Category: Uncategorized

A nice night. Andrew (my nephew) brought his lovely new girlfriend Miss Catherine, over for dinner at our house. We ended up outside, sitting by the fire, eating melon, drinking wine (yours truly working with absinthe again as well…) eating fudge cookies, talking about Catherines’ home back in New Orleans. She came out here first getting away from Katrina, and finishing her semester out, and the second time for Andrew. He beams, he beams.

I am very happy for the both of them! It is truly delightful to see.

Rowan is finishing art projects tonight, tomorrow being his last day at school. I tried to talk him into working with me tomorrow afternoon, but nooooo. He is off for some bowling with friends. His art work is truly bizarre. Strangely Surreal in a Rowanian kinda way.

I have been dreaming of Spain. I have for years. All the dreams tend to be from the 1930′s, set in the Civil War. Durutti Column, Abraham Lincoln Bridgade… you know the routine. I have pondered this for some 25 years and I have yet to figure it out. The events happened 15 years before I was born, and yet I remember it. Ideas?

So, the title of the entry today says it all. One of my all time favourite poets. I need to pick up a new copy of his works, preferably in Spanish with a decent English translation… His works are so moving, and so “present”. I am dreaming and I feel ghost, and I see Lorca…. smiling forever.

Pax,

Gwyllm

——

On the Menu:

The Links

The Article: Backs to the Future

The Poetry: Lorca

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The Links:

I’ve found God, says man who cracked the genome

Putting the Dark into the Dark Age

Life Saving Beer Ingredient!

Coming Soon To Radio Free EarthRites: Bombay Dub Orchestra!

Much played at Caer Llwydd, soon migrating to the playlist at Radio Free EarthRites. Some 20 tracks on 2 CDs, and not a duff track in the bunch.

Fairly Lush, with a nice blending of Eastern and Western Musics. It could be Bollywood, it could be Hollywood, but what it really is, is Chilled, delightfully…

Check out the site, and look up their MySpace account if you can. Sample it!

More on them later, I am sure…

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Backs to the Future

The future is behind for the Aymara: The speaker, at right, indicates next year by pointing backwards over his left shoulder. Copyright Rafael Nunez, UC San Diego

New analysis of the language and gesture of South America’s indigenous Aymara people indicates they have a concept of time opposite to all the world’s studied cultures — so that the past is ahead of them and the future behind.

Tell an old Aymara speaker to “face the past!” and you just might get a blank stare in return – because he or she already does.

New analysis of the language and gesture of South America’s indigenous Aymara people indicates a reverse concept of time.

Contrary to what had been thought a cognitive universal among humans – a spatial metaphor for chronology, based partly on our bodies’ orientation and locomotion, that places the future ahead of oneself and the past behind – the Amerindian group locates this imaginary abstraction the other way around: with the past ahead and the future behind.

Appearing in the current issue of the journal Cognitive Science, the study is coauthored, with Berkeley linguistics professor Eve Sweetser, by Rafael Nunez, associate professor of cognitive Science and director of the Embodied Cognition Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego.

“Until now, all the studied cultures and languages of the world – from European and Polynesian to Chinese, Japanese, Bantu and so on – have not only characterized time with properties of space, but also have all mapped the future as if it were in front of ego and the past in back. The Aymara case is the first documented to depart from the standard model,” said Nunez.

The language of the Aymara, who live in the Andes highlands of Bolivia, Peru and Chile, has been noticed by Westerners since the earliest days of the Spanish conquest. A Jesuit wrote in the early 1600s that Aymara was particularly useful for abstract ideas, and in the 19th century it was dubbed the “language of Adam.” More recently, Umberto Eco has praised its capacity for neologisms, and there have even been contemporary attempts to harness the so-called “Andean logic” – which adds a third option to the usual binary system of true/false or yes/no – to computer applications.

Yet, Nunez said, no one had previously detailed the Aymara’s “radically different metaphoric mapping of time” – a super-fundamental concept, which, unlike the idea of “democracy,” say, does not rely on formal schooling and isn’t an obvious product of culture.

Nunez had his first inkling of differences between “thinking in” Aymara and Spanish, when he went hitchhiking in the Andes as undergraduate in the early 1980s. More than a decade later, he returned to gather data.

For the study, Nunez collected about 20 hours of conversations with 30 ethnic Aymara adults from Northern Chile. The volunteer subjects ranged from a monolingual speaker of Aymara to monolingual speakers of Spanish, with a majority (like the population at large) being bilinguals whose skills covered a range of proficiencies and included the Spanish/Aymara creole called Castellano Andino.

The videotaped interviews were designed to include natural discussions of past and future events. These discussions, it was hoped, would elicit both the linguistic expressions for “past” and “future” and the subconscious gesturing that accompanies much of human speech and often acts out the metaphors being used.

The linguistic evidence seems, on the surface, clear: The Aymara language recruits “nayra,” the basic word for “eye,” “front” or “sight,” to mean “past” and recruits “qhipa,” the basic word for “back” or “behind,” to mean “future.” So, for example, the expression “nayra mara” – which translates in meaning to “last year” – can be literally glossed as “front year.”

But, according to the researchers, linguistic analysis cannot reliably tell the whole story.

Take an “exotic” language like English: You can use the word “ahead” to signify an earlier point in time, saying “We are at 20 minutes ahead of 1 p.m.” to mean “It’s now 12:40 p.m.” Based on this evidence alone, a Martian linguist could then justifiably decide that English speakers, much like the Aymara, put the past in front.

There are also in English ambiguous expressions like “Wednesday’s meeting was moved forward two days.” Does that mean the new meeting time falls on Friday or Monday? Roughly half of polled English speakers will pick the former and the other half the latter. And that depends, it turns out, on whether they’re picturing themselves as being in motion relative to time or time itself as moving. Both of these ideas are perfectly acceptable in English and grammatical too, as illustrated by “We’re coming to the end of the year” vs. “The end of the year is approaching.”

Analysis of the gestural data proved telling: The Aymara, especially the elderly who didn’t command a grammatically correct Spanish, indicated space behind themselves when speaking of the future – by thumbing or waving over their shoulders – and indicated space in front of themselves when speaking of the past – by sweeping forward with their hands and arms, close to their bodies for now or the near past and farther out, to the full extent of the arm, for ancient times. In other words, they used gestures identical to the familiar ones – only exactly in reverse.

“These findings suggest that cognition of such everyday abstractions as time is at least partly a cultural phenomenon,” Nunez said. “That we construe time on a front-back axis, treating future and past as though they were locations ahead and behind, is strongly influenced by the way we move, by our dorsoventral morphology, by our frontal binocular vision, etc. Ultimately, had we been blob-ish amoeba-like creatures, we wouldn’t have had the means to create and bring forth these concepts.

“But the Aymara counter-example makes plain that there is room for cultural variation. With the same bodies – the same neuroanatomy, neurotransmitters and all – here we have a basic concept that is utterly different,” he said.

Why, however, is not entirely certain. One possibility, Nunez and Sweetser argue, is that the Aymara place a great deal of significance on whether an event or action has been seen or not seen by the speaker.

A “simple” unqualified statement like “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” is not possible in Aymara – the sentence would necessarily also have to specify whether the speaker had personally witnessed this or was reporting hearsay.

In a culture that privileges a distinction between seen/unseen – and known/unknown – to such an extent as to weave “evidential” requirements inextricably into its language, it makes sense to metaphorically place the known past in front of you, in your field of view, and the unknown and unknowable future behind your back.

Though that may be an initial explanation – and in line with the observation, the researchers write, that “often elderly Aymara speakers simply refused to talk about the future on the grounds that little or nothing sensible could be said about it” – it is not sufficient, because other cultures also make use of similar evidential systems and yet still have a future ahead.

The consequences, on the other hand, may have been profound. This cultural, cognitive-linguistic difference could have contributed, Nunez said, to the conquistadors’ disdain of the Aymara as shiftless – uninterested in progress or going “forward.”

Now, while the future of the Aymara language itself is not in jeopardy – it numbers some two to three million contemporary speakers – its particular way of thinking about time seems, at least in Northern Chile, to be on the way out.

The study’s younger subjects, Aymara fluent in Spanish, tended to gesture in the common fashion. It appears they have reoriented their thinking. Now along with the rest of the globe, their backs are to the past, and they are facing the future.

Source: University of California, San Diego

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Poetry: Lorca

Gacela of the Dark Death

I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,

I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.

I want to sleep the sleep of that child

who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

I don’t want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,

how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.

I’d rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for

nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn

with its snakelike nose.

I want to sleep for half a second,

a second, a minute, a century,

but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,

that I have a golden manger inside my lips,

that I am the little friend of the west wind,

that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.

When it’s dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me

because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,

and pour a little hard water over my shoes

so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.

Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,

and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,

because I want to live with that shadowy child

who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

——–

Romance Sonambulo

Green, how I want you green.

Green wind. Green branches.

The ship out on the sea

and the horse on the mountain.

With the shade around her waist

she dreams on her balcony,

green flesh, her hair green,

with eyes of cold silver.

Green, how I want you green.

Under the gypsy moon,

all things are watching her

and she cannot see them.

Green, how I want you green.

Big hoarfrost stars

come with the fish of shadow

that opens the road of dawn.

The fig tree rubs its wind

with the sandpaper of its branches,

and the forest, cunning cat,

bristles its brittle fibers.

But who will come? And from where?

She is still on her balcony

green flesh, her hair green,

dreaming in the bitter sea.

–My friend, I want to trade

my horse for her house,

my saddle for her mirror,

my knife for her blanket.

My friend, I come bleeding

from the gates of Cabra.

–If it were possible, my boy,

I’d help you fix that trade.

But now I am not I,

nor is my house now my house.

–My friend, I want to die

decently in my bed.

Of iron, if that’s possible,

with blankets of fine chambray.

Don’t you see the wound I have

from my chest up to my throat?

–Your white shirt has grown

thirsy dark brown roses.

Your blood oozes and flees a

round the corners of your sash.

But now I am not I,

nor is my house now my house.

–Let me climb up, at least,

up to the high balconies;

Let me climb up! Let me,

up to the green balconies.

Railings of the moon

through which the water rumbles.

Now the two friends climb up,

up to the high balconies.

Leaving a trail of blood.

Leaving a trail of teardrops.

Tin bell vines

were trembling on the roofs.

A thousand crystal tambourines

struck at the dawn light.

Green, how I want you green,

green wind, green branches.

The two friends climbed up.

The stiff wind left

in their mouths, a strange taste

of bile, of mint, and of basil

My friend, where is she–tell me–

where is your bitter girl?

How many times she waited for you!

How many times would she wait for you,

cool face, black hair,

on this green balcony!

Over the mouth of the cistern

the gypsy girl was swinging,

green flesh, her hair green,

with eyes of cold silver.

An icicle of moon

holds her up above the water.

The night became intimate

like a little plaza.

Drunken “Guardias Civiles”

were pounding on the door.

Green, how I want you green.

Green wind. Green branches.

The ship out on the sea.

And the horse on the mountain.

—–

City That Does Not Sleep

In the sky there is nobody asleep.Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is asleep.

The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.

The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,

and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the

street corner

the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the

stars.

Nobody is asleep on earth.Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is asleep.

In a graveyard far off there is a corpse

who has moaned for three years

because of a dry countryside on his knee;

and that boy they buried this morning cried so much

it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream.Careful!Careful!Careful!

We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth

or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead

dahlias.

But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;

flesh exists.Kisses tie our mouths

in a thicket of new veins,

and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever

and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

One day

the horses will live in the saloons

and the enraged ants

will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the

eyes of cows.

Another day

we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead

and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats

we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.

Careful!Be careful!Be careful!

The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,

and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention

of the bridge,

or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,

we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes

are waiting,

where the bear’s teeth are waiting,

where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,

and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky.Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is sleeping.

If someone does close his eyes,

a whip, boys, a whip!

Let there be a landscape of open eyes

and bitter wounds on fire.

No one is sleeping in this world.No one, no one.

I have said it before.

No one is sleeping.

But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the

night,

open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight

the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.

_______

Federico García Lorca is presumed to be buried in a mass grave in Viznar, a village which lies at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Granada in Spain.

He was regarded by Franco’s fascists as a dangerous intellectual and was arrested on the 16th August 1936. Three days later he was dragged into a field, along with a schoolmaster and two bullfighters, and shot. His writings were subsequently burnt in the main Plaza in Granada.

While a student in Madrid, Lorca became friends with the surrealist painter Salvador Dali and the film maker Luis Buñuel. Dali designed the set for Lorca’s play Mariana Pineda which was first staged in 1927.

In 1929 Lorca traveled to New York. While in the Big Apple he wrote Poeta en Nueva York and also began El público (The Audience) – an explicitly homosexual play.

After returning to Spain, Lorca was appointed Director of the Madrid University Theatre ‘La Barraca’. The company toured the provinces giving free performances of classical Spanish plays.

Lorca is, today, regarded as one of Spain’s greatest 20th Century poets and playwrights. However, due to the fascist regime, his plays were not performed again until the 1940′s and certain bans on his work remained until 1971.

Lorca’s Andalusian upbringing had a profound influence on his writing. One of his finest poems, Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, is an elegy for his friend the Andulusian bullfighter.

Tardará mucho tiempo en nacer, si es que nace,

un andaluz tan claro, tan rico en aventura.

Yo canto su elegancia con palabras que gimen

y recuerdo una brisa triste por los olivos.

So I was hanging off of a 30 foot roof scraping moss during a rain and the beginning of a passing thunderstorm. Nothing like being on an aluminium ladder in those situations for you to realize that it may be time to find another way of entertaining/making a living. Really, no reasonable offer refused at this point. If it can have good art and poetry thrown in… that would cinch that deal in a moment.

We watched the recent release of “Tristan and Isolde” this weekend. I enjoyed it, and thought it a worthy effort. If you get a chance check it out. Good cast, and the story is pretty close to what you find in the mythology books, as opposed to lots of the Hollywood tripe that is out there…

Muggy and Wet -I have not seen a June quite like this one in Oregon. It reminds me more of the East Coast than here. Usually some rain, but not weeks of it. I think a trend is developing. We had rain last year as well, not as long, but longer than before… It is warming up a bit.

On The Menu:

Art Education & Happenings This Summer and Fall with Martina & Roberto

The Links

The Article: inna bug conference: Bad Shaman Interview

The Poetry: Hafiz!

I have gotten enquiries into where the &@%(!!! is the Magazine? It will be here soon dear readers. I ran out of steam and inspiration. It happens. My relation to the Muse is a complicated one. I have just a bit more to do and it will all be here… patience please!

Thanks For Looking in on this ongoing project & thanks for the feedback, it means much to me!

Gwyllm

____________

I wanted to alert you to some great art and people happenings… Roberto Venosa and Martina Hoffmann teach classes every year in some quite wonderful places… If you have the time, and you want to make a leap forward with you art, these are idea situations! Great Locations, excellent company, and Art with a capital “A”.

The String Chees Incident Show, and Burning Man are unique happenings, take a chance on a wonderful opportunity!

G

—-

Martina & Roberto’s Summer Schedule…

+ Our annual Cadaques, Spain painting workshop (September 17 – 30, 2006) is now almost filled with

the exception of three spaces remaining.

To see images of the villa and to find detailed workshop information please visit:

Cadaques Spain Workshop

+ Beginning this Sunday we will be teaching a 7 day class at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY

June 18, 2006 – June 25, 2006

For Workshop info:

Omega Institute Workshop…

+ From July 8 –21, 2006 we will be on the gorgeous Island of Skyros in Greece at the Skyros

Institute for a 2 week painting workshop and to celebrate Mediterranean life:

Painting Workshop on Skyros

+ On July 2, 2006 we will be painting live on stage with String Cheese Incident at the fabulous Red

Rocks amphitheater. It would be great to see you there! We hear that tickets are selling quickly.

+ August 28 – September 4, 2006 we will be at Burning Man with an exhibition/installation in a 40’ dome

as part of the MAPS village. If you don’t do anything else crazy this Summer than this could be your

opportunity to feed your counter-culture needs:

Burning Man!

__________

The Links:

Do not be Deceived…

Edge of a Galaxy

From The Sixties in France… Hara-kiri Covers…

Sweet Summer Solstice Balances Life’s Bitterness

__________

inna bug conference: Bad Shaman Interview

Spiros Antonopoulos

Insectoidal Nourishment and the Bad Shaman

The Bad Shaman, while barely known, needs nor wants little introduction. He’s a hard-working American ayahuascero. A successful entrepreneur. Conscientious psychonaut. Researcher of arcane plants, animals and insects. He remains perfectly comfortable surfing the edge of obscurity. Like the shaman in many of history’s archaic societies, he lives and works on the outskirts. We visit the shaman as a last resort. His ways elude sense and nonsense. His mojo works, but never as we expect and always at a price. He would be the first to push you down the stairs, if it might cure what ailed you. He may even ask to eat your brains, but that’s another story.

humans eating bugs

Trip: What’s the history of bug eating?

Bad Shaman: Primates and humans have consumed insects since Neolithic and Prehistoric times. Only recently, within the last 100 years, has insect eating gone out of fashion, except in small rural areas of Mexico, China and a handful of other remote areas. Throughout history, insect eating has been a main source of food for most mammals and birds.

How do bugs taste?

Of the 70 species of insects that I’ve sampled, the only ones that weren’t very appetizing were ladybugs. And I’ve eaten grubs, larvae, beetles, wasps, sow bugs (roly-poly bugs), mealworms, pine grubs, post beetles, earwigs… Insects are surprisingly tasty and comprise the spectrum of flavors, from nuts to vegetables.

Earwigs couldn’t be too tasty.

They are surprisingly tasty. Stir fried with rice and snow peas. Very yummy. I’d like to order some take-out right now.

Which bugs are the yummiest?

The roly-poly bugs. They can taste like anything from spinach to oysters depending upon habitat. And if you cook them, they can be made to taste like just about anything.

If folks could get over the base level aversion, it sounds like roly-poly bugs could usurp tofu.

Yep, and that leads me to my basic assertion: If you eat shrimp and you can’t eat grasshoppers, you better re-examine your taxonomy and zoology.

ant eating

Tell us about psychoactive insects.

Psychoactivity in insects is esoteric at best. Certainly there have been reports of psychoactive honeys from bees in the new world and the old world. Rumors and stories abound. There is a tradition in southern California and the Southwest of eating red harvester ants for their hallucinogenic psychoactivity in the acquisition of spirit helpers.

How did you come upon such esoteric knowledge?

I have been interested in ant consumption by humans in different cultures around the world for over 25 years, and I read scientific papers. For example, ants are no longer an imaginary food source. There are serious papers being presented by entomologists suggesting that eating more insects may solve some world hunger problems and be an excellent source of nutrients for humans.

Traditionally, insect information and lore have been considered a female knowledge since the hunter-gatherer societies didn’t share equally in the vertebrate proteins. That is, men would kill the animals and thus procure most of the vertebrate proteins, leaving women to gathering plants. In doing so the women would also learn about what bugs you could eat. They knew that since insects and plants co-evolved in such a similar environment and parallel evolutionary scheme, their ability to transform plant products into insect poisons is an evolutionary strategy that nature has tried again and again successfully. Insect and arachnid poisons are currently being researched in venom therapies, much like the bee venom therapies used by the Greeks and Romans for thousands of years.

Where do the ants come in?

Primarily in central and southern California. Several tribes used the Pogo for their spirit helper acquisition powers. A person ate a prescribed number of ants and went into a dream state for a couple of hours in which (God willing) a spirit helper would appear in the form of an animal.

So this isn’t recreational bug use.

No, their use was mostly therapeutic. Ants have had therapeutic values with the tribes in southern California and other native peoples throughout the Americas. I met a Dr. Rodriguez from the University of California at Irvine who told me, 25 years ago, that there are 20,000 species of ants in Columbia. And Columbia is already the mother source of many of the poisons that the world is aware of today: tobacco, coca, those sorts of things…

How have you used the red harvester ants?

Over the years I have eaten ants both therapeutically and for the psychoactive effects. I had heard tales of ants being used for arthritis and rheumatism for years. And I have found sources indicating that indigenous cultures from South, Central, and North America have used ants in that way. So I would capture and eat a small quantity of ants for their beneficial effects with rheumatism. The ant that we have in New Mexico is a particular harvester ant in the species Pogonomyrmex californicus, which is specifically known for its venom. There are so many types of ants and each ant has a different ability to produce different types of chemicals and venoms.

Ants have the oldest history of farming. They invented agriculture over 60,000 years ago. They are able to grow funguses on harvested plant materials and control the growth of unwanted fungi and microorganisms with antiseptic sprays that they produce with their bodies.

The particular ant of which I currently speak has a historical tradition, and people at the turn of the last century knew about it. J.P. Harrington, a researcher who worked and lived at that time in the Santa Barbara area, documented two matching ceremonial accounts of ant consumption.

Have the venoms been analyzed for their active constituents?

To a small degree. But since there are so many compounds in ant venoms, it’s a process that’s ongoing. I suspect that even in the back annals of scientific literature, this is probably not a popular subject. But it is becoming more popular (see references).

vision questions

Please explain the traditional ceremonial techniques.

In the recorded anecdotes of native peoples giving ants in a prescribed way, that is, ceremonially, eagle down or cotton is used. The ants would be collected from the ant hive, four or five per cotton ball or feather. The cotton ball was then bitten and swallowed. The person would then wait a period of time, and then with the help of an administrator, would go into a sleep state for a couple of hours, after which they would be administered warm water which would help them regurgitate whatever ants might be left in their stomach. It was important that they consume ants while they were still alive.

I’ve eaten a couple of hundred ants and I find that there certainly is a neurotoxic or psychoactive effect. But as far as going into a dream state, passing out, and acquiring spirit helpers, I have yet to reach that level of saturation.

Can one obtain the same prescribed effect from dead ants or the extract? What has been your most successful experimental technique to date?

Ants are plentiful and easy to collect. I’ve found that using a glass pie pan with beer, water, juice or mescal, one can collect a rather large amount of ants in a short amount of time. The LD50, i.e., the lethal dose of ants, is about 1000, swallowing live ants, so a participant would want to consume about a third to half that amount. Be aware that there is a lethal toxicity to the harvester ants which have been traditionally used, and which I have been consuming.

It’s a bit like walking towards death…

People who are interested should research the literature before attempting to consume any ants. Again, it can be fatal and I don’t recommend it. The bite from this ant is extremely painful and will linger for hours, sometimes days.

Why are you using these particular liquids as the base for your extractions?

This is how we find out what solution is more likely to extract the ant’s psychoactive properties. The beer may extract qualities with alcohols that mescal doesn’t have. It may turn out that eating live ants is ultimately what has to be done to get them to exude their compounds in the time that you want and the quantity that you need.

Are the compounds oil-based?

There are high molecular weight compounds and low molecular weight ones. So I would think that they would have an affinity to many things because it is such a complex mix of proteins and histamines and seratonin-like compounds.

About an hour after I sampled the mescal extract, I was overcome with a severe heaviness. It was rather dark, but not particularly scary. Definitely a meet-your-maker heaviness. Is this typical?

I’m sure there’s a dose-response curve where at lower doses one could have physical benefits while at higher doses you could have psychoactivity, and at even higher doses one could have hallucinogenic activity. But this is an area of avant-garde research. Very basic work still needs to be done, but certainly here is an open field of potential for beginning to understand psychoactive insects as we have with psychoactive plants.

In Mexico, centipedes and wasps were commonly revered for their poisonous qualities and there were often beverages made from them.

How would you compare the ant buzz to a more commonly known psychoactive plant-based poison like datura?

Oh, it’s nothing like datura. And actually that’s not a fair comparison at all. It’s much more like the poison of the tarantella, the wolf spider of Europe.

Would you like to see some ants that I’ve collected?

juicing antcastles

This one has a very peculiar taste…

Very ant-y…

How would you describe the taste of ants?

Different ants have different tastes. These particular ants have a lemon-lime, Sprite-like taste. Not the formaldehyde and formic acid tastes of other types of ants. Nor the sweet buttery taste of black ants. Or the honey taste of honey pod ants.

While this is unexplored territory, it’s not for the faint or foolhardy.

No. It’s literally like playing in a wasp’s or hornet’s nest. Ants pack as powerful a venom and sting as those insects.

You’ve been bitten a few times playing in the nest.

When the ants bit my tongue it took about four or five hours for the burning sting to dissipate.

What about other psychoactive bugs?

These were gathered in the Mexican province of Chululah near Puebla. Terence McKenna speculated that the iridescent green was a signature of psychoactivity in bugs. These guys lived in an acacia tree at night and were attracted to the local poppies during the daytime. So I thought that may be a good indication that they were sequestering some psychoactive properties from the trees and flowers.

Have you tried them?

Well, we’ve smoked them and eaten them and there’s mild psychoactivity. But we really haven’t jumped into these bugs with both feet yet. We’re still trying to collect more background information before I start consuming something that could always be potentially lethal in its poison.

How does it compare to the ants?

That’s comparing apples and oranges. Beetles and wasp-like ants. I was reading, however, that there’s a beetle in Brazil that is raised in peanuts and eaten for rheumatism and arthritis. So I suppose there are a few parallels. Insects are often medicine in traditional cultures; the problem is the scarcity of professionally trained ethno-entomologists that can ask the question, “What insects were/are you using for medicines?” Interestingly, Merck currently has an agreement with Costa Rica to categorize not only all their plants but all of their insects, aware that insects are a possible source for chemicals and medicine. And why wouldn’t they be? Plants are certainly a source of medicine. Perhaps this is just the tip of an iceberg that we’ve yet to explore scientifically. It could hold a cure… perhaps even the cockroach holds the cure for cancer or some other unimaginable terminal disease.

Even so, do you have any moral issues with ant eating?

I do. I am concerned with the taking of life for certain solely psychoactive purposes, but for therapeutic purposes I find that it’s a medicine that’s worthwhile.

There’s a theory that the ant colony is a collective consciousness and that the living anima rests not within the individual ant, but with large groups of them…

Within their collective brain the ability to learn advances with each generation. The ants on this mound probably exist over a quarter acre or so. They know this environment so intimately because they are constantly searching to see what’s out there and what’s available. And the sheer quantity of them. We have no idea what it’s like. They’ve dug underneath all of this area. There are literally tens of thousands of them.

Hell, it’s more crowded in New York City, so humans do actually have an idea of what it’s like. What do you think about the ol’ role reversal, HG Wells’ Empire of the Ants and perhaps ants eating humans?

How do we know they don’t? Fuck this article, we should do a movie.

Spiros Antonopoulos was a contributing editor for the dearly departed Fringeware Review.

The Bad Shaman’s insect-eating reading list:

The Eat A Bug Cookbook by David George Gordon

Man Eating Bugs : The Art and Science of Eating Insects by Peter Menzel, Faith D’Aluisio

* Creepy Crawly Cuisine : The Gourmet Guide to Edible Insects by Julieta Ramos-Elorduy, Peter Menzel

____________

Poetry: The Great Hafiz

LAST night I dreamed that angels stood without

The tavern door, and knocked in vain, and wept;

They took the clay of Adam, and, methought,

Moulded a cup therewith while all men slept.

Oh dwellers in the halls of Chastity!

You brought Love’s passionate red wine to me,

Down to the dust I am, your bright feet stept.

For Heaven’s self was all too weak, to bear

The burden of His love God laid on it,

He turned to seek a messenger elsewhere,

And in the Book of Fate my name was writ.

Between my Lord and me such concord lies.

As makes the Huris glad in Paradise,

With songs of praise through the green glades they flit.

A hundred dreams of Fancy’s garnered store

Assail me – Father Adam went astray

Tempted by one poor grain of corn! Wherefore

Absolve and pardon him that turns away

Though the soft breath of Truth reaches his ears,

For two-and-seventy Jangling creeds he hears,

And loud-voiced Fable calls him ceaselessly.

That, that is not the flame of Love’s true fire

Which makes the torchlight shadows dance in rings,

But where the radiance draws the moth’s desire

And send him fort with scorched and drooping wings.

The heart of one who dwells retired shall break,

Rememb’ring a black mole and a red cheek,

And his life ebb, sapped at its secret springs.

Yet since the earliest time that man has sought

To comb the locks of Speech, his goodly bride,

Not one, like Hafiz, from the face of Thought

Has torn the veil of Ignorance aside.

—-

There is the righteous one, here is ruined me.

See how far it is from one to the other!

What link do piety and righteousness have to the rend’s way?

There is the sound of the sermon, here is the melody of the rabab.

My heart grew weary of the cloister, the hypocrite’s cloak.

Where is the monastery of the Magi? Where is pure wine?

The day of union are gone. Let them be a joyful memory.

Where is that amorous glance? Where is that reproach?

What can the enemy’s heart find in my love’s face?

There is that dead lamp, here is this sun candle.

Do not be seduced by her dimpled chin, there is a well in that road.

Where are you going, O heart, in such a hurry?

Since the kohl of our insight is the dust of your doorway,

Please tell us, where do we go from this threshold?

Do not cover rest and sleep from Hafiz, O friend.

What is rest? Which is patience? And where is sleep?

—-

Oh Cup-bearer, set my glass afire

With the light of wine! oh minstrel, sing:

The world fulfilleth my heart’s desire!

Reflected within the goblet’s ring

I see the glow of my Love’s red cheek,

And scant of wit, ye who fail to seek

The pleasures that wine alone can bring!

Let not the blandishments be checked

That slender beauties lavish on me,

Until in the grace of the cypress decked,

Love shall come like a ruddy pine-tree

He cannot perish whose heart doth hold

The life love breathes – though my days are told,

In the Book of the World lives my constancy.

But when the Day of Reckoning is here,

I fancy little will be the gain

That accrues to the Sheikh for his lawful cheer,

Or to me for the drought forbidden I drain.

The drunken eyes of my comrades shine,

And I too, stretching my hand to the wine,

On the neck of drunkenness loosen the rein.

Oh wind, if thou passest the garden close

Of my heart’s dear master, carry for me

The message I send to him, wind that blows!

“Why hast thou thrust from thy memory

My hapless name?” breathe low in his ear;

“Knowest thou not that the day is near

When nor thou nor any shall think on me?”

If with tears, oh Hafiz, thine eyes are wet,

Scatter them round thee like grain, and snare

The Bird of joy when it comes to thy net.

As the tulip shrinks from the cold night air,

So shrank my heart and quailed in the shade;

Oh Song-bird Fortune, the toils are laid,

When shall thy bright wings lie pinioned there?

The heavens’ green sea and the bark therein,

The slender bark of the crescent moon,

Are lost in thy bounty’s radiant noon,

Vizir and pilgrim, Kawameddin!

——-

An Infant in your Arms

The tide of my love

Has risen so high let me flood

over

You.

Close your eyes for a moment

And maybe all your

fears and fantasies

Will end.

If that happened

God would become an infant in your

Arms

And then you

Would have to nurse all

Creation!

Nice Day… sitting outside, we witnessed a Crow Riot (lots of beatings handed out between different groups) A Blue Heron hanging out in our trees, then taking off… and a multitude of Bees all over the Blackberries and Rasberries.

Cat came in, a horrible mood afflicting him. Getting old does not agree with him, he gets a shorter temper daily. “I demand an immeadiate rub, with some attention to the belly (not too much as I will scratch) followed by feeding, with a back rub simultaneously.”

Headed over to Randies and DeDa’s for dinner, hanging out above OHSU… lovely evening indeed.

Came home in the gloaming, and have begun to upload a new show on the radio, of several hours length, stay tuned…

Our concentration for this entry is on the great Afghan Sufi Mystical Poet: Hakim Sana’i. Excellent, all of it.

On the menu:

The Links

The Article: A Dose Of Genius

Poetry: Hakim Sana’i (with Bio)

The Art: Illustrations from Ancient Islamic Afghanistan

Pax,

Gwyllm

_______

The Links:

Meet the Press in Hell

Crows Have Human-Like Intelligence, Author Says

Hitler ‘Tested Small Atom Bomb’

Russian Official Jailed for Forcing Subordinates to Study Scientology

_______________

A Dose Of Genius

Smart Pills’ Are on The Rise. But Is Taking Them Wise?

By Joel Garreau

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, June 11, 2006; Page D01

Studying with diligent friends is fine, says Heidi Lessing, a University of Delaware sophomore.

But after a couple of hours, it’s time for a break, a little gossip: “I want to talk about somebody walking by in the library.”

One of those friends, however, is working too hard for dish — way too hard.

Instead of joining in the gossip, “She says, ‘Be quiet,’ ” Lessing says, astonishment still registering in her voice.

Her friend’s attention is laserlike, totally focused on her texts, even after an evening of study. “We were so bored,” Lessing says. But the friend was still “really into it. It’s annoying.”

The reason for the difference: Her pal is fueled with “smart pills” that increase her concentration, focus, wakefulness and short-term memory.

As university students all over the country emerge from final exam hell this month, the number of healthy people using bootleg pharmaceuticals of this sort seems to be soaring.

Such brand-name prescription drugs “were around in high school, but they really exploded in my third and fourth years” of college, says Katie Garrett, a 2005 University of Virginia graduate.

The bootleg use even in her high school years was erupting, according to a study published in February in an international biomedical and psychosocial journal, Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Mining 2002 data, it noted that even then, more than 7 million Americans used bootleg prescription stimulants, and 1.6 million of those users were of student age. By the time students reach college nowadays, they’re already apt to know about these drugs, obtained with or without a prescription.

Comparable accounts are common on other campuses, according to dozens of interviews with university students in Virginia, the District, Maryland and Delaware, as well as reports in student newspapers serving campuses in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, Indiana and Missouri.

“I’m a varsity athlete in crew,” says Katharine Malone, a George Washington University junior. “So we’re pretty careful about what we put in our bodies. So among my personal friends, I’d say the use is only like 50 or 60 percent.”

Seen by some ambitious students as the winner’s edge — the difference between a 3.8 average and a 4.0, maybe their ticket to Harvard Law — these “brain steroids” can be purchased on many campuses for as little as $3 to $5 per pill, though they are often obtained free from friends with legitimate prescriptions, students report.

These drugs represent only the first primitive, halting generation of cognitive enhancers. Memory drugs will soon make it to market if human clinical trials continue successfully.

There are lots of the first-generation drugs around. Total sales have increased by more than 300 percent in only four years, topping $3.6 billion last year, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information company. They include Adderall, which was originally aimed at people with attention-deficit disorder, and Provigil, which was aimed at narcoleptics, who fall asleep uncontrollably. In the healthy, this class of drugs variously aids concentration, alertness, focus, short-term memory and wakefulness — useful qualities in students working on complex term papers and pulling all-nighters before exams. Adderall sales are up 3,135.6 percent over the same period. Provigil is up 359.7 percent.

In May, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America issued its annual attitude-tracking study on drug use. It is a survey of more than 7,300 seventh- through 12th-graders, designed to be representative of the larger U.S. population and with an accuracy of plus or minus 1.5 percent, according to Thomas A. Hedrick Jr., a founding director of the organization. It reported that among kids of middle school and high school age, 2.25 million are using stimulants such as Ritalin without a prescription.

That’s about one in 10 of the 22 million students in those grades, as calculated by the U.S. Department of Education. Half the time, the study reported, the students were using these drugs not so much to get high as “to help me with my problems” or “to help me with specific tasks.” That motivation was growing rapidly, Hedrick says.

Why should we be surprised? This generation is the one we have pushed to get into the best high schools and colleges, to have the best grades and résumés. Computer nerds are culture heroes, SAT scores are measures of our worth and the Ivy League is Valhalla. Hermione Granger in “Harry Potter” is a heroine despite being such a goody two-shoes that she doubles up her course load with a spell that allows her to be in two places at once. This is the kind of focused overachievement that is addressed by smart pills.

A student Web site for a consortium of tony Philadelphia prep schools makes the point with one of those jokes that’s not really a joke: You know you are part of this elite educational set if:

· “You applied to Penn as a backup school.”

· “You tend to think anything below a 1400 is a mediocre SAT score.”

· “You could get adderall in less than 5 minutes at practically any time of the school day.”

Smart-pill use has not been the focus of much data collection. This comes as no surprise to researchers such as Richard Restak, a Washington neurologist and president of the American Neuropsychiatric Association, who has written extensively about smart drugs in his 2003 book, “The New Brain: How the Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind,” as well as his forthcoming “The Naked Brain: How the Neurosociety Is Changing How We Live, Work and Love.”

Contributing to this dearth, he points out, is that these drugs are not famous for being abused recreationally and they are not being used by people with a disease.

This is not “the type of data collected by the FDA,” he says. Law-enforcement activity has been sparse. “Who is the complainant?”

Compared with the kind of drug users who get police attention, “This is an entirely different population of people — from the unmotivated to the super-motivated,” Restak says. These “drug users may be at the top of the class, instead of the ones hanging around the corners.”

Smart-pill use generally doesn’t show up in campus health center reports, he says, because “This is not the kind of stuff that you would overdose on” easily. Amphetamines are associated with addiction and bodily damage, but in use by ambitious students, “if you go a little over you get wired up but it wears off in a couple of hours. And Provigil has a pretty good safety record.” Finally, smart-pill use is a relatively recent development that has not yet achieved widespread attention, much less study, although Restak expects that to change.

“We’re going to see it not only in schools, but in businesses, especially where mental endurance matters.” Restak can easily imagine a boss saying, ” ‘You’ve been here 14 hours; could you do another six?’ It’s a very competitive world out there, and this gives people an edge.”

That’s why even small surveys conducted by students themselves are suggestive. For a senior project this semester, Christopher Salantrie conducted a random survey of 150 University of Delaware students at the university’s Morris Library and Trabant Student Center.

“With rising competition for admissions and classes becoming harder and harder by the day, a hypothesis was made that at least half of students at the university have at one point used/experienced such ‘smart drugs,’ ” Salantrie writes in his report. He found his hunch easy to confirm.

“What was a surprise, though, was the alarming rate of senior business majors who have used” the drugs, he writes. Almost 90 percent reported at least occasional use of “smart pills” at crunch times such as final exams, including Adderall, Ritalin, Strattera and others. Of those, three-quarters did not have a legitimate prescription, obtaining the pills from friends. “We were shocked,” Salantrie writes. He says that in his report, he was “attempting to bring to light the secondary market for Adderall” specifically because “most of the university is not aware” of its extent, he says.

When you start asking questions about smart pills, the answers you get divide sharply into two groups.

When you ask the grown-ups — deans, crisis counselors, health counselors — they tell you they don’t know too much about the subject, but they don’t think it is much of a problem at their institutions.

“I’m not sure of the size and scope,” says Jonathan Kandell, a psychologist and assistant director at the University of Maryland Counseling Center. “I have heard about it. But I don’t get a sense it’s a major thing that they come to the center about.”

When you ask the students, they look at you like you’re from the planet Zircon. They ask why you weren’t on this story three years ago. Even if some of these drugs are amphetamines, it’s medicine parents give to 8-year-olds, they say. It’s brand-name stuff, in precise dosages. How bad can it be? Sure, there are problems with weight loss, sleep loss, jitters and throwing up, they say. But other unintended consequences are not what you might expect. Universities now sport some of the cleanest apartments in the history of undergraduate education. Says one student who asked for anonymity because she has been an off-prescription user of these drugs: “You’ve done all your work, but you’re still focused. So you start with the bathroom, and then move on to the kitchen . . . .”

Warning: Side Effects

In the name of altering mood, energy and thinking patterns, we have been marinating our brains in chemicals for a very long time.

Caffeine is as old as coffee in Arabia, tea in China, and chocolate in the New World. Alcohol, coca leaves, tobacco and peyote go way back.

Even psychopharmaceuticals have been around for generations. Amphetamines — which are the active ingredient in Adderall and Ritalin — were first synthesized in Germany in 1887. Students have been using them for generations, in the form of Benzedrine and Dexedrine.

Beta blockers have been the dirty little secret of classical musicians since the 1970s. Originally prescribed to treat high blood pressure, they became the “steroids of the symphony” when it became clear Inderal controlled stage fright. As long ago as 1987, a study of the 51 largest orchestras in the United States found one in four musicians using them to improve their live performances, with 70 percent of those getting their pills illicitly.

What’s new is the range, scope, quantity and quality of substances, old and new, aimed at boosting our brains — as well as the increase in what’s in the pipeline. Current psychopharmaceuticals represent only the beginning of cognitive enhancers aimed at improving attention, reasoning, planning and even social skills.

The memory compounds being raced to market by four U.S. companies are initially aimed at the severely impaired, such as early-stage Alzheimer’s patients. But researchers expect the market for memory drugs to rapidly extend into the aging population we think of as normal, such as the more than 70 million baby boomers who are tired of forgetting what they meant to buy at the shopping mall and then realizing they’ve forgotten where they parked their cars, too. Or students who think such drugs could gain them hundreds of points on their SATs.

In research now underway, one such substance, ampakines, boosts the activity of glutamate, a key neurotransmitter that makes it easier to learn and encode memory. How useful they might be in a French or law exam.

But there are side effects with every drug. Strattera — the ADHD medicine that is not a stimulant and may be taken for weeks before it shows an effect — comes with a warning that it can result in fatal liver failure. The FDA warns it also may increase thoughts of suicide in young people. For a while last year, Canada pulled a form of Adderall from its markets as a result of sudden unexplained deaths in children with cardiac abnormalities. Provigil can decrease the effectiveness of birth control. All of these drugs come with a raft of side-effect warnings.

Nonetheless, pharmaceutical companies are racing to bring to market new drugs aimed at fundamentally altering our attitudes toward having a healthy brain. The idea is less to treat a specific disease than it is to, in the words of the old Army recruiting commercial, “Be all that you can be.”

Of Mice and Men

Is this what smart has come to in the early 21st century? Is Ken Jennings, the “Jeopardy” phenom, our model of smart? Do SATs and grade-point averages measure all of what it means to be intelligent? If so, these drugs have a potent future. But definitions of intelligence may change — already, some colleges have stopped requiring SAT scores from applicants.

Howard Gardner of Harvard is the godfather of the idea that smart is more than what IQ tests test. In his seminal 1983 book, “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences,” and later works, he laid out a then-novel model of cognition that included many other kinds of sagacity.

“I feel that what we call ‘intelligence’ is almost always ‘scholastic skill’ — what it takes to do well on a certain kind of short-answer instrument in a certain kind of Western school,” he writes in an e-mail. “Other uses of intellect — musical competence, facility in the use of one’s hands, understanding of other people, sensitivity to distinctions in the natural world, alertness to one’s own and others’ emotional states etc. — are not included in our definitions of intelligence, though I think that they should be. Unless performances in these other domains were directly tapped, we’d have no idea of whether ‘performance enhancing pills’ affect these other forms of intelligence as well.”

Eric R. Kandel is shocked by the idea that powerful elixirs like the ones he is developing might rapidly trickle down to ambitious college kids. He shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in medicine for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons. He also founded Memory Pharmaceuticals.

“That’s awful! Why should they be taking drugs? They should just study! I think this is absurd. What’s so terrible about having a 3.9? The idea that character and functioning and intelligence is to be judged by a small difference on an exam — that’s absurd. This is just like Barry Bonds and steroids. Exactly what you want to discourage. These kids are very sensitive. Their brains are still developing. Who knows what might happen. I went to Harvard. I like Harvard. It ain’t worth it.”

The mind amplifiers he’s working on, he insists, could have major effects on lots of needy people — those with mental retardation or Down syndrome, or those with memory loss from depression or Alzheimer’s or cancer chemotherapy or schizophrenia. “There are lots of populations out there that really, really need help,” he says.

Kandel is hugely enthusiastic about taking a memory that has slipped and bringing it back up to reasonable. His compounds are terrific in aging mice, he says.

But ambitious college kids?

Why take the risk?

In normal mice, he says, his stuff improves memory — only by 20 percent to 50 percent.

_________

Afghan Sufi Poetry – Hakim Sana’i

Saki,

bring wine

& don’t stop the flow!

Our old friend has broken his vows

of repentence. He’s lifted the siege of Self-denial

& Duty, & come to loiter round the

tavern with a notorious beauty!

He’s vacuumed his head of hypocrisy &

pious attitudinizing, & all at once he’s sprung him-

self from his monastery. He’s freed his ankle from

Religion’s chains-but cinched his waist with a

Fireworshipper’s sash. How he drinks! And urges me,

“Have one yourself! Stay drunk as long as you can!

Stick to this path toward nothingness

& light a fire beneath all

that survives!”

(Translated by Hakim Bey)

——–

The Good Darkness

There is great joy in darkness.

Deepen it.

Blushing embarrassments

in the half-light

confuse,

but a scorched, blackened, face

can laugh like an Ethiopian,

or a candled moth,

coming closer to God.

Brighter than any moon, Bilal,

Muhammed’s Black Friend,

shadowed him on the night journey.

Keep your deepest secret hidden

in the dark beneath daylight’s

uncovering and night’s spreading veil.

Whatever’s given you by those two

is for your desires. They poison,

eventually. Deeper down, where your face

gets erased, where life-water runs silently,

there’s a prison with no food and drink,

and no moral instruction, that opens on a garden

where there’s only God. No self,

only the creation-word, BE.

You, listening to me, roll up the carpet

of time and space, Step beyond,

into the one word.

In blindness, receive what I say.

Take “There is no good…”

for your wealth and your strength.

Let “There is nothing…” be

a love-wisdom in your wine.

—–

The Wild Rose of Praise

Those unable to grieve,

or to speak of their love,

or to be grateful, those

who can’t remember God

as the source of everything,

might be described as a vacant wind,

or a cold anvil, or a group

of frightened old people.

Say the Name. Moisten your tongue

with praise, and be the spring ground,

waking. Let your mouth be given

its gold-yellow stamen like the wild rose’s.

As you fill with wisdom,

and your heart with love,

there’s no more thirst.

There’s only unselfed patience

waiting on the doorsill, a silence

which doesn’t listen to advice

from people passing in the street.

—–

The Way of the Holy Ones

Don’t speak of your suffering — He is speaking.

Don’t look for Him everywhere — He’s looking for you.

An ant’s foot touches a leaf, He senses it;

A pebble shifts in a streambed, He knows it.

If there’s a worm hidden deep in a rock,

He’ll know its body, tinier than an atom,

The sound of its praise, its secret ecstasy –

All this He knows by divine knowing.

He has given the tiniest worm its food;

He has opened to you the Way of the Holy Ones.

—-

The Great Provider

Allah sets the table for all living things,

and lays out more edibles than eaters!

Everyone has its spirit, its days, its daily bread,

blessings and happiness from Allah.

Allah brings to light everyone’s daily bread,

then leaves the larder door wide open!

Unbeliever, believer, wretched and happy alike,

all creatures will find new sustenance and new life there.

A Bearded Man Leans on a Stick, Persian, 1630-40. Click for larger image.

While the N of need still sticks in their throats,

the M of His munificence has already provisioned them.

Nothing nurtures us other than bread,

and we eat it only because of our hunger for it.

Allah does not leap to the command of servants!

Having blessed us with our hunger for bread,

He will give us that bread as well.

Your bread and your soul are both in the divine treasury;

they are Allah’s buried treasure, if you only knew it!

If your meal waits for you in China,

the horse you will ride to it is already saddled and waiting.

Either you will be carried there quickly,

or your bread will be brought to your side while you sleep.

Did Allah not say,

“I am your Provider, the Knower of things secret, the Knower of things open.

I give you life, and I will give you bread.

Whatever you wish, I will give you in good time”?

Know that the work of daily bread is at your door like the dawn;

and that bread is a souvenir of the day.

The Mean One fears this truth,

and avoids the leftovers of the Wise.

The lion does not devour its prey alone —

when it’s had its fill, it leaves the rest.

Allah’s kindness is with you,

so you trade the life your hold in your hand for a crumb.

Mind your soul, for, just like bread,

loaf follows loaf till the edge of the grave.

Allah grants no one life without granting bread,

because the soul is sustained by it.

Take this seriously — eat now,

and soon you will eat the food of the soul…

Your daily bread is granted to you by the Knowing, Powerful One,

so don’t shake your fist at the King and the tax-collector!

When the soul flies from your body,

be certain that your daily bread has arrived at last.

It arrives through the gate of Allah,

not the gate of your teeth or throat.

You may sit at the head of the table, but only way of great suffering —

especially if you weren’t wealthy or wise to begin with!

So forget that place!

To rise to such a rank would assure you nothing but heartache and scattered desires — Let Allah be enough to fill you.

In any state, in any event, it is better that you seek support from Allah

than that you should seek it from an ass-powered mill or a sack.

In any state, in any event, it is better that you depend upon the benevolence of Allah

than that you should depend on an ass-powered mill and the sack.

______

Hakim Sanai

Timeline (1044? – 1150?)

Not much is known about Hakim Sanai, often just called Sanai or Sanai of Ghazna. Sanai is one of the earlier Sufi poets. He was born in the province of Ghazna in southern Afghanistan in the middle of the 11th century and probably died around 1150.

Rumi acknowledged Sanai and Attar as his two primary inspirations, saying, “Attar is the soul and Sanai its two eyes, I came after Sanai and Attar.”

Sanai was originally a court poet who was engaged in writing praises for the Sultan of Ghazna.

The story is told of how the Sultan decided to lead a military attack against neighboring India and Sanai, as a court poet, was summoned to join the expedition to record the Sultan’s exploits. As Sanai was making his way to the court, he passed an enclosed garden frequented by a notorious drunk named Lai Khur.

As Sanai was passing by, he heard Lai Khur loudly proclaim a toast to the blindness of the Sultan for greedily choosing to attack India, when there was so much beauty in Ghazna. Sanai was shocked and stopped. Lai Khur then proposed a toast to the blindness of the famous young poet Sanai who, with his gifts of insight and expression, couldn’t see the pointlessness of his existence as a poet praising such a foolish Sultan.

These words were like an earthquake to Hakim Sanai, because he knew they were true. He abandoned his life as a pampered court poet, even declining marriage to the Sultan’s own sister, and began to study with a Sufi master named Yusef Hamdani.

Sanai soon went on pilgrimage to Mecca. When he returned, he composed his Hadiqatu’l Haqiqat or The Walled Garden of Truth. There was a double meaning in this title for, in Persian, the word for a walled garden is the same word for paradise, but it was also from within a walled garden that Lai Khur uttered the harsh truths that set Hakim Sanai on the path of wisdom.

Some of these girls I have had since they were little clonelettes, back in 1996. They don’t survive in ground over winter, but have to be dug up, or cloned out again and re-root in jars over winter. I am going to experiment with straw and compost this fall, to see if they survive the wintering. I will take starts of course…

I have had great satisfaction in the growing of this plant. I thoroughly enjoy our interactions in and out of the ground…

Mary and Rowan being good sports. You my as well tie their ankles to a stake than get a willing photo out of them. My camera has become an object to flee around here, unfortunately.

They see it come out, and they scatter like the wind.

My ex-sister in law, Lisa gave us a moon and a star that have solar batteries. Usually, I like pitch dark at night but for some reason I like thetwo lights out there.

Thanks Lisa!

Mary and Rowan hanging out in the Gloaming. My favourite time, the in-betweenies as I say.

If the insects leave you alone (which does occur, usually when my mind is unclouded, I find this one of the better periods for quiet contemplation.

Ah, that is the secret of the garden I think, it reflects back very well, and also seems to ground one very well….

Putting your hands into earth, caring for all the little beings and plants gets one out of ones self.

On the Menu:

The Links

The Quote of the Day

The Article: Big Brother Bugs Portland

On the Garden: Zen Quotes & Poetry

Life and Death in the Garden.

The Bee was caught in the web of the Spider, and of course the spider was delighted, the Bee lless so. Their dance went on for hours. I wanted to free the Bee, but desisted. Obviously from the early moments of creation, this moment had been forming, and now was in full flower.

Eventually, they killed each other in their struggles…

___________

The Links:

Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites

Bollywood Beatles… their version of “I wanna hold your hand”

bill bennet explains marriage

Brazilian Margarine Commercial…

______________

Quote of the Day:

The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.

Robert Anton Wilson

The inner leaves of our Variegated Brugmansia. Amazing flowers on this little darling, which somehow survives year after year here. (with a bit of help of course)

We have tons of datura this year, always a good omen…

_______________

Big Brother Bugs Portland

Simon Maxwell Apter

To George H.W. Bush, Portland, Oregon, is ” Little Beirut.” Downtown’s omnipresent bicycle messengers call the city “Stumptown,” and officially, the town is known as the City of Roses. In a move more befitting, perhaps, the presidential Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires circa 1982, and not the Rose City of Portland circa 2006, the FBI has been accused by Portland Mayor Tom Potter of “trying to place an informant inside the offices of Portland’s elected officials and employees, in order to inform on City Council and others.”

Since the end of the Age of Aquarius, when thousands of Californians began to migrate north to Oregon, Portland has never been particularly welcoming to the executive branch of the federal government–especially when said branch is in Republican control. Portland’s two Representatives in Congress are Democrats, and Portland’s county, Multnomah, voted for John Kerry over Bush in 2004 by nearly a 3-to-1 ratio. Moreover, in April 2005, the City Council voted, along with the mayor–and with overwhelming support from the citizenry–to withdraw Portland’s participation in the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force project.

Upon Portland’s withdrawal from the task force, NPR’s Larry Abramson noted, “Portlanders seem proud of their bluer-than-blue reputation, of the bumper stickers that proclaim ‘Keep Portland Weird.’ So maybe it was predictable that the city mocked as Little Beirut by conservatives is considering a symbolic declaration of independence.” And tucked away in the Pacific Northwest, with no Jerry Garcia or Kurt Cobain to worship, Portland has made its commitment to progressive politics the city’s calling card. The mayor’s seat is officially nonpartisan, and where major policy is concerned, the mayor has little more power than anyone else on the four-member City Council. With a robust public referendum system that presents voters with potential tax proposals, constitutional amendments and bond issues, Portland’s political system does Montesquieu proud.

By state law, police officers in Oregon are barred from investigating citizens based solely on their political, religious or social leanings, and Portlanders will be quick to point out that it was the Feds, and not local cops, who erroneously arrested local attorney Brandon Mayfield in connection to the 3/11 Madrid train bombings in May 2004. After the bogus fingerprint evidence used to arrest him fell through, the only credible “reason” behind the police action turned out to be Mayfield’s religion, which happened to be Islam.

“In the absence of any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing,” wrote Mayor Potter in an open letter to the city, “I believe the FBI’s recent actions smack of ‘Big Brother.’ Spying on local government without justification or cause is not acceptable to me. I hope it is not acceptable to you, either.”

Of course, the FBI has a different take. In a press release coming on the heels of Potter’s letter, the Portland office of the FBI stated, “It is entirely proper for an FBI agent to ask willing citizens to provide information when those citizens feel it is appropriate to do so regarding potential criminal conduct–whether that information involves a bank robbery, kidnapping, public corruption or other crime.” Like most of America’s major cities, Portland is rife with problems, many stemming from poverty and racism–but a Tammany or Richard J. Daley-style system has never taken root in City Hall at Southwest Fourth and Madison.

Few, including Mayor Potter, Portland’s former chief of police, doubt the capability of information gathered in the field to further the prosecution of governmental graft. In Portland’s case, though, there were and are no reasons to suspect corruption at City Hall. Indeed, when Potter first complained about the incident to the FBI on May 15, special agent Robert Jordan, head of the FBI field office in Portland, wondered if his man was merely hitting on the city employee.

With no evidence unearthed at City Hall to warrant a federal investigation, it’s a “presumed guilty” situation. Potter acknowledges as much, writing, “When there is no information to indicate ANY public corruption on the part of City Council members or employees, the FBI has no legitimate role in surreptitiously monitoring elected officials and city employees.”

If the NSA has claimed ordinary civilians as their own targets for surveillance, perhaps it’s only fitting that the FBI is now venturing into the rotundas and council rooms of America’s cities to find its own prey.

____________

On the Garden: Zen Quotes & Poetry

Mountain fruit drop in the rain

and grass insects sing under my oil lamp.

White hair, after all, can never change

as yellow gold cannot be created.

If you want to know how to get rid

of age, its sickness, study nonbeing.

– Wang Wei, 699-761

———

Crape myrtle, brilliant red, bursting forth;

Hiding the garden.

Some days, only the Garden, entire, serene;

Yet, hiding from sight, shy, single plants.

Seeing Both, seldom, but as One:

Sweat poured from my startled brow,

Dripping on the dry earth,

And all became Sunshine

And shadows of surprise unraveling.

– Michael P. Garofalo, Above the Fog

———-

Being and non-being produce each other.

Difficulty and ease bring about each other.

Long and short delimit each other.

High and low rest on each other.

Sound and voice harmonize each other.

Front and back follow each other.

Therefore the sage abides in the condition of unattached action.

And carries out the wordless teaching.

Here, the myriad things are made, yet not separated.

———

Dust and sand in his eyes, dirt in his ears,

He doesn’t consent to stay in the myriad peaks.

Falling flowers, flowing streams, very vast.

Suddenly raising my eyebrows – where has he gone?

– Hsueh-tou (980-1052)

———-

Even plants and trees,

Which have no heart,

Wither with the passing days;

Beholding this,

Can anyone help but feel chagrin?

– Dogen, 1200 – 1253

——–

Long ago there was an immortal man

Who lived on the slope of Shooting Mountain.

Riding clouds and commanding flying dragons,

He did his breathing and supped on precious flowers.

He could be heard, but not seen.

Sighing sorrows and full emotions,

Self-tortured, he had no companion;

Grief and heartbreak piled upon him

“Study the familiar to penetrate the sublime”

But time is short and what’s to be done?

– Juan Chi (210-263 CE)

Moon to the south… our last photo entry on this track, more to come I am sure…

Pax,

Gwyllm

Thursday Night. My friend Terry comes over , and we go to explore a semi-new Organic Brewery, “Roots” down on 7th off of Hawthorne. Tasty IPA, nice crowd, Reggae Music, Dance Hall and some Dub pounding out of the door.

After 2 IPAs’ we head up the street to Caer Llwydd, settle back and crack open the Absinthe and settle in, listening to XM channel 100 (The French Channel)… Conversations dance in and out of some 40 years, touching on the latest screw-ups in Iraq to our dear Ann Coulters latest verbal car-wrecks…

The evening moves on, from 7:30, and now at 12:46 Friday morning, we talk about the failures of the education system for most of the kids…

A nice night, good music, good friendship…. 8o)

On the Menu…

The Linkage:

Article: Scotland’s Nostradamus and the Queen of the Fairies

The Ballads in two different Versions: “True Thomas”

Enjoy…!

Gwyllm

________

The Linkage:

Survivalist Personals…

Loony Tunes: Ann Coulter’s Further Adventures…

Bullied by the Eunuchs

Hijaras in Pakistan…

_____________

Scotland’s Nostradamus and the Queen of the Fairies

IAIN LUNDY

True Thomas sat on Huntley bank,

And he beheld a lady gay;

A lady that was brisk and bold,

Come riding o’er the ferny brae.

Her skirt was of the grass green silk,

Her mantle of the velvet fine;

At every lock of her horse’s mane,

Hung fifty silver bells and nine.

SO BEGINS the ballad of the quaint 13th-century figure known as Scotland’s Nostradamus and his enchantment by the Queen of the Fairies. Thomas of Ercildoune – more commonly known as Thomas the Rhymer – was a soothsayer of such repute that for a time his fame rivalled that of the Arthurian magician Merlin.

The accuracy of what happened to Thomas and how he gained his supernatural powers has become confused over the centuries, but there are common threads running through every variation of the story. It is, in essence, a fairy story but one which seeks to explain how Thomas was able to predict some of the most important events in Scottish history, including the defeat by the English at the Battle of Flodden and the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England.

Very few “fairy stories” are given such credence as that of Thomas and his dalliance with the Queen of Elfland. After all, he was no fairy. He was a real person and his predictions – which were written down – were treated so seriously that they were consulted before both the two Jacobite rebellions.

So who was Thomas and why was he singled out for mystical powers? Born around 1220, he lived in Learmont Tower, near Ercildoune, now Earlston in Berwickshire. Close by there stood a grove of hardwood trees on the banks of Huntly Burn and as a youngster Thomas had a favourite tree under which he used to lie.

The story goes that as he lay there one day he saw the beautiful Queen of the Fairies approaching on her graceful white horse. She was wearing green silk and velvet and on her horse’s mane there hung 59 silver bells. Thomas was entranced by her beauty and readily complied when the Queen asked him to kiss her underneath his favourite tree. He then agreed to accompany her, and the two rode off into the Eildon Hills where Thomas spent seven years as the Queen’s lover in her fairy home in Elfland.

The years seemed only a few minutes to Thomas. But when the time came for the Queen to return him to mortal land, she made him promise never to speak of what he had seen. He agreed and she gave him an apple and said: “Take this for thy wages Thomas, it will give thee a tongue that can never lie.”

From then on he was known as “True Thomas”. The Queen also conferred on him the gift of prophecy.

He used his new powers to prophesy several significant historical events including the death of King Alexander lll; the succession of Robert the Bruce to the throne of Scotland; the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Flodden; the defeat of Mary, Queen of Scots’ forces at the Battle of Pinkie in 1567; and the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

He is also said to have predicted the Scottish success at the Battle of Bannockburn and the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745.

The story of Thomas is told in the ballad Thomas the Rhymer, which was included by Sir Walter Scott in his work, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. In recent years recordings of the ballad have been made by the folk-rock band Steeleye Span and Scottish folk musician Ewan MacColl.

Thomas himself was a noted poet and is supposed to be the author of one of the oldest-known surviving Scottish stories, Sir Tristrem, also edited by Sir Walter himself.

There is one final twist to the saga of Thomas the Rhymer. One day, many years after returning from Elfland, he walked out of his house to his favourite tree under which he had first met the Queen. He has never returned and has not been seen since.

According to legend he will return one day to help Scotland in her hour of greatest need. Some might say that time is not far off.

______

Two Ballad Versions of the Tale:

Campbell HISS, II, 83

As Thomas lay on Huntlie banks –

A wat a weel bred man was he

And there he spied a lady fair,

Coming riding down by the Eildon tree.

The horse she rode on was dapple gray,

And in her hand she held bells nine;

I thought I heard this fair lady say

These fair siller bells they should a’ be mine.

It’s Thomas even forward went,

And lootit low down on his knee

‘ Weed met thee save, my lady fair,

For thou’rt the flower o this countrie.’

O no, O no, Thomas,’ she says,

‘O no, O no, that can never be,

For I’m but a lady of an unto land.

Comd out a hunting, as ye may see.

O harp and carp, Thomas,’ she says,

‘O harp and carp, and go wi me;

It’s be seven years, Thomas, and a day.

Or you see man or woman in your am countrie.’

It’s she has rode, and Thomas ran.

Until they cam to yon water clear ;

He’s coosten off his hose and shon,

And he’s wooden the water up to the knee.

It’s she has rode, and Thomas ran,

Until they cam to yon garden green ;

He’s put up his hand for to pull down ane,

For the lack o food he was like to tyne.

‘Hold your hand, Thomas,’ she says,

‘Hold your hand, that must not be;

It was a’ that cursed fruit o thine

Beggared man and woman in your countrie

‘ But I have a loaf and a soup o wine,

And ye shall go and dine wi me;

And lay yer head down in my lap,

And, I will tell ye farlies three.

‘It ‘s dont ye see yon broad broad way,

That leadeth down by yon skerry fell?

It’s ill’s the man that dothe thereon gang,

For it leadeth him straight to the gates o hell.

It’s dont ye see yon narrow way,

That leadeth down by yon lillie lea?

It’s weel’s the man that doth therein gang,

For it leads him straight to the heaven hie.’

—–

It’s when she cam into the hall

I wat a weel bred man was he –

They’ve asked him question[s], one and all,

But he answered none but that fair ladie.

O they speerd at her where she did him get,

And she told them at the Eildon tree;

______

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, II, 251, ed. 1802

TRUE Thomas lay on Huntlie bank,

A ferlie he spied wi’ his ee,

And there be saw a lady bright,

Come riding down by the Eildon Tree.

Her shirt was o the grass-green silk,

Her mantle o the velvet fyne,

At ilka tett of her horse’s mane

Hang fifty siller bells and nine.

True Thomas, he pulld aff his cap,

And louted low down to his knee

‘All hail, thou mighty Queen of Heaven!

For thy peer on earth I never did see.’

`O no, O no, Thomas,’ she said,

‘ That name does not belang to me;

I am but the queen of fair Elfland,

That am hither come to visit thee.

‘ Harp and carp. Thomas.’ she said,

‘Harp and carp along wi me,

And if ye dare to kiss my lips.

Sure of your bodie I will be.’

‘ Betide me weal, betide me woe,

That weird shall never daunton me ; ‘

Syne he has kissed her rosy lips,

All underneath the Eildon Tree.

‘Now ye maun go wi me,’ she said,

True Thomas, Ye maun no wi me,

And ye maun serve me seven years.

Thro weal or woe, as may chance to be.’

She mounted on her milk-white steed,

She’s taen True Thomas up behind,

And aye wheneer her bridle rung,

The steed flew swifter than the wind.

O they rade on, and farther on –

The steed gaed swifter than the wind –

Untill they reached a desart wide,

And living land was left behind.

‘ Light down, light down, now, True Thomas,

And lean your head upon my knee;

Abide and rest a little space,

And I will shew you ferlies three.

see ye not yon narrow road,

So thick beset with thorns and briers?

That is the path of righteousness,

Tho after it but few enquires.

‘And see not ye that braid braid road,

That lies across that lily leven?

That is the path of wickedness,

Tho some call it the road to heaven.

`And see not ye that bonny road,

That winds about the fernie brae?

That is the road to fair Elfland

Where thou and I this night maun gae.

‘ But, Thomas, ye maun hold your tongue,

Whatever ye may hear or see,

For, if you speak word in Elflyn land,

Ye’Il neer get back to your ain countrie.’

they rade on, and farther on,

And they waded thro rivers aboon the knee,

And they saw neither sun nor moon,

But they heard the roaring of the sea.

It was mirk mirk night, and there was nae stern light,

And they waded thro red blade to the knee;

For a’ the blude that’s shed on earth

Rins thro the springs o that countrie.

Syne they came on to a garden green,

And she pu’d an apple frae a tree

Take this for thy wages, True Thomas,

It will give the tongue that can never lie.’

‘ My tongue is mine ain,’ Tree Thomas said

‘ A gudely gift ye wad gie to me!

I neither dought to buy nor sell,

At fair or tryst where I may be.

‘ I dought neither speak to prince or peer,

Nor ask of grace from fair ladye :’

Now hold thy peace,’ the lady said,

‘ For as I say, so must it be.’

He has gotten a coat of the even cloth,

And a pair of shoes of velvet green,

And till seven years were gane and past

True Thomas on earth was never seen.

____________

A. 7 stands 15 in the MS

82. golden green if only my copy is right.

112,3are 112,3 in the MS: the order of words is still not simple enough for a ballad.

144. goe

Jamison has a few variations, which I suppose to be his own.

11, oer yonder bank. 34. your like. 44. And I am come here to. 64. her steed. 82. garden, rightly. 102. clarry. 112. Lay your head. 121. see you not. 124. there’s few. 13. see ye not yon. 141. see ye yon. 142. which winds.

B. 32. her knee. 38. thou save.

121. MS perhaps unto.

131,2 follows st. 12 without separation.

C. 201. a cloth

_____________

The groves were God’s first temples.

– William Cullen Bryant, A Forest Hymn

Mary’s Garden Assistant. This is the 2nd year that she has come back. We rescued her when she was young, having fallen out of the tree. We saved her from the cats, fed her and helped her to fly.

Miss Robin joins Mary when she working in the garden, often no more than a foot or two away from Mary, waiting for bugs and worms. Sadly, she turns her beak up at slugs. A bit of retraining?

She is a member of a family that has come to the same tree since we have been here at our house. I begin to suspect that there are traditional grounds for most animals…. There are also areas of our yards where swarms of gnats appear every year, like clock work.

The Tao of life, the Morphic Fields abound around and within us. The Squirrels, the Crow Tribe, The Raccoon Raiders… all have their place in our world. The gnats, the bees… (oh the bees!) all have their parts to play in the divine dance, of the garden.

They shouldn’t grow here, but somehow they do. I have raised most of them since they were wee pups. Good friends, and a wonder for the garden here in the NW.

I have always loved raising cactus. I started in San Francisco some 30 years ago. Fascinating plants, and very patient and forgiving.

A trio of beings who really dodge the camera at the best of times. This is looking to the SW…

We have some challenges for growing in our garden, as our neighbor believes that if you trim trees, they will only grow more. Thank goodness this logic doesn’t run to keeping the yard trimmed. Way to much shade!

Our Challenge every year….

Our new Fire Pit. Rowan is wild for this little number. We were looking for one of those portable ones, but ended up sticking to earth and rock, the old standbys…

Since we have put it in, we don’t eat inside any more. Nice!

I love watching the flames. It brings out the dreaming… and it turns Marys’ Garden into a magickal place for us.

More tomorrow!

On the Menu:

Big Brother’s new toy: Another bloated gas bag watching you from the sky

Quotes: On Gardeners & Trees

Two Poems on Nature: William Cullen Bryant

I hope you enjoy this edition.

Big Love,

Gwyllm

__________

Big Brother’s new toy: Another bloated gas bag watching you from the sky

By James Renner – Cleveland Free Times

Last week, a fire ignited at the Akron Airdock that once housed a fleet of Goodyear blimps. Firemen rushed to the 211-foot-tall structure and quickly doused the flames. Reporters and photographers descended on the landmark. Many were surprised to learn the blimps were no longer being stored there.

Turns out Lockheed Martin — the company that gave us the Trident intercontinental ballistic missile — was renovating the site for an upcoming project when the fire started. It’s being turned into a hangar for a prototype airship. If you’re frightened of this administration’s habit of spying on American citizens, you may want to stop reading.

The prototype is called the High Altitude Airship, or HAA. Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors in Akron won the $40 million contract from the Missile Defense Agency to build HAA in 2003. It is essentially another blimp. A giant one. Seventeen times the size of the Goodyear dirigible. It’s designed to float 12 miles above the earth, far above planes and weather systems. It will be powered by solar energy, and will stay in a geocentric orbit for up to a year, undetectable by ground-based radar. You can’t see it from the ground. But it can see you.

“The possibilities are endless for homeland security,” says Kate Dunlap, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson. “It could house cameras, and other surveillance equipment. It would be an eye in the sky.”

According to a summary released by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, the HAA can watch over a circle of countryside 600 miles in diameter. That’s everything between Toledo and New York City. And they want to build 11. With high-res cameras, that could mean constant surveillance of every square inch of American soil. “If you had a fleet of them, this could be used for border surveillance,” suggests Dunlap.

Launch date: 2009.

Of course, mimicking its defense of warrantless wiretapping and phone-log data mining, the government maintains it only wants to protect its citizens from external threats. But as any geek can tell you, blimps were ubiquitous in The Watchmen, the seminal ’80s graphic novel in which heroes have been driven underground and Nixon is still president.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not watching you.

___________

Trees and the Gardener…

Our Cherry Tree, left over from when our part of town was the largest insane asylum west of the Mississippi. Some say it still is. We try to maintain the tradition in our own little ways….

When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than

the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined

branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of

the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike

you with the presence of a deity?

– Seneca

—-

Trees serve as homes for visiting devas who do not manifest in earthly bodies,

but live in the fibers of the trunks and larger branches of the trees, feed from

the leaves and communicate through the tree itself. Some are permanently

stationed as guardians of sacred places.

– Hindu Deva Shastra, verse 117, Nature Devas

—-

The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree;

they are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies,

because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but sacred,

the ganz andere or ‘wholly other.’

– Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries

—-

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,

We fell them down and turn them into paper,

That we may record our emptiness.

– Kahlil Gibran

—-

God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, “Ah!”

– Joseph Campbell

—–

Give me a land of boughs in leaf,

A land of trees that stand;

Where trees are fallen there is grief;

I love no leafless land.”

– A.E. Housman

—–

We can see from the experience of Odin that the image of the tree was the template

within which all of the sacred world could be apprehended. The tree was the framework

within which one “flew” to these Otherworlds. And since the exploration of sacred space

was also a quest into the nature of human consciousness, the tree was regarded as an

image of the ways in which we, humans, are constructed psychically. It was a natural

model for our deepest wisdom, our highest aspirations.

– Brian Bates, Sacred Trees

________

Two Poems on Nature: William Cullen Bryant

A Forest Hymn

THE groves were God’s first temples. Ere man learned

To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,

And spread the roof above them,—ere he framed

The lofty vault, to gather and roll back

The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,

Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,

And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks

And supplication. For his simple heart

Might not resist the sacred influences,

Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,

And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven

Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound

Of the invisible breath that swayed at once

All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed

His spirit with the thought of boundless power

And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why

Should we, in the world’s riper years, neglect

God’s ancient sanctuaries, and adore

Only among the crowd, and under roofs,

That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,

Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,

Offer one hymn—thrice happy, if it find

Acceptance in His ear.

Father, thy hand

Hath reared these venerable columns, thou

Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down

Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose

All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,

Budded, and shook their green leaves in the breeze,

And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow,

Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died

Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,

As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,

Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold

Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults,

These winding aisles, of human pomp and pride

Report not. No fantastic carvings show

The boast of our vain race to change the form

Of thy fair works. But thou art here—thou fill’st

The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds

That run along the summit of these trees

In music; thou art in the cooler breath

That from the inmost darkness of the place

Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground,

The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee.

Here is continual worship;—Nature, here,

In the tranquility that thou dost love,

Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around,

From perch to perch, the solitary bird

Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs,

Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots

Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale

Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left

Thyself without a witness, in these shades,

Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace

Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak—

By whose immovable stem I stand and seem

Almost annihilated—not a prince,

In all that proud old world beyond the deep,

E’er wore his crown as lofty as he

Wears the green coronal of leaves with which

Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root

Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare

Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower

With scented breath, and look so like a smile,

Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,

An emanation of the indwelling Life,

A visible token of the upholding Love,

That are the soul of this wide universe.

My heart is awed within me when I think

Of the great miracle that still goes on,

In silence, round me—the perpetual work

Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed

Forever. Written on thy works I read

The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die—but see again,

How on the faltering footsteps of decay

Youth presses—-ever gay and beautiful youth

In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees

Wave not less proudly that their ancestors

Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost

One of earth’s charms: upon her bosom yet,

After the flight of untold centuries,

The freshness of her far beginning lies

And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate

Of his arch enemy Death—yea, seats himself

Upon the tyrant’s throne—the sepulchre,

And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe

Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth

From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves

Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave

Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived

The generation born with them, nor seemed

Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks

Around them;—and there have been holy men

Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.

But let me often to these solitudes

Retire, and in thy presence reassure

My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,

The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink

And tremble and are still. Oh, God! when thou

Dost scare the world with falling thunderbolts, or fill,

With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods

And drowns the village; when, at thy call,

Uprises the great deep and throws himself

Upon the continent, and overwhelms

Its cities—who forgets not, at the sight

Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,

His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?

Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face

Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath

Of the mad unchained elements to teach

Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,

In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,

And to the beautiful order of the works

Learn to conform the order of our lives.

———

The Gladness of Nature

IS this a time to be cloudy and sad,

When our mother Nature laughs around;

When even the deep blue heavens look glad,

And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren,

And the gossip of swallows through all the sky;

The ground-squirrel gaily chirps by his den,

And the wilding bee hums merrily by.

The clouds are at play in the azure space,

And their shadows at play on the bright green vale,

And here they stretch to the frolic chase,

And there they roll on the easy gale.

There’s a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,

There’s a titter of winds in that beechen tree,

There’s a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,

And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles

On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,

On the leaping waters and gay young isles;

Ay, look, and he’ll smile thy gloom away.

_______________

Our Sky over the Roof…

Have a wonderful day…

G

This one of those mono-focused entries. The destruction of important archaeological sites always puts me in a twist, especially for something like a road. Argh. The Irish Gov’t is relentless with this drive up the Gowra Valley. Write the Irish Gov’t! This is a crime against all of our histories. What has happened in other parts of the world can be stopped here, and should be.

On The Menu:

Link o’ Rama!

Land of High Kings is battlefield for fight between heritage and growth

Protests over plan to route four-lane motorway through historic sites

Poetry:William Butler Yeats

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Link 0′ Rama!:

Crazy Fishing Style

Snack Time!

The Monkey Chow Diaries

Shroom: A cultural history of the magic mushroom by Andy Letcher

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Land of High Kings is battlefield for fight between heritage and growth

Protests over plan to route four-lane motorway through historic sites

Owen Bowcott, Ireland correspondent

Tuesday May 30, 2006

The Guardian

The panoramic view from the Hill of Tara reputedly encompasses half the counties of Ireland. Windswept, grass ramparts enclose the ancient seat of the country’s High Kings. Nearby stands the Mound of the Hostages, a megalithic passage tomb.

Soon a four-lane motorway, speeding traffic in and out of Dublin, will bulldoze its way through the landscape below the Iron Age earthworks. The first scars are already visible as archaeologists investigate the lush Gowra valley for the remains of a civilisation whose monuments pre-date many Egyptian pyramids. Unless survey teams uncover a new site of “national archaeological importance”, the controversial, government-backed route through County Meath is likely to go ahead.

The row over construction of the M3 has set Ireland’s marginalised, heritage lobby at odds with the republic’s newfound prosperity and the drive to upgrade its outdated infrastructure. It has also highlighted Ireland’s increasing reliance on the car.

The row is now entering a more embittered phase. Construction of the 36-mile road, connecting Clonee, on Dublin’s congested outskirts, to Kells, north-west of the capital, was scheduled to begin early this month. The national roads authority (NRA) is blaming legal action by environmental protesters for delays costing €1m (£680,000) a week and for the number of fatal car crashes attributable to the unmodernised road.

No date has yet been set for an appeal to the supreme court over the disputed route, and the NRA has cautioned its preferred tenderer, the Eurolink consortium, not to start work until court proceedings are completed. If the case goes to Europe, it could take years.

Vincent Salafia, a Dublin lawyer fighting the Tara M3 case, denied his action had caused delays. He said he could be amenable to “mediation” if “an independent archaeological expert [was] appointed to determine whether the M3 passes through the greater national monument of Tara [or] if any of the 38 sites [already unearthed constitute] national monuments in their own right”. He lost his case in the high court.

“The government is saying the Tara monument is just the tip of the hill,” he told the Guardian. “But there are outer defensive forts which are all part of a large, single [complex]. We want to force [the road] to move further away. A route further out to the west would be better.”

Boom

The issue has rocketed up the domestic political agenda as the economy has boomed and Dublin’s commuter belt has expanded far out into the Irish midlands. Tara is barely 30 miles from the capital but car journeys can take several hours at peak traffic times.

Ireland has not experienced direct action protests against road building but the campaign has attracted celebrity support, notably from the Hollywood actress Charlize Theron and her Irish partner, Stuart Townsend.

Muireann Ni Bhrolochain, a university lecturer in Celtic studies at Maynooth, is one of the leading opponents. “Tara is one of the premier sites in Europe,” she said. “Some of the tombs date back 4,000 years and the hill was used by the High Kings of all Ireland until 1200AD. I’m not anti-roads but we have the opportunity to learn from mistakes in other countries,” she said.

Given the success of single issue candidates in Ireland’s proportional representation system, there has been talk of an anti-M3 candidate at the general election anticipated next year. Several opposition parties, including Sinn Féin and the Green party, have backed the campaign. The Labour party’s environment spokesman, Eamon Gilmore, described the route as a “betrayal of the country’s Celtic heritage that will result in the destruction of the Tara landscape”.

Many question why the existing freight railway line, from nearby Navan via Drogheda to Dublin, has not been improved to relieve congestion.

“The government said it would take until 2015 to [rebuild] the direct line from Navan to Dublin [closed in the 1960s],” said a local campaigner, Proinsas MacFheargus. “But that railway was begun in 1859 and finished in 1862. So nowadays it would take three times as long to build? They won’t open up the line because it would conflict with the motorway’s tolling arrangements.”

Julitta Clancy, of the Meath Historical Society, did not join the legal action because the costs would have put her at risk of losing her home. “We went through the planning process and found it very frustrating,” she said. “There was no remedy. We tried to persuade the government that the road could be moved, producing a better transport and heritage solution. We have petitioned the European parliament on the rights of litigants to oppose infrastructure projects. The delays to the road are not due to us but to the fact that the route picked was rich in archaeology. These sites are part of our European collective memory. We have asked for independent monitoring of the excavations. At present if they find anything in the valley … it’s the NRA that decides whether it’s a national monument.”

The M3 will also slice through Dalgan Park, headquarters of the St Columban Missionaries in the Gowra valley. The estate’s woodland and riverside walks are open to the public.

“This road will be a violation of the sacredness and tranquility of the area,” said Father Pat Raleigh. “This was given in trust to us by the people of Ireland. People are not going to enjoy a greater quality of life commuting to Dublin.”

Last year 400 people died on the republic’s roads, about 100 deaths per million people. That rate is close to the European average. The litany of casualties, however, fills the daily papers. Last week the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, joined the controversy, complaining that protests meant that “not a thistle has yet been cut” on the motorway. In the meantime, he added, existing roads were still proving deadly. “Nine people have died in the past nine months.”

Saving lives

An NRA spokesman also accused protesters of endangering the public.”The sooner we have a modern motorway the sooner we will start saving lives,” he insisted. “Motorways, because of the traffic separation, are much safer. Construction was due to start at the beginning of May … but we have to wait until all the legal challenges have been exhausted.

“We are not going through or over the Hill of Tara. The M3 has taken into account the historical significance of the area. It was known from the outset. There were two years of public reviews. More than 2,000 issues were addressed. We have tried to minimise the visual impact. The local community supports [us] and wants the M3 to be built.”

Backstory

The oldest excavated monument is the Mound of the Hostages, constructed in 2500BC. Its name derives from Niall of the Nine Hostages, a king who held prisoners from every province of Ireland as well as from Britain and Europe. Legend has it that candidates for the high kingship had to drive their chariots towards two standing stones positioned close together which opened only for the rightful king. In historic times, Tara was the seat of power in Ireland; 142 High Kings reigned from the hilltop that was revered as a sacred place with a direct connection to the underworld. St Patrick visited the hill in 433AD to convert the pagan king. One interpretation of “Tara” says it means “place of great prospect”. An Israeli archaeological team excavated the hill in the 20th century, convinced the Arc of the Covenant was buried under the soil of County Meath.

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William Butler Yeats – Poems

A POET TO HIS BELOVED

I bring you with reverent hands

The books of my numberless dreams;

White woman that passion has worn

As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,

And with heart more old than the horn

That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:

White woman with numberless dreams

I bring you my passionate rhyme.

——

HE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG

The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears

Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,

And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries

Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.

We who still labour by the cromlec on the shore,

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

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

Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.

——-

HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN

HadI the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

——–

HE HEARS THE CRY OF THE SEDGE

I wander by the edge

Of this desolate lake

Where wind cries in the sedge:

Until the axle break

That keeps the stars in their round,

And hands hurl in the deep

The banners of East and West,

And the girdle of light is unbound,

Your breast will not lie by the breast

Of your beloved in sleep.

A short note, kinda tired and all…

Monday Evening… watched some of the Wicker Man, extended version tonight. Got to the last 5 minutes, and the DVD hiccuped. Enough to make you twist. It is as if it completely disappeared.

Argh.

Hoping to have some new music on the radio show soon. Stay Tuned!

On the Menu:

The Links For This Holy Day…. 80)

UFOs Over Sacred Sites

Poem & Lyrics: Robin Williamson

I hope you enjoy

Gwyllm

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The Links For This Holy Day…. 80)

Mrs. Malkin’s sacrifice

Is Michelle Malkin doing the Michael Jackson thing?

More Tasteless Misinterpetations: Dutch Evangelicals calls for pray-in against the Devil

Dan Brown sequel unveiled: ‘The Rolf Harris Code’

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UFOs Over Sacred Sites by Brad Steiger

In the early 1970s, numerous metaphysical groups began conducting pilgrimages to ancient sacred sites around the world. Travel agencies were soon formed that specialized in offering tour packages designed to attract those individuals seeking spiritual enlightenment, rather than exotic locales, on their two-week vacation. Many of these spiritual pilgrims returned to report dramatic sightings of UFOs hovering above sacred areas.

My wife Sherry and I believe them, for we have witnessed UFO activity at Petra, the ancient Nabatean city in Jordan; Machu Picchu, the Incan metropolis located high in the Andes; the Great Pyramid of Giza; the Sphinx; the mystical city of Luxor in Egypt; Masada, the hilltop fortress at the edge of the Judean Desert; the remains of the Essene community at Qumran; the transformational vortex areas of Sedona, Arizona; the powerful Kahuna shrines of Hawaii; the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco, Peru; Mt. Nebo, the legendary burial place of Moses; the ancient Incan healing springs at Tambo Machay; the gigantic, sprawling mystery lines in the Nazca Desert; the sacred Peruvian city of Ollantaytambo; tribal medicine power places in Santa Fe and the Four Corners area of the Southwest; and an ancient pre-Navajo monastery recently discovered on private property outside of Sedona.

Higher Awareness

In addition to having observed UFO activities at these sacred sites, a number of spiritual pilgrims also claimed a personal mystical encounter with otherworldly intelligences. To many of these UFO experiencers, the contact that they received during an encounter with an alien or multidimensional intelligence at these holy places served as an initiation into higher awareness. Their interaction with an intelligence that had previously existed far beyond their normal mundane world of ordinary expectations served as an impetus to awaken their consciousness to consider undreamed facets of the universe.

At some level of the universe, these experiencers declare, there is a Force that blends and interconnects each of us to the other—and to all other living things. On some level of consciousness, every living cell is in communication with every other living cell. The UFO experience, some maintain, may be yet another method the Universe has devised to get humankind in touch with aspects of self and of other life forms in the cosmos.

In recent years the hologram has been found to be a workable analogy to illustrate the concept of the Oneness of things. What is most remarkable about a hologram is that every single part of it contains all the information about the whole, just as the DNA in each cell of the body contains the blueprint for the entire physical structure. Split a hologram in half, shine a laser through it, and the whole object is reconstituted in three dimensions.

It has been postulated by some that the entire universe may be a single hologram. It may well be that information about all of the cosmos is encapsulated in each part of it. And that includes each of us human beings. We may all be unfolded images of aspects that exist in a higher reality.

UFO as Symbol

In Wholeness and the Implicate Order, physicist David Bohn of the University of London urges contemporary men and women to become aware that the modern view of the world has become fragmented, especially in the sciences, but also in the execution of our daily lives. In science’s efforts to divide our universe into stars and atoms, it has separated us from nature. In humankind’s penchant for dividing itself into races, nations, ethnic groups, political parties, and economic classes, we have fragmented ourselves from any underlying wholeness with each other.

Perhaps there is a Higher Intelligence that has been striving for centuries to bring our species into the Wholeness, the Oneness. Perhaps the circular shape of the UFO is a symbol of the wholeness of life in the universe.

Since the most ancient of times, tribal elders, priests, and religious orders have worked to develop traditions of spirituality to provide inspiration for life’s challenges. Rituals and rites were designed to reveal certain truths, explain various mysteries, and present a process by which initiation into a higher awareness might be achieved. Spiritually, the significance of initiation lies in the death of the egoistic, physical self and its rebirth in the divine, transcendental order.

In some sacred traditions, such special knowledge and power were kept secret and remained exclusive to the initiated. Other great teachers focused their energies on arousing the sleeping spiritual senses of their students, thereby bringing about enlightenment through the personal mystical experience. These wise masters were aware that the individual mystical experience was the catalyst that awakened the initiate to the Inner Voice that speaks of a sense of Oneness with All That Is and the wisdom that the Great Mystery dwells within each soul.

Many great spiritual teachers have declared that initiation may be bestowed upon the sincere seeker by entities that exist on higher planes of being. The UFOs that appear above sacred sites may combine ancient symbols of initiation with the space age. Among these images capable of elevating one to higher awareness are the following:

Egyptian Icons

The Sphinx, created by the oldest human priesthood, represents in its majestic combination of human head, bull’s body, lion’s paws, and eagle’s wings the living unity of nature’s kingdoms. These same four animal representations also manifest in the otherworldly entities in Ezekiel’s vision of a wheel within a wheel; and they are the four constituent elements of microcosm and macrocosm—water, earth, air, and fire, the foundations of esoteric science.

The answer to the ancient riddle of the Sphinx—What first walks on four legs, then two, then three?—is the human being, the divine agent that includes within itself all the elements and forces of nature. Achieving higher awareness with the Sphinx teaches the initiate, the experiencer, how human nature evolves from animal nature and develops “eagle wings” to travel to other dimensions of a greater reality.

Many spiritual teachers believe that the Great Pyramid was a holy place in which sacred initiations were conducted rather than a tomb for Egyptian royalty, and that the sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber was an agent of the initiate’s resurrection into the Light.

In recent years, dozens of UFO and metaphysical conferences have been held near the Great Pyramid and thousands of spiritual seekers have lain in the ancient sarcophagus to make contact with the essence of the alien or multidimensional beings that they believe actually constructed the pyramid as a kind of cosmic educational toy to stimulate the nascent human thinking process.

Biblical Figures

The mysterious figure of the prophet Elijah, messenger of God, who had no known parents, who came from nowhere to challenge the forces of darkness, and who returned to heaven in a fiery chariot has come to represent to certain UFO experiencers the very pinnacle of otherworldly wisdom and resolve. For many UFO contactees, Elijah has become their spiritual mentor, or, in some cases, his essence serves as the conduit that connects them with their own personal spiritual guide.

Melchizedek, King of Salem, priest of Elohim, initiated Father Abraham with wine served in a golden chalice. Jesus of Nazareth was also a priest of the Order of Melchizedek. Many UFO experiencers have expressed their belief that the beings that they have encountered came to Earth to perpetuate the Order of Melchizedek. These beings, many believe, hold the golden chalice of Melchizedek, a symbol of supreme spiritual transformation and divine inspiration, and give assurance that the Divine Being that exists above the soul dwells in each of us.

Since very ancient times, the image of a serpent gripping its tail in its mouth and becoming a living circle has represented the ineluctable cycle of universal life. The fact that so many UFO experiencers state that their contact was with reptilian entities presents little difficulty. Throughout human history, the serpent has represented wisdom, and vast numbers of early culture bearers were described as being reptilian in appearance. From these serpentine alien intelligences, UFO experiencers say that they have been able to envision the universe as a living whole, endowed with intelligence, soul, and will. The universe is but the reflection of an invisible order of cosmogenic forces and spiritual kingdoms, classes, and species which through their perpetual involution into matter produced the evolution of life.

Child of Man, Child of God, Cross of Stars

A great number of UFO experiencers insist that the alien intelligences with whom they have been in contact revere the sign of the cross and that the cross is a symbol of profound universal teachings. The ancient Doctrine of the Divine Word taught by Krishna in India, by the priests of Osiris in Egypt, by Pythagoras in Greece, and by the prophets of Israel reveals the great mystery of the Child of Man and the Child of God.

In Hindu, Egyptian, and Greek initiations, the term “Child of God” meant a consciousness identified with Divine Truth and a will capable of manifesting it. The universal sign of the Child of Man is that of four stars in the form of a cross.

This sign of ancient spiritual transformation was familiar to the priests of Egypt, preserved by the Essenes, and worshiped by the sons of Japhet as the symbol of earthly and heavenly fire. Native American medicine practitioners and other initiates have seen in the Cross of Stars the symbol of balance, the wholeness of the Great Mystery, the image of the Ineffable Being that reveals itself in the Cosmos.

Initiation

The ancient masters predicted a time when the great mass of earthbound humanity would pass to a higher dimension of consciousness to begin a new cycle of evolution. As we have seen since the 1950s, one of the principle messages of the UFO contactees has to do with Homo sapiens graduating to a higher vibratory state and moving into a higher dimension.

Both the ancient teachers of wisdom and the contemporary UFO experiencers state that in the series of cycles that constitute the planetary evolution of Earth, all humankind will one day develop the intellectual, spiritual, and transcendent principles that were previously manifested only in the Great Initiates. Such a development may require many more thousands of years and will likely bring about unimaginable changes in the overall condition of humankind. The supreme goal of spiritual transformation is to reproduce divine perfection in the soul. Only when spiritual seekers can say that they have acquired divine freedom and conquered fate can they become true prophets, seers, healers, and initiators. Only those who control themselves through spiritual discipline can teach others. Only those who have set themselves free can set others free.

In Healing States by Alberto Villoldo and Stanley Kripper, the shaman Don Eduardo speaks of the true meaning of initiation:

“Initiation represents a readiness to assume responsibility for the planet and for serving humanity.

“Initiation helps one to forge a link between oneself and an ancient lineage of knowledge.

“Initiation is not graduation. It is only the beginning of the great work that lies ahead of the initiate.

“Initiation is basically a salute to the spirit of a person whose consciousness has been awakened.”

And, as Don Eduardo emphasizes, initiations are taking place all the time: “Initiations can occur on the way to the supermarket or on top of the Himalayas. And the most powerful initiations…are bestowed from the hands of the masters who work directly from the ‘overworld.’ These initiations may occur in our dreams or during meditation or may take us by surprise…when we least expect them. But in the final analysis we make the choice to be initiated ourselves.”

(Brad Steiger is a professional writer who deals with the all aspects of the strange and unknown.)

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Poem & Lyrics: Robin Williamson

Through the Horned Clouds Lyrics

I see your faces

blown through the horned clouds

in the silent cities

they call me so loud

come through the fire

come through the foam

come at the world’s night

call the herds home

dearest child dearest child

Most High

please don’t let our fancy die

till all the grapes are gathered from the vine

when you come

will you sound the harp

give to the blind

cat’s eyes in the dark

o will we know you for what you are

you who have come so far

sweetest fair sweetest fair

Most High

don’t let them cut that ladder before its time

for all the grapes to be gathered from the vine

He comes again

She comes again

through the mist of time

through the mist of rain

no more words my heart brims over

in the sea of circustance

rows for the rocky shore

we who have sworn

by the dead and the unborn

wheels within wheels

O Most High.

——-

Me and the mad girl lyrics

I learned in school

That I was mad if they were sane, you see

They had to beat me black and blue

They said it hurt them more than me

But I learned who were my enemies

and I learned who were my friends

I learned to read between the lines

When I was 10

I’d do anything to get out of school

Away from the teacher’s stick

To shoot streetlamps with my slingshot

Smoke cigarettes and get sick

Steal apples in September

Fight shadows in green June

Or just sit and smell the burning leaves

Of an autumns afternoon

Of an autumns afternoon

Once I met a mad girl

As she came hopping through the furze

Her clothes all stuck with fluff and stuff

Bearded barley and bristly burrs

and I was high among the branches green

and she, she hadn’t seen me there

As she went shuffling with her shadow

and snatching at the air

Wild weeds, wilting

Were twined all in her curls

and I could tell by her mad blue eyes

She was a mad girl

She was thin as any sparrow

Her song it had no tune

Just scuffling through the piney glades

Of a summer’s afternoon

Of a summer’s afternoon

I came dropping through the branches down

She started round in surprise and fear

I don’t know what I had to say

But something I knew she had to hear

She picked up a piece of flint

Drew back her arm and flung it high

Not a bad throw that cut my cheek

Just below the eye

Mad girl, mad girl

Before you ran away

I knew you were as mad as me

and as sane as a summer’s day

Mad girl, mad girl

We both were wrong again

You took me for an anemy

and I took you for a friend

I took you for a friend…

——

Witches Hat

Certainly

The children have seen them

In quiet places where the moss grows green

Coloured shells

Jangle together

The wind is cold, the year is old

The trees whisper together

And bent in the wind they lean

If I was a witches hat

Sitting on her head like a paraffin stove

I’d fly away and be a bat

Across the air I would rove

Stepping like a tightrope walker

Putting one foot after another

Wearing black cherries for rings

If I was a witches hat

Sitting on her head like a telegraph pole

Id fly away and be a bat

Across the air I would roll

Stepping like a tightrope walker

Putting one foot after another

Wearing black cherries for rings

——

When Evening Shadow Fall

When evening shadow fall

All tongues at last will tire of bustling trade

The brightest eye at last grows dull

And the finest flowers fade

Life is short o life is sweet

Sweeter is the love you gave to me

Sure by cold death we two must parted be

But life is sweet

When evening shadows fall

Gaze long upon the lamps that light the sky

And sing again that oldest song of all

Poor mortals born to die

________

Biography

Between 1966 and 1974, Robin Williamson was one half of the Incredible String Band, but his career did not founder after ISB’s demise, although it might be said to have taken a few quirky turns, including collaboration on a spy novel and the publication of a bizarre semi-autobiography. Away from these literary avocations, Williamson formed the Far Cry Ceilidh Band with Stan Schnier and Mark Simos, but never made it to the recording studio. In 1976, Williamson met with harpist Sylvia Wood, and together with Chris Caswell and Jerry McMillian, they formed Robin Williamson and His Merry Band. Between 1977 and 1979, they released three albums: the highly traditional Journey’s Edge in 1977, American Stonehenge in 1978, and A Glint at the Kindling in 1979, which featured the epic historical cycle, “Five Denials on Merlin’s Grave.” After the breakup of the Merry Band, Williamson started to tour solo, offering highly ambient sets dominated by traditional stories set to song. Releases of this period include Songs of Love and Parting and the dedicated folklorist’s Legacy of the Scotish Harpers. Williamson’s concern with the British bardic tradition also manifested itself in several books and tapes containing spoken renditions of traditional tales. Subsequent projects have seen the the prolific Williamson recording tapes and discs of music for children and pouring his energies into environmental projects for the Scottish Wildlife Trust. ~ Leon Jackson, All Music Guide

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Jeremy Sneaks Up On The Pentax….

Wonderful day here in Portland. Rain, Sun, more Sun! The trials of the “sunbreak”… a term used in the NW for those moments when the sun peaks through… It rained for some 8 hours straight last night…

A Happy Birthday To My Sister Rebecca! (Call ya soon!)

On the Menu:

The Links

Pharmako Gnosis Tour Part II – The Party

Poetry: Gary Snyder Part II

I hope you enjoy…..

Gwyllm

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The Links:

Enter the dragons

BeatHippieRaver

Why We Fight

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Pharmako Gnosis Tour Part II – The Party

Dale comes in from the reading, finding a rather full house to his bemusement….

Mix Master Morgan, Mary, and PK enjoying Dales’ offering for the gathering: Absinthe….. a lovely green, oh yes….!

Gayle telling stories about her times in Equador. She is heading back soon from what I gather….

Dale mixing up the medicine for all of the guest…

Jeremy and Laura relaxing half way through the gathering….

On past Midnight…… 80) Cymon, Ed, Mike H, and friends around the table in the Dining Room….

A lovely night……

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Poetry: Gary Snyder Part II

Long Hair

Hunting Season:

Once every year, the Deer catch human beings. They

do various things which irresistibly draw men near them;

each one selects a certain man. The Deer shoots the man,

who is then compelled to skin it and carry its meat home

and eat it. Then the deer is inside the man. He waits and

hides in there, but the man doesn’t know it. When

enough Deer have occupied enough men, they will strike all

at once. The men who don’t have Deer in them will

also be taken by surprise, and everything will change some.

This is called “takeover from inside”.

Deer Trails:

Deer trails run on the side hills

cross country access roads

dirt ruts to bone-white

board house ranches,

tumbled down.

Waist high through manzanita,

Through sticky, prickly, crackling

gold dry summer grass.

Deer trails lead to water,

Lead sideways all ways

Narrowing down to one best path –

And split –

And fade away to nowhere.

Deer trails slide under freeways

slip into cities

swing back and forth in crops and orchards

run up the sides of schools!

Deer spoor and crisscross dusty tracks

Are in the house: and coming out the walls:

And deer bound through my hair.

——

Manzanita

Before dawn the coyotes

weave medicine songs

dream nets — spirit baskets –

milky way music

they cook young girls with

to be woman;

or the whirling dance of

striped boys –

At moon-set the pines are gold-purple

Just before sunrise.

The dog hastens into the undergrowth

Comes back panting

Huge, on the small dry flowers.

A woodpecker

Drums and echoes

Across the still meadow

One man draws, and releases an arrow

Humming, flat,

Misses a gray stump, and splitting

A smooth red twisty manzanita bough.

Manzanita the tips in fruit,

Clusters of hard green berries

The longer you look

The bigger they seem,

`little apples’

—————-

For a Stone Girl at Sanchi

half asleep on the cold grass

night rain flicking the maples

under a black bowl upside-down

on a flat land

on a wobbling speck

smaller than stars,

space,

the size of a seed,

hollow as bird skulls.

light flies across it

–never is seen.

a big rock weatherd funny,

old tree trunks turnd stone,

split rocks and find clams.

all that time

loving;

two flesh persons changing,

clung to, doorframes

notions, spear-hafts

in a rubble of years.

touching,

this dream pops. it was real:

and it lasted forever.

————

this poem is for bear

“As for me I am a child of the god of the mountains.”

A bear down under the cliff.

She is eating huckleberries.

They are ripe now

Soon it will snow, and she

Or maybe he, will crawl into a hole

And sleep. You can see

Huckleberries in bearshit if you

Look, this time of year

If I sneak up on the bear

It will grunt and run

The others had all gone down

From the blackberry brambles, but one girl

Spilled her basket, and was picking up her

Berries in the dark.

A tall man stood in the shadow, took her arm,

Led her to his home. He was a bear.

In a house under the mountain

She gave birth to slick dark children

With sharp teeth, and lived in the hollow

Mountain many years.

snare a bear: call him out:

honey-eater

forest apple

light-foot

Old man in the fur coat, Bear! come out!

Die of your own choice!

Grandfather black-food!

this girl married a bear

Who rules in the mountains, Bear!

you have eaten many berries

you have caught many fish

you have frightened many people

Twelve species north of Mexico

Sucking their paws in the long winter

Tearing the high-strung caches down

Whining, crying, jacking off

(Odysseus was a bear)

Bear-cubs gnawing the soft tits

Teeth gritted, eyes screwed tight

but she let them.

Til her brothers found the place

Chased her husband up the gorge

Cornered him in the rocks.

Song of the snared bear:

“Give me my belt.

“I am near death.

“I came from the mountain caves

“At the headwaters,

“The small streams there

“Are all dried up.

– I think I’ll go hunt bears.

“hunt bears?

Why shit Snyder.

You couldn’t hit a bear in the ass

with a handful of rice!”

Pharmako Gnosis World Tour “2006″

Pharmako Gnosis World Tour Bus (Hey Jeremy!)

_____________

The Links:

Plastic Martians…

Beware of Laughing At The Man Wearing New Balance Sneakers

Gene experts say we are not entirely human

Alien Skulls: The Great Debate

Museum of Computer Art…

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The Talk at Powells’, June 1st 2006

Jan Introducing Dale…

Jan has been on the Portland book scene for many a year. She used to work at Looking Glass Books, arraigning speaking engagements for many a writer, including Terence McKenna and Martin Prechtel…

She moved over to Powell’s a few years back, and it is always a pleasure seeing her when we cruise by the store on Hawthorne…

Dale Speaking…

Dale spoke first on what he calls, “Horizon Anarchism” dealing with changes that will take place over millenia as opposed to rapid/spiked changes that most people look at as signpost..

The talk went on from there, centered on Pharmako Gnosis… with a reading of one of my favourite chapters…(on DMT) It comes across nicely when it is spoken, the poetic side leaps out in rich detail…

Enraptured….

A nice audience. Good comments, and lots of laughter. In the audience were friends of Dales’ back some 36 years to when they all lived on Gary Snyders’ land in the Sierras. There were several members of Earth Rites there, and many people who I recognized from events around town. Over all, a nice balance…. of smiling faces!

Dale going into detail about the concepts of Horizon Anarchism, and how the state has been perpetuated from so long ago…

The talk was very enjoyable. You will be able to hear it on Earth Rites some time next week I believe, as Jeremy will be sending it up for us to put up for your enjoyment

More tomorrow or Monday, stay tuned! 80}

Gwyllm

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Poetry: Gary Snyder

second shaman song

Squat in swamp shadows.

mosquitoes sting;

high light in cedar above.

Crouched in a dry vain frame

— thirst for cold snow

— green slime of bone marrow

Seawater fills each eye

Quivering in nerve and muscle

Hung in the pelvic cradle

Bones propped against roots

A blind flicker of nerve

Still hand moves out alone

Flowering and leafing

turning to quartz

Streaked rock congestion of karma

The long body of the swamp.

A mud-streaked thigh.

Dying carp biting air

in the damp grass,

River recedes. No matter.

Limp fish sleep in the weeds

The sun dries me as I dance

———

Civilization

Those are the people who do complicated things.

they’ll grab us by the thousands

and put us to work.

World’s going to hell, with all these

villages and trails.

Wild duck flocks aren’t

what they used to be.

Aurochs grow rare.

Fetch me my feathers and amber

A small cricket

on the typescript page of

“Kyoto born in spring song”

grooms himself

in time with The Well-Tempered Clavier.

I quit typing and watch him through a glass.

How well articulated! How neat!

Nobody understands the ANIMAL KINGDOM.

When creeks are full

The poems flow

When creeks are down

We heap stones.

———

The Spring

Beating asphalt into highway potholes

pickup truck we’d loaded

road repair stock shed & yard

a day so hot the asphalt went in soft.

pipe and steel plate tamper

took turns at by hand

then drive the truck rear wheel

a few times back and forth across the fill–

finish it off with bitchmo around the edge.

the foreman said let’s get a drink

& drove through the woods and flower fields

shovels clattering in back

into a black grove by a cliff

a rocked in pool

feeding a fern ravine

tin can to drink

numbing the hand and cramping in the gut

surging through the fingers from below

& dark here–

let’s get back to the truck

get back on the job.

—–

Regarding Wave

The voice of the Dharma

the voice

now

A shimmering bell

through all.

Every hill, still.

Every tree alive. Every leaf.

All the slopes flow.

old woods, new seedlings,

tall grasses plumes.

Dark hollows; peaks of light.

wind stirs the cool side

Each leaf living.

All the hills.

The Voice

is a wife

to

him still.