thee in both that and this.

———-

My Joy

My joy –

My Hunger –

My Shelter –

My Friend –

My Food for the journey –

My journey’s End –

You are my breath,

My hope,

My companion,

My craving,

My abundant wealth.

Without You — my Life, my Love –

I would never have wandered across these endless countries.

You have poured out so much grace for me,

Done me so many favors, given me so many gifts –

I look everywhere for Your love –

Then suddenly I am filled with it.

O Captain of my Heart

Radiant Eye of Yearning in my breast,

I will never be free from You

As long as I live.

Be satisfied with me, Love,

And I am satisfied.

——–

O my Lord, the stars glitter

O my Lord,

the stars glitter

and the eyes of men are closed.

Kings have locked their doors

and each lover is alone with his love.

Here, I am alone with you.

———

O God, Another Night is passing away

O God, Another Night is passing away,

Another Day is rising –

Tell me that I have spent the Night well so I can be at peace,

Or that I have wasted it, so I can mourn for what is lost.

I swear that ever since the first day You brought me back to life,

The day You became my Friend,

I have not slept –

And even if You drive me from your door,

I swear again that we will never be separated.

Because You are alive in my heart.

——–

Brothers, my peace is in my aloneness.

Brothers, my peace is in my aloneness.

My Beloved is alone with me there, always.

I have found nothing in all the worlds

That could match His love,

This love that harrows the sands of my desert.

If I come to die of desire

And my Beloved is still not satisfied,

I would live in eternal despair.

To abandon all that He has fashioned

And hold in the palm of my hand

Certain proof that He loves me—

That is the name and the goal of my search.

——–

I carry a torch in one hand

I carry a torch in one hand

And a bucket of water in the other:

With these things I am going to set fire to Heaven

And put out the flames of Hell

So that voyagers to God can rip the veils

And see the real goal.

———

I have two ways of loving You:

I have two ways of loving You:

A selfish one

And another way that is worthy of You.

In my selfish love, I remember You and You alone.

In that other love, You lift the veil

And let me feast my eyes on Your Living Face.

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Rabia, sometimes called Rabia of Basra or Rabia al Basri, was born to a poor family in Basra in what is now Iraq. Her parents died of famine and she was eventually sold into slavery.

The story is told that her master one night woke up and saw a light shining above her head while she was praying. Stunned, he freed her the next morning.

Rabia chose a solitary life of prayer, living much of her life in desert seclusion.

Her fame as a Sufi holy woman spread and people began to journey to her retreat, to ask advice, to study, to learn.

Today she is greatly revered by devout Muslims and mystics throughout the world.

The Mystery of it All

“The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer– they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”

– Ken Kesey

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Dandelions. Thousands of dandelions. The front yard has been a breeding patch for these little mutants. I had the pleasure of digging dandelions Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. I think we reduced their number by a third… yet more pop up. I understand the siren call of using weed killer, but the water tables… the water tables…

Sunday Do the Chores:

Dandelions (see above)

Off to Goodwill, picking up work clothes. Found 2 great books: Huston Smith’s “The World’s Religions & James Fadiman & Robert Frager’s ” Essential Sufism.

Feeling rather chuffed at that I proceeded up to the CD store and picked up Donovan’s BARABAJAGAL, (I had gone in for a remix of Philip Glass) which Rowan has since squirrelled away somewhere in his room…

After the CD store we walked the Doglet over in the park around the corner. Socialization Hour for the Pooch. She was unimpressed with the local male canines. She felt they were all a bit rude. She even ignored the off-leash joy of chasing the stick. Ah… well. Headed home…

So what is the big mystery? The life, pure and simple. Watching Mary call a Robin down to her, and have it rooting for worms underneath her feet, calm in the fact that she (the Robin) is safe with the human.

The Mystery? The utter beauty that cannot be classified. The joy of knowing life in the moment, in the eternal now.

The Mystery? Why so much of the world is shrouded in our Dreams.

On The Menu:

The Links…

The Article… Magic Lanterns

The Poetry: Earth Prayers

Have a good Monday…

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The Links:

Just Monkeys…

Tag It!

Nothing like being removed further from Reality…

Excellent exploration of the Arts….

KUNSTBAR…

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Magic Laterns…

Robert Halliday

The Rendlesham Incident of 1980 is by no means the earliest case of strange lights in the area. Alan Murdie and Robert Halliday have uncovered an account dating to the 1940s.

Illustrations by Alex Severin

As is well known, that cause célèbre of British ufology, the Rendlesham Forest UFO case, first came to public attention in early 1981. Over the years, it has grown in importance, spawning a whole series of books, articles, claims and counter-claims from sceptics and believers alike. It has drawn in military figures, politicians, the Ministry of Defence and the Pentagon. And, as with Roswell, while the stories have become more fantastic as time has gone on, critiques of the case have become increasingly detailed.

ome of the more extraordinary tales in circulation can be traced back to the local ufologist Brenda Butler, who was responsible for launching the Rendlesham story back in 1981. It was Brenda who, with Dot Street, brought the story to the attention of Jenny Randles, who contacted Flying Saucer Review. In the spring of 1981, an account was also provided to the local fortean magazine Lantern, produced by the now defunct Borderline Science Investigation Group from Lowestoft. Under the title “CIII at Woodbridge?” Lantern carried what, at this distance, is an incredibly low-key treatment of the Rendlesham incident, burying it away on page 17. 1 Brenda Butler has maintained her belief in the story through thick and thin. Like Arthur Shuttlewood at Warminster or Alex Campbell at Loch Ness, she has kept the story rolling along with interviews and broadcasts. Brenda Butler generously gives her time to guiding groups through the forests, which seem almost to have become sacred to her.

Potentially the most significant of these ancillary stories were claims that mysterious lights were seen in the Rendlesham area in the past. Stories of strange lights being seen during the Victorian era and earlier are mentioned in Georgina Bruni’s You Can’t Tell the People (2001). Bruni’s source was Brenda Butler and, if true, these would be suggestive of at least something strange in the area – even if only anomalous lights rather than full-blown UFO phenomena. On a visit to Rendlesham Forest in September 2002 we took the opportunity to talk to Brenda Butler about the stories. Persisting in asking how she had learned of them, we eventually obtained from Brenda an admission that she could no longer remember the identity of her local sources with any precision. Regrettably, these stories have thus become hearsay, illustrating the difficulties of collecting oral testimony.

It is therefore most intriguing to come across a local report of strange light activity a few miles from Rendlesham which cannot in any way be attributed to any post-1980/81 witness account, rumour or hearsay. A search for forteana in a rare local collection, The East Anglian Miscellany, published between 1933-1943, reveals a letter from a Mr GF Fell of Orford, which reads as follows:

“Hobby Lanterns

“May I beg a space in the ‘Miscellany’ for a problem I have never been able to solve? Perhaps some reader can explain or enlighten me on the subject. In my boyhood days 60 years ago [i.e. c.1882] there were no cinemas or dance halls, not even a gramophone, and us boys had to find material for amusement standing at the corner of the street. Most people have heard or read stories about ‘Will-o’-the-wisps’: we called them Hobby Lanterns. I expect very few people have seen one, and some may think no-one else has, but this story is absolutely true. At Sudbourne there are two fields known as Workhouse Field and Kiln Field and on certain nights one of these objects could be seen on these fields. They look like a dull red light, like a lantern with the glass smoky. It moved to and fro across the field, about walking pace, always in the same track above the ground: it never went near the hedge.” 2

At this point, it should be mentioned that Sudbourne is a hamlet close to what is now known as Rendlesham Forest. In an incident which mirrors the actions of American servicemen 100 years later, the boys decided to go and hunt down the light:

“One night we went out to see if we could find what it was. When we went off the road on the field it vanished, so we spread out and walked across the field and back slowly, but we could see nothing. Then as we were going off the field it suddenly appeared again: then half of us stopped on the road and the others went to have another look; they could see nothing, but from the road it was visible all the time except at intervals of a few seconds it was invisible.”

Like the American servicemen from Bentwaters a century later, the boys made repeated efforts to trace the light on successive nights. Mr Fell recalled:

“We tried it several nights: the result was always the same, so we had to leave it a mystery. Now the problem is: It was visible at two or three hundred yards or more and invisible at less than one hundred yards. Why?”

Anyone familiar with the Rendlesham Forest sightings of December 1980 will notice certain parallels. Like one of the lights initially reported by the American servicemen in the Rendlesham Forest, Mr Fell’s light was red and appeared and vanished intermittently, confusing observers. As with the American witnesses, it was an experience that made a lasting impression and clearly stayed with Mr Fell for many years afterwards. Although no time of year is stated for Mr Fell’s experience, it is possible that the light was seen in the wintertime when it would have been dark early and there were no other games or entertainments to pursue. The light is also described as being close to the ground, which might suggest an autumn or wintertime appearance, the ground being free of crops or long grass. Aficionados of the earthlight hypothesis (they too seem to occur often in wintertime) will also recognise the comparison with a lantern.

The prime candidate explanaining the phenomenon, as with the 1980 Rendlesham UFO incident is, a misidentification of the Orfordness Lighthouse (see FT152:28-32). The current light is one of several to have existed at Orford over the centuries. The earliest form of lighthouse was established in the area in 1634, and there has been a light at the present site since 1792 when a structure with candles and burning coals was set up. 4 However, Sudbourne seems too far from the site for a lighthouse beam to be directly implicated as a culprit in the way it has been with the Rendlesham case. From an examination of old maps of the area we discovered that Kiln Field and Workhouse field are quite widely separated within the parish itself, so the mysterious red light was able to cover a considerable distance in Sudbourne. It is conceivable that a strange atmospheric effect might have distorted beams from the lighthouse, but how did the light appear to move “at walking pace” on two fields separated by some distance?

Interestingly, to the east of Sudbourne lies an area known suggestively as “the Lantern Marshes”. The name is certainly an old one, apparently predating the establishment of any lighthouse or beacon, and a check of the records reveals a map carrying the name “Lanterne Marsh” dating from 1600.5 Strange lights were frequently referred to as “Lantern Men”, “Jack O’ Lanterns” and “Hobby Lanterns” (the term used by Mr Fell) in Suffolk dialect. However, it would be wrong to read too much into the place name in the absence of other evidence.

More pertinently, it may be noted that strange red lights are not the only oddities to have been seen in the neighbourhood. A green meteor was reported moving in the direction of Orford in the autumn of 1999, stimulating correspondence in the local press; 6 forteans and ufologists may note how writers from Charles Fort to John Keel have made much of strange meteors, and green ones were also a concern in the early days of the modern UFO phenomena in the USA. 7

Regrettably, Mr Fell never received any answer or explanation for his appeal, at least not through the pages of the East Anglian Miscellany. However, we hope its reprinting here will be of comfort to any surviving readers of the Miscellany or descendants of Mr Fell insofar as his plea did not go entirely unnoticed.

In the meantime, the discovery of this old account arguably poses a problem. It is a strange coincidence – if nothing else – that witnesses in the 1880s had successive sightings of strange red lights not far from the site of one of the major British UFO incidents of the second half of the 20th century. Indeed, it will be interesting to see what sceptics of anomalous light phenomena at Rendlesham will make of Mr Fell’s account, which obviously pre-dates any notions of UFOs, particularly just when the Rendlesham story seemed to be at the point of final exorcism. Indeed, for those who have pronounced the case “solved”, Mr Fell’s statement may bring to mind a remark by the philosopher Professor CD Broad. Considering claims that the presence of infra-red equipment in séance rooms frustrated spiritualist manifestations, he remarked: “It may or may not be a significant fact but it is certainly an unfortunate one”.

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Earth Prayers: A big Thanks to Tomas for turning me on to the book “Earth Prayers”

We Two—How Long We were Fool’d.

(Walt Whitman)

WE two—how long we were fool’d!

Now transmuted, we swiftly escape, as Nature escapes;

We are Nature—long have we been absent, but now we return;

We become plants, leaves, foliage, roots, bark;

We are bedded in the ground—we are rocks;

We are oaks—we grow in the openings side by side;

We browse—we are two among the wild herds, spontaneous as any;

We are two fishes swimming in the sea together;

We are what the locust blossoms are—we drop scent around the lanes, mornings and

evenings;

We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals;

We are two predatory hawks—we soar above, and look down;

We are two resplendent suns—we it is who balance ourselves, orbic and stellar—we

are as two comets;

We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods—we spring on prey;

We are two clouds, forenoons and afternoons, driving overhead;

We are seas mingling—we are two of those cheerful waves, rolling over each other, and

interwetting each other;

We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious:

We are snow, rain, cold, darkness—we are each product and influence of the globe;

We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again—we two have;

We have voided all but freedom, and all but our own joy.

—-

(Hildegard Von Bingen)

I am the one whose praise echoes on high.

I adorn all the earth.

I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.

I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.

I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.

I am the rain coiming from the dew

that causes the greasses to laugh with the joy of life.

I am the yearning for good.

—-

(Herman Hesse)

Sometimes, when a bird cries out,

Or the wind sweeps through a tree,

Or a dog howls in a far-off farm,

I hold still and listen a long time.

My world turns and goes back to the place

Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,

The bird and the blowing wind

Were like me, and were my brothers.

My soul turns into a tree,

And an animal, and a cloud bank.

Then changed and odd it comes home

And asks me questions. What should I reply?

—-

The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee

( N. Scott Momaday)

I am a feather on the bright sky

I am the blue horse that runs in the plain

I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water

I am the shadow that follows a child

I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows

I am an eagle playing with the wind

I am a cluster of bright beads

I am the farthest star

I am the cold of dawn

I am the roaring of the rain

I am the glitter on the crust of the snow

I am the long track of the moon in a lake

I am a flame of four colors

I am a deer standing away in the dusk

I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche

I am an angle of geese in the winter sky

I am the hunger of a young wolf

I am the whole dream of these things

You see, I am alive, I am alive

I stand in good relation to the earth

I stand in good relation to the gods

I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful

I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte

You see, I am alive, I am alive

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(Gordon & Gwyllm on Saturday…)