Gwyllm.com

“ Come away…come away, o love, from the prisons of pain and the keepers thereof
For I have found a way.
Come away from the holding of thy sad hands, for I have found a way.
Seized am I with a burning passion to free from thy cage.
Come away… The temple walls be falling, I have found a way.
I am thy lover, I am thy teacher, renounce all and follow me.
The vast firmament, the limitless space enfold me,
For I have found a way” – Jiddu Krishnamurti

Origins…
So, this post started out with me listening to Davy Graham (listen below).  He is an important character along with Anne Briggs in the British Folk scene from years ago.  I am always looking for the roots, the seminal moments of movements, art, culture.  Of course, it is perhaps first a stream, then a river, when what we are really talking about are the rivulets that started it all along the way.

There seems to be streams of creativity; one person can spark many, and those in turn can start others up. It’s the cascade effect.  Do something well, get it out there, and all else follows. You see the mutations of the original impulse almost immediately, as someone else’s perception will alter the original, sometimes just ever so slightly.  Each of these modifications are necessary for greater distribution of the original concept, regardless of the gloss layered upon it by it’s handling along the way.

Davy Graham travels to Morocco and other points in North Africa in the late 50′s, early 60′s. Along the way whilst studying the culture and its music, he discovers the tuning of DADGAD (well recognizes it’s potential) and brings it back to the UK. Along the way he writes a few songs, “Anji”, “She moved thru’ the Bizarre/Blue Raga” (you’ll probably know it as Jimmy Page’s “White Summer”). His will be the first music heard in Britain using tablas, and various other exotic instruments. He got there first, and in doing so with the tuning re-united two folk traditions that had been separated for some 2800 years; North African and Celtic musics. (Remember that one branch of the Celts came through the Mediterranean basin and spent some time there in North Africa before moving up the western coast to Galatia, and then the British Isles…)

One must of course put this in perspective; there has been a flow of ideas back and forth from Europe and the “East” for a very long time.  The events around Davy Graham and his introduction of  DADGAD  might be compared to the period of time when the Sufi Minstrels interacted with their European counterparts, the Troubadours.  This moment brought forth many mutations, the Lute from the Oud, the concept of romantic love, and the flowering of the court at Aquitaine under Elanor.

The events surrounding Davy may of happened anyway, but none the less these events can be traced to one person and it is fairly well recognized. One person can change world views, and some how not be counted by those just slightly removed from his or her time.

The world of culture are full of such examples. These are the founts, from which the waters of creativity flow, though downstream one sees a river, where once it started from a spring in the mountains long before.

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. – George Bernard Shaw

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On The Menu:
The Links
Creation Quotes
Davy Graham – Maajun
Salish Creation Myth
The Poetry of Jiddu Krishnamurti
Davy Graham – She Moved Thru’ the Bizarre/Blue Raga
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The Links:
Heal Thy Self: Meditate
Hyperion: the largest bath sponge in the solar system
First Realistic Simulation of the Formation of the Milky Way
Think fast: Speed of thought and perception limited by unified neocortical gateway
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Creation Quotes:

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty. – Albert Einstein

I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God’s creation, woman, the object of our lust. –
Mohandas Gandhi

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.
Maya Angelou

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. – Edgar Allan Poe

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty. – Edgar Allan Poe

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. – Pablo Picasso

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future. – Albert Camus

To destroy is always the first step in any creation. – e. e. cummings

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Let us dream of tomorrow where we can truly love from the soul, and know love as the ultimate truth at the heart of all creation. – Michael Jackson

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers. – George Orwell

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. – Carl Jung

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath. – Emily Dickinson

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Davy Graham – Maajun (A Taste of Tangier)

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Salish Creation Myth

Old-Man-in-the-Sky created the world. Then he drained all the water off the earth and crowded it into the big salt holes now called the oceans. The land became dry except for the lakes and rivers. Old Man Coyote often became lonely and went up to the Sky World just to talk. One time he was so unhappy that he was crying. Old- Man-in-the-Sky questioned him.

“Why are you so unhappy that you are crying? Have I not made much land for you to run around on? Are not Chief Beaver, Chief Otter, Chief Bear, and Chief Buffalo on the land to keep you company?”

Old Man Coyote sat down and cried more tears. Old-Man-in-the-Sky became cross and began to scold him. “Foolish Old Man Coyote, you must not drop so much water down upon the land. Have I not worked many days to dry it? Soon you will have it all covered with water again. What is the trouble with you? What more do you want to make you happy?”

“I am very lonely because I have no one to talk to,” he replied. “Chief Beaver, Chief Otter, Chief Bear, and Chief Buffalo are busy with their families. They do not have time to visit with me. I want people of my own, so that I may watch over them.”

“Then stop this shedding of water,” said Old-Man-in-the-Sky. “If you will stop annoying me with your visits, I will make people for you. Take this parfleche. It is a bag made of rawhide. Take it some place in the mountain where there is red earth. Fill it and bring it back up to me.”

Old Man Coyote took the bag made of the skin of an animal and traveled many days and nights. At last he came to a mountain where there was much red soil. He was very weary after such a long journey but he managed to fill the parfleche. Then he was sleepy. “I will lie down to sleep for a while. When I waken, I will run swiftly back to Old-Man-in-the-Sky.” He slept very soundly.

After a while, Mountain Sheep came along. He saw the bag and looked to see what was in it. “The poor fool has come a long distance to get such a big load of red soil,” he said to himself. “I do not know what he wants it for, but I will have fun with him.” Mountain Sheep dumped all of the red soil out upon the mountain. He filled the lower part of the parfleche with white solid, and the upper part with red soil. Then laughing heartily, he ran to his hiding place.

Soon Old Man Coyote woke up. He tied the top of the bag and hurried with it to Old-Man-in-the-Sky. When he arrived with it, the sun was going to sleep. It was so dark that the two of them could hardly see the soil in the parfleche. Old-Man-in-the-Sky took the dirt and said, “I will make this soil into the forms of two men and two women.”

He did not see that half of the soil was red and the other half white. Then he said to Old Man Coyote, “Take these to the dry land below. They are your people. You can talk with them. So do not come up here to trouble me.” Then he finished shaping the two men and two women — in the darkness.

Old Man Coyote put them in the parfleche and carried them down to dry land. In the morning he took them out and put breath into them. He was surprised to see that one pair was red and the other was white. “Now I know that Mountain Sheep came while I was asleep. I cannot keep these two colors together.” He thought a while. Then he carried the white ones to the land by the big salt hole. The red ones he kept in his own land so that he could visit with them. That is how Indians and white people came to the earth.
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The Poetry of Jiddu Krishnamurti:

I Have No Name

I have no name,
I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.
I have no shelter;
I am as the wandering waters.
I have no sanctuary, like the dark gods;
Nor am I in the shadow of deep temples.
I have no sacred books;
Nor am I well-seasoned in tradition.
I am not in the incense
Mounting on the high altars,
Nor in the pomp of ceremonies.
I am neither in the graven image,
Nor in the rich chant of a melodious voice.
I am not bound by theories,
Nor corrupted by beliefs.
I am not held in the bondage of religions,
Nor in the pious agony of their priests.
I am not entrapped by philosophies,
Nor held in the power of their sects.
I am neither low nor high,
I am the worshipper and the worshipped.
I am free.
My song is the song of the river
Calling for the open seas,
Wandering, wandering,
I am Life.
I have no name,
I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.
–

The Simple Union

Listen to me, O friend.
Be thou a yogi, a monk, a priest,
A devout lover of God,
A pilgrim searching for Happiness, Bathing in holy rivers,
Visiting sacred shrines,
The occasional worshipper of a day,
A great reader of books, Or a builder of many temples –
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.
This vain struggle,
This long toil,
This ceaseless sorrow,
This changing pleasure,
This burning doubt,
This burden of life,
All these will cease, O friend –
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.
Have I pilgrimage the earth,
Have I loved the reflections,
Have I chanted, singing in ecstasy,
Have I donned the robe,
Have I put on ashes,
Have I listened to the temple bells,
Have I grown old with study,
Have I searched,
Was I lost?
Yea, much have I known –
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved,
O friend,
Wouldst thou love the reflection,
If I can give thee the reality?
Throw away thy bells, thine incense,
Thy fears and thy gods,
Set aside thy systems, thy philosophies.
Come,
Put aside all these.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.
O friend,
The simple union is the best.
This is the way to the heart of the Beloved.
—

The Garden Of My Heart

I am the path
Leading to the sheltered garden
Of thy heart,
O world.
I am the fountain
That feeds thy garden,
O world,
With the tears
Of my experience.
I am the scented flower
That beautifies thy garden,
The honey thereof,
The delight of thy heart.
Destroy thy weeds In thy garden,
O world,
And keep thy heart
Pure and strong,
For there alone I can grow.
Create no barriers
In the garden of thy heart,
O world,
For in limitation
I wither and die.
I have a garden
In my heart,
O world,
Where every flower
Speaketh of thee.
Open the gates
Of the garden of thy heart,
O world,
And let me in.
Without me
There shall be no shade,
Nor the soft breeze
From the cool mountains.
I have a garden in my heart,
O world,
That hath no beginning
And no end,
Where the mighty
Do sit with the poor,
Where the Gods
Do delight with the human.
Open as the vast skies,
Clear as the mountain stream,
Strong as the tree in the wind,
Is my heart.
Come,
O world,
Gather thy flowers
In the garden of my heart.
—

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Davy Graham – She Moved Thru’ the Bizarre/Blue Raga

That dark dweller in Braj
Is my only refuge.
O my companion, worldly comfort is an illusion,
As soon you get it, it goes.
I have chosen the indestructible for my refuge,
Him whom the snake of death will not devour.
My beloved dwells in my heart all day,
I have actually seen that abode of joy.
Meera’s lord is Hari, the indestructible.
My lord, I have taken refuge with you, your maidservant – Mirabai

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(Listening to Anne Briggs…)

Talking Ecstatic States…

As I draw near to the beginning of the month, I come into a period of the year that holds a couple of transition points for me on different levels. One, I am about to celebrate my 45th anniversary for my first psychedelic excursion. Some people are un-comfortable in talking about such things, but I am not one of them. After the birth of my son Rowan, and my time with Mary, this is perhaps the one defining moment when one can say: “Once I was this way, and after that experience, I was never the same.” To the point, LSD saved my life. It introduced me to a universe that I was not the center of, and perhaps didn’t actually exist in what we have been led to believe about ourselves…

I am also changing decades on the weekend. Dancing into elder-hood if you follow. I never knew you could arrive so quickly. Usually, I don’t give much notice to these moments, but this one makes me take pause. Okay, done with that, carry on!

The other ecstatic state that I would speak to is the moment of pure poetry. Today’s entry has two examples, one, in 5D, and the other in the divine poetry of Mirabai, (Meera; Mira; Meera Bai). Two examples hundred’s of years apart, and yet connected in my head and heart.

Have a good one,

Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
On Rowan Turning 21…
The Links
Kim Pimmel- Compressed 02
Fifth Dimension
Into The Ecstatic: Mirabai’s Poetry

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On Rowan Turning 21…
“There was a star danced, and under that was I born.” – William Shakespeare

Rowan, our son made it to 21 (yay!). He took off for New York shortly after to film a documentary, came back and jumped into classes again. He is moving into his last year at school. It has gone so rapidly. I am pleased with what I am seeing him go through with his education and life. It gives me hope for the future and the young generation.

I have to say that I get excited watching Rowan and his friends, such energy! The joy they find in discovering their abilities paints a great picture. I wish them all the best in their endeavors and emerging lives.

So, I found some quotes that I like quite a bit and some of them might actually be relevant!

Live as long as you may. The first twenty years are the longest half of your life. – Robert Southey

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. – Franz Kafka

Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself. – Tom Wilson

All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much. – George Harrison

There must be a day or two in a man’s life when he is the precise age for something important. – Franklin P. Adams

Real birthdays are not annual affairs. Real birthdays are the days when we have a new birth. – Ralph Parlette

My heart is like a singing bird… Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me. – Christine Rossetti

One of the advantages of being young is that you don’t let common sense get in the way of doing things everyone else knows are impossible. – Author Unknown

Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time. – Jean Paul Richter

It takes a long time to grow young. – Pablo Picasso

Happy 21st year Rowan, make it shine.
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The Links:
Time Cells…
Dyatlov Pass Incident
Stanley Kubrick and the Ipad
The Cuddly Kitten Factor…
Space Oddity, A Children’s Book (PDF)
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A nice bit of science, beauty and something that verges on art. I hope you enjoy!

Kim Pimmel- Compressed 02

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Fifth Dimension

I am not nostalgic by nature. I don’t play music from my youth much, and find the present music scene vital, and full of diversity. I can spend all day if I want discovering great bands, and I would not be able to listen to all the great releases even in just a few genres. Really, the music scene is exploding and expanding rapidly.

With that noted, there are a couple of albums that hold up for me. One of them is The Byrds “5D” (Fifth Dimension). Perhaps I imprinted on it on my early lysergic wanderings, or perhaps it really is that good… I actually listen to this album more than any other rock album from that era. Strange. I won’t listen to it for a year or so, and then I will go over it again. My taste of which songs are my favourites evolve as well. So that would tell me that the art component of the album is still working away in my consciousness. I had liked the Byrd’s previously, loving their harmonies, and the sound… Strangely enough this album came out about the same time I got into John Coltrane, who happens to be an inspiration for some of the pieces on 5D. I stumbled onto “A Love Supreme” one night about 3:00 in the morning on the local rock station… the DJ snuck it in, and it hit me like an express train. (I ended looking up the phone number of the radio station and begging to know about it, really)

So, I venture that there is an emotional component that comes across with 5D that still talks to me. The opening track is the one that talks to me the most. It is funnily enough, “5D (Fifth Dimension)” Really there are two parts that move me, the lyrics and the playing of Van Dykes Parks on the organ. Wonderful stuff. The lyrics were for me a break through in consciousness. It was on hearing them that perhaps for the first time that I heard the psychedelic state articulated. I was deeply moved then, and the other day hearing it again was pulled once more into its spell. Really a wonderful piece.

After all that, here it is, lyrics and all. I feel it stands now as it stood then.

Blessings,
G

THE BYRDS
“5D (Fifth Dimension)”
(McGuinn)
Oh how is it that I could come out to here and be still floating
And never hit bottom and keep falling through
Just relaxed and paying attention
All my two dimensional boundaries were gone I had lost to them badly
I saw the world crumble and thought I was dead
But I found my senses still working
And as I continued to drop thru the hole
I found all the surrounding
Who showed me the joy that innocently is
Just be quiet and feel it around you
And I opened my heart to the whole universe and I found it was loving
And I saw the great blunder my teacher’s had made
Scientific delirium madness
I will keep falling as long as I live
All without ending
And I will remember the place that is now
That has ended before the beginning
Oh how is it that I could come out to here and be still floating
And never hit bottom and keep falling through
Just relaxed and paying attention….
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Into The Ecstatic: Mirabai’s Poetry

Mira the Lotus

My Lord, the love that binds us cannot be broken.
It is hard as the diamond that shatters
the hammer that strikes it.
As polish goes into the gold, my heart
has gone into you.
As a lotus lives in its water, I am rooted in you.
Like the bird that gazes all night at the passing moon,
I have blinded myself in giving my eyes to your beauty.
She who offers herself completely asks only this:
That her Lord love Mira as fully as he is loved.
—

It’s True I Went to the Market

My friend, I went to the market and bought the Dark One.
You claim by night, I claim by day.
Actually, I was beating a drum all the time I was burying him.
You say I gave too much, I say too little.
Actually, I put him on a scale before I bought him.
What I paid was my social body, my town body,
my family body, and all my inherited jewels.
Mirabai says: The Dark One is my husband now.
Be with me when I lie down; you promised me
this in an earlier life.
—
Ankle Bells

Mira dances, how can her ankle bells not dance?
“Mir is insane,” strangers say that. “The family’s ruined.”
Poison came to the door one day; she drank it and laughed.
I am at Hari’s feet; I give him body and soul.
A glimpse of him is water: How thirsty I am for that!
Mira’s Lord is the one who lifts mountains,
he removes evil from human life.
Mira’s Lord attacks the beings of greed;
for safety I go to him.
—

Mira the Bee

O my friends
What can you tell me of Love,
Whose pathways are filled with strangeness?
When you offer the Great One your love,
At the first step you body is crushed.
Next be ready to offer your head as his seat.
Be ready to orbit his lamp like a moth
giving in to the light,
To live in the deer as she runs toward
the hunter’s call,
In the partridge that swallows hot coals
for love of the moon,
In the fish that, kept from the sea, happily dies.
Like a bee trapped for life in the closing
of the sweet flower.
Mira has offered herself to her Lord.
She says, the single Lotus will swallow you whole.
—

Awake to the Name

To be born in a human body is rare,
Don’t throw away the reward of your past good deeds.
Life passes in an instant— the leaf doesn’t go
back to the branch.
The ocean of rebirth sweeps up all beings hard,
Pulls them into its cold-running, fierce, implacable currents.
Giridhara, your name is the raft, the one safe-passage over.
Take me quickly.
All the awake ones travel with Mira, singing the name.
She says with them: Get up, stop sleeping—
the days of a life are short.
—

In All My Lives

In all my lives you have been with me;
whether day or night I remember.
When you fall out of my sight, I am restless
day and night, burning.
I climb hilltops; I watch for signs of your return;
my eyes are swollen with tears.
The ocean of life— that’s not genuine the ties
of family, the obligations to the world—
they’re not genuine.
It is your beauty that makes me drunk.
Mira’s Lord is the Great Dark Snake. That love
comes up from the ground of the heart.
—

A Dream of Marriage

In my dreams the Great One married me.
Four thousand people came to the wedding.
My bridegroom was the Lord Brajanath,
and in the dream all the doorways
were made royal, and he held my hand.
In my dream he married me, and fortune came to me.
Mirabai has found the Great Snake Giridhar; she must
have done something good in an earlier life.
—

Why Mira Can’t Come Back to Her Old House

The colors of the Dark One have penetrated Mira’s
body; all the other colors washed out.
Making love with the Dark One and eating little,
those are my pearls and my carnelians.
Meditation beads and the forehead streak,
these are my scarves and my rings.
That’s enough feminine wiles for me.
My teacher taught me this.
Approve me or disapprove me: I praise
the Mountain Energy night and day.
I take the path that ecstatic human beings
have taken for centuries.
I don’t steal money, I don’t hit anyone.
What will you charge me with?
I have felt the swaying of the elephant’s shoulders;
and now you want me to climb
on a jackass? Try to be serious.
—

Polish into Gold

I give my heart without fear to the Beloved:
As the polish goes into the gold, I have gone into him.
Through many lives, I heard only the outer music.
Now the teacher has whispered into my ears,
And familiar ties have gone the way of weak thread.
Mira has met the Energy That Lifts Mountains—
That good luck now is her home.
—

The Necklace

O friend, I sit alone while the world sleeps.
In the palace that held love’s pleasure
the abandoned one sits.
She who once threaded a necklace of pearls
is now stringing tears.
He has left me. The night passes while I count stars.
When will the Hour arrive?
This sorrow must end. Mira says:
Lifter of Mountains, return.

—

Mira Has Finished with Waiting

O friends on this path,
My eyes are no longer my eyes.
A sweetness has entered through them,
Has pierced through to my heart.
How long did I stand in the house of this body
And stare at the road?
My Beloved is a steeped herb, he has cured me for life.
Mira belongs to Giridhara, the One Who Lifts All,
And everyone says she is mad.
—

— Mirabai (1498-1550),

Monday… Cool weather (so far) here today. Working on Poetry Post/Boxes, and the magazine. A restless night, persistent visions that vanished with morning light. I have to get that dreaming hat on again.

We had a great evening last night, Rowan & Jessa were here for dinner and a movie. Lots of fun.

I have a couple of more postings coming up in the next two days, I have a backlog of them it seems.

Quiet on the web, many of my friends off to Burning Man. I hope they have fun!
This entry is built around Lament for Bion, by Moschus. Quite the poem. I hope you enjoy this entry!

Have a great week,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
GAUDI – Oud we think we are?
The Seven Ravens
Poetry: Lament for Bion
William Russell Flint Biography
Gaudi – Ayahuasca Deep Fall
Art: William Russell Flint
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GAUDI – Oud we think we are?

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From Household Tales – The Brothers Grimm

The Seven Ravens

There was once a man who had seven sons, and still he had no daughter, however, much he wished for one. At length his wife again gave him hope of a child, and when it came into the world it was a girl. The joy was great, but the child was sickly and small, and had to be privately baptized on account of its weakness. The father sent one of the boys in haste to the spring to fetch water for the baptism. The other six went with him, and as each of them wanted to be first to fill it, the jug fell into the well. There they stood and did not know what to do, and none of them dared to go home. As they still did not return, the father grew impatient, and said, “They have certainly forgotten it for some game, the wicked boys!” He became afraid that the girl would have to die without being baptized, and in his anger cried, “I wish the boys were all turned into ravens.” Hardly was the word spoken before he heard a whirring of wings over his head in the air, looked up and saw seven coal-black ravens flying away. The parents could not recall the curse, and however sad they were at the loss of their seven sons, they still to some extent comforted themselves with their dear little daughter, who soon grew strong and every day became more beautiful. For a long time she did not know that she had had brothers, for her parents were careful not to mention them before her, but one day she accidentally heard some people saying of herself, “that the girl was certainly beautiful, but that in reality she was to blame for the misfortune which had befallen her seven brothers.” Then she was much troubled, and went to her father and mother and asked if it was true that she had had brothers, and what had become of them? The parents now dared to keep the secret no
longer, but said that what had befallen her brothers was the will of Heaven, and that her birth had only been the innocent cause. But the maiden laid it to heart daily, and thought she must deliver her brothers. She had no rest or peace until she set out secretly, and went forth into the wide world to trace out her brothers and set them free, let it cost what it might. She took nothing with her but a little ring belonging to her parents as a keepsake, a loaf of bread against hunger, a little pitcher of water against thirst, and a little chair as a provision against weariness.

And now she went continually onwards, far, far, to the very end of the world. Then she came to the sun, but it was too hot and terrible, and devoured little children. Hastily she ran away, and ran to the moon, but it was far too cold, and also awful and malicious, and when it saw the child, it said, “I smell, I smell the flesh of men.” On this she ran swiftly away, and came to the stars, which were kind and good to her and each of them sat on its own particular little chair. But the morning star arose, and gave her the drumstick of a chicken, and said, “If thou hast not that drumstick thou canstnot open the Glass mountain, and in the Glass mountain are thy brothers.”

The maiden took the drumstick, wrapped it carefully in a cloth, and went onwards again until she came to the Glass mountain. The door was shut, and she thought she would take out the drumstick; but when she undid the cloth, it was empty, and she had lost the good star’s present. What was she now to do? She wished to rescue her brothers, and had no key to the Glass mountain. The good sister took a knife, cut off one of her little fingers, put it in the door, and succeeded in opening it. When she had gone inside, a little dwarf came to meet her, who said, “My child, what are you looking for?” “I am looking for my brothers, the seven ravens,” she replied. The dwarf said, “The lord ravens are not at home, but if you will wait here until they come, step in.” Thereupon the little dwarf carried the ravens’ dinner in, on seven little plates, and in seven little glasses, and the little sister ate a morsel from each plate, and from each little glass she took a sip, but in the last little glass she dropped the ring which she had brought away with her.

Suddenly she heard a whirring of wings and a rushing through the air, and then the little dwarf said, “Now the lord ravens are flying home.” Then they came, and wanted to eat and drink, and looked for their little plates and glasses. Then said one after the other, “Who has eaten something from my plate? Who has drunk out of my little glass? It was a human mouth.” And when the seventh came to the bottom of the glass, the ring rolled against his mouth. Then he looked at it, and saw that it was a ring belonging to his father and mother, and said, “God grant that our sister may be here, and then we shall be free.” When the maiden, who was standing behind the door watching, heard that wish, she came forth, and on this all the ravens were restored to their human form again. And they embraced and kissed each other, and went joyfully home.
_________________________

Poetry: Lament for Bion
by: Moschus (fl. 150 B.C.)
translated by George Chapman

Ye mountain valleys, pitifully groan!
Rivers and Dorian springs, for Bion weep!
Ye plants drop tears; ye groves, lamenting moan!
Exhale your life, wan flowers; your blushes deep
In grief, anemones and roses, steep;
In whimpering murmurs, Hyacinth! prolong
The sad, sad woe thy lettered petals keep;
Our minstrel sings no more his friends among–
Sicilian Muses! now begin the doleful song.

Ye nightingales! that mid thick leaves set loose
The gushing gurgle of your sorrow, tell
The fountains of Sicilian Arethuse
That Bion is no more–with Bion fell
The song–the music of the Dorian shell.
Ye swans of Strymon! now your banks along
Your plaintive throats with melting dirges swell
For him, who sang like you the mournful song;
Discourse of Bion’s death the Thracian nymphs among–

The Dorian Orpheus, tell them all, is dead.
His herds the song and darling herdsman miss,
And oaks, beneath whose shade he propt his head;
Oblivion’s ditty now he sings for Dis;
The melancholy mountain silent is;
His pining cows no longer wish to feed,
But moan for him; Apollo wept, I wis,
For thee, sweet Bion! and in mourning weed
The brotherhood of Fauns, and all the Satyr breed.

Sicilian Muses! lead the doleful chant;
Not so much near the shore the dolphin moans;
Nor so much wails within her rocky haunt
The nightingale; nor on their mountain thrones
The swallows utter such lugubrious tones;
Nor Cëyx such for faithful Halcyon,
Whose song the blue wave, where he perished, owns
Nor in the valley, neighbor to the sun,
The funeral birds so wail their Memnon’s tomb upon–

As these moan, wail, and weep for Bion dead,
The nightingales and swallows, whom he taught,
For him their elegiac sadness shed;
And all the birds contagious sorrow caught;
The sylvan realm was all with grief distraught.
Who, bold of heart, will play on Bion’s reed,
Fresh from his lip, yet with his breathing fraught?
For still among the reeds does Echo feed
On Bion’s minstrelsy, Pan only may succeed

To Bion’s pipe; to him I make the gift;
But, lest he second seem, e’en Pan may fear
The pipe of Bion to his mouth to lift.
For thee sweet Galatea drops the tear,
And thy dear song regrets, which sitting near
She fondly listed; ever did she flee
The Cyclops and his songs–but ah! more dear
Thy song and sight than her own native sea;
On the deserted sands the nymph without her fee

Me with thy minstrel still as proper heir–
Others thou didst endow with thine estate.
Alas! alas! when in a garden fair
Mallows, crisp dill, and parsley yield to fate,
These with another year regerminate;
But when of mortal life the bloom and crown,
The wise, the good, the valiant, and the great
Succumb to death, in hollow earth shut down,
We sleep, for ever sleep–for ever lie unknown.
—-

Pan, Echo, and the Satyr
by: Moschus (fl. 150 B.C.)
translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Pan loved his neighbour Echo–but that child
Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping;
The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild
The bright nymph Lyda–and so three went weeping.
As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr,
The Satyr Lyda–and so love consumed them.–
And thus to each–which was a woeful matter–
To bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them;
For in as much as each might hate the lover,
Each loving, so was hated.–Ye that love not
Be warned–in thought turn this example over,
That when ye love–the like return ye prove not.
—
Europa
by: Moschus (fl. 150 B.C.)
translated by M. J. Chapman

Cypris, when all but shone the dawn’s glad beam,
To fair Europa sent a pleasant dream;
When sleep, upon the close-shut eyelids sitting,
Sweeter than honey, is eye-fetters knitting,
The limb-dissolving sleep! When to and fro
True dreams, like sheep at pasture, come and go.
Europa, sleeping in her upper room,
The child of Phoenix, in her virgin bloom,
Thought that she saw a contest fierce arise
Betwix two continents, herself the prize;
They to the dreamer seemed like women quite,
Asia, and Asia’s unknown opposite.
This was a stranger, that a native seemed,
And closer hugged her–so Europa dreamed;
And called herself Europa’s nurse and mother,
Said that she bore and reared her; but that other
Spared not her hands, and still the sleeper drew,
With her good will, and claimed her as her due,
And said that Zeus Ægiochus gave her,
By Fate’s appointment, that sweet prisoner.

Up-started from her couch the maiden waking,
And felt her heart within her bosom quaking;
She thought it true, and sat in hushed surprise–
Still saw those women with her open eyes;
Then to her timid voice at last gave vent;–
‘Which of the gods to me this vision sent?
What kind of dream is this that startled me,
And sudden made my pleasant slumber flee?
Who was the stranger that I saw in sleep?
What love for her did to my bosom creep!
And how she hailed me, as her daughter even!
But only turn to good my vision, Heaven!’

So said, and bounded up, and sought her train
Of dear companions, all of noble strain,
Of equal years and stature; gentle, kind,
Sweet to the sight, and pleasant to the mind;
With whom she sported, when she led the choir,
Or in the river’s urn-like reservoir
She bathed her limbs, or in the meadow stopt,
And from its bosom odorous lilies cropt.
Her flower-basket in each maiden’s hand;
And to the meadows near the pleasant shore
They sped, where they had often sped before,
Pleased with the roses growing in their reach,
And with the waves that murmured on the beach.

A basket by Hephæstus wrought of gold,
Europa bore–a marvel to behold;
He gave it Libya, when a blooming bride
She went to grace the great Earth-shaker’s side;
She gave it Telephassa fair and mild,
Who now had given it to her virgin child.
Therein were many sparkling wonders wrought–
The hapless Iö to the sight was brought;
A heifer’s for a virgin’s form she wore;
The briny paths she frantic wandered o’er,
And was a swimming heifer to the view,
While the sea round her darkened into blue.

Two men upon a promontory stood,
And watched the heifer traversing the flood.
Again where seven-mouthed Nile divides his strand,
Zeus stood and gently stroked her with his hand,
And from her horned figure and imbruted
To her original form again transmuted.

In brass the heifer–Zeus was wrought in gold;
Nile softly in a silver current rolled.
And to the life was watchful Hermes shown
Under the rounded basket’s golden crown;
And Argus near him with unsleeping eyes
Lay stretched at length; then from his blood did rise
The bird, exulting in the brilliant pride
Of his rich plumes and hues diversified,
And like a swift ship with her out-spread sail,
Expanding proudly his resplendant tail,
The basket’s galden rim he shadowed o’er.
Such was the basket fair Europa bore.

They reached the mead with vernal blossoms full,
And each begun her favourite flowers to pull.
Narcissus one; another thyme did get;
This hyacinth, and that the violet;
And of the spring-sweets in the meadow found
Much scented bloom was scattered on the ground.
Some of the troop in rivalry chose rather
The sweet and yellow crocuses to gather;
Shining, as mid the graces Cypris glows,
The Princess in the midst preferred the rose;
Nor long with flowers her gentle fancy charmed,
Nor long she kept her virgin flower unharmed.
With love for her was Saturn’s son inflamed,
By unexpected darts of Cypris tamed,
Who only tames e’en Zeus. To shun the rage
Of Heré, and the virgin’s mind engage,
To draw her eyes and her attention claim,
He hid his godhead and a bull became;
Not such as feeds at stall, or then or now,
The furrow cuts and draws the crooked plough;
Not such as feeds the lowing kine among,
Or trails in yoke the heavy wain along;
His body all a yellow hue did own,
But a white circle in his forehead shone;
His sparkling eyes with love’s soft lustre gleamed;
His arched horns like Dian’s crescent seemed.
He came into the meadow, nor the sight
Fluttered the virgins into sudden flight.
But they desired to touch and see him near;
His breath surpassed the meadow sweetness there.
Before Europa’s feet he halted meek,
Licked her fair neck and eke her rosy cheek;
Threw round his neck her arms the Beautiful,
Wiped from his lips the foam and kissed the bull;
Softly he lowed; no lowing of a brute
It seemed, but murmur of Mygdonian flute;
Down on his knees he slunk; and first her eyed,
And then his back, as asking her to ride.
The long-haired maidens she began to call;–
‘Come let us ride, his back will hold us all,
E’en as a ship; a bull unlike the rest,
As if a human heart were in his breast,
He gentle is and tractable and meek,
And wants but voice his gentleness to speak.’

She said and mounted smiling, but before
Another did, he bounded for the shore.
The royal virgin struck with instant fear,
Stretched out her hands and called her playmates dear;
But how could they the ravished Princess reach?
He, like a dolphin, pushed out from the beach.
From their sea-hollows swift the Nereids rose,
Seated on seals, and did his train compose;
Poseidon went before, and smooth did make
The path of waters for his brother’s sake;
Around their king in close array did keep
The loud-voiced Tritons, minstrels of the deep,
And with their conchs proclaimed the nuptial song.
But on Jove’s bull-back as she rode along,
The maid with one hand grasped his branching horn,
The flowing robe, that did her form adorn,
Raised with the other hand, and tried to save
From the salt moisture of the saucy wave;
Her robe, inflated by the wanton breeze,
Seemed like a ship’s sail hovering o’er the seas.
But when, her father-land no longer nigh,
Nor sea-dashed shore was seen, nor mountain high,
But only sky above, and sea below–
She said, and round her anxious glance did throw;–

‘Whither with me, portentous bull? Discover
This and thyself; and how canst thou pass over
The path of waters, walking on the wave,
And dost not fear the dangerous path to brave?
Along this tract swift ships their courses keep,
But bulls are wont to fear the mighty deep.
What pasture here? What sweet drink in the brine?
Art thou a god? Thy doings seem divine.
Nor sea-born dolphins roam the flowery mead,
Nor earth-born bulls through Ocean’s realm proceed;
Fearless on land, and plunging from the shores
Thou roamest ocean, and thy hoofs are oars.
Perchance anon, up-borne into the sky,
Thou without wings like winged birds wilt fly!
Ah me unhappy! who my father’s home
Have left and with a bull o’er ocean roam,
A lonely voyager! My helper be,
Earth-shaking Regent of the hoary sea!
I hope to see this voyage’s cause and guide,
For not without a god these things betide.’

To her the horned bull with accent clear:–
‘Take courage, virgin! nor the billow fear;
The seeming bull is Zeus; for I with ease
Can take at will whatever form I please;
My fond desire for thy sweet beauty gave
To me this shape–my footstep to the wave.
Dear Crete, that nursed me, now shall welcome thee;
In Crete Europa’s nuptial rites shall be;
From our embrace illustrious sons shall spring,
And every one of them a sceptered king.’–

And instantly they were in Crete; his own
Form Zeus put on–and off her virgin zone.
Strowed the glad bed the Hours, of joy profuse;
The whilom virgin was the bride of Zeus.
—

_____________________________

William Russell Flint Biography:
(via Wiki)
Sir William Russell Flint (4 April 1880 – 30 December 1969) was a Scottish artist and illustrator who was known especially for his watercolour paintings of women. He also worked in oils, tempera, and printmaking.
He was born in Edinburgh. From 1894–1900 Flint apprenticed as a lithographic draughtsman while taking classes at the Royal Academy of Art, Edinburgh.[1] From 1900–02 he worked as a medical illustrator in London while studying part-time at Heatherley’s Art School.[2] He furthered his art education by studying independently at the British Museum. He was an artist for the Illustrated London News from 1903–07, and produced illustrations for editions of several books, including Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1912).[1]
Flint was president of Britain’s Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours (now the Royal Watercolour Society) from 1936 to 1956, and knighted in 1947.
During visits to Spain he was impressed by Spanish dancers, and he depicted them frequently throughout his career.[2] Flint enjoyed considerable commercial success but little respect from art critics, who were disturbed by a perceived crassness in his eroticized treatment of the female figure.[2]
William Russell Flint was active as an artist until his death in London on 30 December 1969.
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Gaudi – Ayahuasca Deep Fall

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Praise be to Eros who loves only beauty
and finds it everywhere

…sharing his own soft wanton grace
with all who let his presence enter in
faithless as flowers, fickle as the wind-borne butterfly – Lenore Kandel

Lenore Kandel past away 2 years ago. She left a body of poetry and work that any poetess would be happy with. She tweaked the nose of the proper and prim, and explored a depth of life that few get to do.

I have always enjoyed her work, I first came acrossed it many years ago. This edition is a tip of the hat to her, it seems that someone has noticed; as Randomhouse is releasing a book of her works this coming April. You will find her poetry throughout this edition of Turfing of course. It strikes me funny how little poets are recognized; and especially women poets. Lenore held her own; She was the one female speaker on the podium of “The Human Be-In” in Golden Gate Park. I can name four, and she is among them.
—

So It’s Late Summer here in Portland, lots of hot nights. Working on Poetry Post/Boxes and the new Invisible College Magazine. I have found that my yoga is the work, without it I am indeed rudderless.

Hope all is sweet in your life!

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
_______________________

On The Menu:
The Links
Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Morning Meditation, Sarod
Historical Essay (on Lenore Kandel & Her Obscenity Trial)
Lenore’s Poetry
Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Pandit Ravi Shankar
_______________________

The Links:
Lenore Kandel
Imagine – Thanks To Stephanie
For Leeann: Reggie Watts & Daniel Pinchbeck
Electric Ice Orchestra
_______________________

Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Morning Meditation, Sarod

__________________________
Historical Essay
by Jeffrey M. Burns
(Originally published in The Argonaut, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1994)

1967 press conference with Lenore Kandel, 2nd from right

Photo: San Francisco Chronicle

In 1971, Professors Howard S. Becker and Irving L. Horowitz suggested that San Francisco fostered a “culture of civility,”1 a culture which provided greater acceptance of “deviant groups” and cultures, such as the Beats, the hippies, and the growing gay community. Countercultural groups were allowed greater freedom in San Francisco than in any other city in the United States.

On the other hand, in 1993 journalist Mark Dowie wrote an essay in which he dubbed the century between the 1860s and the 1960s as the “Catholic century” in San Francisco.2 While Dowie’s essay is overstated, and marred by several factual errors, his essential contention is correct–the Catholic Church in San Francisco exerted enormous influence in defining the contours of San Francisco culture and society, though they were not the only group to do so. Regardless of the reality, Catholics in San Francisco considered themselves the cultural guardians of the City. As such, the Catholic culture contributed to the culture of civility; at the same time it often found itself in conflict with that culture.3 One such instance of conflict was generated by the publication of Lenore Kandel’s paean to love, the 825 word poem entitled simply “The Love Book.”

In November 1966, police inspectors Sol Wiener and Peter Maloney arrested Jay Thelen and Allen Cohen of the Psychedelic Book Shop in the Haight Ashbury and Ron Muszalski of City Lights Bookstore in North Beach for “knowingly possessing obscene matter [i.e. ‘The Love Book’] with the intent to sell.” What ensued was the longest Municipal Court trial in San Francisco history, pitting the City’s past and present countercultures against the City’s cultural mainstream. (A decade earlier City Lights was at the center of another obscenity trial for having published Allen Ginsberg’s classic, Howl.)

The trial, begun in late April 1967, on the eve of the Summer of Love, became a showcase for different visions of the City. The proceedings reflected the pre-eminent position of the Catholic Church as cultural authority within San Francisco. The composition of witnesses led defense attorney Marshall Krause of the American Civil Liberties Union to complain that the trial was more a “heresy trial” than an “obscenity trial.” Krause complained further, “I am distressed, for the prosecution seems to have taken a religious emphasis, with Catholics trying to apply their doctrine to the rest of the world. And I don’t think the testimony at this case is based on sound Catholic doctrine”4 What Krause failed to understand was that the witnesses were not merely projecting the Catholic party line; they were expressing the attitudes of a significant portion of the San Francisco populace, Catholic and non-Catholic. What had begun as a simple obscenity trial had now become a trial with much larger cultural ramifications. At odds were (1) the emerging counterculture and mainstream San Francisco culture and (2) old notions of Catholic morality versus new conceptions inspired by the recently completed Second Vatican Council.

What was exceptionally objectionable about the poem, beyond its description of a sexual encounter between a man and a woman, was its frequent use of several unmentionable four-letter words. The description of “gods” engaging in sexual acts also upset many. But the poem could be quite lyrical, as suggested by the following section:

I kiss your shoulder and it reeks of lust

the lust of hermaphroditic deities doing

inconceivable things to each other and

SCREAMING DELIGHT over the entire

universe and beyond

and we lie together… and

we WEEP we WEEP we WEEP

the incredible tears

that saints and holy men shed in the presence

of their own incandescent gods…

And it concludes:

we are transmuting

we are as soft and warm and trembling

as a new gold butterfly

the energy

indescribable

almost unendurable

at night sometimes I see our bodies glow.

Lenore Kandel herself expressed her intent in the most noble terms: “I believe when humans can be so close together to become one flesh, or spirit, they transcend the human into the divine. Unfortunately for Kandel, not everyone saw her poem in the same light.

From the moment of the initial arrests, the events surrounding “The Love Book” and its subsequent trial had a slightly comic quality about them, and suggest some of the excesses of the era. Mayor John F. Shelley immediately condemned the poem as “hard core pornography,” and opined, “I certainly wouldn’t want my kids to read it.” Police inspector Peter Maloney added, “I’m no prude… but where is the redeeming social importance in this book?”5

Typical of San Francisco, a group of professors from San Francisco State leapt to the poems defense. Professors Leonard Wolf, Mark Linenthal, James Scheville, and Jack Gilbert were hired by the City Lights Bookstore with wages of one dollar a day to sell the poem. The professors then sponsored a public reading at San Francisco State. A crowd of more than three hundred persons listened to the poem in “defiance” of the “City’s police censorship squad,”6 though the police were noticeably absent from the reading. The reasons the professors gave for supporting the poem were something less than sublime. One observed, “The book makes me want to make love–and I think that’s good.” And another added, “It seems to me it is a good thing for society to maintain a high degree of sexual excitability… (Prosecuting attorney Frank Shane countered during the trial, “If ‘The Love Book’ is so exciting, would it not cause hundreds of college students to rush into bed together after readings of the poem, such as been held in the Bay Area?”)7

The actual trial began in late April with the prosecution attempting to fashion a jury that “had little or nothing to do with the hippies.”8 The jury selected consisted primarily of married women.

The high point for the defense came with their initial witness — the poet herself, Lenore Kandel. Ms. Kandel added a theatrical dimension to the proceedings, appearing in “a brilliant orange turtleneck sweater, burgundy jacket, and vivid orange stockings.” She then read her poem to the jury in tones “more reverent than passionate.” In addition, she read selections from the “erotic” poetry of Brother Antoninus (William Everson) and St. John of the Cross. She defended her poem in language quintessential to the 1960s: “Love is a four-letter word,” she noted, observing that the really obscene words were “hate,” “bomb,” and “war”. “If we can recognize our own beauty, it will be impossible for any human being to bring harm to any other human being. We owe each other loving responsibility.” Finally, when asked if the poem was religious, she responded, “Yes, and everyone who makes love is religious.”9

The encounter between Prosecutor Shaw and Ms. Kandel also had its comic moments, and some not quite so comic, as the clash of world views became personalized. One reporter described Shaw in the following manner: “His voice shook with anger much of the time and he used the four-letter words with inflections of disgust for them. Ms. Kandel maintained her composure as Shaw threw “various Anglo Saxon shock words at Kandel and found himself being called beautiful by her.” Shaw was not converted. He accused Kandel of subverting fundamental moral values and attempting to “condition us into a new type of morality.”10

The rest of the defense witnesses defended the poem in a variety of ways. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti defended the poem’s artistic merit.

Professor Thomas F. Parkinson of the University of California at Berkeley was presented as a distinguished literary scholar, and “gave a whole day’s testimony on the nature of poetry and the poet’s call to truth.”11 Parkinson observed: “The sexual mysticism of the ‘Love Book’ is an attempt to show that through an abandon to the senses one may achieve a kind of spiritual revelation.”12 Two women, Mrs. Nina Beggs, the wife of a Congregational minister, and Mrs. Margaret Krebs, testified that the poem was a beautiful expression of sexuality from the “woman’s point of view.”13 Mrs. Krebs testified, “The general theme is love and it discusses the beauty and the spiritual heights possible in intercourse between man and woman, primarily from a woman’s point of view. I am a woman and I identify with it.”14 The testimony of both women encountered problems. Mrs. Beggs’s testimony was undercut by her statement that she “had never heard of two of the disputed words,” and Mrs. Krebs’s testimony was disallowed because the court determined that she could not be considered “an ordinary woman.”15 Several other witnesses, including G.W. Smith, a professional marriage counselor, Dr. J. M. Stubblebine, director of San Francisco’s Mental Health Services, and Rabbi Joseph Glaser, testified that the poem improved the City’s mental health by dealing directly and openly with the issue of sexuality. More harmful, they claimed, were the repressive notions of sexuality which had dominated society for too long and resulted in a variety of unhealthy manifestations.

After ten hours of deliberation, the jury found the defendants guilty. They concluded that “The Love Book” was obscene and had “no redeeming social value.” In 1971, however, the verdict was overturned.

The trial had two immediate results besides the fines imposed on the sales clerks. First, sales of “The Love Book” skyrocketed. Prior to the trial less than 100 copies had been sold; after the trial sales soared to 20,000 plus. In appreciation, Ms. Kandel donated one percent of the profits to the Police Retirement Association.16

While the trial of “The Love Book” may have little significance in itself, it does provide an interesting window to view several of the basic conflicts in San Francisco in the 1960s. First, despite the culture of civility, San Francisco was racked by the cultural conflicts of the times. Often, in romanticizing the 1960s and the Love Generation, we tend to overlook the profound trauma the counterculture generated for more traditional San Franciscans. On one level, the “Love Book” trial can be interpreted as an attempt to assert the basic values of mainstream San Francisco; values that were increasingly and vigorously being called into question.

Historian Charles Perry has suggested that the trial was not about obscenity at all but was a direct attack on the psychedelic counterculture of the Haight-Ashbury. The two defendants from the Psychedelic Shop were Allen Cohen, editor of The Oracle, the most significant paper of the Haight, and Jay Thelen, its publisher. It is noteworthy that the two stores singled out for violating the community’s obscenity standards represented the old counterculture (the Beats) and the new counterculture (the hippies). San Francisco, being a port town, always had a rather high tolerance for “vice.” At the time of “The Love Book” trial, topless night clubs were opening up in the City with little harassment from the courts. Perhaps the City was making a distinction between acknowledged vice–few would argue topless dancing had any socially redeeming value–and “vice” which presented itself as virtue. What was dangerous about “The Love Book” was that it was perceived to be presenting a new moral ethic without apology, and the new moral ethic ran counter to the accepted ethic of mainstream San Francisco. As such the trial was a manifestation of the public anxiety generated by the enormous cultural shocks and transitions of the 1960s.

Second, the “Love Book” trial brought to public awareness the conflict that was occurring within the Catholic Church. Catholic squabbling at the trial broke the united Catholic front on moral issues. And with the public squabbling came an erosion of the Church’s moral authority within the City. Increasingly it seemed there was no one Catholic voice in the City, but a variety of competing voices. As such, the Catholic influence on the life of the City began to dissipate. What was occurring within the Church, and within the culture at large, was a relentless questioning of the validity of authority at every level. And too often the response of the cultural authority was so muddled or ill-considered that the response served only to undercut further the authority of the challenged institution. In the case of the “Love Book” trial, well meaning Catholics attempted to reassert their position as cultural authority within the City–however, the result was disastrous. The complex story of the cultural transformation wrought by the 1960s in San Francisco is still to be written. One conclusion is certain, however–the “Catholic century” had come to an end.

Notes:

1. Howard S. Becker and Irving L. Horowitz, “The Culture of Civility,” in Howard Becker, ed., Culture and Civility in San Francisco (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1971).

2. Mark Dowie, “Holy Smoke,” SF Weekly 24 February 1993, II.

3. For an interesting discussion on the Catholic influence on Labor in the city see William Issel, “Business Power and Political Culture in San Francisco, 1900-1940,” Journal of Urban History 16 (November 1989), 52-77.

4. Anne Marie Ferrairis, “Local Testimony on ‘Love Book’ Trial,” San Francisco Monitor, 11 May 1967,3.

5. From the Oregon Journal, 26 November 1966, City Lights Bookstore Collection, Clippings File, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, CA.

6. From the San Francisco Chronicle, 24 November 1966. Ibid.

7. Donovan Bess, “Witness Explains His Reactions After Reading ‘Love Book’,” San Francisco Chronicle 12 May 1967, 3.

8. San Francisco Chronicle, 25 April 1967.

9. Donovan Bess, “Lenore Defends the Love Book,” San Francisco Chronicle, 6 May 1967, 3; Donovan Bess, “Love Book Poet Keeps Her Cool,” San Francisco Chronicle, 9 May 1967,3; Anne Marie Fertaris, “Local Testimony…”

10. Bess, “Love Book Poet Keeps Her Cool,”3.

11. Robert Brophy. “Brophy and the Love Book” (unpublished manuscript, 1993) Copy in the Archives for the Archdocese of San Francisco (AASF).

12. Donovan Bess, “Scholar’s Plea for the Love Book,” San Francisco Chronicle, 10 May 1967, 2.

13. Donovan Bess, “A Minister’s Wife Praises the Love Book,” San Francisco Chronicle, 13 May 1967, 2.

14. Sam Blumenfeld, “My Husband’s Birthday Gift,” San Francisco Examiner, 19 May 1967.

15. Ibid.

16. Charles Perry, The Haight Ashbury: A History (NY: Vintage Books, 1984), 195.
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Lenore’s Poetry….

HARD CORE LOVE

To Whom It Does Concern

Do you believe me when I say / you’re beautiful
I stand here and look at you out of the vision of my eyes
and into the vision of your eyes and I see you and you’re an
animal
and I see you and you’re divine and I see you and you’re a
divine animal
and you’re beautiful
the divine is not separate from the beast; it is the total crea-
ture that
transcends itself
the messiah that has been invoked is already here
you are that messiah waiting to be born again into awareness
you are beautiful; we are all beautiful
you are divine; we are all divine
divinity becomes apparent on its own recognition
accept the being that you are and illuminate yourself
by your own clear light

GOD/LOVE POEM

there are no ways of love but / beautiful /
I love you all of them

I love you / your cock in my hands
stirs like a bird
in my fingers
as you swell and grow hard in my hand
forcing my fingers open
with your rigid strength
you are beautiful / you are beautiful
you are a hundred times beautiful
I stroke you with my loving hands
pink-nailed long fingers
I caress you
I adore you
my finger-tips… my palms…
your cock rises and throbs in my hands
a revelation / as Aphrodite knew it

there was a time when gods were purer
/ I can recall nights among the honeysuckle
our juices sweeter than honey
/ we were the temple and the god entire/

I am naked against you
and I put my mouth on you slowly
I have longing to kiss you
and my tongue makes worship on you
you are beautiful

your body moves to me
flesh to flesh
skin sliding over golden skin
as mine to yours
my mouth my tongue my hands
my belly and my legs
against your mouth your love
sliding…sliding…
our bodies move and join
unbearably

your face above me
is the face of all the gods
and beautiful demons
your eyes…

love touches love
the temple and the god
are one

TO FUCK WITH LOVE PHASE III

to fuck with love
to love with all the heat and wild of fuck
the fever of your mouth devouring all my secrets and my alibis
leaving me pure burned into oblivion
the sweetness UNENDURABLE
mouth barely touching mouth

nipple to nipple we touched
and were transfixed
by a flow of energy
beyond anything I have ever known

we TOUCHED!

and two days later
my hand embracing your semen-dripping cock
AGAIN!

the energy
indescribable
almost unendurable

the barrier of noumenon-phenomenon
transcended
the circle momentarily complete
the balance of forces
perfect
lying together, our bodies slipping into love
that never have slipped out
I kiss your shoulder and it reeks of lust
the lust of erotic angels fucking the stars
and shouting their insatiable joy over heaven
the lust of comets colliding in celestial hysteria
the lust of hermaphroditic deities doing
inconceivable things to each other and
SCREAMING DELIGHT over the entire universe
and beyond
and we lie together, our bodies wet and burning, and
we WEEP we WEEP we WEEP the incredible tears
that saints and holy men shed in the presence
of their own incandescent gods

I have whispered love into every orifice of your body
As you have done
to me

my whole body is turning into a cuntmouth
my toes my hands my belly my breast my shoulder my eyes
you fuck me continually with your tongue you look
with your words with your presence

we are transmuting
we are as soft and warm and trembling
as a new gold butterfly

the energy
indescribable
almost unendurable

at night sometimes I see our bodies glow

–

Small Prayer for Fallen Angels

too many of my friends are junkies
too many of my psychic kin tattoo invisible revelations on themselves
signing their manifestos to etheric consciousness with little
hoofprint scars stretching from fingertip to fingertip
a gory religiosity akin to Kali’s sacred necklace of fifty human heads

Kali-Ma, Kali-Mother; Kali-Ma, Kali-Mother
too many of my friends are running out of blood, their veins
are collapsing, it takes them half an hour to get a hit
their blood whispers through their bodies, singing its own death chant
in a voice of fire, in a voice of glaciers, in a voice of sand that blows
forever
over emptiness

Kali-Ma, remember the giving of life as well as the giving of death
—-Kali-Ma…
Kali-Ma, remember the desire is for enlightenment and not oblivion
—-Kali-Ma…
Kali-Ma, their bones are growing light; help them to fly
Kali-Ma, their eyes burn with the pain of fire; help them that they see
with clear sight

Kali-Ma, their blood sings to death to them; remind them of life
that they be born once more
that they slide bloody through the gates of yes, that
they relax their hands nor try to stop the movement of the flowing now

too many of my friends have fallen into the white heat of the only flame
may they fly higher; may there be no end to flight

from Word Alchemy
Grove Press, 1967
—-

Enlightenment Poem

“We have all been brothers, hermaphroditic as oysters
Bestowing our pearls carelessly.
No one yet had invented ownership
Nor guilt, nor time.

We watched the seasons pass,
We were as crystalline as snow
And melted gently into newer forms
As stars spun round our heads –

We had not learned betrayal.

Our selves were pearls,
Irritants transmuted into luster
And offered carelessly.

Our pearls became more precious and our sexes static
Mutability grew a shell, we devised different languages
New words for new concepts, we invented alarm clocks
Fences, loyalty.

Still… Even now… Making a feint at communion
Infinite perceptions
I remember
We have all been brothers
And offer

Carelessly.”
—

Blues for Sister Sally

I
moon-faced baby with cocaine arms
nineteen summers
nineteen lovers

novice of the junkie angel
lay sister of mankind penitent
sister in marijuana
sister in hashish
sister in morphine

against the bathroom grimy sink
pumpink her arms full of life
(holy holy)
she bears the stigma (holy holy) of the raving christ
(holy holy)
holy needle
holy powder
holy vein

dear miss lovelorn: my sister makes it with a hunk
of glass do you think this is normal miss lovelorn

I DEMAND AN ANSWER!

II
weep
for my sister she walks with open veins
leaving her blood in the sewers of your cities
from east coast
to west coast
to nowhere

how shall we canonize our sister who is not
quite dead
who fornicates with strangers
who masturbates with needles
who is afraid of the dark and wears her long hair soft
and black
against her bloodless face

III
midnight and the room dream-green and hazy
we are all part of the collage

brother and sister, she leans against the wall
and he, slipping the needle in her painless arm

pale fingers (with love) against the pale arm

IV
children our afternoon is soft, we lean against
each other

our stash is in our elbows
our fix is in our heads
god is a junkie and he has sold salvation
for a week’s supply

_________________________________

Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Pandit Ravi Shankar

__________________________________

I cannot be satisfied until I speak with the angels
I require to behold the eye of god
to cast my own being into the cosmos as bait for miracles…
“I demand the access of enlightenment…
“the presence of unendurable light…
“(as) the child of man demands his exit
from the safe warm womb – Lenore Kandel

Hot days here in P-town. Up in the low 90′s yesterday, and upper 80′s today. We live in a brick house, affectionately known as “the oven” as in brick oven in the summer, and as the brick ice house in the winter. Not much insulation in these old places. Still, I love the house, the garden and the neighborhood.

So many of my friends are getting ready for Burning Man. Roberto was talking about 115 degree heat. I know that I could never do a week of that. Love the concept, but the temperature would be such a challenge for me.

A couple of notes on this entry. The music is a real favourite of mine: Carbon Life Forms. If you are unfamiliar with it, you are in for a treat. The art (except for the poetry piece) is from the Danish Artist Gerda Wegener. It is a departure from the usual themes that we pursue here. It is erotic, and in my mind, quite fun and endearing.

Hope This Finds You Well!

Gwyllm
______________________

On The Menu:
Carbon Based Lifeforms – Metrosat 4
Mahmūd Shabistarī – The Secret Garden
Carbon Based Lifeforms – Rise To Tomorrow
Art: Gerda Wegener

______________________________
Carbon Based Lifeforms – Metrosat 4

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

Mahmūd Shabistarī – The Secret Garden

The Marriage of the Soul

Descending to the earth, that strange intoxicating beauty of the unseen world
lurks in the elements of nature.

And the soul of man,
who has attained the rightful balance,
becoming aware of this hidden joy,
straightaway is enamored and bewitched.

And from this mystic marriage are born
the poets’ songs, inner knowledge,
the language of the heart, virtuous living,
and the fair child Beauty.

And the Great Soul gives to man as dowry
the hidden glory of the world.
—

The Wine of Rapture

The wine, lit by a ray from his face,
reveals the bubbles of form,
such as the material world and the soul-world,
which appear as veils to the saints.
Universal Reason seeing this is astounded,
Universal Soul is reduced to servitude.

Drink wine! for the bowl is the face of the Friend.
Drink wine! for the cup is his eye, drunken and flown with wine.
Drink wine! and be free from cold-heartedness,
for a drunkard is better than the self-satisfied.

The world is his tavern,
his wine-cup the heart of each atom;
reason is drunken, angels drunken, soul drunken,
air drunken, earth drunken, heaven drunken.

The sky, dizzy with the wine-fumes’ aroma,
is staggering to and fro;
the angels, sipping pure wine from goblets,
pour down the dregs to the world.
From the scent of these dregs man rises to heaven.
Inebriated from the draft, the elements
fall into water and fire.
Catching the reflection, the frail body becomes soul,
And the frozen soul by its heat
thaws and becomes living.
The creature world becomes giddy,
forever straying from house and home.

One from the dregs’ odor becomes a philosopher.
One viewing the wine’s color becomes a relater.
One from half a draft becomes religious.
One from a bowlful becomes a lover.
Another swallows at one draught
goblet, tavern, cupbearer, and drunkards;
he swallows all, but still his mouth stays open.
—

The Mirror

Your eye has not strength enough
to gaze at the burning sun,
but you can see its burning light
by watching its reflection
mirrored in the water.

So the reflection of Absolute Being
can be viewed in the mirror of Not-Being,
for nonexistence, being opposite Reality,
instantly catches its reflection.

Know the world from end to end is a mirror;
in each atom a hundred suns are concealed.
If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water,
from it will flow a hundred clear oceans;
if you look intently at each speck of dust,
in it you will see a thousand beings.
A gnat in its limbs is like an elephant;
in name a drop of water resembles the Nile.
In the heart of a barleycorn is stored a hundred harvests.
Within a millet-seed a world exists.
In an insects wing is an ocean of life.
A heaven is concealed in the pupil of an eye.
The core at the center of the heart is small,
yet the Lord of both worlds will enter there.

______________________________________________

Carbon Based Lifeforms – Rise To Tomorrow

______________________________________________

(Robert Venosa – Angelic Awakening)

Why Cling

Why cling to one life
till it is soiled and ragged?

The sun dies and dies
squandering a hundred lives
every instant

God has decreed life for you
and He will give
another and another and another
– Rumi
___________________

Dear Friends,

I have put off posting this entry for a week, as our friend Roberto Venosa has past away at his Colorado home. (please see below)

I hope this finds you well. In the last week, we have seen our son Rowan turn 21, and now he is in New York filming a documentary along with his friends Colleen (she is Directing) and Adam (he’s the DP). Whilst in New York, Rowan will probably get a chance to visit with our old dear friend Nels Cline, and his wife Yuka. Nels has known Rowan since he was a wee button, and it has been about 8 years since the last time they got to hang out together. Ah, a perfect summer occasion!

We got to spend time with our friends Kyle and Trish and their son McKenna (2.5 years old!) this past week! It was delightful seeing them again. Nothing better than friends, kids, hanging out eating and drinking together!

Working on lots of art, the magazine and various projects. Spending some special time with Mary. I do love her company. The yard is an absolute riot of green. We are eating our way through the continual harvest of beans, peppers and aubergine. This is perhaps our best garden in awhile. Mary is the champ with the green thumb.

I hope this finds you well.

Blessings,
Gwyllm
___________________

On The Menu:
The Links
Younger Brother – Spinning Into Place (Acoustic Mix)
Robert Venosa Memorial Event/ August 21st/ Boulder Colorado
For Roberto
Robert Venosa Art
Rumi: Life & Death
Younger Brother – Train

____________________________

The Links:
Flight In Medieval England
Desktop Jellyfish Tank
Obama Is Asked To Defend His Administration’s Opposition To Medical Cannabis — He Can’t
Zoologger: The world’s smartest insect
_________________________

Younger Brother – Spinning Into Place (Acoustic Mix)

_________________________

Robert Venosa Memorial Event/ August 21st/ Boulder Colorado

Please Join All of Us.
For a Memorial Life Celebration
We will be honoring Robert Venosa’s life and art

Sunday, August 21, 2011
Ceremony from 3 pm till 5 pm

At the
Boulder Events Center
boulderintegral.org
2805 Broadway
Boulder, CO 80304
(Right across Balsam from Boulder Community Hospital)

We invite you to arrive before 3 pm

Robert loved life and celebration and once said: “when I die please just throw me a party!”

So we are honoring his wishes and inviting the community to gather for an after party with conversations, sharing food and cheer at the ‘Harburg Residence’,
one of Boulder’s great landmarks, also known as the ‘Wedding Cake House’,
located on 1020 Mapleton Avenue, on the West side of Broadway.

Please bring a dish or drink to share. A grill station will also be available to all.

Please join us, even if you were not invited personally but feel called to celebrate Venosa’s memory .

We do welcome love donations to the ‘Robert Venosa Foundation’.
Make checks payable to:
Wells Fargo Advisors
Attn. Laura Hay
1155 Canyon Blvd. #200
Boulder, CO 80302
_________________________

(Robert Venosa – Garden Of Delights)

_________________________
For Roberto:

I found out last week when I awoke one early morning that Robert Venosa had passed away early the previous evening.   I had known that he was ill for quite awhile, but still it took me by surprise. Robert’s work had been part of my life off and on since my late teens. We had a personal relationship going back some 10 years, and had spent time, most delightfully together on a few occasions. It seemed an impossible event, but yes it had happened.

I have watched the reaction to his passing on the web. Many people were moved by Robert, and there has been a large outpouring of emotion and thoughts regarding him and his work. I have held back for a few days, trying to get my thoughts aligned before I put this out. I hope it conveys some of what I have been thinking and feeling about his life, and works.

I first became aware of Robert’s work in his collaboration with Mati Klarwein on Santana’s album covers. I would see his work show up on various albums over the years, and then in the 80′s, I started seeing his work in various magazines. All of it was engaging. In the 90′s after I re-emerged into the culture after a hiatus, I became distinctly aware of his art. It seemed everywhere. His work was lauded by Terence McKenna, and others. I was enthralled by what he was producing. I wrote him a couple of times via email, and he responded. We finally met in the early part of this century at Mind States, where he and Martina were giving an artistic presentation, and participating on the art panel. We spent many hours hanging out over the course of the event. It was absolutely delightful. A few years later, I had the pleasure of them visiting our home on their way back from a gallery opening in Eugene. We stayed in touch, and talked frequently over the years.

Robert and Martina have been the nexus point for what is called “Visionary Art” for lack of a better descriptor for the last 3 decades. Their work alone, and together has laid the foundations for the emerging generation of current artist. Robert’s studies under Ernst Fuchs, Mati Klarwein, and his time living and studying with Salvador Dali ties him firmly in with the pathway from Symbolist, Surrealist, Visionary. It is from this context that Robert’s and Martina’s works delineate perfectly where the vanguard has been for over 30 years. Robert was the real deal. He put in his time, studied with the masters, and his work stands, and will stand the test of time.

Robert had a generous nature, when he found out that I had a passion for Orientalist painting, he sent off a copy of “The Orientalist” (Western Artist in Arabia, The Sahara, Persia & India) by Kristian Davies. Just like that. He was deeply involved along with Martina with the foundations of “The Invisible College Magazine”. I told them my idea about having a journal that would capture the currents of culture and art, and they enthusiastically supported it by suggestions, ideas and allowing us to use their art for the first two editions (PDF’s at this point). Martina had been working with me over the last year helping to assemble the re-issues as she could whilst taking care of Robert at their home. Their support was invaluable emotionally and artistically.

A dear friend described Robert’s & Martina’s relationship as “perhaps one of the great love stories of our times”. From where I am, I must concur. The energy between them seemed to be of common delight. It was an immense pleasure to be in their company. They thoroughly were in the moment when I spent time with them. Present, and thoughtful.

From my POV there was defining elements of Robert’s art. His work was unique. You knew it was his when you saw it. Can this be said for many artist? He captured a moment of eternity in all of his works. I am moved time and again as I go through his paintings. Some move me to such emotion that I am transported to the timeless moment. His gifts I would describe as Light, Luminous, and especially the sense of “Presence”. What he painted, many had experienced on the inner journey. It was a beautiful gift that the Muse had bestowed, and he did not squander it, but shared, and gave freely of.

His kindness and artistic gifts shall perhaps outlive us all, and that is perhaps as it should be.

Adios Roberto, thank you for all that you shared and gave.

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

(Roberto Venosa)

_______________________

Robert Venosa: Paintings

There are so many good ones to choose from. I have put them in no particular order except that the portrait of Martina is one of my favourites…

(Robert Venosa – Martina de Duoro)

(Robert Venosa – Dos Angeles)

(Robert Venosa – Yage Guide)

(Robert Venosa – Ayahuasca Dream)

(Robert Venosa – Cerebralation)

_______________________

Rumi: Life & Death

(Robert Venosa – Portal to Edentia)

Life & Death

look at love
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love

look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life

why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how the unknown merges into the known

why think seperately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last

look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs

look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once

the wolf and the lamb
the lion and the deer
far away yet together

look at the unity of this
spring and winter
manifested in the equinox

you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me

be like sugarcane
sweet yet silent
don’t get mixed up with bitter words

my beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be
—

come on sweetheart
let’s adore one another
before there is no more
of you and me

a mirror tells the truth
look at your grim face
brighten up and cast away
your bitter smile

a generous friend
gives life for a friend
let’s rise above this
animalistic behavior
and be kind to one another

spite darkens friendships
why not cast away
malice from our heart

once you think of me
dead and gone
you will make up with me
you will miss me
you may even adore me

why be a worshiper of the dead
think of me as a goner
come and make up now

since you will come
and throw kisses
at my tombstone later
why not give them to me now
this is me
that same person

i may talk too much
but my heart is silence
what else can i do
i am condemned to live this life
—

i’ve come again
like a new year
to crash the gate
of this old prison

i’ve come again
to break the teeth and claws
of this man-eating
monster we call life

i’ve come again
to puncture the
glory of the cosmos
who mercilessly
destroys humans

i am the falcon
hunting down the birds
of black omen
before their flights

i gave my word
at the outset to
give my life
with no qualms
i pray to the Lord
to break my back
before i break my word

how do you dare to
let someone like me
intoxicated with love
enter your house

you must know better
if i enter
i’ll break all this and
destroy all that

if the sheriff arrives
i’ll throw the wine
in his face
if your gatekeeper
pulls my hand
i’ll break his arm

if the heavens don’t go round
to my heart’s desire
i’ll crush its wheels and
pull out its roots

you have set up
a colorful table
calling it life and
asked me to your feast
but punish me if
i enjoy myself

what tyranny is this
—

you mustn’t be afraid of death
you’re a deathless soul
you can’t be kept in a dark grave
you’re filled with God’s glow

be happy with your beloved
you can’t find any better
the world will shimmer
because of the diamond you hold

when your heart is immersed
in this blissful love
you can easily endure
any bitter face around

in the absence of malice
there is nothing but
happiness and good times
don’t dwell in sorrow my friend

Translated by Nader Khalili “Rumi, Fountain of Fire”
Cal-Earth Press, 1994
______________________

(Robert Venosa – Celestial Tree)

_______________________
Younger Brother – Train

_______________________

(Roberto & Martina, Portland Outside Our Home)

Lovers

O lovers, lovers it is time
to set out from the world.
I hear a drum in my soul’s ear
coming from the depths of the stars.
Our camel driver is at work;
the caravan is being readied.
He asks that we forgive him
for the disturbance he has caused us,
He asks why we travelers are asleep.

Everywhere the murmur of departure;
the stars, like candles
thrust at us from behind blue veils,
and as if to make the invisible plain,
a wondrous people have come forth.

-Rumi

I Come and Stand at Every Door

I come and stand at every door
But no one hears my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead, for I am dead.

I’m only seven although I died
In Hiroshima long ago
I’m seven now as I was then
When children die they do not grow.

My hair was scorched by swirling flame
My eyes grew dim, my eyes grew blind
Death came and turned my bones to dust
And that was scattered by the wind.

I need no fruit, I need no rice I
need no sweet, nor even bread
I ask for nothing for myself
For I am dead, for I am dead.

All that I ask is that for peace
You fight today, you fight today
So that the children of this world
May live and grow and laugh and play.

– by Nâzım Hikmet

_____________________________

_____________________________

For the children.

Blessings,
Gwyllm

Behold how this drop of seawater
has taken so many forms and names;
it has existed as mist, cloud, rain, dew, and mud,
then plant, animal, and Perfect man;
and yet it was a drop of water
from which these things appeared.
Even so this universe of reason, soul, heavens, and bodies,
was but a drop of water in its beginning and ending.

…When a wave strikes it, the world vanishes;
and when the appointed time comes to heaven and stars,
their being is lost in not being.

– Mahmūd Shabistarī

What a week. I think perhaps we are seeing the beginning, the true beginning of a centuries old system moving rapidly into collapse. With the US losing its credit rating, everything appears to be settling into a new phase where the cracks in the visage of capitalism should now be visible to all. In a way, I feel I could wax nostalgic, but it may be a bit too early for that. What will emerge will perhaps be a better way of life, for a greater number of people.

It may be a bumpy ride, that will challenge the majority of us, but be of good heart; We can now bring a better future about for those that come after us.

Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm
______________________

Today’s Turf revolves around Mahmūd Shabistarī, who I have long admired as a poet. We toudh bases with another favourite, Peter Gabriel, and the wonderful art of Georges Jules Victor Clairin. I hope you enjoy this entry.

On The Menu:
Random Quotes
The Links
Peter Gabriel – The Nest That Sailed The Sky
Mahmūd Shabistarī -The Perfect Face Of The Beloved
Peter Gabriel – Make Tomorrow
Art: Georges Jules Victor Clairin
_________________________________
Random Quotes:
“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.” – John Benfield
“History is the short trudge from Adam to atom.” – Leonard Louis Levinson
“There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.” – Albert Guinon
“Never confuse movement with action.” – Ernest Hemingway |
__________________________________________

The Links:

New technologies, tires reconstruct ancient bison hunts
Tooth filing was a worldwide craze among Viking men
Going underground: The massive European network of Stone Age tunnels that weaves from Scotland to Turkey
‘Multiverse’ theory suggested by microwave background

___________________________________________
Peter Gabriel – The Nest That Sailed The Sky

___________________________________________

From The Secret Rose Garden…Mahmūd Shabistarī

The Perfect Face Of The Beloved: The Eye And The Lip

What is the nature of the eye and the lip?
Let us consider.

Coquettish and intoxicating glances shine from His eye.
The essence of existence issues from His ruby lip.
Hearts burn with desire because of His eye,
And are healed again by the smile of His lip.

Because of His eye hearts are aching and drunken.
His ruby lip gives soul-garments to men.
His eye does not perceive this visible world,
Yet often His lip quivers with compassion.

Sometimes He charms us with a touch of humanity,
And gives help to the despairing.
It is His smile that gives life to man’s water and clay;
It is His breath that opens heaven’s gate for us.
A corn-baited snare is each glance of that eye,
And a wine-shop lurks in each corner.

When He frowns the wide world is laid waste,
But is restored every moment by His kiss.
Our blood is at fever point because of His eye,
Our souls demented because of His lip.

How He has despoiled our hearts by a frown!
How He has uplifted our souls by a smile!
If you ask of Him an embrace,
His eye will say “Yea,” His lip “Nay.”
He finished the creation of the world by a frown,
Now and then the soul is revived by a kiss.
We would give up our lives with despair at His frown,
But would rise from the dead at his kiss.

. . . When the world meditates on His eye and His lip,
It yields itself to the intoxication of wine.

The Mole

The single point of the mole in His cheek
Is a centre from which circles
A circumference.
The two worlds circle round that centre.
The heart and soul of Adam evolved from there.

. . . Hearts bleed because they are a reflection
Of the point of that black mole,
And both are stagnant; for there is no escape
Of the reflection from the reflect.

Unity will not embrace Plurality,
For the point of Unity has one root only.

. . . I wonder if His mole is the reflection of my heart,
Or my heart the reflection of His mole.
Was my heart created from His mole’s reflection?
Or may it be seen shining in His mole?
I wonder if my heart is in His face,
Or if His mole abides in my heart.
But this is a deep secret hidden, alas! from me.

. . . If my heart is a reflection,
Why is it ever so changing?

Sometimes tired like His brilliant eye,
Sometimes waving to and fro as His curl waves,
Sometimes a shining moonbeam like His face,
Sometimes a dark shadow like His mole,
Sometimes it is a mosque, sometimes a synagogue,
Sometimes a hell, sometimes a heaven,
Sometimes soaring above the seventh heaven,
Sometimes buried far below this earth.

. . . After a spell the devotee and ascetic
Turns again to wine, lamp, and beauty.

The Curl

If you ask of me the long story
Of the Beloved’s curl,
I cannot answer, for it contains a mystery
Which only true lovers understand,
And they, maddened by its beauty,
Are held captive as by a golden chain.
I spoke too openly of that graceful form,
But the end of the curl told me to hide its glory,
So that the path to it should be twisted
And crooked and difficult.

That curl enchains lovers’ hearts,
And bears their souls to and fro
In the sea of desire. A hundred thousand hearts
Are tightly bound, not one escapes, alas!

No single infidel would remain in the world
If he could see the shaking aside
Of those black curls,
And on the earth there would not remain a faithful soul
If they were always in their place.
Suppose they were shorn. . . . No matter,
Day would increase and the night disappear.

As a spider spreads its nets to ensnare,
So does the Beloved in wantonness
Shake His locks from off His face.

Behold His hands plundering Reason’s caravan
And with knots binding it tight.

Never at rest is that curl,
Ever moving to and fro
Making now night, making now morning,
Playing with the seasons in wonder.

Adam was created when the perfume of that
amber-scented curl
Was blown by the wind on his clay.

And I too possess an ensample;
I cannot wait for a moment,
But breathlessly start working anew
To tear my heart out of my breast.
. . . Sore troubled am I by that curl
Which veils my longing soul from His face.

The Cheek And The Down

The theatre of Divine beauty is the cheek,
And the down is the entrance to His holy presence.
Beauty is erased by His cheek, who says,
“Without my presence you are non-existent.”
In the unseen world the down is as green meadows
Leading to the mansion of Eternal Life.
The blackness of His curl turns day into night,
The down of His cheek holds the secret of life.
If only you can glimpse His face and its down,
You will understand the meaning of plurality and unity.
His curl will teach you the knowledge of this world,
His down will reveal hidden paths.

Imagine seven verses in which each letter
Contains oceans of mysteries;
Such is His cheek.
And imagine, hidden beneath each hair of His cheek,
Thousands of oceans of mysteries;
Such is His down.

As the heart is God’s throne in the water,
So is the down the ornament of the soul.
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Peter Gabriel -Make Tomorrow

_________________________________

Your eye has not strength enough
to gaze at the burning sun,
but you can see its burning light
by watching its reflection
mirrored in the water.

So the reflection of Absolute Being
can be viewed in the mirror of Not-Being,
for nonexistence, being opposite Reality,
instantly catches its reflection.

Know the world from end to end is a mirror;
in each atom a hundred suns are concealed.
If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water,
from it will flow a hundred clear oceans;
if you look intently at each speck of dust,
in it you will see a thousand beings.
A gnat in its limbs is like an elephant;
in name a drop of water resembles the Nile.
In the heart of a barleycorn is stored a hundred harvests.
Within a millet-seed a world exists.
In an insects wing is an ocean of life.
A heaven is concealed in the pupil of an eye.
The core at the center of the heart is small,
yet the Lord of both worlds will enter there.
– Mahmūd Shabistarī

The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form.

So…
Kinda on a role here. 3rd Turf in 3 days, whoa!

My walking with Mary and Sophie have helped me reassemble the latest form of the creative self. We to often think of our selves as something static I think, whilst we are anything but. My adventures in various realms of consciousness doesn’t give me great confidence in the static model. We are made of colonies of bacteria on one hand working in cooperation with each other and other rudimentary forms of life, yet we see ourselves as discreet individuals, isolated in our field of precious self-consciousness. The layers of the onion… peel a bit away, and another appears, until one is at the heart of it, then; nothing.

I have found that we are eternally winkling in and out of existence. We are here, then we are not. We do it all the time with shifting focus, and emerging personalities that rise to the surface, and then submerge back into the sea of “self, non-self”. “Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.” ~ John Lancaster Spalding

We are consciousness thinking we are human, or not.

Blessings,
Gwyllm

_____________________
On The Menu:
The Golden Rule Through The Ages
Amon Tobin – At The End Of The Day
Visu the Woodsman and the Old Priest
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro 4 Poems
Ariwara no Narihira – 4 Poems
Galerie Stratique – Horizons Lointains
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The Golden Rule Through The Ages

“This is the sum of duty. Do not unto others that which would cause you pain if done to you.”
– Mahabharata 5:1517, from the Vedic tradition of India, circa 3000 BC

“What is hateful to you, do not to our fellow man. That is entire Law, all the rest is commentary.”
– Talmud, Shabbat 31a, from the Judaic tradition, circa 1300 BC

“That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself.”
– Avesta, Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5, from the Zoroastrian tradition, circa 600 BC

“Hurt not others in ways that you find hurtful.”
– Tripitaka, Udanga-varga 5,18 , from the Buddhist tradition, circa 525 BC

“Surely it is the maxim of loving kindness, do not unto others that which you would not have done unto you.”
– Analects, Lun-yu XV,23, from the Confucian tradition, circa 500 BC

“Be charitable to all beings, love is the representative of God.”
– Ko-ji-ki, Hachiman Kasuga of the Shinto tradition, circa 500 AD

“No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.”
– Koran, Sunnah, from the Islam tradition, circa 620 AD

———————————

Amon Tobin – At The End Of The Day

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Japanese Folk Tales:
Visu the Woodsman and the Old Priest

Many years ago there lived on the then barren plain of Suruga a woodsman by the name of Visu. He was a giant in stature, and lived in a hut with his wife and children.
One day Visu received a visit from an old priest, who said to him: “Honorable woodsman, I am afraid you never pray.”

Visu replied: “If you had a wife and a large family to keep, you would never have time to pray.”

This remark made the priest angry, and the old man gave the woodcutter a vivid description of the horror of being reborn as a toad, or a mouse, or an insect for millions of years. Such lurid details were not to Visu’s liking, and he accordingly promised the priest that in future he would pray.

“Work and pray,” said the priest as he took his departure.

Unfortunately Visu did nothing but pray. He prayed all day long and refused to do any work, so that his rice crops withered and his wife and family starved. Visu’s wife, who had hitherto never said a harsh or bitter word to her husband, now became extremely angry, and, pointing to the poor thin bodies of her children, she exclaimed: “Rise, Visu, take up your ax and do something more helpful to us all than the mere mumbling of prayers!”

Visu was so utterly amazed at what his wife had said that it was some time before he could think of a fitting reply. When he did so his words came hot and strong to the ears of his poor, much-wronged wife.

“Woman,” said he, “the Gods come first. You are an impertinent creature to speak to me so, and I will have nothing more to do with you!” Visu snatched up his ax and, without looking round to say farewell, he left the hut, strode out of the wood, and climbed up Fujiyama, where a mist hid him from sight.

When Visu had seated himself upon the mountain he heard a soft rustling sound, and immediately afterward saw a fox dart into a thicket. Now Visu deemed it extremely lucky to see a fox, and, forgetting his prayers, he sprang up, and ran hither and thither in the hope of again finding this sharp-nosed little creature.

He was about to give up the chase when, coming to an open space in a wood, he saw two ladies sitting down by a brook playing go. The woodsman was so completely fascinated that he could do nothing but sit down and watch them. There was no sound except the soft click of pieces on the board and the song of the running brook. The ladies took no notice of Visu, for they seemed to be playing a strange game that had no end, a game that entirely absorbed their attention. Visu could not keep his eyes off these fair women. He watched their long black hair and the little quick hands that shot out now and again from their big silk sleeves in order to move the pieces.

After he had been sitting there for three hundred years, though to him it was but a summer’s afternoon, he saw that one of the players had made a false move. “Wrong, most lovely lady!” he exclaimed excitedly. In a moment these women turned into foxes and ran away.

When Visu attempted to pursue them he found to his horror that his limbs were terribly stiff, that his hair was very long, and that his beard touched the ground. He discovered, moreover, that the handle of his ax, though made of the hardest wood, had crumbled away into a little heap of dust.

After many painful efforts Visu was able to stand on his feet and proceed very slowly toward his little home. When he reached the spot he was surprised to see no hut, and, perceiving a very old woman, he said: “Good lady, I am amazed to find that my little home has disappeared. I went away this afternoon, and now in the evening it has vanished!”

The old woman, who believed that a madman was addressing her, inquired his name. When she was told, she exclaimed: “Bah! You must indeed be mad! Visu lived three hundred years ago! He went away one day, and he never came back again.”

“Three hundred years!” murmured Visu. “It cannot be possible. Where are my dear wife and children?”

“Buried!” hissed the old woman, “and, if what you say is true, you children’s children too. The Gods have prolonged your miserable life in punishment for having neglected your wife and little children.”

Big tears ran down Visu’s withered cheeks as he said in a husky voice: “I have lost my manhood. I have prayed when my dear ones starved and needed the labor of my once strong hands. Old woman, remember my last words: “If you pray, work too!”

We do not know how long the poor but repentant Visu lived after he returned from his strange adventures. His white spirit is still said to haunt Fujiyama when the moon shines brightly.
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Kakinomoto no Hitomaro 4 Poems

From the heights of Tsuno Mountain

In Iwami,
From the heights of Tsuno Mountain,
Even through the trees,
My waving sleeves,
My darling must have seen.
—

From uncountable Ôtsu

From uncountable
Ôtsu, she came and,
On the day I met her,
Glanced at her but briefly,
So, now, regret fills me.
—

Harvested Jewelled Seaweed

Harvested jewelled seaweed
At Minume; passed on,
Lush as summer grasses,
To the point at Noshima,
My boat draws near.
—

Heaven’s Clouds

Heaven’s clouds,
Layer on layer, conceal
The rumbling thunder:
Sound alone-
Must I continue just to hear?
___________

Ariwara no Narihira – 4 Poems

The purple
Hue is deep-now is the time
Every sprouting shoot-seen from afar
Throughout the fields-of trees and plants
Is equally dear.
—

Letter
c. mid-ninth century
Princess
I know not whether
Is was I who journeyed there
Or you who came to me:
Was it dream or reality?
Was I sleeping or awake?
Narihira
Last night I too
Wandered lost in the darkness
Of a disturbed heart
Whether dream or reality
Tonight let us decide!
Princess
Shallow the inlet
If the traveler wading it
Is not even wetted
Narihira
I shall cross again to you
Over Meeting Barrier.
—

Upon this pathway,
I have long heard others say,
man sets forth at last –
yet I had not thought to go
so very soon as today–
—

For sorrowing sons
who would have their parents live
a thousand long years –
how I wish that in this world
there were no final partings.

———————————
Galerie Stratique – Horizons Lointains

_________________________________

“The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you’ve gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?” ~Chuang Tzu

PREHISTORIC ORIGINS OF DNA

Its rising is not bright
nor its setting dark

Unceasing, continuous
Branching out in roots innumerable
Forever sending forth the serpent coil
of living things
Mysterious as the formless existence
to which it returns

Twisting back
Beyond mind

We say only that it is form from the formless
Life from spiral void

-Tim Leary — from Psychedelic Prayers
________________

Return

Return to the source
honing in on the signal
a bee to nectar.

-Gwyllm
_____________

Here is to source, and finding ones way. Here is to helping the traveler on their way. Here is to bravery of every chosen path…

I have become enamored of a past I am just discovering, understanding how others lit my way when even I was not aware of it. This is praise, for voices unknown, whose generosity of spirit, and adventuring of soul laid the way open for all that has come forth.

There is nothing like the present, I will grant you that. Without those who blazed the trails, where would we be now I ask?

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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Our last entry for July. This one came together, like the early morning it was conceived upon. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed bringing its diverse elements together.

On The Menu:
Marianne Faithfull – Si Demain
The Were-Wolf In The Middle-Ages
Sky Taste Alive Inside
Marianne Faithfull – Lullaby
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The voice! Ah!
Marianne Faithfull – Si Demain

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A further exploration of the shape-shifter, from an earlier time. – G

The Book of Were-Wolves, by Sabine Baring-Gould, [1865]

The Were-Wolf In The Middle-Ages

Stories from Olaus Magnus of Livonian Were-wolves–Story from Bishop Majolus–Story of Albertus Pericofcius–Similar occurrence at Prague–Saint Patrick–Strange incident related by John of Nüremberg–Bisclaveret–Courland Were-wolves–Pierre Vidal–Pavian Lycanthropist–Bodin’s Stories–Forestus’ Account of a Lycanthropist–Neapolitan Were-wolf

OLAUS MAGNUS relates that–”In Prussia, Livonia, and Lithuania, although the inhabitants suffer considerably from the rapacity of wolves throughout the year, in that these animals rend their cattle, which are scattered in great numbers through the woods, whenever they stray in the very least, yet this is not regarded by them as such a serious matter as what they endure from men turned into wolves.

“On the feast of the Nativity of Christ, at night, such a multitude of wolves transformed from men gather together in a certain spot, arranged among themselves, and then spread to rage with wondrous ferocity against human beings, and those animals which are not wild, that the natives of these regions suffer more detriment from these, than they do from true and natural wolves; for when a human habitation has been detected by them isolated in the woods, they besiege it with atrocity, striving to break in the doors, and in the event of their doing so, they devour all the human beings, and every animal which is found within. They burst into the beer-cellars, and there they empty the tuns of beer or mead, and pile up the empty casks one above another in the middle of the cellar, thus showing their difference from natural and genuine wolves. . . . Between Lithuania, Livonia, and Courland are the walls of a certain old ruined castle. At this spot congregate thousands, on a fixed occasion, and try their agility in jumping. Those who are unable to bound over the wall, as; is often the case with the fattest, are fallen upon with scourges by the captains and slain.”[1] Olaus relates also in c. xlvii. the story of a certain nobleman who was travelling through a large forest with some peasants in his retinue who dabbled in the black art. They found no house [1. OLAUS MAGNUS: Historia de Vent. Septent. Basil. 15, lib. xviii. cap. 45.] where they could lodge for the night, and were well-nigh famished. Then one of the peasants offered, if all the rest would hold their tongues as to what he should do, that he would bring them a lamb from a distant flock.

He thereupon retired into the depths of the forest and changed his form into that of a wolf, fell upon the flock, and brought a lamb to his companions in his mouth. They received it with gratitude. Then he retired once more into the thicket, and transformed himself back again into his human shape.

The wife of a nobleman in Livonia expressed her doubts to one of her slaves whether it were possible for man or woman thus to change shape. The servant at once volunteered to give her evidence of the possibility. He left the room, and in another moment a wolf was observed running over the country. The dogs followed him, and notwithstanding his resistance, tore out one of his eyes. Next day the slave appeared before his mistress blind of an eye.

Bp. Majolus[1] and Caspar Peucer[2] relate the following circumstances of the Livonians:–

[1. MAJOLI Episc. Vulturoniensis Dier. Canicul. Helenopolis, 1612, tom. ii. colloq. 3.

2. CASPAR PEUCER: Comment. de Præcipuis Divin. Generibus, 1591, p. 169.]

At Christmas a boy lame of a leg goes round the country summoning the devil’s followers, who are countless, to a general conclave. Whoever remains behind, or goes reluctantly, is scourged by another with an iron whip till the blood flows, and his traces are left in blood. The human form vanishes, and the whole multitude become wolves. Many thousands assemble. Foremost goes the leader armed with an iron whip, and the troop follow, “firmly convinced in their imaginations that they are transformed into wolves.” They fall upon herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, but they have no power to slay men. When they come to a river, the leader smites the water with his scourge, and it divides, leaving a dry path through the midst, by which the pack may go. The transformation lasts during twelve days, at the expiration of which period the wolf-skin vanishes, and the human form reappears. This superstition was expressly forbidden by the church. “Credidisti, quod quidam credere solent, ut illæ quæ a vulgo Parcæ vocantur, ipsæ, vel sint vel possint hoc facere quod creduntur, id est, dum aliquis homo nascitur, et tunc valeant illum designare ad hoc quod velint, ut quandocunque homo ille voluerit, in lupum transformari possit, quod vulgaris stultitia, werwolf vocat, aut in aliam aliquam figuram?”–Ap. Burchard. (d. 1024). In like manner did S. Boniface preach against those who believed superstitiously in it strigas et fictos lupos.” (Serm. apud Mart. et Durand. ix. 217.)

In a dissertation by Müller[1] we learn, on the authority of Cluverius and Dannhaverus (Acad. Homilet. p. ii.), that a certain Albertus Pericofcius in Muscovy was wont to tyrannize over and harass his subjects in the most unscrupulous manner. One night when he was absent from home, his whole herd of cattle, acquired by extortion, perished. On his return he was informed of his loss, and the wicked man broke out into the most horrible blasphemies, exclaiming, “Let him who has slain, eat; if God chooses, let him devour me as well.”

As he spoke, drops of blood fell to earth, and the nobleman, transformed into a wild dog, rushed upon his dead cattle, tore and mangled the carcasses and began to devour them; possibly he may be devouring them still (ac forsan hodie que pascitur). His wife, then near her confinement, died of fear. Of these circumstances there were not only ear but also eye witnesses. (Non ab auritis tantum, sed et ocidatis accepi, quod [1. De Λυκανθρωπία. Lipsiæ, 1736.] narro). Similarly it is related of a nobleman in the neighbourhood of Prague, that he robbed his subjects of their goods and reduced them to penury through his exactions. He took the last cow from a poor widow with five children, but as a judgment, all his own cattle died. He then broke into fearful oaths, and God transformed him into a dog: his human head, however, remained.

S. Patrick is said to have changed Vereticus, king of Wales, into a wolf, and S. Natalis, the abbot, to have pronounced anathema upon an illustrious family in Ireland; in consequence of which, every male and female take the form of wolves for seven years and live in the forests and career over the bogs, howling mournfully, and appeasing their hunger upon the sheep of the peasants.[1] A duke of Prussia, according to Majolus, had a countryman brought for sentence before him, because he had devoured his neighbour’s cattle. The fellow was an ill-favoured, deformed man, with great wounds in his face, which he had received from dogs’ bites whilst he had been in his wolf’s form. It was believed that he changed shape twice in the year, at Christmas and at Midsummer. He was said to exhibit much uneasiness [1. PHIL. HARTUNG: Conciones Tergeminæ, pars ii. p. 367.] and discomfort when the wolf-hair began to break out and his bodily shape to change.

He was kept long in prison and closely watched, lest he should become a were-wolf during his confinement and attempt to escape, but nothing remarkable took place. If this is the same individual as that mentioned by Olaus Magnus, as there seems to be a probability, the poor fellow was burned alive.

John of Nüremberg relates the following curious story.[1] A priest was once travelling in a strange country, and lost his way in a forest. Seeing a fire, he made towards it, and beheld a wolf seated over it. The wolf addressed him in human-voice, and bade him not fear, as “he was of the Ossyrian race, of which a man and a woman were doomed to spend a certain number of years in wolf’s form. Only after seven years might they return home and resume their former shapes, if they were still alive.” He begged the priest to visit and console his sick wife, and to give her the last sacraments. This the priest consented to do, after some hesitation, and only when convinced of the beasts being human beings, by observing that the wolf used his front paws as hands, and when he saw the [1. JOHN EUS. NIERENBERG de Miracul. in Europa, lib. ii. cap. 42.] she-wolf peel off her wolf-skin from her head to her navel, exhibiting the features of an aged woman.

Marie de France says in the Lais du Bisclaveret:–[1]

Bisclaveret ad nun en Bretan
Garwall Papelent li Norman.
* * * *
Jadis le poet-hum oir
Et souvent suleit avenir,
Humes pluseirs Garwall deviendrent
E es boscages meisun tindrent

There is an interesting paper by Rhanæus, on the Courland were-wolves, in the Breslauer Sammlung.[2] The author says,–”There are too many examples derived not merely from hearsay, but received on indisputable evidence, for us to dispute the fact, that Satan–if we do not deny that such a being exists, and that he has his work in the children of darkness–holds the Lycanthropists in his net in three ways:–

“1. They execute as wolves certain acts, such as seizing a sheep, or destroying cattle, &c., not changed into wolves, which no scientific man in Courland believes, but in their human frames, and with their

[1. An epitome of this curious were-wolf tale will be found in Ellis’s Early English Metrical Romances.

2. Supplement III. Curieuser und nutzbarer Anmerkungen von Natur und Kunstgeschichten, gesammelt von Kanold. 1728.] human limbs, yet in such a state of phantasy and hallucination, that they believe themselves transformed into wolves, and are regarded as such by others suffering under similar hallucination, and in this manner run these people in packs as wolves, though not true wolves.

“2. They imagine, in deep sleep or dream, that they injure the cattle, and this without leaving their conch; but it is their master who does, in their stead, what their fancy points out, or suggests to him.

“3. The evil one drives natural wolves to do some act, and then pictures it so well to the sleeper, immovable in his place, both in dreams and at awaking, that he believes the act to have been committed by himself.”

Rhanæus, under these heads, relates three stories, which he believes be has on good authority. The first is of a gentleman starting on a journey, who came upon a wolf engaged in the act of seizing a sheep in his own flock; he fired at it, and wounded it, so that it fled howling to the thicket. When the gentleman returned from his expedition he found the whole neighbourhood impressed with the belief that he had, on a given day and hour, shot at one of his tenants, a publican, Mickel. p. 62 On inquiry, the man’s Wife, called Lebba, related the following circumstances, which were fully corroborated by numerous witnesses:–When her husband had sown his rye he had consulted with his wife how he was to get some meat, so as to have a good feast. The woman urged him on no account to steal from his landlord’s flock, because it was guarded by fierce dogs. He, however, rejected her advice, and Mickel fell upon his landlord’s sheep, but he had suffered and had come limping home, and in his rage at the ill success of his attempt, had fallen upon his own horse and had bitten its throat completely through. This took place in the year 1684.

In 1684, a man was about to fire upon a pack of wolves, when he heard from among the troop a voice exclaiming–”Gossip! Gossip! don’t fire. No good will come of it.”

The third story is as follows:–A lycanthropist was brought before a judge and accused of witchcraft, but as nothing could be proved against him, the judge ordered one of his peasants to visit the man in his prison, and to worm the truth out of him, and to persuade the prisoner to assist him in revenging himself upon another peasant who had injured him; and this was to be effected by destroying one of the man’s cows; but the peasant was to urge the prisoner to do it secretly, and, if possible, in the disguise of a wolf. The fellow undertook the task, but he had great difficulty in persuading the prisoner to fall in with his wishes: eventually, however, he succeeded. Next morning the cow was found in its stall frightfully mangled, but the prisoner had not left his cell: for the watch, who had been placed to observe him, declared that he had spent the night in profound sleep, and that he had only at one time made a slight motion with his head and hands and feet.

Wierius and Forestus quote Gulielmus Brabantinus as an authority for the fact, that a man of high position had been so possessed by the evil one, that often during the year he fell into a condition in which he believed himself to be turned into a wolf, and at that time he roved in the woods and tried to seize and devour little children, but that at last, by God’s mercy, he recovered his senses.

Certainly the famous Pierre Vidal, the Don Quixote of Provençal troubadours, must have had a touch of this madness, when, after having fallen in love with a lady of Carcassone, named Loba, or the Wolfess, the excess of his passion drove him over the country, howling like a wolf, and demeaning himself more like an irrational beast than a rational man.

He commemorates his lupine madness in the poem A tal Donna:–[1]

Crowned with immortal joys I mount
The proudest emperors above,
For I am honoured with the love
Of the fair daughter of a count.
A lace from Na Raymbauda’s hand
I value more than all the land
Of Richard, with his Poïctou,
His rich Touraine and famed Anjou.
When loup-garou the rabble call me,
When vagrant shepherds hoot,
Pursue, and buffet me to boot,
It doth not for a moment gall me;
I seek not palaces or halls,
Or refuge when the winter falls;
Exposed to winds and frosts at night,
My soul is ravished with delight.
Me claims my she-wolf (Loba) so divine:
And justly she that claim prefers,
For, by my troth, my life is hers
More than another’s, more than mine.

Job Fincelius[2] relates the sad story of a farmer of Pavia, who, as a wolf, fell upon many men in the open country and tore them to pieces. After much trouble [1. BRUCE WHYTE: Histoire des Langues Romaines, tom. ii. p. 248. 2. FINCELIUS de Mirabilibus, lib. xi.]the maniac was caught, and he then assured his captors that the only difference which existed between himself and a natural wolf, was that in a true wolf the hair grew outward, whilst in him it struck inward. In order to put this assertion to the proof, the magistrates, themselves most certainly cruel and bloodthirsty wolves, cut off his arms and legs; the poor wretch died of the mutilation. This took place in 1541. The idea of the skin being reversed is a very ancient one: versipellis occurs as a name of reproach in Petronius, Lucilius, and Plautus, and resembles the Norse hamrammr.

Fincelius relates also that, in 1542, there was such a multitude of were-wolves about Constantinople that the Emperor, accompanied by his guard, left the city to give them a severe correction, and slew one hundred and fifty of them.

Spranger speaks of three young ladies who attacked a labourer, under the form of cats, and were wounded by him. They were found bleeding in their beds next morning.

Majolus relates that a man afflicted with lycanthropy was brought to Pomponatius. The poor fellow had been found buried in hay, and when people approached, he called to them to flee, as he was a werewolf, and would rend them. The country-folk wanted to flay him, to discover whether the hair grew inwards, but Pomponatius rescued the man and cured him.

Bodin tells some were-wolf stories on good authority; it is a pity that the good authorities of Bodin were such liars, but that, by the way. He says that the Royal Procurator-General Bourdin had assured him that he had shot a wolf, and that the arrow had stuck in the beast’s thigh. A few hours after, the arrow was found in the thigh of a man in bed. In Vernon, about the year 1566, the witches and warlocks gathered in great multitudes, under the shape of cats. Four or five men were attacked in a lone place by a number of these beasts. The men stood their ground with the utmost heroism, succeeded in slaying one puss, and in wounding many others. Next day a number of wounded women were found in the town, and they gave the judge an accurate account of all the circumstances connected with their wounding.

Bodin quotes Pierre Marner, the author of a treatise on sorcerers, as having witnessed in Savoy the transformation of men into wolves. Nynauld[1] relates that in a village of Switzerland, near Lucerne, a peasant was [1. NYNAULD, De la Lycanthropie. Paris, 1615, p. 52.] attacked by a wolf, whilst he was hewing timber; he defended himself, and smote off a fore-leg of the beast. The moment that the blood began to flow the wolf’s form changed, and he recognized a woman without her arm. She was burnt alive.

An evidence that beasts are transformed witches is to be found in their having no tails. When the devil takes human form, however, he keeps his club-foot of the Satyr, as a token by which he may be recognized. So animals deficient in caudal appendages are to be avoided, as they are witches in disguise. The Thingwald should consider the case of the Manx cats in its next session.

Forestus, in his chapter on maladies of the brain, relates a circumstance which came under his own observation, in the middle of the sixteenth century, at Alcmaar in the Netherlands. A peasant there was attacked every spring with a fit of insanity; under the influence of this he rushed about the churchyard, ran into the church, jumped over the benches, danced, was filled with fury, climbed up, descended, and never remained quiet. He carried a long staff in his hand, with which he drove away the dogs, which flew at him and wounded him, so that his thighs were covered with scars. His face was pale, his eyes deep sunk in their sockets. Forestus pronounces the man to be a lycanthropist, but he does not say that the poor fellow believed himself to be transformed into a wolf. In reference to this case, however, he mentions that of a Spanish nobleman who believed himself to be changed into a bear, and who wandered filled with fury among the woods.

Donatus of Altomare[1] affirms that he saw a man in the streets of Naples, surrounded by a ring of people, who in his were-wolf frenzy had dug up a corpse and was carrying off the leg upon his shoulders. This was in the middle of the sixteenth century.

[1. De Medend. Human. Corp. lib. i. cap. 9.]

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This is the second themed poem that I have published of George Andrews. Both poems were retrieved from “The Psychedelic Review”

(Gwyllm – MacGreggor Mathers)

Sky Taste Alive Inside

George Andrews

I feel like a rocket that has just been launched
brain waves travel at the speed of light
shot through by all the stars
tense liquid movements turn me inside out
I am in all the worlds at once
after I have made a flute from the bones of my own skeleton
then I can begin to dance
my own ghost is holy and it is all I have
mother earth alive within me
calling all her children home
lost ones playing in the sky
I am in all your eyes
we are all inside each other’s bones
all wearing jewels from the same ocean
radioactive salt sounding in each ear
it is working just like magic sure as shit
writing with my own intestines
writing in my own intestines
signatures of maker sealer in order of the chromosomes
supreme secret foundation of the empire
protector of what is fine in all the worlds
of what in all the worlds holds true
coming up from beneath out of the abyss
tortoise shell oracle from the depths of time
seed of the space tribe planted before history began
rainbows oscillate through the flesh
innumerable worlds revolving in the galaxy of each individual sack of skin
each sensitive hungry island universe of an ego
has been alive in all the centuries
all the centuries are alive in me now
all is here now
all that ever was since time began
sea of primal radiance foam from which beauty springs
rare mountain fragance snowdrop breath
organic rainbow constellation
from inside the tissues paradise rays transform the flesh
revolution of the beautiful in the protoplasm
micro-explosion in the nucleus
morning glory story older than the earth we walk on
electromagnetic apple in the ecstatic garden
the scimitar of lightning severs my head from my shoulders
celestial earth within my flesh awakens the subtle part of my solid self
as caterpillar becomes butterfly so man becomes
a luminous giant thundering anthems
crown jewel on the forehead of our star the earth
recognize the other world in this one
the light takes me apart then puts me together again
bird in the mouth of the jaguar saved by a virgin’s hand
the markings on the tiger skin are in the language of the diamond back rattlers
zero in on one of those acts bathed in the fragance of the night
scars of passion like the markings on an animal’s coat
tell-tale traces of past experience
mother’s broth of many generations of lamentations
sort all the ingredients out
put each one in its proper place
now let’s begin again
the family of the forces in harmony
all back home again in one stew
traces of yesterday stirring in today’s home cooking
the dead in conscious contact with the living
ancestral traits alive and speaking
true nobility is this memory engraved in the bones
transformation thrice sanctified of the fossil into a living being
all the joy of what never was at last has a chance to be
scintillating at the peak each atom has danced its glory
when really pinned down up here
there is a lot of fast action for enormous stakes
scurrying of insect feet wars of species
whole lifetimes of energy being oozled up in a few instants
the marrow of the soul extracted
look into the fiery opal listen to the djinn
empty place between the eyes
space animal hidden in the human form
royal tiger science king game
armor of chain lightening links each star to its nerve
incredible night-hawks on the frontier of the open sky
extreme weathering of time along the seams of matter
cut that queen bee nectar with a knife of pollen
rainbow amoebas in my organism I am an organism of
crystallized light chords
each cell is an instrument in the orchestra of the body
floating cushion of joyous resonance
sound box swinging through the structure of the being
each cell in the body can communicate with any cell of any body
cosmic joke being played in the navel of the radiance
in the cauldron of exploding ether
you may think you are pissing it out of you
but it is in the salt of the bones forever
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Short Interview, then an amazing piece of music. Enjoy.

Marianne Faithfull – Lullaby

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1.
The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and
unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and
unchanging name.

(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven
and earth; (conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all
things.

Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.

Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development
takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them
the Mystery. Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that
is subtle and wonderful.