Gwyllm.com

I have become you, you have become me.
I have become life, you have become body
From now on, let no one say that
I am other and you are
another – Amir Khusrau

(Lawrence Alma-Tadema – Welcome Footsteps)

Sunday, early morning frost on the roofs. The heater is kinda on the fritz so we are all bundling up. The birds are flocking to our feeders, and Rowan has had a crew filming outside the house for the last couple of hours. All nice young people, so intent on their art. I am always amazed at the dedication and good spirits. It gives one such deep hope.

Last night we took Rowan and Miss Jessa out for Cider at Bushwacker Cider for a couple of nice ones. We had been threatening to take Rowan out for his legal coming of age since his birthday in August, and finally we could deliver. If you are local and you haven’t been to Bushwacker Cider, you are in for a treat. Love the place, the staff is great and there is a brilliant mural by Jason Coatney to look at whilst you are in there. There is the largest variety of ciders on tap, and in bottle probably on the West Coast, if not further. Really, if you visit Portland, you must visit!

Working on the magazine, listening to Azam Ali’s newish album “From the Night to the Edge of Day“. A great piece of work. Since her early days with Vas, and then with Niyaz, she has always picked great material. This album is no different in that. It shows a certain maturity in it, as she has been at the top of her game for a couple of decades. I expect her work to continue to expand with her solo and group work. Pick this album up!… I have included 2 songs from the new album for this entry.

We feature the quotes and poetry of Amir Khusrau in this entry. I am happy to see more translations coming out of India, and especially of the poets who spoke Urdu. I think you might like his work.

Hope This Finds You Well,

Gwyllm
~~~~~~~

On The Menu:
Jim Fadiman’s Event
The Links
Azam Ali – “Mehman (The Guest)”
Amir Khusrau’s Quotes
Bewilderness
Amir Khusrau Poems
Azam Ali – “Neni Desem”
Art: Lawrence Alma-Tadema
~~~~~~

Jim Fadiman’s Event At Powell’s Hawthorne

(A Nemo Foto! Jim and Tashi discussing Psychedelics & Sacred Sexuality At Powell’s Hawthorne.)

I was thrilled by the visit and talk given at Powell’s Hawthorne this past weekend by Jim Fadiman. I picked Jim up at the airport around noon, and we kinda sailed through the day. We had loads of great conversation, and eased up to Powell’s about a half an hour early. Suprisingly, there were already people waiting, and Jan & Scot of Powell’s were very excited by the early turn-out. They had a stack of Jim’s books up front, right underneath a Steve Jobs display. Jim was tickled by this, and tried to capture it on his phone’s camera.

The Talk:
Jim opened up the proceedings, with a short reading from his book The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys (Reviews Here) went directly to questions. It was a nice banter back and forth from the beginning. As the talk proceeded more and more people poured in. Eventually it got to be some 60 or more people there! There were some deeply intelligent queries, that Jim fielded adroitly. There was lots of laughter and excitement in the room as it all went along. People were genuinely engaged, and deeply interested. There were a few faces I knew, but there was many, many people I had never met before. (Hello Simon!)

The talk lasted about an hour and a half, culminating in Jim signing multiple copies of his book. He engaged with everyone that came up, sometimes spending 10 minutes or so with people who had pressing questions that they couldn’t express during the open discussion. We had several people come in after the talk; they had gone off to Powell’s Downtown by accident. Jim took the time to talk to all comers. It was almost another hour before we all cleared out.

Powell’s Hawthorne staff were ecstatic, every copy except 2 display copies were all signed and sold out. We walked out into the evening mist and light drizzle. Jim was fairly floating as we walked across the street by the Baghdad Theatre. It was a brilliant afternoon, and a most magickal moment in time. We wandered along into the evening driving around for something to eat. Jim, Mary & I got to spend some quality time, talking about the world situation, Sufism, poetry, entheogenics and life in general. I dropped Jim at the airport the next morning, for his flight south after a great breakfast and talk.

A big thanks to all who came, and to Jim for such an enjoyable talk and visit!

Bright Blessings!
Gwyllm

~~~

The Links:
Thanks To Cliff For This: The contradictions of the Arab Spring
Paramilitary Policing of Occupy Wall Street
The Strategy Behind The Clampdown On Occupy
Dale Pendell: Is the spiritual experience inside or outside us?
Martina Hoffmann – Portals To Inner Landscapes
~~~~~~

Azam Ali – “Mehman (The Guest)”

~~~~~~

Amir Khusrau’s Quotes

Utter a word of truth
That goes against the king,
And behead yourself with
The sword of your own tongue.
~~

There are those who consume
Naans and kebabs even in their dreams;
And there are those who don’t even dream,
Since they can’t sleep due to starvation.
~~

If you ask me the road to hell,
I would say a night in a lonely bedroom
~~

Man can never be satisfied,
Even if he gets to the heaven;
How can he?
Adam himself couldn’t.
~~

One who laughs at the plight of lovers,
himself needs being cried at.
~~

A needle is better than a sword;
The latter cuts, while the former sews
~~

If you cannot tolerate
The pressing of a needle against your body,
You have no right to raise a sword,
Against another human being.

~~~~~~

Bewilderness

by John Moore
From Anarchy and Ecstasy, Visions of Halcyon Days

In an important article, Jay Vest convincingly demonstrates that the words “will” and “wild” derive from a common etymological root. For primal Europeans, nature was pervaded by a will force that remained beyond their power to influence. What nature autonomously willed became identified as wild.

Wilderness then means “self-willed-land” or “self-willed-place” with an emphasis upon its own intrinsic volition… This “willed” conception is itself in opposition to the controlled and ordered environment, which is characteristic of the notion of civilization. While control, order, domination and management are true of civilization and domestication, they are not essentials of primal culture… Nature worship among primal Indo-Europeans evidences a traditional theme of sacred natural places, free from desecration by humans and their technology. Such sacred places were wilderness in the deepest sense; they were imbued with will- force,—willed, willful, uncontrollable—and with spirit. Thus, they held about them a sacred mystery—a numinous presence. It is from this tradition that the “will-of the-land”—wilderness—concept emerges.1
Vest’s remarks recover important information, but remain curiously exteriorized. The contours of a spirituality structured around the recognition of a sacred wilderness—the significance of its symbolism and ritual—are skilfully outlined. But the interiority of this experience—what it felt like and what it meant to be immersed in such a wilderness—remains beyond Vest’s purview.

One reason for this deficiency may be the lack of an appropriate vocabulary. Vest’s article establishes that primal notions of wilderness are diametrically opposite to those operative in contemporary mainstream discourse. Archaic humans regarded the wilderness as a site of positive energies, whereas today power complexes demand that it be considered as a place of evil and negativity which deserves domination and exploitation. In Against His-story. Against Leviathan!, Fredy Perlman retraces the process whereby power—through authority structures, imperial and Judaeo-Christian civilizing forces—converts nature into a wasteland, thus forcing the term “wilderness” to acquire pejorative connotations. But the semantic history of a cognate term which denotes the interior experience of sacred wilderness—”bewilder”—has not received similar examination. Necessarily, this semantic reconstruction must be speculative. Contextual factors, however, indicate appropriate orientations for an accurate recovery of the term’s original meaning.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) provides two definitions of the verb “bewilder”: literally, “to lose in pathless places, to confound for want of a plain road,” and figuratively, “to confuse in mental perception, to perplex, confound, to cause mental aberration.” It is my contention that as the notion of the wilderness was forced to abandon its positive meanings and acquire negative connotations, the originally unified meaning of “bewilder” was divided into two partial definitions, whose connotations were then inverted. Wilderness, as Vest avers, simultaneously denoted a location and a condition: a state inhabited by willful, uncontrollable natural energies. In such states,2 humans surrendered their individuality, renounced personal volition to the will-of-the-land, and merged individuated desire within the expansive needs of the wild. In doing so, they became channels or mediums through which the wilderness could become articulate and operative in the human sphere. The process was ecstatic: the surrender of the ego; the merging of individuation within holism, produced sensations of bliss and promoted ecstatic/erotic actions. Any incipient characterological sclerosis, absorbed through prolonged participation in communal relations, was discarded or dissipated. Any tendencies toward the formation of Leviathanic structures were thus dispersed.

Individuals undergoing this process were bewildered, in the original, integrated sense of the term. They entered “pathless places” in two senses. First, wilderness areas (i.e., the vast totality of the world) contained no paths or tracks—neither the roads of imperial domination and plunder constructed by the Romans, nor the routes of commerce carved by Islamic merchants. By definition, the wilderness remained free from incursions by technology. And secondly, there were no established journeys to be undertaken, no predetermined paths to traverse. All social codes were annulled: vision, emotion and behaviour were no longer subject to regulation and control. Total transformation was possible. But the directions—for unlimited eversion were no longer, or only minimally, under individual control. The individual will, subsumed within the will-of-the-land, no longer retained the power of volition. Possessed by the wilderness, individuals eagerly became vehicles for its sacred and ecstatic expression.

Evidence to substantiate these contentions regarding the bewilderment process can be derived from a consideration of an associated term, “amazement.” The OED variously defines “amaze” as “to put out of one’s wits… bewilder, perplex,” “to overcome with sudden fear or panic,” and “to overwhelm with wonder, to astound or greatly astonish.” It also defines “amazedness” as “loss of self-possession through fear.” This cluster of ideas clearly parallels the meanings attached to “bewilder.” Indeed, they may ultimately derive from a common origin. The OED notes that “amaze and a maze were often identified.” And this etymological link provides the crucial connexion. In certain primal traditions, the maze or labyrinth played a homologous role to that of the sacred wilderness area—in fact, the two may have been indistinguishable:

Extremely complex ideas were expressed through the symbol of the labyrinth. First, the initiate had to find the way through the underworld—the womb of the Mother—going through symbolic death to be reborn through her on a larger psychic level. Simultaneously, by dancing the winding and unwinding spiral, the initiate reached back to the still heart of cosmos, and so immortality, in her. The dance would have been combined with sexual rites and the taking of some hallucinogen like the legendary soma. In the resulting illumination soma and self were experienced as one with the cosmic self in orgasmic ego-death. The ecstatic centre of the labyrinth was the no-mind centre of orgasm experienced as death, creative madness, and loss of the conditioned “self.”3

“Bewilderment” and “amazement” once denoted the experienced interiority of radical purification through displacement. Losing one’s self in a maze meant precisely that, not merely a sense of disorientation. Bewilderment entailed an encounter with death and transcendence, and so was necessarily characterized by complex interacting responses, including terror, wonder and ecstasy. The wilderness overwhelmed the individual will from three directions. Spiritual techniques for arousing the coiled kundalini energy eroded ego boundaries and merged the individuated self within the cosmic All. Hallucinogens derived from poisonous substances transported the individual to the brink of physical decease. And uncontrollable sexual desires overcame any social inhibitions placed on the search for erotic pleasures. The combination of these three elements took the individual to the edge of dissolution—as a psychological, physical, and social/ethical entity. But only to the edge: vestiges of consciousness remained so that the wilderness could become aware of itself, achieve a knowledge of its own awesome nature. However, the process remained reciprocal: the individual emerged transformed and whole, often bearing shamanic gifts—such as prophetic powers, healing capacities and visions—to enrich the community. Such symbiosis constituted the core of the ancient Mysteries.4

Once “wilderness” acquired pejorative connotations, however, the bewilderment phenomenon underwent a similarly negative redefinition. The originally integrated meanings of the process were separated and demonized, gradually assuming the forms in which they are currently known. On the one hand, bewilderment now signifies the feeling experienced when one is lost, disorientated in an unfamiliar—and hence potentially threatening—context or environment, unable to find an exit. On the other hand, the term denotes a derangement of perceptions, not in a positive sense of possession by the wilderness, but in the negative sense of perplexity and bafflement. To lose one’s self now becomes an adversity because the failure of the cognitive faculties reveals, not a wealth of inner spiritual resources, but an emptiness—a subjectivity evacuated by power and glutted with totalitarian trivia.

These contemporary meanings of “bewilderment” are so ingrained that it seems an impossible task to retrieve this term. Hence, as an alternative I propose the notion of bewilderness. The primal meanings of “bewilder” are now apparent. The amalgamation of “bewilder” and “wilderness” in this new term possesses the advantage of restoring the emphasis on the wild component of the former term. But the addition of “ness” to “bewilder” also remains appropriate. Vest demonstrates that the suffix “ness,” in addition to expressing a particular state (e.g., sweetness, tiredness), originally denoted a “land” or “place.” Hence, as a term “bewilderness” reunites the two separated aspects of “bewilder” as geographical dislocation and as a spiritual condition.

The reasons for coining this neologism are far from antiquarian. The experience denoted by bewilderness remains crucial for all proponents of anarchy, who recognize that syncopating the spiral dance could facilitate total revolution. Bewilderness constitutes both the means and an end (i.e., the beginning of another cycle). Like anarchic Zen, it postulates a supersession of everyday, socially conditioned consciousness on an individual and later generalized scale. It promotes psychosocial biodegradation or ecdysis: the refusal of assigned identities, the divestment of polysemic integuments, the disgorgement of totalitarian toxins. Dispossession becomes Possession, not so much through an expropriation of the expropriators, as an evacuation of and from the evacuating control complex. This process is purgative and therapeutic: the vacuum becomes inundated with waves of ecstasy that prefigure, and hence promote the shift toward, total global anarchy.

Techniques for recovering bewilderness are available. Many of Starhawk’s magic exercises, for example, attempt to elicit precisely this condition. She proposes wordless chants, inarticulate noises which resolve into the sounds of the wilderness communing through individuals and groups. Such techniques aim to liberate the involuntary, be it a yelp of pain, an orgasmic groan, a growl of anger, or any other expression. The individual invokes, and waits to discover what energy emerges. Magic consists of merging and participating in these energies, and shaping their manifestations. The nature of the resulting patterns depends on the metaphors and symbols utilized. For example, Starhawk, characterizing subjectivity within hierarchical control structures, discerns three aspects of the self: Younger Self, the playful, sensory element that appears when the infant distinguishes itself from its environment; Talking Self, the later rational faculty of abstraction and codification; and Deep Self, the all-pervasive oceanic consciousness: Imagine Talking Self’s domain as a house we live in, and Younger Self’s domain as a garden that surrounds it completely. Beneath the garden are the caves and wells of Deep Self; outside it are the other realms of reality, the wilderness. There is no clear dividing line between Younger Self’s garden and the wild until Talking Self builds a wall. Younger Self constantly brings in plants and animals… In order to walk out into the wild, we must first pass through the garden.

Or, conversely, in order to examine any piece of the wild Younger Self brings in, in order to name it and set it on the shelves of our house, it must first be brought through the garden. The clearer the paths are, the more familiar we are with their windings and turnings, the friendlier we are with the creatures that inhabit them, the clearer are our contacts with external reality – both physical and metaphysical.5

Despite its illuminating qualities, Starhawk’s metaphor remains descriptively inadequate because it lacks any notion of the historical relativity of the configuration of elements she discerns within subjectivity. Deep Self can undoubtedly be found beneath the garden (and the house), but also – and most prodigiously – in the wilderness. Here lies Starhawk’s major error. Rather than contrariety, one finds identity: the wilderness is Deep Self, and vice versa. Primal peoples realized this fact. They also knew that Talking Self was a useful and beneficial agency, but only so long as it remained contextualized, in situ, within its proper, circumscribed dimensions. Its constant tendency to hypertrophy was recognized, and thwarted by the bewilderness process. But in hierarchical control structures, this tendency is encouraged, and Talking Self becomes deracinated, denatured, (pre)dominant. Hence, in terms of Starhawk’s metaphor, the central issue should not be tending the garden, making it more hospitable, indeed civilized, but rather flattening the wall. Younger Self’s garden should by degrees imperceptibly shade into the wilderness, allowing for an untroubled access to and from the two complementary areas of hearth and hinterland. Any strict demarcation automatically creates and maintains the divisions of private property.

Jacques Camatte provides another metaphorical representation of this issue when he proposes a recovery of the unconscious:

What is the subconscious if not the affective-sensual life of the human being repressed by capital? The human being has to be domesticated, shaped to a rationality which he must internalize – the rationality of the process of production of capital. Once this domestication is achieved, the human being is dispossessed of this repressed sensual life which becomes an object of knowledge, of science; it becomes capitalizable. The unconscious, becoming an object of commerce, is thinly sliced and retailed in the market of knowledge. The unconscious did not always exist, and it exists now only as a component in the discourse of capital.6
To demolish barriers and walls, to recover the unconscious and reactivate it in everyday life – these are metaphors for a process which bewilderness can help to facilitate. Bewilderness is an extreme condition, an encounter with transcendence, possession by elemental energies. But it allows the possibility of more measured and integrated lifeways. After such experiences, individuals and communities can accept convivial coexistence because they wittingly live within and amidst the oceanic consciousness. And such a state characterizes the condition of total anarchy.

Notes

1. Jay Hansford C. Vest. “Will-of-the-Land: Wilderness Among Primal Indo-Europeans,” Environmental Review, Vol.9, no.4 (Winter 1985), 324-5.

2. By “states,” I mean both a state of existence and the state of nature, not the State.

3. Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 74-5.

4. The Mysteries were part of a long and integrated tradition, much of which has now been lost. The access routes toward bewilderness were highly structured and thoroughly understood, even if the condition itself allowed total liberation. For additional information, see “Eversion Mysteries” below.

5. Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982), 55-6. The magic techniques can be found in The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979).

6. Jacques Camatte, The Wandering of Humanity trans. F.Perlman (Detroit Black & Red, 1975), 35n. As the context renders apparent, by “capital” Camatte means much more than the mere Marxist economic category.
~~~~~~

Amir Khusrau Poems

I am a pagan and a worshipper of love: the creed (of Muslims) I do not need;
Every vein of mine has become taunt like a wire,
the (Brahman’s) girdle I do not need.
Leave from my bedside, you ignorant physician!
The only cure for the patient of love is the sight of his beloved –
other than this no medicine does he need.
If there be no pilot in our boat, let there be none:
We have god in our midst: the sea we do not need.
The people of the world say that Khusrau worships idols.
So he does, so he does; the people he does not need,
the world he does not need.

(Trans. Dr.Hadi Hasan)
~~~

I wonder what was the place where I was last night,
All around me were half-slaughtered victims of love,
tossing about in agony.
There was a nymph-like beloved with cypress-like form
and tulip-like face,
Ruthlessly playing havoc with the hearts of the lovers.
God himself was the master of ceremonies in that heavenly court,
oh Khusro, where (the face of) the Prophet too was shedding light
like a candle.
(trans. S.A.H.Abidi)
~~~

Tonight there came a news that you, oh beloved, would come –
Be my head sacrificed to the road along which you will come riding!
All the gazelles of the desert have put their heads on their hands
In the hope that one day you will come to hunt them….
The attraction of love won’t leave you unmoved;
Should you not come to my funeral,
you’ll definitely come to my grave.
My soul has come on my lips (e.g. I am on the point of expiring);
Come so that I may remain alive –
After I am no longer – for what purpose will you come?
(trans. A. Schimmel)
~~~

May your charming face ever shine like the full moon;
May you hold eternal sway over the domains of beauty.
By your amorous glance you have killed a poor man like me;
How magnanimous of you? May God give you a long life.
Pray do not be cruel lest you should feel ashamed of yourself
Before your lovers on the day of judgment.
I shall be set free from the bonds of the two worlds
If you become my companion for a while.
By your wanton playfulness you must have destroyed
Thousands of hearts of lovers like that of Khusrau.
(trans. S.A.H.Abidi)
~~~

(Lawrence Alma-Tadema – Among The Ruins)

O you whose beautiful face is the envy of the idols of Azar
(Abraham’s father and famous idol maker);
You remain superior to my praise.
All over the world have I traveled;
many a maiden’s love have I tasted;
Many a beauty-star have I seen; but you are something unique.
I have become you, and you me; I have become the body,
you the soul; So that none hereafter may say
that “I am someone and you someone else.”
Khusro a beggar, a stranger has come wandering to your town;
For the sake of god, have pity on this beggar
and do not turn him away from your door.
(trans. Dr. Hadi Hasan)
~~~

Do not overlook my misery by blandishing your eyes,
and weaving tales; My patience has over-brimmed,
O sweetheart, why do you not take me to your bosom.
Long like curls in the night of separation,
short like life on the day of our union;
My dear, how will I pass the dark dungeon night
without your face before.
Suddenly, using a thousand tricks, the enchanting eyes robbed me
of my tranquil mind;
Who would care to go and report this matter to my darling?
Tossed and bewildered, like a flickering candle,
I roam about in the fire of love;
Sleepless eyes, restless body,
neither comes she, nor any message.
In honour of the day I meet my beloved
who has lured me so long, O Khusro;
I shall keep my heart suppressed,
if ever I get a chance to get to her trick.
(trans. M. Rehman)
~~~

You carried the soul from (my) body – and yet,
You are still in the soul;
You have given pains – and are still the remedy;
Openly you split my breast –
Yet, you are still hidden in my heart.
You have destroyed the kingdom of my heart
With the sword of coquetry,
And are still a ruler in that place….
~~~

Do not overlook my misery,
by blandishing your eyes and weaving tales,

My patience has over-brimmed, O sweetheart!
why do you not take me to your bosom.

Long like curls in the night of separation
short like life on the day of our union.

My dear, how will I pass the dark dungeon night
without your face before.

Suddenly, using a thousand tricks
the enchanting eyes robbed me of my tranquil mind.

Who would care to go and report
this matter to my darling.

Tossed and bewildered, like a flickering candle,
I roam about in the fire of love.

Sleepless eyes, restless body,
neither comes she, nor any message.

In honour of the day I meet my beloved
who has lured me so long, O Khusro!

I shall keep my heart suppressed
if ever I get a chance to get to her trick.
~~~~~~

Azam Ali – “Neni Desem”

~~~~~~

My fair one sleeps on the bed,
& scattered her hair across her face.
Khusrau it is time you also go to your home
Shades of evening have spread over the land – Amir Khusrau

(Lawrence Alma-Tadema – A Harvest Festival~A Dancing Bacchante at Harvest Time)

I have so much to say about the changing tides, and the rising seas that are starting their upward movements within the society, no, across the world. We are stepping off into uncharted territories and we should do this together. Regardless of political, spiritual, national, racial, tribal familial persuasions, we are all brothers and sisters. This cannot be denied, no matter what the differences may appear to us. Cut us, we bleed, hurt us we cry, hold us, we relax, we all laugh and we all love.

The future is opening up. We have all come here to this place and time for deeper reasons than we can imagine, or have aspired to. We must do it together it seems. Together, or not at all.

This is about the dialog, first the inner and then the one between us all, all of whom are all equal to each other, no higher, no lower, but equal. We meet at this juncture, and we must now engage for the greater good, and for the potential yet to be released in us all. No longer can we or should we view “the other” as outside of ourself… this dialog is not the I-It, but the I-Thou. None above, none below, none alone, none separate.

If we are to change, and change we must, as the pressure of the new world being birthed is upon us, we must do it in deep compassion, and deep cooperation. Not for the nation state, the corporation, but for everyone, here, now, and those that are to come.

Love, is the answer and the path. Opening, dilating ourselves, releasing of strictures.

I had a discussion with a young friend who is a member of the Black Brigade. She has stated that she feels the violent approach to change is as valid as the non-violent, and perhaps that non-violence, or pacifism is Pathology… but I beg to disagree. If this change is to occur, it cannot be patterned on the changes of the past which in the end regurgitated up the same old patterns. Those times have come to their end, surely as the end of slavery came. I wrote this to her:

“On Non-Violent Civil Disobedience… I would not consider Gandhi’s or MLK’s efforts to be anything close to a failure. By exiting out of the I-It dialog to the I-Thou, we can transform the world. I would not consider Non-Violence or as you term it Pacifism as Pathology, anything but. To step outside of the historical content, and consider other options other than violence meeting violence, a fundamental rift occurs. Watching the application of Non-Violent resistance in The West Bank etc., shows that even in the most dire circumstances, change can and does occur without going to combat. The police love nothing more than to have resistance, you are speaking their language. By following the dialog they have set in motion, you are co-opted. It is that simple.”

I ask you all to join together for a different world, a different way, a change, finally a change. I ask you to join in creating the Bodhisattva as a collective soul, that no being be left behind. I ask you to join in transforming ourselves, our world, our dreams.

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
~~~~~
On The Menu:
We Are The Many – Makana
The Links
Michael Hughes: Some Thoughts for the Occupy/99% Movement in the Face of Evictions
Dale Pendell at Occupy Nevada County
Pretenders – Revolution
Fatima the Spinner and the Tent
Patti Smith – Changing of the Guards

~~~~~~~~
Thanks To Nima For Sharing This:

We Are The Many – Makana

Lyrics by MAKANA
We Are the Many

Ye come here, gather ’round the stage
The time has come for us to voice our rage
Against the ones who’ve trapped us in a cage
To steal from us the value of our wage

From underneath the vestiture of law
The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw
At liberty, the bureaucrats guffaw
And until they are purged, we won’t withdraw

We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

Our nation was built upon the right
Of every person to improve their plight
But laws of this Republic they rewrite
And now a few own everything in sight

They own it free of liability
They own, but they are not like you and me
Their influence dictates legality
And until they are stopped we are not free

We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

You enforce your monopolies with guns
While sacrificing our daughters and sons
But certain things belong to everyone
Your thievery has left the people none

So take heed of our notice to redress
We have little to lose, we must confess
Your empty words do leave us unimpressed
A growing number join us in protest

We occupy the streets
We occupy the courts
We occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

You can’t divide us into sides
And from our gaze, you cannot hide
Denial serves to amplify
And our allegiance you can’t buy

Our government is not for sale
The banks do not deserve a bail
We will not reward those who fail
We will not move till we prevail

We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

We are the many
You are the few
~~~~~~~~
The Links:
The New Progressive Movement
Prehistoric Men Scarred, Pierced, Tattooed Privates
Take The Test!
~~~~~~~~

Dale Pendell at Occupy Nevada County

~~~~~~~~

Some Thoughts for the Occupy/99% Movement in the Face of Evictions
by Michael Hughes

Perhaps it’s time for the Occupy Wall Street/99% movement to adopt some new tactics. From the brilliant poet/philosopher Hakim Bey, originator of the “Temporary Autonomous Zone” (TAZ):

In short, we’re not touting the TAZ as an exclusive end in itself, replacing all other forms of organization, tactics, and goals. We recommend it because it can provide the quality of enhancement associated with the uprising without necessarily leading to violence and martyrdom. The TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it. Because the State is concerned primarily with Simulation rather than substance, the TAZ can “occupy” these areas clandestinely and carry on its festal purposes for quite a while in relative peace. Perhaps certain small TAZs have lasted whole lifetimes because they went unnoticed, like hillbilly enclaves–because they never intersected with the Spectacle, never appeared outside that real life which is

(Michael Hughes!)
The TAZ is an encampment of guerilla ontologists: strike and run away. Keep moving the entire tribe, even if it’s only data in the Web. The TAZ must be capable of defense; but both the “strike” and the “defense” should, if possible, evade the violence of the State, which is no longer a meaningful violence. The strike is made at structures of control, essentially at ideas; the defense is “invisibility,” a martial art, and “invulnerability”–an “occult” art within the martial arts. The “nomadic war machine” conquers without being noticed and moves on before the map can be adjusted. As to the future–Only the autonomous can plan autonomy, organize for it, create it. It’s a bootstrap operation. The first step is somewhat akin to satori–the realization that the TAZ begins with a simple act of realization.

Nomadic occupations? I like the idea. Appearing and existing just long enough to catch the attention of the state, then slipping back into the shadows. Appearing like a cluster of potent psychedelic mushrooms, only to return to the underground mycelial network before manifesting bursting through the soil on the other side of the forest. Finally, perhaps, a proper use of the often maligned “flashmobs” for something other than simple amusement.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pretenders – Revolution

Cats like me and you
Have got laws
That they adhere to
Laws outside the laws
As laid down
By those we don’t subscribe to
The world is getting stranger
But we’ll never lose heart
We can’t just wait for the
Old guard to die
Before we can
Make a new start

Bring on the revolution
(keep the pressure on)
I wanna die for something
Bring on the revolution
I wanna die for something
Bring on the revolution
I wanna die for something
Bring on the revolution
I don’t wanna die for nothing

For every freedom fighter
I wanna hold on tighter
To the hope and will you gave
You were the brave
You were the brave
And one day
When I hear your children sing
Freedom will ring
Freedom!

When we watch the children play
Remember
How the privileged classes grew
And from this day
We set out
To undo what won’t undo
Looking for the grand
In the minute
Every breath justifies
Every step that we take
To remove what the powers that be
Can’t prove
And the children will
Understand why

Bring on the revolution
(keep the pressure on)
I wanna die for something
Bring on the revolution
I wanna die for something
Bring on the revolution
I don’t wanna die for nothing
Bring on the revolution
I wanna die for something
~~~~~~~
(James Fadiman told me yesterday after our talks over the weekend, that perhaps this tale is mine. I think perhaps, it is all of ours.)
Fatima the Spinner and the Tent
– Idris Shah

“Fatima the Spinner and the Tent” from “Tales of the Dervishes – Teaching Stories of the Sufi Masters over the Past Thousand Years”, by Idries Shah

Once in a city in the Farthest West there lived a girl called Fatima. She was the daughter of a prosperous spinner. One day her father said to her: “Come, daughter; we are going on a journey, for I have business in the islands of the Middle Sea. Perhaps you may find some handsome youth in a good situation whom you could take as a husband.” They set off and traveled from island to island, the father doing his trading while Fatima dreamt of the husband who might be hers. One day, however, they were on the way to Crete when a storm blew up, and the ship was wrecked. Fatima, only half-conscious, was cast up on the seashore near Alexandria. Her father was dead, and she was utterly destitute. She could only remember dimly her life until then, for her experience of the shipwreck, and her exposure in the sea, had utterly exhausted her.

While she was wandering on the sands, a family of cloth-makers found her. Although they were poor, they took her into their humble home and taught her their craft. Thus it was that she made a second life for herself, and within a year or two she was happy and reconciled to her lot. But one day, when she was on the seashore for some reason, a band of slave-traders landed and carried her, along with other captives, away with them. Although she bitterly lamented her lot, Fatima found no sympathy from the slavers, who took her to Istanbul and sold her as a slave. Her world had collapsed for the second time.

Now it chanced that there were few buyers at the market. One of them was a man who was looking for slaves to work in his wood yard, where he made masts for ships. When he saw the dejection of the unfortunate Fatima, he decided to buy her, thinking that in this way, at least, he might be able to give her a slightly better life than if she were bought by someone else. He took Fatima to his home, intending to make her a serving maid for his wife. When he arrived at the house, however, he found that he had lost all his money in a cargo which had been captured by pirates. He could not afford workers, so he, Fatima and his wife were left alone to work at the heavy labor of making masts. Fatima, grateful to her employer for rescuing her, worked so hard and so well that he gave her her freedom, and she became his trusted helper. Thus it was that she became comparatively happy in her third career. One day he said to her: “Fatima, I want you to go with a cargo of shops’ masts to Java, as my agent, and be sure that you sell them at a profit.”

She set off, but when the ship was off the coast of China, a typhoon wrecked it, and Fatima found herself again cast up on the seashore of a strange land. Once again she wept bitterly, for she felt that nothing in her life was working in accordance with expectation. Whenever things seemed to be going well, something came and destroyed all her hopes. “Why is it”, she cried out, for the third time, “that whenever I try to do something it comes to grief? Why should so many unfortunate things happen to me?” But there was no answer.

So she picked herself up from the sand, and started to walk inland. Now it so happened that nobody in China had heard of Fatima, or knew anything about her troubles. But there was a legend that a certain stranger, a woman, would one day arrive there, and that she would be able to make a tent for the Emperor. And, since there was as yet nobody in China who could make tents, everyone looked upon the fulfillment of this prediction with the liveliest anticipation. In order to make sure that this stranger, when she arrived, would not be missed, successive Emperors of China had followed the custom of sending heralds, once a year, to all the towns and villages of the land, asking for any foreign woman to be produced at Court.

When Fatima stumbled into a town by the Chinese seashore, it was one such occasion. The people spoke to her through an interpreter, and explained that she would have to go to see the Emperor. “Lady,” said the Emperor, when Fatima was brought before him, “can you make a tent?” “I think so,” said Fatima. She asked for rope but there was none to be had. So, remembering her time as a spinner, she collected flax and made ropes. Then she asked for stout cloth, but the Chinese had none of the kind which she needed. So, drawing on her experience with the weavers of Alexandria, she made some stout tent cloth. Then she found that she needed tent-poles, but there were none in China. So Fatima, remembering how she had been trained by the wood-fashioner of Istanbul, cunningly made stout tent-poles. When these were ready, she racked her brains for the memory of all the tents she had seen in her travels: and lo, a tent was made.

When this wonder was revealed to the Emperor of Chine, he offered Fatima the fulfillment of any wish she cared to name. She chose to settle in China, where she married a handsome prince, and where she remained in happiness, surrounded by her children, until the end of her days. It was through these adventures that Fatima realized that what had appeared to be an unpleasant experience at the time, turned out to be an essential part of the making of her ultimate happiness.
~~~~~~

Patti Smith – Changing of the Guards

Sixteen years
Sixteen banners united over the field
Where the good shepherd grieves
Desperate men, desperate women divided
Spreading their wings ‘neath falling leaves.

Fortune calls
I stepped forth from the shadows to the marketplace
Merchants and thieves, hungry for power, my last deal gone down
She’s smelling sweet like the meadows where she was born
On midsummer’s eve near the tower.

The cold-blooded moon
The captain waits above the celebration
Sending his thoughts to a beloved maid
Whose ebony face is beyond communication
The captain is down but still believing that his love will be repaid.

They shaved her head
She was torn between Jupiter and Apollo
A messenger arrived with a black nightingale
I seen her on the stairs and I couldn’t help but follow
Follow her down past the fountain where they lifted her veil.

I stumbled to my feet
I rode past destruction in the ditches
With the stitches still mending beneath a heart-shaped tattoo
Renegade priests and treacherous young witches
Were handing out the flowers that I’d given to you.

The palace of mirrors
Where dog soldiers are reflected
The endless road and the wailing of chimes
The empty rooms where her memory is protected
Where the angel’s voices whisper to the souls of previous times.

She wakes him up
Forty-eight hours later the sun is breaking
Near broken chains, mountain laurel and rolling rocks
She’s begging to know what measures he now will be taking
He’s pulling her down and she’s clutching on to his long golden locks.
Gentlemen, he said I don’t need your organization, I’ve shined your shoes
I’ve moved your mountains and marked your cards
But Eden is burning either brace yourself for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards.

Peace will come
With tranquillity and splendor on the wheels of fire
But will bring us no reward when her false idols fall
And cruel death surrenders with it’s pale ghost retreating
Between the King and the Queen of Swords.

-(Bob Dylan)
~~~~~~

The heavenly rider passed;
The dust rose in the air;
He sped; but the dust he cast
Yet hangeth there.

Straight forward thy vision be,
And gaze not left or night;
His dust is here, and he
In the Infinite. – Rumi

The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide

It’s long been known that psychedelic substances expand normal functions and perceptions of the brain. Psychologist and professor James Fadiman says there is a resurgence of scientific and medical research on the healing potential of psychedelics and renewed interest in their use as a vehicle for spiritual discovery and problem solving. With The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide (Park Street), Fadiman clears up myths and misperceptions about psychedelics, and presents findings from both long-neglected and recent clinical studies, research experiments, and surveys showing a surprising range of benefits from the safe, supervised use of psychedelics.

Preorder a signed edition of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide!

Sunday, November 13th @ 4pm Powell’s Books on Hawthorne
3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd. (800) 878-7323
~~

I hope that you can all come and see Jim talk at Powell’s On Hawthorne, this coming Sunday, the 13th at 4:00pm. We will all be there, and it looks like there is going to be a very good turn-out! I understand that Jim gives a heck of a talk, and you won’t want to miss this event! See You There!

Blessings,
Gwyllm
~~
On The Menu:
Something Groovy
The Promise of Psychedelic Research
Rabia & Rumi, Poetry
Cocteau Twins – Watchlar
Art – Gwyllm
~~~~~~
Something Groovy!

A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.

Audio Data courtesy of CARISMA, operated by the University of Alberta, funded by the Canadian Space Agency. Special Thanks to Andy Kale.

Made for the exhibition Invisible Fields at Arts Santa Monica in Barcelona Spain.
lighthouse.org.uk/​programme/​invisible-fields

20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The Promise of Psychedelic Research
by James Fadiman, PhD

Psychedelics are back. To be more accurate, psychedelic research is back. To be truly factual, peer-reviewed, double-blind, institutionally based, and federally sanctioned psychedelic research is back. The research community, of which I am a member, is enthusiastic that after what Dr. Charles Grob calls “a protracted lull,” research has resumed. And the results of initial studies have been conclusive: Psychedelics, given in a safe, supportive setting, can be of enormous benefit to people suffering from numerous serious conditions.

It is not surprising to know that people intending to have a spiritual experience can do so with the help of psychedelics when properly supported and guided. It is totally surprising, however, that for people suffering from cluster headaches—the worst kind of headaches we know of—a single psychedelic experience can prevent these headaches from reoccurring for months afterward. Not to mention the fact that people nearing death can become far less anxious about their impending transition after a supervised psychedelic journey. We have also learned that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy has helped people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who had failed to benefit from any other kind of therapy.

These results are not only being published and replicated, but each study mentioned above became a news sensation, garnering hundreds of media stories within weeks of its journal release. When publications as diverse as The Wall Street Journal and Scottish Sporting News run positive stories about psychedelic experiences, you know that we have turned a cultural corner.

At the beginning of this article I said that psychedelics are back. I was speaking only about the return of research. Government surveys reveal that nonsanctioned psychedelic use has continued during the forty-plus years that these substances have been illegal. Twenty-three million Americans have used LSD, a figure estimated by U.S. government surveys to increase by as much as six hundred thousand each year. Any inclusive discussion of psychedelic experiences must take into account not only the few extremely important approved studies but also the larger body of users.

LSD and a number of other psychedelics are unusual in that the major effects are dose dependent. This means that if the dose is higher or lower, entirely different experiences occur. When you think of aspirin, antidepressants, blood pressure medications, diuretics, and other classes of pharmaceuticals, raising the dose makes the central effect more obvious, may increase the duration of that effect, and at high enough doses can become dangerous. This is not true for psychedelics.

To better understand the full span of psychedelic research and experience, it is useful to describe four areas of dosage, each of which differs in intention, methodology, dose level, and results.

Microdosage: Improved Normal Functioning

The lowest effective dose of LSD is 5 to 10 micrograms (millionths of a gram), which Albert Hoffman, who first synthesized LSD, characterized as “an under-researched area” of use. These subperceptual dosages, or “microdoses,” induce minimal perceptual, sensory, or cognitive changes or distortions.

Typically, micro-dosers talk about sustained intellectual and emotional clarity. A physician I talked with reported, “Since I started microdosing, taking 10 mcg of LSD every three days, I am in touch with a deep place of ease and beauty and trust. I have more strength and determination.” An addiction counselor concludes, “The subthreshold doses helped me to be more focused overall, with better mental clarity. I was also more energetic, with better memory recall.”

While most of the field reports I’ve been accumulating are favorable, a few are not. For example, “I experience headaches, obsess about cleaning, and feel so spaced afterwards . . . it is not for my biochemistry.” People who find these doses uncomfortable either lower their dose or simply stop taking the psychedelic. There are no reports, as yet, of serious difficulties.

It is foolish to assume that any substance, especially those as powerful as psychedelics, are good for everyone. These preliminary reports, however, reveal possibilities that beg for more rigorous scientific exploration. Many of the self-reports come from people in creative occupations. They don’t say that they are more creative or that they are creating at a higher level. Rather, they report that they do more of what they do well, with greater concentration and less fatigue.

Many individuals note that their use of microdoses goes unnoticed by anyone else, thus causing no upsets or negative reactions. One man called microdosing “an invisible use.” While most of these reports are about LSD, descriptions about other psychedelics are becoming available as well. For centuries, indigenous healers have taken a small dose when giving larger doses to others or have given tiny doses to individuals or groups for clarity, cohesiveness, or healing.

Low Dose: Creative Problem-Solving

At a dose of about 100 micrograms of LSD, higher-than-normal levels of creativity have been reported. Willis Harman, president of IONS from 1975 through 1996, helped pioneer this work and was convinced that it was possible to harness the psychedelic experience for the purpose of finding solutions to difficult technical and scientific problems. At the time, there was no evidence that this was likely. People working with psychedelics generally felt that the experience was so sensorially overwhelming and psychologically and emotionally engaging that no one could or would focus that psychic energy on a problem in physics, architecture, computer design, or biology.

Nevertheless, in l965, Dr. Harman, together with a small research team of which I was a member, conducted a series of sessions with senior scientists and architects. One criterion for inclusion in the study was that a participant had to have been trying to solve a specific problem for several months without success. Having already invested considerable effort on the problem area, finding a solution mattered personally as well as professionally to them.

They were instructed to use the psychedelic-induced state as a way to stay with their problem and not get distracted by any other influence. After taking the psychedelic (LSD or mescaline), they were encouraged to lie down, put on eyeshades, and let their minds relax by listening to music for several hours. Soon after the peak of the psychophysiological experience, they were asked to sit up and take the same standard creativity tests they had taken earlier. They spent the rest of the afternoon—and for most of them that evening—on their chosen problems.

This initial group of four was so successful that later groups were told to bring at least two problems, so that if one was solved, they would have another one ready. [Of the forty-four problems attempted by twenty-seven subjects, only four were scored “no solution obtained.” Twenty problems were scored “new avenues for investigation opened.”1 One participant voiced what seemed to be true for many of the subjects: “The ideas considered and developed in the session appear as important steps, and the period of the session was the single most productive period of work on this problem I have had in the several months preceding or following the session.”2 As an indirect measurement of the perceived value of the process, many colleagues of those in the original study eagerly volunteered to be prospective subjects.

While we cannot say what might have happened if this kind of work had continued during the forty-year taboo on psychedelic research, we do know that at least two Nobel Prize winners, Francis Crick and Kary Mullins, reported that their own insights while using psychedelics were pivotal in exactly those areas for which they received the prize. Steve Jobs also stated that his LSD sessions were important in his creative life.

The current research emphasis is on medical and therapeutic results; it may be that the work pioneered by Willis Harman’s team will, in the long run, be equally valuable.

Moderate Dosage: Physical and Psychological Healing

The research done in the 1960s on the therapeutic efficacy of psychedelic experiences is being reviewed and renewed, but with a new emphasis on treating conditions that have not been successfully treated by other means. As noted earlier, the research so far has focused on high anxiety in terminal cancer patients, cluster headaches, and PTSD. Other possible studies are looking at stuttering and smoking cessation as well as autism and other genetic conditions.

Moderately high doses of psychedelics show similar benefits for individuals working on psychodynamic issues, as would be found in a normal outpatient clinic population. Earlier large-sample study results reported a high abstinence rate in otherwise treatment-resistant alcoholics.3

Based on his personal as well as his clinical experience, Dr. Andrew Weil is calling for studies using psychedelics for allergies as well as multiple sclerosis. There is also successful work being done with cocaine and heroin addiction using ibogaine [a plant-based psychoactive agent found originally in Africa]. Clinics in Africa, Europe, Australia, Mexico, Peru, and other countries are following up on research originally carried out (but no longer legal) in the United States (see, for example, http://www.myeboga.com/providers.html).

Researchers (including myself) who are surveying people who use psychedelics recreationally are finding that many of them report that their primary reason for taking the drug is self-help, self-understanding, and greater awareness of their own consciousness. It is hoped that sponsored legal research will begin to look more closely at these reports and at this population of users.

High Dosage: Entheogenic Experiences

Highest-dose research (in the range of 400 micrograms of LSD) on subjects in safe and well-guided situations often reports experiences of personal transcendence, described by participants with what has been called “classical mystical language.” Follow-up research suggests that these people become less neurotic, more compassionate, and more aware of others, and are seen by their friends and colleagues as more open and friendly. In one study, over 90 percent of the sample reported that their marriages had improved as a result of their experience.4 A major American Buddhist teacher reports that at least 80 percent of the Buddhist teachers in the United States either were attracted to Buddhism after such an experience or had some of these experiences early in their training.

Below is a case where the intention was therapeutic but the dose used was such that the subject had a true entheogenic experience.

Roy [is] a 52-year-old television news producer and Stage-4 lung-cancer patient, who this summer underwent psilocybin treatment at NYU after three years of chemotherapy. Roy had grown increasingly anxious and depressed before his revelatory psilocybin session. Today he describes that session as among the most precious and important experiences of his life . . . “From here on love was the only consideration,” Roy writes of his psilocybin session. “Love seemed to emanate from a single point of light. The bliss was indescribable . . . I took a tour of my lungs. There were nodules but they seemed rather unimportant . . . I was being told (without words) to not worry about the cancer . . . it’s minor in the scheme of things, simply an imperfection of your humanity and that the real work to be done is before you . . . [On the day after the session] I felt spectacular . . . both physically and mentally! It had been a very long time since I’d felt that good . . . a serene sense of balance . . . Undoubtedly, my life has changed in ways I may never fully comprehend. I now have an understanding, an awareness that goes beyond intellect, that my life, that every life, and all that is the universe equals one thing: Love.”5

The entire article is detailed and comprehensive and can be found here. [The recollection comes from the work of Stephen Ross, highlighted in last month’s issue of Noetic Now in the article “Psilocybin at the End of Life.”]

Implications for Contemporary Culture

What I haven’t discussed are reported incidences of paranormal phenomena during higher-dose usages, including telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. These phenomena often occurred in earlier research studies, but because the substances themselves were controversial, the research climate wasn’t conducive to reporting these events. They do, however, live at the core of some sacred indigenous traditions. A common practice in South America, for example, is to ask a shaman to visit and observe distant relatives. Such “remote-viewing” rituals using plant and fungal entheogens have been noted repeatedly by anthropologists but are still avoided in current research.

Also fundamental to many indigenous cultures that have used these substances ritually for thousands of years is a profound awareness of their natural biological community. They say that unless more people experience a deeper awareness and appreciation of the complex ecological network in which we all move and live, it is unlikely that “developed” civilization will continue. While psychedelic plants and fungi occur worldwide, it is curious that LSD, a synthesized substance, has been the breakthrough substance that has restored many Westerners’ connection with nature. Perhaps as psychedelic research becomes more accepted, formal studies on their use in indigenous cultures will start to emerge that bring the wisdom of these traditions to bear on the nature and potential of all human consciousness.

What then are we to make of the four faces of psychedelic research: low doses for higher functioning, moderate doses for scientific problem solving, higher doses for psychotherapy and self-exploration, and high doses for transcendent spiritual experiences? Ram Dass quotes a saying that “painted words do not satisfy.” No matter how attractive the menu, ultimately one needs to eat the food to be nourished. As more people are trained to ensure that these substances are used with maximum safety and for maximum benefit, the initial promise of beneficial psychedelic experiences will, if verified, lead to more research and greater acceptance of these compounds.

Endnotes

1. James Fadiman, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys (Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 2011), p. 132.
2. Ibid, p. 133.
3. N. Chwelos, D. Blewett, C. Smith, A. Hoffer, “Use of LSD in the Treatment of Alcoholism,” Quarterly Journal of Alcohol Studies 20 (1959): 577–590.
4. Fadiman, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, p. 290.
5. Alexander Zaitchik, Flashback! Psychedelic Research Returns, last accessed November 2011, http://life.salon.com/2011/09/28/the_new_lsd_cure/.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Rabia & Rumi, Poetry

Rabia al-Basri

If I Adore You

If I adore You out of fear of Hell,
Burn me in Hell!
If I adore you out of desire for Paradise,
Lock me out of Paradise.
But if I adore you for Yourself alone,
Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty.
~~

Reality

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?
~~

Rumi:

As salt resolved in the ocean
I was swallowed in God’s sea,
Past faith, past unbelieving,
Past doubt, past certainty.

Suddenly in my bosom
A star shone clear and bright;
All the suns of heaven
Vanished in that star’s light.
~~

Flowers every night
Blossom in the sky;
Peace in the Infinite;
At peace am I.

Sighs a hundredfold
From my heart arise;
My heart, dark and cold,
Flames with my sighs.
~~~~~~~~

Cocteau Twins – Watchlar

“There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.” – ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(Marci McDonald – Orchid)

Samhain… Woke up, Portland swathed in fog and mist. The day unfolded beautifully. We were off to clients that we really like, and started a new project. Around 1:00 the fog burned off and the day stepped out, full of glory.

We went out yesterday, picked up candy, decorated the porch, got pumpkins. Our street is pretty dark. We got 1 kid. 1 KID. Sad. When Rowan was very young, the whole neighborhood was full of young’uns. I guess not so much anymore. Sad that. Ended up watching bad vampire films, and abusing ourselves with sugar.

Need Candy? We have BAGS of the stuff.

Here is something to let you know where things are going….

Making headway! Another edition soon! The cover art was a partnership effort of Aloria Weaver & David Heskin. Their work will be featured in the new 7th edition of The Invisible College Magazine.

This Edition Of Turfing: Some nice stuff in this one, from the music of Cluster, to the Aboriginal Dream Time Tale ‘Why the Crow is Black’, to the poetry of Denise Levertov and the art of Marci McDonald.

Everything beautiful, bright, and full of light…

Blessings,
Gwyllm
~~

On The Menu:
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
Cluster “Sowiesoso”
Why the Crow is Black
Denise Levertov Poetry
Cluster “Plas”
Artist: Marci McDonald
~~~~~~~
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes:

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”
“By seeking and blundering we learn.”
“Trust yourself, and you will know how to live.”
“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
“Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.”
~~~~~~~
One of the bands that influenced me deeply, deeply enough that I eventually bought and played synthesizer for many years. This always reminds me of living along side the Rhine, so many years ago.

Cluster “Sowiesoso”

~~~~~~~

Aboriginal Dream Time Tales:

Why the Crow is Black

One day, a crow and a hawk hunted together in the bush. After travelling together for some time, they decided to hunt in opposite directions, and, at the close of the day, to share whatever game they had caught. The crow travelled against the sun, and at noonday arrived at a broad lagoon which was the haunt of the wild ducks. The crow hid in the tall green reeds fringing the lagoon, and prepared to trap the ducks. First, he got some white clay, and, having softened it with water, placed two pieces in his nostrils. He then took a long piece of hollow reed through which he could breathe under water, and finally tied a net bag around his waist in which to place the ducks.

On the still surface of the lagoon, the tall gum trees were reflected like a miniature forest. The ducks, with their bronze plumage glistening in the sun, were swimming among the clumps of reeds, and only paused to dive for a tasty morsel hidden deep in the water weeds. The crow placed the reed in his mouth, and, without making any sound, waded into the water. He quickly submerged himself, and the only indication of his presence in the lagoon, was a piece of dry reed which projected above the surface of the water, and through which the crow was breathing. When he reached the centre of the water hole he remained perfectly still. He did not have to wait long for the ducks to swim above his head. Then, without making any sound or movement, he seized one by the leg, quickly pulled it beneath the water, killed it, and placed it in the net bag. By doing this, he did not frighten the other ducks, and, in a short time he had trapped a number of them. He then left the lagoon and continued on his way until he came to a river.

The crow was so pleased with his success at the waterhole, that he determined to spear some fish before he returned to his camp. He left the bag of ducks on the bank of the river, and, taking his fish spear, he waded into the river until the water reached his waist. Then he stood very still, with the spear poised for throwing. A short distance from the spot where he was standing, a slight ripple disturbed the calm surface of the water. With the keen eye of the hunter, he saw the presence of fish, and, with a swift movement of his arm, he hurled the spear, and his unerring aim was rewarded with a big fish. The water was soon agitated by many fish, and the crow took advantage of this to spear many more. With this heavy load of game, he turned his face towards home.

The hawk was very unfortunate in his hunting. He stalked a kangaroo many miles, and then lost sight of it in the thickly wooded hills. He then decided to try the river for some fish, but the crow had made the water muddy and frightened the fish, so again he was unsuccessful. At last the hawk decided to return to his gunyah with the hope that the crow would secure some food, which they had previously agreed to share. When the hawk arrived, he found that the crow had been there before him and had prepared and eaten his evening meal. He at once noticed that the crow had failed to leave a share for him. This annoyed the hawk, so he approached the crow and said: “I see you have had a good hunt to-day. I walked many miles but could not catch even a lizard. I am tired and would be glad to have my share of food, as we agreed this morning.” “You are too lazy,” the crow replied. “You must have slept in the sun instead of hunting for food. Anyhow, I’ve eaten mine and cannot give you any.” This made the hawk very angry, and he .attacked the crow. For a long time they struggled around the dying embers of the camp fire, until the hawk seized the crow and rolled him in the black ashes. When the crow recovered from the fight, he found that he could not wash the ashes off, and, since that time, crows have always been black. The crow was also punished for hiding the food which he could not eat by being condemned to live on putrid flesh.
~~~~~~
(Marci McDonald – Ladyslipper)

~~~~~~
Denise Levertov Poetry

A Tree Telling of Orpheus

White dawn. Stillness.When the rippling began
I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors
of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog
didn’t stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched,
unmoving.
Yet the rippling drew nearer – and then
my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and their twig-tips
were drying and curling.
Yet I was not afraid, only
deeply alert.
I was the first to see him, for I grew
out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest.
He was a man, it seemed: the two
moving stems, the short trunk, the two
arm-branches, flexible, each with five leafless
twigs at their ends,
and the head that’s crowned by brown or golden grass,
bearing a face not like the beaked face of a bird,
more like a flower’s.
He carried a burden made of
some cut branch bent while it was green,
strands of a vine tight-stretched across it. From this,
when he touched it, and from his voice
which unlike the wind’s voice had no need of our
leaves and branches to complete its sound,
came the ripple.
But it was now no longer a ripple (he had come near and
stopped in my first shadow) it was a wave that bathed me
as if rain
rose from below and around me
instead of falling.
And what I felt was no longer a dry tingling:
I seemed to be singing as he sang, I seemed to know
what the lark knows; all my sap
was mounting towards the sun that by now
had risen, the mist was rising, the grass
was drying, yet my roots felt music moisten them
deep under earth.

He came still closer, leaned on my trunk:
the bark thrilled like a leaf still-folded.
Music! There was no twig of me not
trembling with joy and fear.

Then as he sang
it was no longer sounds only that made the music:
he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language
came into my roots
out of the earth,
into my bark
out of the air,
into the pores of my greenest shoots
gently as dew
and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.
He told me of journeys,
of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark,
of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day
deeper than roots …
He told of the dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs,
and I, a tree, understood words – ah, it seemed
my thick bark would split like a sapling’s that
grew too fast in the spring
when a late frost wounds it.

Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.
~~
Contraband

The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason.
That’s why the taste of it
drove us from Eden. That fruit
was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder
for use a pinch at a time, a condiment.
God had probably planned to tell us later
about this new pleasure.
We stuffed our mouths full of it,
gorged on but and if and how and again
but, knowing no better.
It’s toxic in large quantities; fumes
swirled in our heads and around us
to form a dense cloud that hardened to steel,
a wall between us and God, Who was Paradise.
Not that God is unreasonable – but reason
in such excess was tyranny
and locked us into its own limits, a polished cell
reflecting our own faces. God lives
on the other side of that mirror,
but through the slit where the barrier doesn’t
quite touch ground, manages still
to squeeze in – as filtered light,
splinters of fire, a strain of music heard
then lost, then heard again.
~~

To the Snake

Green Snake, when I hung you round my neck
and stroked your cold, pulsing throat
as you hissed to me, glinting
arrowy gold scales, and I felt
the weight of you on my shoulders,
and the whispering silver of your dryness
sounded close at my ears –

Green Snake–I swore to my companions that certainly
you were harmless! But truly
I had no certainty, and no hope, only desiring
to hold you, for that joy,
which left
a long wake of pleasure, as the leaves moved
and you faded into the pattern
of grass and shadows, and I returned
smiling and haunted, to a dark morning.
~~

Adam’s complaint

Some people,
no matter what you give them,
still want the moon.
The bread, the salt,
white meat and dark,
still hungry.
The marriage bed
and the cradle,
still empty arms.
You give them land,
their own earth under their feet,
still they take to the roads.
And water: dig them the deepest well,
still it’s not deep enough
to drink the moon from.
~~~~~~
Cluster “Plas”

~~~~~~

“Nine requisites for contented living:
Health enough to make work a pleasure.
Wealth enough to support your needs.
Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them.
Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them.
Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished.
Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor.
Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others.
Faith enough to make real the things of God.
Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(Marci McDonald – A Paper Veil)

This Entry is a bit of a hybrid: usually I post just on the traditions of the Celtic/Pagan world, but this one includes elements from Haiti, the deep South, as well as Ireland. It is a bit of a mix, but one I have enjoyed putting together. I hope your Samhain/Halloween is a grand occassion, on this the thinnest night and day between the worlds..

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
~~~~~~
On The Menue:
Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
Muddy Waters – Louisiana Blues
The Ghost of Sneem
The Poetry Of Poe…
Dr. John – I Walk On Giilded Splinters
~~~~~~~~~
Edgar Allan Poe Quotes:

Madness vs. Intelligence:
“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.”
– from “Eleonora”

“But as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.”
– from “Berenice”
~~
Daydreaming:
“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
– from “Eleonora”

“She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art which was her rival;”
– from “The Oval Portrait”
~~
Fears:
“There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell — but the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful — but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us — they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.”
– from “The Premature Burial”
~~~~~~~~~

Muddy Waters – Louisiana Blues

~~~~~~~~~
The Ghost of Sneem

Some time after Pat Doyle was killed by the ghost, my husband, Martin Doyle, was at work on an estate at some distance from Sneem, and one evening the gentleman who employed Martin told him to go that night on an errand to Sneem.

“Well,” said he, “it’s too late and the road is very lonesome. There is no one to care for my mother but me, and if anything should happen to me she’d be without support. I’ll go in the morning.”

“That will not do,” said the gentleman: “I want to send a letter, and it must be delivered to-night.”

“I’ll not risk it; I’ll not go,” said Martin.

Martin had a cousin James, who heard the conversation and, stepping up, he said, “I’ll go. I am not afraid of ghost or spirit, and many a night have I spent on that road.”

The gentleman thanked him and said:

“Here is a sword for you, if you need it.” He gave James the letter with directions for delivering it.

James started off, and took every short cut and by-path, and when he thought he was half-way to Sneem a ghost stood before him in the road, and began to make at him. Whenever the ghost came near, James made a drive at him with the steel sword, for there is great virtue in steel, and above all in steel made by an Irish blacksmith. The ghost was darting at James, and he driving at the ghost with his sword till he came to a cross-road near Sneem. There the ghost disappeared, and James hurried on with great speed to Sneem. There he found that the gentleman who was to receive the letter had moved to a place six miles away, near Blackwater bridge, half-way between Sneem and Kenmare. The place has a very bad name to this day, and old people declare that there is no night without spirits and headless people being around Blackwater bridge. James knew what the place was, but he made up his mind to deliver the letter. When he came to the bridge and was going to cross it a ghost attacked him. This ghost had a venomous look and was stronger than the first one. He ran twice at James, who struck at him with the sword. Just then he saw a big man without a head running across the road at the other side of the bridge and up the cliff, though there was no path there. The ghost stopped attacking and ran after the headless man. James crossed the bridge and walked a little farther, when he met a stranger, and the two saluted each other and the man asked James where he lived, and he said: “I came from Drumfada.” “Do you know what time it is?” asked James. “I do not; but when I was passing that house just below there the cocks were beginning to crow. Did you see anything?” “I did,” said James, and he told him how the ghost attacked him and then ran away up the cliff after the headless man.

“Oh,” said the stranger, “that headless body is always roaming around the bridge at night; hundreds of people have seen it. It ran up the cliff and disappeared at cock-crow, and the ghost that attacked you followed when the cocks crowed.”

The stranger went on and James delivered the letter. The man who received it was very thankful and paid him well. James came home safe and sound, but he said: “I’d be a dead man this day but for the steel.”

“Could you tell me a real fairy tale?” asked I of the old woman. “I could,” said she, “but to-day I’ll tell you only what I saw one night beyond Cahirciveen:

Once I spent the night at a house near Waterville, about six miles from Derrynane. The woman of the house was lying in bed at the time and a young child with her. The husband heard an infant crying outside under the window, and running to the bed he said:

“Yerra, Mary, have you the child with you?”
“Indeed, then, I have, John.”

“Well, I heard a child crying under the window. I’ll go this minute and see whose it is.”
“In the name of God,” screamed the wife, “stop inside! Get the holy water and sprinkle it over the children and over me and yourself.”
He did this, and then sprinkled some in the kitchen. He heard the crying go off farther and farther till it seemed half a mile away: it was very pitiful and sad. If he had gone to the door the man of the house would have got a fairy stroke and the mother would have been taken as a nurse to the fort.

This is all the old woman told. When going she promised to come on the following day, but I have not seen her since. The blind man informed me some evenings later that she was sick and in the “ashpitl” (hospital). Her sickness was caused, as she said, by telling me tales in the daytime. Many of the old people will tell tales only in the evening; it is not right, not lucky, to do so during daylight.

~~~~~~~~~
The Poetry Of Poe…

The Bells
I.

HEAR the sledges with the bells –
Silver bells !
What a world of merriment their melody foretells !
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night !
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight ;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II.

Hear the mellow wedding bells
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells !
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight !
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon !
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells !
How it swells !
How it dwells
On the Future ! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells !

III.

Hear the loud alarum bells –
Brazen bells !
What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells !
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright !
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now — now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells !
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair !
How they clang, and clash, and roar !
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air !
Yet the ear, it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows ;
Yet, the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells –
Of the bells –
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
In the clamour and the clangour of the bells !

IV.

Hear the tolling of the bells –
Iron bells !
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels !
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy meaning of their tone !
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people — ah, the people –
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone –
They are neither man nor woman –
They are neither brute nor human –
They are Ghouls: –
And their king it is who tolls ;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A pæan from the bells !
And his merry bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells !
And he dances, and he yells ;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells –
Of the bells :
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells –
Of the bells, bells, bells –
To the sobbing of the bells ;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells –
Of the bells, bells, bells –
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells –
Bells, bells, bells –
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
~~

The Haunted Palace

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace-
Radiant palace- reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion-
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow,
(This- all this- was in the olden
Time long ago,)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically,
To a lute’s well-tuned law,
Round about a throne where, sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well-befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!- for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh- but smile no more.
~~

The Conqueror Worm

Lo! ’tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

~~~~~~~~~

Dr. John – I Walk On Giilded Splinters

~~~~~~~~~

“In dreams begin responsibilities.” ― W.B. Yeats

“I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams.”

A return to theme, of seminal poetry, tales and art. Thursday night, the rains are sliding in, and a chill is on the city. Step outside, the sky is crisp, and the winds pick up. So Alive.

Here is to the coming Samhain.

Blessings,
Gwyllm
~~~~~~

On The Menu:
W.B Yeats Quotes
The Six Parts Seven – In a Late Style of Fire
The Recovered Bride
The Poetry: William Butler Yeats
The Six Parts Seven – Knock At My Door
Art: Max Ernst
~~~~~~

W.B Yeats Quotes:
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
“For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.” ― The land of heart’s Desire

“What can be explained is not poetry.”

“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.”

~~~~~~
The Six Parts Seven – In a Late Style of Fire

~~~~~~
The Recovered Bride

There was a marriage in the townland of Curragraigue. After the usual festivities, and when the guests were left to themselves, and were drinking to the prosperity of the bride and bridegroom, they were startled by the appearance of the man himself rushing into the room with anguish in his looks.

“Oh!” cried he, “Margaret is carried away by the fairies, I’m sure. The girls were not left the room for half a minute when I went in, and there is no more sign of her there than if she never was born.”

Great consternation prevailed, great search was made, but no Margaret was to be found. After a night and day spent in misery, the poor bridegroom laid down to take some rest. In a while he seemed to himself to awake from a troubled dream, and look out into the room. The moon was shining in through the window, and in the middle of the slanting rays stood Margaret in her white bridal clothes. He thought to speak and leap out of the bed, but his tongue was without utterance, and his limbs unable to move.

“Do not be disturbed, dear husband,” said the appearance; “I am now in the power of the fairies, but if you only have courage and prudence we may be soon happy with each other again. Next Friday will be May-eve, and the whole court will ride out of the old fort after midnight. I must be there along with the rest. Sprinkle a circle with holy water, and have a black-hafted knife with you. If you have courage to pull me off the horse, and draw me into the ring, all they can do will be useless. You must have some food for me every night on the dresser, for if I taste one mouthful with them, I will be lost to you forever. The fairies got power over me because I was only thinking of you, and did not prepare myself as I ought for the sacrament. I made a bad confession, and now I am suffering for it. Don’t forget what I have said.”

“Oh, no, my darling,” cried he, recovering his speech, but by the time he had slipped out of bed, there was no living soul in the room but himself.

Till Friday night the poor young husband spent a desolate time. The food was left on the dresser over night, and it rejoiced all hearts to find it vanished by morning. A little before midnight he was at the entrance of the old rath. He formed the circle, took his station within it, and kept the black-hafted knife ready for service. At times he was nervously afraid of losing his dear wife, and at others burning with impatience for the struggle.

At last the old fort with its dark high bushy fences cutting against the sky, was in a moment replaced by a palace and its court. A thousand lights flashed from the windows and lofty hall entrance; numerous torches were brandished by attendants stationed round the courtyard; and a numerous cavalcade of richly attired ladies and gentlemen was moving in the direction of the gate where he found himself standing.

As they rode by him laughing and jesting, he could not tell whether they were aware of his presence or not. He looked intent at each countenance as it approached, but it was some time before he caught sight of the dear face and figure borne along on a milk-white steed. She recognized him well enough, and her features now broke into a smile — now expressed deep anxiety.

She was unable for the throng to guide the animal close to the ring of power; so he suddenly rushed out of his bounds, seized her in his arms, and lifted her off. Cries of rage and fury arose on every side; they were hemmed in, and weapons were directed at his head and breast to terrify him. He seemed to be inspired with superhuman courage and force, and wielding the powerful knife he soon cleared a space round him, all seeming dismayed by the sight of the weapon. He lost no time, but drew his wife within the ring, within which none of the myriads round dared to enter. Shouts of derision and defiance continued to fill the air for some time, but the expedition could not be delayed.

As the end of the procession filed past the gate and the circle within which the mortal pair held each other determinedly clasped, darkness and silence fell on the old rath and the fields round it, and the rescued bride and her lover breathed freely. We will not detain the sensitive reader on the happy walk home, on the joy that hailed their arrival, and on all the eager gossip that occupied the townland and the five that surround it for a month after the happy rescue.
~~~~~~

The Poetry: William Butler Yeats

~~
The Harp of Aengus

Edain came out of Midhir’s hill, and lay
Beside young Aengus in his tower of glass,
Where time is drowned in odour-laden winds
And Druid moons, and murmuring of boughs,
And sleepy boughs, and boughs where apples made
Of opal and ruhy and pale chrysolite
Awake unsleeping fires; and wove seven strings,
Sweet with all music, out of his long hair,
Because her hands had been made wild by love.
When Midhir’s wife had changed her to a fly,
He made a harp with Druid apple-wood
That she among her winds might know he wept;
And from that hour he has watched over none
But faithful lovers.
~~

Her Praise

She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.
I have gone about the house, gone up and down
As a man does who has published a new book,
Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown,
And though I have turned the talk by hook or crook
Until her praise should be the uppermost theme,
A woman spoke of some new tale she had read,
A man confusedly in a half dream
As though some other name ran in his head.
She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.
I will talk no more of books or the long war
But walk by the dry thorn until I have found
Some beggar sheltering from the wind, and there
Manage the talk until her name come round.
If there be rags enough he will know her name
And be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days,
Though she had young men’s praise and old men’s blame,
Among the poor both old and young gave her praise.
~~
To A Young Girl

My dear, my dear, I know
More than another
What makes your heart beat so;
Not even your own mother
Can know it as I know,
Who broke my heart for her
When the wild thought,
That she denies
And has forgot,
Set all her blood astir
And glittered in her eyes.
~~

The Seven Sages

The First. My great-grandfather spoke to Edmund Burke
In Grattan’s house.
The Second. My great-grandfather shared
A pot-house bench with Oliver Goldsmith once.
The Third. My great-grandfather’s father talked of music,
Drank tar-water with the Bishop of Cloyne.
The Fourth. But mine saw Stella once.
The Fifth. Whence came our thought?
The Sixth. From four great minds that hated Whiggery.
The Fifth. Burke was a Whig.
The Sixth. Whether they knew or not,
Goldsmith and Burke, Swift and the Bishop of Cloyne
All hated Whiggery; but what is Whiggery?
A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind
That never looked out of the eye of a saint
Or out of drunkard’s eye.
The Seventh. All’s Whiggery now,
But we old men are massed against the world.
The First. American colonies, Ireland, France and India
Harried, and Burke’s great melody against it.
The Second. Oliver Goldsmith sang what he had seen,
Roads full of beggars, cattle in the fields,
But never saw the trefoil stained with blood,
The avenging leaf those fields raised up against it.
The Fourth. The tomb of Swift wears it away.
The Third. A voice
Soft as the rustle of a reed from Cloyne
That gathers volume; now a thunder-clap.
The Sixtb. What schooling had these four?
The Seventh. They walked the roads
Mimicking what they heard, as children mimic;
They understood that wisdom comes of beggary.
~~~~~~

The Six Parts Seven – Knock At My Door

~~~~~~
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
― W.B. Yeats

Sunday…
Working on Art, watching the day flow by. This is a gathering of items that I have been wanting to post for awhile. Leander Valdes’s article on Salvia was the first work that I read on Salvia Divinorum. We were in communication for quite awhile, now out of touch for at least 12 years. Leander, if you are out there, drop a line!

I have included another couple of songs from Bert Jansch. Love his work. His passing has coloured the past couple of weeks. Here is a link on him: The Guardian Bert Jansch Obituary He was from Mary’s home town, but I had the pleasure of introducing her to his, and Pentangle’s music.

Hope This Finds You And Yours Well,
Gwyllm
~~~~~~

On The Menu:
The Quotes
Bert Jansch – Sweet Death
The Early History of Salvia Divinorum
Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Poems
Science Saved My Soul
Bert Jansch – Dreams Of Love
~~~~~~
The Quotes:
Rudyard Kipling: “Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.”
Inigo DeLeon: “The cure for writer’s cramp is writer’s block.”
Leo Tolstoy: “Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.”
Bertrand Russell: It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.”
~~~~~

Bert Jansch – Sweet Death

~~~~~~
The Early History of Salvia Divinorum
Leander J. Valdés III

(Salvia – Dana Vallery)
Unless you believe that Salvia divinorum is the old Mexica (Aztec) narcotic plant pipiltzintzintli (I don’t), the story of this fascinating mint began in the late 1930s. When R. Gordon Wasson and Albert Hoffman brought back material for Carl Epling to identify (Wasson 1962, 1963; Epling and Játiva-M 1962), they ended a search that had lasted nearly a quarter of a century. Their party traveled through Oaxaca under the auspices of a famous Mexican anthropologist, Roberto Weitlaner (an Austrian by birth), who had been guiding expeditions to Oaxaca for decades (Pompa y Pompa 1966). I’ve quoted everything relative to S. divinorum from each of the following rather rare references, translating to English where necessary.

In the summer of 1938 Jean B. Johnson, Weitlaner’s son-in-law, visited the Mazatec town of Huautla de Jiminéz, Oaxaca, with a group of young anthropologists. He wrote a couple of articles based on their findings. The first one covered various aspects of Mazatec culture and language. In the section on curing and witchcraft he discussed the magic mushrooms:

Shamans, as well as other persons, use certain narcotic plants in order to find lost objects. In some cases teonanacatl is used, while in others a seed called “semilla de la Virgen” is used. “Hierba María” is similarly used. The Zapotecs use a plant called “bador”, the little children, and the Aztecs used narcotic plants in a similar manner(Johnson 1939a).

“Semilla de la Virgen” is “the Virgin’s seed,” and “Hierba (or Yerba) María” is Mary’s herb, both refer to Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. In the second article Johnson covered the activities of Mazatec shamans in greater detail. It is an excellent and interesting source of information, being based on interviews with a shaman. Concerning the Mazatec trio of magic plants he wrote:

To find a lost animal or object, one takes some mushrooms at night. One commences to speak (after falling asleep). It is not permitted to keep an animal around which might cry out and disturb the sleeper, who goes on speaking while another person listens. The sleeper tells where the lost animal or thing is, and the next day, there it is when they go to find it. In addition to the mushrooms, some people use a seed called “Semilla de la Virgen”, others use “Hierba Maria” …The use of various magical plants to find lost objects is not restricted to the Mazatec alone; the Zapotec use a plant called “bador, the little children,” which is administered the same way as yerba Maria by the Mazatec. The leaf is beaten well, and a tea is made thereof. It is probable that the Chinantec use it, since it well known to those who live in the vicinity of Ojitlan. The Aztecs used narcotic plants in a similar way (Johnson 1939b).

Bador, or badoh, was later identified as the morning glory, Rivea corymbosa, and it is the seeds that are used, not the leaves (Wasson 1963). Johnson was killed in Africa during World War II.

Blas P.Reko, like Weitlaner, was an Austrian expatriate. He was a doctor and naturalist, and often worked in collaboration with the anthropologist (Reko 1945; Pompa y Pompa 1966). In his book on medicinal plants, he wrote:

I cannot leave unmentioned here another magical plant whose leaves produce visions and which the Cuicatecs and Mazatecs (of the districts of Cuicatlán and Teotitlán) call “leaf of prophecy.” The loose leaves I have obtained do not allow its scientific identification at the present time.

Teotitlán is in the Valley of Oaxaca, in the upper central part of the state. It is Mazatec country. Cuicatlán is the district directly adjacent to the southeast. A search engine such as GoogleTM can find you some good maps. As an aside, the credit for discovering the magic mushrooms has been given to Richard Schultes (1939), and later R.G. Wasson. Actually, at the time Schultes was in the Sierra Mazateca, working on his PhD thesis (Schultes 1941). He was accompanying Reko, who had been puzzling out the mushroom mystery since 1919. During the late 1930s Reko sent specimens he had collected to various American taxonomists for identification. He later said this about the American botanist:

I have to mention these details, now that an ambitious young Harvard student, having turned literary pirate, has taken credit for my discoveries (The identification of Teonanacatl, by Richard E. Schultes, Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University, Febr. 21, 1939), after I had communicated to him the results of my prolonged investigations and invited him on a botanical expedition to Huautla de Jiménez during the summer of 1938, where I gave him numerous samples of the aforesaid mushroom, which had been finally positively identified by Dr. Linder as Paneolus campanulatus L. var. sphinctrinus (Fr.) Bresadola. Samples that I sent to professor C.G. Santesson in Stockholm revealed the presence of a new narcotic glucoalkaloid.

Schultes never did return to Mexico, and turned his research toward South America.

Weitlaner, himself, was trained and worked for a while as an engineer, but later switched to anthropology after emigrating to Mexico (Pompa y Pompa 1966). He led numerous expeditions throughout Mexico and was an expert on the peoples of Oaxaca. While collecting data on the Chinantecs, he came across a person who gave him a lot of information about Mazatec healing rites, including the use of Yerba de María, or S. divinorum. The interview covering the mint went as follows:

4. USE OF PLANTS IN HEALING

Asking Don S. about the mushroom Teonanacatl, which is found in Huautla de Jiménez, he said it wasn’t used in Jalapa, but he mentioned another plant that was called Yerba de María.

The plant somewhat resembles yerba mora but its leaves are a little wider; only the leaves are used, and they are put in water. First they are rubbed (crushed) in the hands, the water is not boiled, and they are used for very specific means. When the curandero goes to the mountain to search for this plant, he has to kneel down and pray to it before cutting it. There are only two or three specialists who know this remedy. They aren’t brujos, and they cut the plants only when they need them, after praying.
For example, if someone is ill, and the doctors don’t know the disease, then with this herb they can divine the illness. The curandero who brings the leaves first asks the sick person if they are addicted to alcohol, for a person who doesn’t drink is prescribed fifty leaves, but one who does is prescribed one hundred. The ill one drinks the water in which the leaves have been squeezed; at midnight the curandero goes with them and another person to a place where there is no noise, as for example, a house where the sick person drinks the potion. They wait a quarter of an hour for the effects of the drug, and the sick person begins to describe the type of illness they are suffering from. The sick one finds themselves in a semi-delirious state, they speak as if in a trance and the others listen attentively to what they say, they throw off their clothing as if with the herb they could free themselves of the animals. At daybreak the curandero bathes the sick person with the same water that they took, and with this they are cured.
It is said that this bath ends the intoxicated state of the sick person who has taken the herb.
When one is trying to uncover a robbery or loss, the curandero listens to what the person who has taken the plant says and in this manner the deeds are discovered.
There is a man called Felipe Miranda in Jalapa de Díaz who goes to the mountain every three to six months to collect the herb; he performs excellent cures and he is doing quite well, economically; they say he grows the plant, but he won’t reveal what type of herb it is.

Later Weitlaner continued:

It seems odd that the use of the mushroom called Teonanacatl was categorically denied, when we know that in the Mazatecan capital of Huautla de Jiménez its esoteric use is very well known. As has been said, here it gives way to the plant known as Yerba de María.

Perhaps it may be of interest to point out the fact that a plant called Yerba de la Virgen is used in almost the identical manner in the Otomí town of Santa Ana Hueytalpan, in the region of Tulancingo, Hidalgo, according to Dr. J. Soustelle, who learned of it and wrote us. However, he didn’t mention an auto-diagnosis as takes place in our Mazatecan town.

Yerba mora is Black Nightshade or Solanum nigrum; illness can be physical, psychological or magical. There is a more detailed description of crushing the Salvia leaves by hand (Valdés et al 1983). Weitlaner’s article is excellent reading.

When I was in Mexico City in 1980, I visited the National Herbarium (a place where plant specimens are stored) to look at their collection of S. divinorum. I learned that in 1957 the Mexican botanist, Arturo Gómez Pompa, while in the Sierra Mazateca collecting mushrooms for the drug firm CIBA, found a Salvia species known by the Mazatecs as xka Pastora. He noted that it was hallucinogenic (alucinante) and a dose was 8-12 pair of leaves. Flowering material was unavailable (floral description is almost always necessary to define a new species), so it couldn’t be identified past the genus level. Unable to return to the area before Wasson and Hofmann’s visit, he missed the chance to get the credit for identifying ska María Pastora (Gómez Pompa 1957, 2001).

This, then, is what was known about S. divinorum before Wasson and Hofmann set out to collect the magic plant. These old articles pose some very important unanswered questions. Reko noted possible use of S. divinorum by the Cuicatecs, and Weitlaner by the Otomi. These people live in areas surrounding the Mazatecan heartland, and they as well as the Chinantecs are long overdue for study. These old explorers used horses and mules for their traveling, I used a car and a jeep, but I’m sure that now one could do it all by bus, if they were brave enough (traveling on rural Mexican buses can be a real learning experience).

REFERENCES

Epling, C. and Játiva-M., C. 1962. A new species of Salvia from Mexico. Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University, 20:75-76.

Gómez Pompa, A. 1957. Salvia divinorum herbarium sheets, A. Gómez Pompa 87556 and 93216 National Herbarium (UNAM), México, D.F.

Gómez Pompa, A. 2001. Personal communication 5/13/2001.

Johnson, J.B. 1939a. Some notes on the Mazatec, Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos, 3:142-156.

Johnson, J.B. (1939b) The elements of Mazatec witchcraft, Etnologiska Studier 9:128-150.

Pompa y Pompa, A. (1966) Summa Antropológica en homenaje a Roberto Weitlaner, INAH, México, D.F. Many of the articles deal directly with his life and his numerous expeditions.

Reko, B.P. (1945) Mitobotanica Zapoteca. Tacubaya, México, D.F. (Privately printed), pp. 17, 53-54.

Schultes, R.E. (1939) Plantae Mexicanae II. The identification of Teonanacatl, a narcotic
Basidiomycete of the Aztecs. Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University 7:37-54.

Schultes, R.E. (1941) Economic aspects of the flora of northeastern Oaxaca, Mexico. Ph.D. Thesis, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Valdés, L.J., III., Díaz, J.L., and Paul, A.G. (1983) Ethnopharmacology of Ska María Pastora (Salvia Divinorum, Epling and Játiva-M.). J. Ethnopharmacology 7:287-312.

Wasson, R.G. (1962) A new Mexican psychotropic drug from the mint family. Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University 20:77-84.

Wasson, R.G. (1963) Notes on the present status of Ololiuhqui and the other hallucinogens of Mexico. Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University 20:161-193.

Weitlaner, R.J. (1952) Curaciones Mazatecas. Anales del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (México) 4:279-285.
~~~~~~

Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Poems

If What She Says Is True

If what she says is true
And she feels for me
The obsessive desire
That I feel for her,

Then, in the sweltering heat of noon,
In her tent, in secret,
We will meet
To fulfill the promise completely…

We will reveal the passion
We feel one for the other
As well as the harshness of the trial
And the pains of ecstasy.

~~

When We Came Together

When we came together
to bid each other adieu
You would have thought that we were
Like a double letter
At the moment of union and embrace.

Even if we are made up
Of a double nature,
Our glances see only
One unified being…

I am absent and therefore desire
Causes my soul to pass away.
Meeting does not cure me
Because it persists both in absence
and in presence.

Meeting her produced in me
That which I had not imagined at all.
Healing is a new ill,
Which comes of ecstasy…

Because as for me, I see a being
Whose beauty increases,
Brilliant and superb
At every one of our meetings.

One does not escape in ecstasy
That exists in kinship
With beauty that continues to intensify
To the point of perfect harmony.
~~

In Memory of Those Who Melt the Soul Forever

Their spring meadows
are desolate now. Still, desire
for them lives always
in our heart, never dying.

These are their ruins.
These are the tears
in memory of those
who melt the soul forever.

I called out, following after
love-dazed:
You so full with beauty,
I’ve nothing!

I rubbed my face in the dust,
laid low by the fever of love.
By the privilege of the right of desire for you
don’t shatter the heart

Of a man drowned in his words,
burned alive
in sorrow.
Nothing can save him now.

You want a fire?
Take it easy. This passion
is incandescent. Touch it.
It will light your own.

~~~~~~

Science Saved My Soul

~~~~~~

~~~~~~

Bert Jansch – Dreams Of Love

Saturday Night: Long week at work, 6 days so far, perhaps 7 then on again. The leaves are falling now in Portland, and the winds are rising. We are heading towards Samhain, and the veil is kinda thin.

I have been having some amazing lucid dreams. Perhaps it is seasonal, perhaps not.

More postings on the way!

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

On The Menu:
In Memory Of Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch – “Blues Run The Game”
Poetry: Philip Larkin
Bert Jansch – October Song
~~~~~~~
In Memory Of Bert Jansch

I think it was early 1966 that I heard Bert Jansch for the first time. I was hanging around the Folk Lore Centre, and someone put on his first album. It was of course, an import. Too expensive for me to purchase, I heard it just a couple of times. I was very impressed. I knew he was important, and I kind of grasped what he was doing. I was of course 14 at the time, so I didn’t have the musical knowledge to fully comprehend what he had done with his acquaintances borrowed 2 track tape recorder in his flat. Along side Davy Graham, Anna Briggs, and his other musical partner John Renbourn, he was charting new territory for British folk music. Listening today, I am astounded. Listening then, it was like a great wash of beauty on that late winter afternoon.

Three years later, I was in San Anselmo at some Sufi friend’s house (students of Sam Lewis) and someone put on Pentangle’s “Basket Of Light”. I was absolutely transported. We sat and listened, and I felt like I had returned home. This moment brought me to my roots musically. Although I love many forms of music, British Folk is where my comfort lies.

I have listened to Basket on and off now for some 42 years. I started listening to it with new ears in the late 80′s when I understood folk traditions better. An amazing body of work, some of it going back to pre-christian times.

Bert’s guitar work, phrasing, and articulation have always amazed me. He got out of a guitar what Jimi Hendrix did with an electric. Mind you, without effects, or playing it with his mouth. 80) His singing is an acquired taste for some, but easy on my ears. He had a way with inflection that I always found disarming, and as if he was in the room with you.

His body of work is quite large. I could go over all that he did over the years, but you can find that on-line if you like. Bert’s gift to me is on a different level. His music is part of the rich tapestry of our lives here at Caer Llwydd.

Thanks Bert for the beauty that you brought with your guitar and singing. Happy Voyage.
~~~~~~~
Bert Jansch – “Blues Run The Game”

~~~~~~~

Poetry: Philip Larkin

An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd –
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would no guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-littered ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigures them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
~~

Arrival

Morning, a glass door, flashes
Gold names off the new city,
Whose white shelves and domes travel
The slow sky all day.
I land to stay here;
And the windows flock open
And the curtains fly out like doves
And a past dries in a wind.

Now let me lie down, under
A wide-branched indifference,
Shovel-faces like pennies
Down the back of the mind,
Find voices coined to
An argot of motor-horns,
And let the cluttered-up houses
Keep their thick lives to themselves.

For this ignorance of me
Seems a kind of innocence.
Fast enough I shall wound it:
Let me breathe till then
Its milk-aired Eden,
Till my own life impound it-
Slow-falling; grey-veil-hung; a theft,
A style of dying only.
~~~~~
Annus Mirabilis

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) –
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.

Up to then there’d only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) –
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
~~

‘Waiting for breakfast, while she brushed her hair’

Waiting for breakfast, while she brushed her hair,
I looked down at the empty hotel yard
Once meant for coaches. Cobblestones were wet,
But sent no light back to the loaded sky,
Sunk as it was with mist down to the roofs.
Drainpipes and fire-escape climbed up
Past rooms still burning their electric light:
I thought: Featureless morning, featureless night.

Misjudgment: for the stones slept, and the mist
Wandered absolvingly past all it touched,
Yet hung like a stayed breath; the lights burnt on,
Pin-points of undisturbed excitement; beyond the glass
The colourless vial of day painlessly spilled
My world back after a year, my lost lost world
Like a cropping deer strayed near my path again,
Bewaring the mind’s least clutch. Turning, I kissed her,
Easily for sheer joy tipping the balance to love.

But, tender visiting,
Fallow as a deer or an unforced field,
How would you have me? Towards your grace
My promises meet and lock and race like rivers,
But only when you choose. Are you jealous of her?
Will you refuse to come till I have sent
Her terribly away, importantly live
Part invalid, part baby, and part saint?
~~~~

Bert Jansch – October Song

~~~~~
Adios Bert… We Love Ya.

To Welcome In A New Consensus Reality In A Post Corporate/Statist World….

~~~~~

Sunday October 16th…

A picture from long ago… :0]

Today, Mary and I celebrate our 33rd year together as a married couple. She is the best friend I have ever had, my MUSE, and my wild companion in many an adventure. She brings a certain wisdom to my foolishness, and I can’t say enough about her. She has had the patience to put up with my craziness over the years, and to understand what I have been trying to achieve. I dedicate this entry to her.

Today, on a long walk through our neighborhood, we stepped out into the most perfect of days. The sun was out, the streets were full of people, and the joy of living was palpable in the air. You know those days, where the light plays through the leaves, the squirrels are going like crazy, people are busy, and the last of the summer bees are working overtime. Everything is vibrant, bright, full of life. We walked hand in hand, Sophie ahead of us sniffing the air. We walked up the hill, towards the east, with the sun to the south, no longer overhead as it was just months ago. We talked, and headed to the park, where families, friends, dogs, kids were all scrambling about. We finally circled back.

About a block from our house, we ran into Elliot, the founder of the “Beloved Festivals” riding by on his bike, having just come from Hawthorne buying Olive Oil. We stood there, sharing our thoughts on DJ Cheb, and what the year had given us, and what we planned to give in the coming year. He is an amazing fellow Elliot. I have known him some 10 or so years, and he is always present, trying to and achieving good things for the community. We talked, and then he was on his way to Clinton St..

Mary and my life has been blessed by good and sincere people. We are all on this path together I feel. I often muse that we chose this time to incarnate, if that is possible. So many good people, so much love that we have all shared in this place.

Never forget that Love is the foundation for all. Love before us, Love behind us, Love beside us, Love over us, Love below us.

Bright Blessings,
G
~~~~~
On The Menu:
Sunday October 9th, Occupy Portland
Quotes
Occupy Portland Live
William Morris – How I Became a Socialist
Patti Smith – My Blakean Year
William Blake – The Divine Image
~~~~~
Sunday October 9th, Occupy Portland:

We seem to have arrived at the time of great change; it is here, it is now. What we do, and do collectively will alter the world for generations to come. Join with us, with friends of mutual thought, and with the growing world community dedicated with changing the world for the better. Our time is now. Talk to your neighbors, your friends. Join us, join us now in the streets to take the world back for community, for people, for the future.

The wheels are turning, and the world is moving on a new course!

Our friend Tom Beckett marching with fellow Veterans For Peace

mid walk with a couple of thousand of our friends!

Barbara, Felicity & Paul… Felicity every bit the young social activist!

Miss Mary and yours truly!

Our Friend Paul’s Videos of last Sundays Walk of Occupy Portland!

Quotes:
‘A single nonrevolutionary weekend is infinitely more bloody than a month of total revolution.’
‘The tears of philistines are the nectar of the gods.’
‘This concerns everyone.’
‘We want structures that serve people, not people serving structures.’
‘Politics is in the streets.’
‘Barricades close the streets but open the way.’
‘Our hope can come only from the hopeless.’

-Paris Graffiti UpRising, 1968
~~~~~~

Occupy Portland Live:

~~~~~~
William Morris – How I Became a Socialist

I am asked by the Editor to give some sort of a history of the above conversion, and I feel that it may be of some use to do so, if my readers will look upon me as a type of a certain group of people, but not so easy to do clearly, briefly and truly. Let me, however, try. But first, I will say what I mean by being a Socialist, since I am told that the word no longer expresses definitely and with certainty what it did ten years ago. Well, what I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master’s man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers, nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all—the realization at last of the meaning of the word COMMONWEALTH.

Now this view of Socialism which I hold to-day, and hope to die holding, is what I began with; I had no transitional period, unless you may call such a brief period of political radicalism during which I saw my ideal clear enough, but had no hope of any realization of it. That came to an end some months before I joined the (then) Democratic Federation, and the meaning of my joining that body was that I had conceived a hope of the realization of my ideal. If you ask me how much of a hope, or what I thought we Socialists then living and working would accomplish towards it, or when there would be effected any change in the face of society, I must say, I do not know. I can only say that I did not measure my hope, nor the joy that it brought me at the time. For the rest, when I took that step I was blankly ignorant of economics; I had never so much as opened Adam Smith, or heard of Ricardo, or of Karl Marx. Oddly enough, I had read some of Mill, to wit, those posthumous papers of his (published, was it in the Westminster Review or the Fortnightly?) in which he attacks Socialism in its Fourierist guise. In those papers he put the arguments, as far as they go, clearly and honestly, and the result, so far as I was concerned, was to convince me that Socialism was a necessary change, and that it was possible to bring it about in our own days. Those papers put the finishing touch to my conversion to Socialism. Well, having joined a Socialist body (for the Federation soon became definitely Socialist), I put some conscience into trying to learn the economical side of Socialism, and even tackled Marx, though I must confess that, whereas I thoroughly enjoyed the historical part of Capital, I suffered agonies of confusion of the brain over reading the pure economics of that great work. Anyhow, I read what I could, and will hope that some information stuck to me from my reading; but more, I must think, from continuous conversation with such friends as Bax and Hyndman and Scheu, and the brisk course of propaganda meetings which were going on at the time, and in which I took my share. Such finish to what of education in practical Socialism as I am capable of I received afterwards from some of my Anarchist friends, from whom I learned, quite against their intention, that Anarchism was impossible, much as I learned from Mill against his intention that Socialism was necessary.

But in this telling how I fell into practical Socialism I have begun, as I perceive, in the middle, for in my position of a well-to-do man, not suffering from the disabilities which oppress a working man at every step, I feel that I might never have been drawn into the practical side of the question if an ideal had not forced me to seek towards it. For politics as politics, i.e., not regarded as a necessary if cumbersome and disgustful means to an end, would never have attracted me, nor when I had become conscious of thewrongs of society as it now is, and the oppression of poor people, could I have ever believed in the possibility of a partial setting right of those wrongs. In other words, I could never have been such a fool as to believe in the happy and “respectable” poor.

If, therefore, my ideal forced me to look for practical Socialism, what was it that forced me to conceive of an ideal? Now, here comes in what I said of my being (in this paper) a type of a certain group of mind.

Before the uprising of modern Socialism almost all intelligent people either were, or professed themselves to be, quite contented with the civilization of this century. Again, almost all of these really were thus contented, and saw nothing to do but to perfect the said civilization by getting rid of a few ridiculous survivals of the barbarous ages. To be short, this was the Whig frame of mind, natural to the modern prosperous middle-class men, who, in fact, as far as mechanical progress is concerned, have nothing to ask for, if only Socialism would leave them alone to enjoy their plentiful style.

But besides these contented ones there were others who were not really contented, but had a vague sentiment of repulsion to the triumph of civilization, but were coerced into silence by the measureless power of Whiggery. Lastly, there were a few who were in open rebellion against the said Whiggery—a few, say two, Carlyle and Ruskin. The latter, before my days of practical Socialism, was my master towards the ideal aforesaid, and, looking backward, I cannot help saying, by the way, how deadly dull the world would have been twenty years ago but for Ruskin! It was through him that I learned to give form to my discontent, which I must say was not by any means vague. Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization. What shall I say of it now, when the words are put into my mouth, my hope of its destruction—what shall I say of its supplanting by Socialism?

What shall I say concerning its mastery of and its waste of mechanical power, its commonwealth so poor, its enemies of the commonwealth so rich, its stupendous organization—for the misery of life! Its contempt of simple pleasures which everyone could enjoy but for its folly? Its eyeless vulgarity which has destroyed art, the one certain solace of labour? All this I felt then as now, but I did not know why it was so. The hope of the past times was gone, the struggles of mankind for many ages had produced nothing but this sordid, aimless, ugly confusion; the immediate future seemed to me likely to intensify all the present evils by sweeping away the last survivals of the days before the dull squalor of civilization had settled down on the world. This was a bad look-out indeed, and, if I may mention myself as a personality and not as a mere type, especially so to a man of my disposition, careless of metaphysics and religion, as well as of scientific analysis, but with a deep love of the earth and the life on it, and a passion for the history of the past of mankind. Think of it! Was it all to end in a counting-house on the top of a cinder-heap, with Podsnap’s drawing-room in the offing, and a Whig committee dealing out champagne to the rich and margarine to the poor in such convenient proportions as would make all men contented together, though the pleasure of the eyes was gone from the world, and the place of Homer was to be taken by Huxley? Yet, believe me, in my heart, when I really forced myself to look towards the future, that is what I saw in it, and, as far as I could tell, scarce anyone seemed to think it worth while to struggle against such a consummation of civilization. So there I was in for a fine pessimistic end of life, if it had not somehow dawned on me that amidst all this filth of civilization the seeds of a great change, what we others call Social-Revolution, were beginning to germinate. The whole face of things was changed to me by that discovery, and all I had to do then in order to become a Socialist was to hook myself on to the practical movement, which, as before said, I have tried to do as well as I could.

To sum up, then the study of history and the love and practice of art forced me into a hatred of the civilization which, if things were to stop as they are, would turn history into inconsequent nonsense, and make art a collection of the curiosities of the past, which would have no serious relation to the life of the present.

But the consciousness of revolution stirring amidst our hateful modern society prevented me, luckier than many others of artistic perceptions, from crystallizing into a mere railer against “progress” on the one hand, and on the other from wasting time and energy in any of the numerous schemes by which the quasi-artistic of the middle classes hope to make art grow when it has no longer any root, and thus I became a practical Socialist.

A last word or two. Perhaps some of our friends will say, what have we to do with these matters of history and art? We want by means of Social-Democracy to win a decent livelihood, we want in some sort to live, and that at once. Surely any one who professes to think that the question of art and cultivation must go before that of the knife and fork (and there are some who do propose that) does not understand what art means, or how that its roots must have a soil of a thriving and unanxious life. Yet it must be remembered that civilization has reduced the workman to such a skinny and pitiful existence, that he scarcely knows how to frame a desire for any life much better than that which he now endures perforce. It is the province of art to set the true ideal of a full and reasonable life before him, a life to which the perception and creation of beauty, the enjoyment of real pleasure that is, shall be felt to be as necessary to man as his daily bread, and that no man, and no set of men, can be deprived of this except by mere opposition, which should be resisted to the utmost.
~~~~~~
Patti Smith – My Blakean Year

my blakean year

In my Blakean year
I was so disposed
Toward a mission yet unclear
Advancing pole by pole
Fortune breathed into my ear
Mouthed a simple ode
One road is paved in gold
One road is just a road

In my Blakean year
Such a woeful schism
The pain of our existence
Was not as I envisioned
Boots that trudged from track to track
Worn down to the sole
One road is paved in gold
One road is just a road

Boots that tread from track to track
Worn down to the sole
One road is paved in gold
One road is just a road

In my Blakean year
Temptation but a hiss
Just a shallow spear
Robed in cowardice

Brace yourself for bitter flack
For a life sublime
A labyrinth of riches
Never shall unwind
The threads that bind the pilgrim’s sack
Are stitched into the Blakean back
So throw off your stupid cloak
Embrace all that you fear
For joy will conquer all despair
In my Blakean year
~~
The Divine Image
by William Blake
(from Songs of Innocence)

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
All pray in their distress,
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is God our Father dear;
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is man, His child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart;
Pity, a human face;
And Love, the human form divine:
And Peace the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine:
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew.
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.

(William Waterhouse – The Tempest)

I have been on a short break. Here is something that you might enjoy, off of the cuff and ready made for an evening such as this.

Blessings,
Gwyllm
~~~~~

On The Menu:
3 Poems – Robinson Jeffers
Harpo!

The smallest Turfing in awhile. Soon, a return to form… the past few weeks have been so engaging!
~~~~

Robinson Jeffers – Three Poems

“Be Angry At The Sun”

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.

Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
—

“Hurt Hawks”

I
I

The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,

No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.

He stands under the oak-bush and waits
The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.

He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,

The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.

You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.

II

I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk;
but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.

We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance.

I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.
What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.
~~

“Ossian’s Grave”

PREHISTORIC MONUMENT NEAR CUSHENDALL
IN ANTRIM
Steep up in Lubitavish townland stands
A ring of great stones like fangs, the shafts of the stones
Grown up with thousands of years of gradual turf,
The fangs of the stones still biting skyward; and hard
Against the stone ring, the oblong enclosure
Of an old grave guarded with erect slabs; gray rocks
Backed by broken thorn-trees, over the gorge of Glenaan;
It is called Ossian’s Grave. Ossian rests high then,
Haughtily alone.
If there were any fame or burial or monument
For me to envy,
Warrior and poet they should be yours and yours.
For this is the pure fame, not caged in a poem,
Fabulous, a glory untroubled with works, a name in the north
Like a mountain in the mist, like Aura
Heavy with heather and the dark gray rocks, or Trostan
Dark purple in the cloud: happier than what the wings
And imperfections of work hover like vultures
Above the carcass.
I also make a remembered name;
And I shall return home to the granite stones
On my cliff over the greatest ocean
To be blind ashes under the butts of the stones:
As you here under the fanged limestone columns
Are said to lie, over the narrow north straits
Toward Scotland, and the quick-tempered Moyle. But written
reminders
Will blot for too long a year the bare sunlight
Above my rock lair, heavy black birds
Over the field and the blood of the lost battle.
Oh but we lived splendidly
In the brief light of day
Who now twist in our graves.
You in the guard of the fanged
Erect stones; and the man-slayer
Shane O’Neill dreams yonder at Cushendun
Crushed under his cairn;
And Hugh McQuillan under his cairn
By his lost field in the bog on Aura;
And I a foreigner, one who has come to the country of the dead
Before I was called,
To eat the bitter dust of my ancestors;
And thousands on tens of thousands in the thronged earth
Under the rotting freestone tablets
At the bases of broken round towers;
And the great Connaught queen on her mountain-summit
The high cloud hoods, it creeps through the eyes of the cairn,

We dead have our peculiar pleasures, of not
Doing, of not feeling, of not being.
Enough has been felt, enough done, Oh and surely
Enough of humanity has been. We lie under stones
Or drift through the endless northern twilights
And draw over our pale survivors the net of our dream.
All their lives are less
Substantial than one of our deaths, and they cut turf
Or stoop in the steep
Short furrows, or drive the red carts, like weeds waving
Under the glass of water in a locked bay,
Which neither the wind nor the wave nor their own will
Moves; when they seem to awake
It is only to madden in their dog-days for memories of dreams
That lost all meaning many centuries ago.

Oh but we lived splendidly
In the brief light of day,
You with hounds on the mountain
And princes in palaces,
I on the western cliff
In the rages of the sun:
Now you lie grandly under your stones
But I in a peasant’s hut
Eat bread bitter with the dust of dead men;
The water I draw at the spring has been shed for tears
Ten thousand times,
Or wander through the endless northern twilights
From the rath to the cairn, through fields
Where every field-stone’s been handled
Ten thousand times,
In a uterine country, soft
And wet and worn out, like an old womb
That I have returned to, being dead.

Oh but we lived splendidly
Who now twist in our graves.
The mountains are alive;
Tievebuilleagh lives, Trostan lives,
Lurigethan lives;
And Aura, the black-faced sheep in the belled heather;
And the swan-haunted loughs; but also a few of us dead
A life as inhuman and cold as those.
~~~~~~

Harpo!