Gwyllm.com

The Hill-Water

From the rim it trickles down
Of the mountain’s, granite crown
Clear and cool;
Keen and eager though it go
Through your veins with lively flow,
Yet it knoweth not to reign
In the chambers of the brain
With misrule;

Where dark water-cresses grow
You will trace its quiet flow,
With mossy border yellow,
So mild, and soft, and mellow,
In its pouring.
With no shiny dregs to trouble
The brightness of its bubble
As it threads its silver way
From the granite shoulders grey
Of Ben Dorain.

Then down the sloping side
It will slip with glassy slide
Gently welling,
Till it gather strength to leap,
With a light and foamy sweep,
To the corrie broad and deep
Proudly swelling;

Then bends amid the boulders,
‘Neath the shadow of the shoulders
Of the Ben,
Through a country rough and shaggy,
So jaggy and so knaggy,
Full of hummocks and of hunches,
Full of stumps and tufts and bunches,
Full of bushes and of rushes,
In the glen,

Through rich green solitudes,
And wildly hanging woods
With blossom and with bell,
In rich redundant swell,
And the pride
Of the mountain daisy there,
And the forest everywhere,
With the dress and with the air
Of a bride.
– Duncan Bran MacIntyre

This entry started out today as a thought that I was going to write a bit about Irish poetry, and especially William Butler Yeats. My mind got to wandering, and I decided that perhaps I would go with ancient or medieval Irish poetry instead.

I arrived home, and before ya knew it we were eating dinner and Mary had a movie for us to watch, “The Boys & Girls From County Clare“. What a great film. I would recommend it to anyone. As the theme was somewhat musical, I started to look for something appropriate before I got started proper on the Turfing entry, and whilst perusing music I stumbled upon Julie Fowlis, a traditional Gaelic singer from Scotland. The whole entry changed on her voice.

So, we end up with all things Scottish tonight, and this goes out to our Family cast across from the Ilse’s to the Lowlands from Glasgow east to Edinburgh and points between. Scotland is perhaps the most beautiful country I have spent time in. I know, I know, every place is lovely but Scotland’s nature has shaped it’s people, music and hearts in a remarkable way. As cold as it gets, their hearts burn with love and caring, at least the ones I have been privileged to know.

Their beauty is evident in the poetry, the music, and the tales handed down from time out of mind. My family has strong roots there, and doubly so with our marriage.

I hope you enjoy this entry,
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Julie Fowlis – Mo Ghruagach Dhonn
Billy Connolly Quotes
Exiles from Fairyland
Ancient & Modern Gaelic Poetry
Julie Fowlis – ‘Ille Dhuinn, ‘s Toigh Leam Thu
Art: Margaret MacDonald MacIntosh
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Julie Fowlis – Mo Ghruagach Dhonn

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Billy Connolly Quotes:
“The human race has been set up. Someone, somewhere, is playing a practical joke on us. Apparently, women need to feel loved to have sex. Men need to have sex to feel loved. How do we ever get started?”

“It seems to me that Islam and Christianity and Judaism all have the same god, and he’s telling them all different things.”

“There are two seasons in Scotland: June and winter.”

“What always staggers me is that when people blow their noses, they always look into their hankies to see what came out. What do they expect to find?”

“I’m a citizen of the world. I like it that way. The world’s a wonderful. I just think that some people are pretty badly represented. But when you speak to the people themselves they’re delightful. They all want so little.”
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Exiles from Fairyland

The Fairy Queen banishes from Fairyland any fairy who disobeys her orders. Then the exile wanders about alone through the land in search of companions. As the queen’s subjects shun the banished fairy man or woman, he or she must needs make friends with human beings.

The Goona 1 is the name given to one class of fairy exiles. A Goona is very kindly and harmless, and goes about at night trying to be of service to mankind. He herds the cattle on the hills, and keeps them away from dangerous places. Often he is seen sitting on the edge of a cliff, and when cattle come near he drives them back. In the summer and autumn seasons he watches the cornfields, and if a cow should try to enter one, he seizes it by a horn and leads it to hill pasture. In winter time, when the cattle are kept in byres, the Goona feels very, lonely, having no work to do.

Crofters speak kindly of the Goona, and consider themselves lucky when one haunts their countryside. They tell that he is a little fairy man with long golden hair that falls down over his shoulders and back. He is clad in a fox’s skin, and in wintry weather he suffers much from cold, for that is part of his punishment. The crofters pity him, and wish that he would come into a house and sit beside a warm fire, but this he is forbidden to do. If a crofter were to offer a Goona any clothing the little lonely fellow would have to go away and he could never return again. The only food the exiled fairy can get are scraps and bones flung away by human beings. There are songs about the Goona. One tells:

He will watch the long weird night,
When the stars will shake with fright,
Or the ghostly moon leaps bright
O’er the ben like Beltane fire.
If my kine should seek the corn
He will turn them by the horn,
And I’ll find them all at morn
Lowing sweet beside the byre.

Only those who have “second sight”–that is, the power to see supernatural beings and future events-can behold a Goona. So the song tells:

Donald Ban has second sight,
And he’ll moan the Goona’s plight
When the frosts are flickering white,
And the kine are housed till day;
For he’ll see him perched alone
On a chilly old grey stone,
Nibbling, nibbling at a bone
That we’ve maybe thrown away.

He’s so hungry, he’s so thin,
If he’d come we’d let him in;
For a rag of fox’s skin
Is the only thing he’ll wear.
He’ll be chittering in the cold
As he hovers round the fold,
With his locks of glimmering gold
Twined about his shoulders bare.

Another exiled fairy is called “The Little Old Man of the Barn”. He lives to a great age–some say until he is over two hundred years old–but he remains strong and active although his back is bent and his long grey beard-reaches to his ankles. He wears grey clothing, and the buttons of his coat are of silver. On his high peaked cap there is a white owl’s feather. The face of the little old man is covered with wrinkles, but his eyes are bright and kindly. He is always in a hurry, and hobbles about, leaning on his staff, but he walks so quickly that the strongest man can hardly keep up with him. When he begins to work he works very hard and very quickly. He will not hold a conversation with anyone once he begins to perform a task. If a man who has second sight should address him, saying: “How are you, old man?” he will answer: “I’m busy, busy, busy.” If he should be asked: “What are you doing?” he will give the same answer, repeating it over and over again. It is no use trying to chat with the little old man.

There was once an old crofter whose name was Callum. He had seven strong sons, but one by one they left him to serve as keepers of the deer. Callum was left to do all the work on the croft. He had to cut the corn and thresh it afterwards, and had it not been for the assistance given him by the “Little Old Man of the Barn”, he would never have been able to get the threshing done.

Each night the fairy man entered the barn and worked very hard. The following verses are from a song about Callum:–

When all the big lads will be hunting the deer,
And no one for helping old Callum comes near,
Oh, who will be busy at threshing his corn?
Who will come in the night and be going at morn?–

The Little Old Man of the Barn.
Yon Little Old Man–
So tight and so braw, he will bundle the straw,
The Little Old Man of the Barn.

When the peat will turn grey, and the shadows fall deep,
And weary old Callum is snoring asleep;
When yon plant by the door will keep fairies away,
And the horseshoe sets witches a-wandering till day,

The Little Old Man of the Barn,
Yon Little Old Man
Will thrash with no light in the mouth of the night–
The Little Old Man of the Barn.

There was once a fairy exile who lived in a wood in Gairloch, Ross-shire. He was called Gillie Dhu, which means “dark servant”, because he had dark hair and dark eyes. He wore a green garment made of moss and the leaves of trees. Nobody feared him, for he never did any harm.

Once a little girl, whose name was Jessie Macrae, was wandering in the wood and lost her way. It was in summer time, and the air was warm. When evening came on Jessie began to grow afraid, but although she hastened her steps she could not find her way out of the wood. At length, weary and footsore, she sat down below a fir tree and began to weep. A voice spoke to her suddenly from behind, saying: “Why are you crying, little girl?”

Jessie looked round and saw the Gillie Dhu. He had hair black as the wing of a raven, eyes brown as hazel-nuts in September, and his mouth was large; he had a hundred teeth, which were as small as herring bones. The Gillie Dhu was smiling: his cream-yellow cheeks had merry dimples, and his eyes were soft and kindly. Had Jessie seen him at a distance, with his clothing of moss and leaves, she would have run away in terror, but as he seemed so kindly and friendly she did not feel the least afraid.

“Why are you crying, little girl?” the Gillie asked again. “Your tear-drops are falling like dew on the little blue flowers at your feet.”

“I have lost my way,” said Jessie in a low voice, “and the night is coming on.”

Said the Gillie: “Do not cry, little girl; I shall lead you through the wood. I know every path–the rabbit’s path, the hare’s path, the fox’s path, the goat’s path, the path of the deer, and the path of men.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you!” Jessie said. She looked the fairy up and down, and wondered to see his strange clothing.

“Where do you dwell, little girl?” asked Gillie Dhu.

Jessie told him, and he said: “You have been walking every way but the right way. Follow me, and you’ll reach home before the little stars come out to peer at me through the trees.”

The Gillie turned round about, and began to trip lightly in front of the girl. He went so fast that she feared she would lose sight of him, but he turned round again and again, and when he found she was far behind, he danced a pretty dance until she came up to him. Then he scampered on as before.

At length Jessie reached the edge of the wood, and saw her home beside the loch. The Gillie bade her good-bye, and said: “Have I not led you well? Do not forget me. I am the Gillie Dhu, and I love little girls and little boys. If ever you get lost in the wood again, I shall come to your aid. Good-bye, little girl, good-bye.”

He laughed merrily, and then trotted away and was soon lost to sight among the trees.

There was once a fairy exile who was a dummy. The Fairy Queen had punished him for some offence by taking away his powers of speech and hearing, and forbade any other fairy to go near him. He wore a bright red jacket and green breeches, and from beneath his little red cap his long curling hair, which was yellow as broom, dropped down on his shoulders. The dummy had cheeks red as rowan berries and laughing blue eyes, and he was always smiling. It made one happy to look at him. He was always so contented and pleased and playful, although he was deaf and dumb, that he put everyone who met him in good humour.

For a long time the fairy dummy lived all alone beneath a great heap of stones, called the Grey Cairn, on a lonely moor in the Black Isle, in Ross-shire. This cairn is in a fir wood which skirts the highway.

When a cart came along the highway the fairy dummy used to steal out from behind a big grey stone, smiling and smiling. Then he would jump on the axle of a wheel, and whirl round and round; and the faster the cart would go the better he would be pleased. He would drop off the axle at the edge of the wood, but he never forgot to turn round and smile to the driver as he ran away.

The people liked to see the little fairy dummy whirling round and round on the cart-wheel, because they believed he always brought them luck.

One day a farmer and his wife were going to the Fair of St. Norman at Cromarty to sell their butter and eggs, but when they reached the big grey stone the Little Red Dummy did not come in sight.

The farmer, who was ill-tempered that day, wanted to go on without giving the little fellow a whirl on the cart-wheel, but his wife said: “No, no; if you will not wait for him, I’ll get down and walk home; for we would have no luck at the Fair if we missed the bonnie wee red man.”

The woman was looking through the trees, and suddenly she began to laugh.

“Look, Sandy dear, look!” she cried, “there comes the Little Red Dummy–the bonnie wee man–oh, the dear little fairy!”

The farmer was frowning and ill-tempered, but when he looked round he began to smile, for the little red fairy was smiling so sweetly to him. He whipped up his mare, and cried over his shoulder to his wife: “Is he on the wheel yet, Kirsty dear; is he on the wheel?”

“Yes, yes, Sandy dear,” Kirsty answered,–he’s on now. Go faster, Sandy–the faster you go the better he’ll be pleased.”

The farmer cried to the mare: “Gee-up, jenny, gee-up, my lass!” and the old mare went trotting along the highway, while the little red fairy sat on the axle, whirling round and round with the wheel, and smiling and smiling all the time.

When he dropped off at the edge of the wood, his bright yellow hair was streaming over his laughing eyes, and his cheeks were redder than hazel-berries. The fairy smiled to Sandy and smiled to Kirsty, looking over his shoulder as he ran away.

“The dear wee man!” cried the farmer’s wife.

“The happy little chap,” cried the farmer.

They both looked back to see the glint of the fairy’s red jacket as he ran merrily through the trees. They both felt very happy, and they were happier still when they were on their way homeward, because they had secured good prices for their butter and eggs at the Fair.

There was a miller who had a mill with a waterwheel in a woody dell not far from the Grey Cairn. The little fairy dummy was fond of him, because he got many a fine whirl on the mill-wheel. Every morning and every evening the miller left a little cog of oatmeal porridge on the window-sill for the wee red man. Sometimes, when he was busy tying the bags of meal, the fairy would look in at the door and smile and smile, until the miller felt so happy that he forgot he was old, and began to whistle or sing like a young lad on a bright May morning.

When the miller was getting frail, the little red fairy used to help him at his work. Every now and then he would run out to whirl round the mill-wheel, and he would come back with the spray clinging to his hair like dew-drops on whin blossom.
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Ancient & Modern Gaelic Poetry

Durisdeer.

We’ll meet nae mair at sunset when the weary day is dune,
Nor wander hame thegither by the lee licht o’ the mune.
I’ll hear your steps nae langer amang the dewy corn,
For we’ll meet nae mair, my bonniest, either at e’en or morn.

The yellow broom is waving abune the sunny brae,
And the rowan berries dancing where the sparkling waters play;
Tho’ a’ is bright and bonnie it’s an eerie place to me,
For we’ll meet nae mair, my dearest, either by burn or tree.

Far up into the wild hills there’s a kirkyard lone and still,
Where the frosts lie ilka morning and the mists hang low and chill.
And there ye sleep in silence while I wander here my lane
Till we meet ance mair in Heaven never to part again!
– Lady John Scott
—

The Lament of the Deer
(Cumha nam Fiadh.)

O for my strength! once more to see the hills!
The wilds of Strath-Farar of stags,
The blue streams, and winding vales,
Where the flowering tree sends forth its sweet perfume.

My thoughts are sad and dark!–
I lament the forest where I loved to roam,
The secret corries, the haunt of hinds,
Where often I watched them on the hill!

Corrie-Garave! O that I was within thy bosom
Scuir-na-Làpaich of steeps, with thy shelter,
Where feed the herds which never seek for stalls,
But whose skin gleams red in the sunshine of the hills.

Great was my love in youth, and strong my desire,
Towards the bounding herds;
But now, broken, and weak, and hopeless,
Their remembrance wounds my heart.

To linger in the laich* I mourn,
My thoughts are ever in the hills
For there my childhood and my youth was nursed
The moss and the craig in the morning breeze was my delight.

Then was I happy in my life,
When the voices of the hill sung sweetly;
More sweet to me, than any string,
It soothed my sorrow or rejoiced my heart

My thoughts wandered to no other land
Beyond the hill of the forest, the shealings of the deer,
Where the nimble herds ascended the hill,–
As I lay in my plaid on the dewy bed.

The sheltering hollows, where I crept towards the hart,
On the pastures of the glen, or in the forest wilds–
And if once more I may see them as of old,
How will my heart bound to watch again the pass!

Great was my joy to ascend the hills
In the cause of the noble chief,
Mac Shimé of the piercing eye–never to fail at need,
With all his brave Frasers, gathered beneath his banner.

When they told of his approach, with all his ready arms,
My heart bounded for the chase–
On the rugged steep, on the broken hill,
By hollow, and ridge, many were the red stags which he laid low.

He is the pride of hunters; my trust was in his gun,
When the sound of its shot rung in my ear,
The grey ball launched in flashing fire,
And the dun stag fell in the rushing speed of his course.

When evening came down on the hill,
The time for return to the star of the glen,
The kindly lodge where the noble gathered,
The sons of the tartan and the plaid,

With joy and triumph they returned
To the dwelling of plenty and repose;
The bright blazing hearth–the circling wine–
The welcome of the noble chief!
– Angus MacKenzie
—

A Kiss of the King’s Hand.

It wasna from a golden throne,
Or a bower with milk-white roses blown,
But mid the kelp on northern sand
That I got a kiss of the king’s hand.

I durstna raise my een tae see
If he even cared to glance at me;
His princely brow with care was crossed
For his true men slain and kingdom lost.

Think not his hand was soft and white,
Or his fingers a’ with jewels dight,
Or round his wrists were jewels grand
When I got a kiss of the king’s hand.

But dearer far tae my twa een
Was the ragged sleeve of red and green
O’er that young weary hand that fain,
With the guid broadsword, had found its ain.

Farewell for ever, the distance gray
And the lapping ocean seemed to say–
For him a home in a foreign land.
And for me one kiss of the king’s hand.
– Sarah Robertson Matheson
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Julie Fowlis – ‘Ille Dhuinn, ‘s Toigh Leam Thu

“I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.” – Arthur Rimbaud
(Ludwig Deutsch – the Scribe)

Sensation
On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,
Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:
In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.
I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.

I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:
But endless love will mount in my soul;
And I shall travel far, very far, like a gipsy,
Through the countryside – as happy as if I were with a woman.

Arthur Rimbaud – March 1870.
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Just ignore the Austrian Ludwig Deutsch for the art of course.
A few bits that have been running around my head for the last couple of days. A newer, compact version I would think, so it is not such a task for the reader to wade through….

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

On The Menu:
The Links
Arthur Rimbaud Quotes
Poetry of Joachim du Bellay
Serge Gainsbourg je suis venu te dire
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The Links:
Ginsberg In Chicago
American Thought Police
More American Marketing…
The Hum…
Some Of You May Have Seen This Already… “Welcome Back To The Burning Times!”
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Arthur Rimbaud Quotes:

“Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.”
“The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth.”
“I is another.”
“And again: No more gods! no more gods! Man is King, Man is God! – But the great Faith is Love!”
“one single true word: it is, COME BACK. I want to be with you, I love you. If you listen to this you will prove your courage and sincerity. Otherwise, I am sorry for you. But I love you. I kiss you and we’ll see eachother again…”
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Poetry of Joachim du Bellay

D’un vanneur de blé aux vents
(The Winnower to the Winds)

To you, fleeting things,
That on passing wings
Through the world fly free,
And with murmuring sigh
The green shade passed by,
Sweetly shake the tree,

I pledge these violets,
Lilies, mignonettes,
And these roses new,
With each crimson rose
Only now disclosed,
And these wild pinks too.

With your breath so sweet
Cool the plain complete,
Cool this space and stray,
While I labour again
As I winnow my grain
In the heat of the day.
—

‘La nuit froide et sombre’
(Chanson)

The night cold and sombre
With dark shadows covers
The earth and the sky,
Like honey, as sweet,
On heavenly feet,
Comes sleep to the eye.

Then day, renewing,
Its labour pursuing,
Discloses the light,
And with glow diverse
Weaves this universe,
A vast poem bright.
—

‘Quand ton col de couleur rose’
(Baiser)

When your neck like a rose
You offer me,
When eyes cloud sweetly,
Eyelids half-close,

My soul melts with desire
Fills with ardour again,
Can scarce suffer such pain
The force of that fire.

When your lips approach mine,
And, close to the bower,
I could gather the flower
Of your breath divine,

When the sigh of that odour,
Where tongues, entwined,
Moistly frolic, and wind,
Fanning my sweet ardour,

It would seem I dine
With the gods, all is gracious,
I drink long, and delicious
Draughts of their wine.

If the good that is near
Greater good, may so take,
Or leave me, why make
Mine forever the greater?

Do you fear that your light
Might make me divine
And without you I’ll climb
To eternal delight?

Sweet, you’ve naught to fear
Wherever you are,
My heaven, afar,
And my paradise is near.
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Serge Gainsbourg je suis venu te dire

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To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery. – Charles Baudelaire

(Ludwig Deutsch – The Nubian Dance 1886)

—
Rhea

On her shut lids the lightning flickers,
Thunder explodes above her bed,
An inch from her lax arm the rain hisses;
Discrete she lies,

Not dead but entranced, dreamlessly
With slow breathing, her lips curved
In a half-smile archaic, her breast bare,
Hair astream.

The house rocks, a flood suddenly rising
Bears away bridges: oak and ash
Are shivered to the roots – royal green timber.
She nothing cares.

(Divine Augustus, trembling at the storm,
Wrapped sealskin on his thumb; divine Gaius
Made haste to hide himself in a deep cellar,
Distraught by fear.)

Rain, thunder, lightning: pretty children.
“Let them play,” her mother-mind repeats;
“They do no harm, unless from high spirits
Or by mishap.”
-Robert Graves
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Sunday Afternoon/March 27th:
I first started to put this post together back in October, 28th 2010 in the heat running up to the mid-term elections. I put in about 60 revisions, or at least saved that many times. I built it up, then tore it down several times, and finally I am ready to let it go.

So without much ado, here it is. My thoughts on the modern malaise of social sorcery, and assorted ideas and music that kind of ties it all up into a package in my head. I hope you enjoy it, and remember folks, is that thought really your own?

Blessings,
Gwyllm
—–

On The Menu:

The Links:
Sorcery Quotes:
Sorcery In Modern Times
The Golden Age (L’âge d’or) (1930)
Circe’s Power
Nouvelle Vague – Fade To Grey
Sorcery – Hakim Bey
Poetic Summonings…
Nouvelle Vague – Love Will Tear Us Apart
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Sorcery Quotes:
“Rarely has a people paid the lavish compliment and taken the subtle revenge of turning its oppressor’s speech into sorcery.” – T. E. Kalem
“May it preserve thee from sorcery, from thy equals and thy kin! Undying be, immortal, exceedingly vital; thy spirits shall not abandon thy body!” – Atharva Veda
“The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery” – Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
“But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: / To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.”
“I think that the ideal space must contain elements of magic, serenity, sorcery and mystery.” – Luis Barragan
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The Links:
The Year Of Thinking Magically
Military Experiments: The Short Take
Early Arrivals? Haven’t gone far enough off shore yet…
What really happened in Trafalgar Square
How the Hippies Saved Physics
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Sorcery In Modern Times

“Sorcery, n. The ancient prototype and forerunner of political influence. It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was punished by torture and death. Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to compel a confession. After enduring a few gentle agonies the suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively asked his tormentors if it were not possible to be a sorcerer without knowing it.” – Ambrose Bierce

It seems that we live in a time of deep, and dark sorcery. The unprecedented assault upon the collective psyche over the last century via media in any other time would have constituted ‘a magical attack’ in times past. This assault has gone on unparalleled for as long as it has means that something deeper and perhaps sinister has developed from the initial casting of spells. As in any magickal venture, one must be ready for ‘blowback’ if the spell has been cast perhaps incorrectly.

(Due to the rules being changed during ‘The Reformation’, using terms like sorcery, magick, spells, were cast aside for say; science, theory, practice… 80) Let’s be straight about this, it is all a matter of will…)

With first ‘The Press’, then cinema, radio then television, and now the internet. Perhaps the best example acknowledged of how this works would be “The Nazi Era” in Germany. With the guidance of Goebbels, a campaign was instigated to win the hearts and minds of the populace. Using his own words, we can easily define the spell work:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
(see also: The Will and The Way)

Before we pat ourselves on the back, remember that Goebbels techniques were not of his sole development, but in large part refinements of Madison Avenue’s marriage to Psychiatric Theory in the 1920′s. It is that knowledge that should give us pause, and make us wonder, at least in part where these events 80-70 years in the past have resonance with current events.

How The Spell Is Cast:
Assertion
Bandwagon
Card stacking
Glittering Generalities
Lesser of Two Evils
Pinpointing the Enemy
Plain Folks
Simplification (Stereotyping)
Testimonials
Transfer
(Source) Originally compiled by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1938

Now these techniques have been used in countless ways, from selling you shoes, vitamins, cars to shaping political discourse among other things. Watching the events of the last several years, one has to admire the use of the dark arts in the arena of public opinion. Faux (fox) News has been brilliant in its overt manipulation of message for the Republican Party. Nothing is ever neutral in their approach, everything is laid out just so. No wonder the uneducated mind is easily snared in the deceptions. Remember, most people are taught “What To Think, Not How To Think”… logic, once taught in public and private schools has not raised it’s hoary head in perhaps forty years. Civics, and the teaching of social responsibility went the way of music and the arts.

If one wants to indeed cast a spell, then the ignorant or semi educated are perhaps best to be practiced upon. The less educated one is in logic, rhetoric, and the more one is steered by fear and the emotional drives in decisions etc, the easier one is stampeded in the directions that the masters want. There are several levels to be aware of at all times when dealing with any form of media, and indeed in conversation, as conversations and our inner thoughts are the targets of the manipulators. Think of it as a form of mental colonization. If your unformed thoughts, opinions, desires can be supplanted by the memes of a society based in dominating the populace, then you can be tapped and tapped again until you take on certain thoughts and patterns of thoughts. Eventually, a person will not be able to parse their genuine thoughts apart from the programming.

With all of the overload of media and input, keeping ones balance and finding your genuine thoughts are perhaps one of the great modern task. Watch what your reactions are. Are they really yours, or have they been implanted?

Cheers,
Gwyllm
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The Golden Age (L’âge d’or) (1930)

Η ΧΡΥΣΗ ΕΠΟΧΗ – The Golden Age (L'âge d'or)… by myfilm-gr
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(William Waterhouse – Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses)

Circe’s Power

I never turned anyone into a pig.
Some people are pigs; I make them
Look like pigs.

I’m sick of your world
That lets the outside disguise the inside. Your men weren’t bad men;
Undisciplined life
Did that to them. As pigs,

Under the care of
Me and my ladies, they
Sweetened right up.

Then I reversed the spell, showing you my goodness
As well as my power. I saw

We could be happy here,
As men and women are
When their needs are simple. In the same breath,

I foresaw your departure,
Your men with my help braving
The crying and pounding sea. You think

A few tears upset me? My friend,
Every sorceress is
A pragmatist at heart; nobody sees essence who can’t
Face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you

I could hold you prisoner.

– Louise Gluck –
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Nouvelle Vague – ” Fade To Grey “

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Sorcery -Hakim Bey

(William Waterhouse – The Magic Circle)

This essay has been used before on Turfing, but with the current subject matter a little repetition of source material is permitted. 80) I recently read through the TAZ writings again, and much of it still holds up, as long as you skirt the obvious comments about then current events etc. Some of it does not read so well, but still all in all there are gems to be found. – Gwyllm

THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO PLAY. Those who refuse out of dry spiritual greed & choose pure contemplation forfeit their humanity–those who refuse out of dull anguish, those who hesitate, lose their chance at divinity–those who mold themselves blind masks of Ideas & thrash around seeking some proof of their own solidity end by seeing out of dead men’s eyes.
Sorcery: the systematic cultivation of enhanced consciousness or non-ordinary awareness & its deployment in the world of deeds & objects to bring about desired results.

The incremental openings of perception gradually banish the false selves, our cacophonous ghosts–the “black magic” of envy & vendetta backfires because Desire cannot be forced. Where our knowledge of beauty harmonizes with the ludus naturae, sorcery begins.

No, not spoon-bending or horoscopy, not the Golden Dawn or make-believe shamanism, astral projection or the Satanic Mass–if it’s mumbo jumbo you want go for the real stuff, banking, politics, social science–not that weak blavatskian crap.

Sorcery works at creating around itself a psychic/physical space or openings into a space of untrammeled expression– the metamorphosis of quotidian place into angelic sphere. This involves the manipulation of symbols (which are also things) & of people (who are also symbolic)–the archetypes supply a vocabulary for this process & therefore are treated as if they were both real & unreal, like words. Imaginal Yoga.

The sorcerer is a Simple Realist: the world is real–but then so must consciousness be real since its effects are so tangible. The dullard finds even wine tasteless but the sorcerer can be intoxicated by the mere sight of water. Quality of perception defines the world of intoxication–but to sustain it & expand it to include others demands activity of a certain kind–sorcery. Sorcery breaks no law of nature because there is no Natural Law, only the spontaneity of natura naturans, the tao. Sorcery violates laws which seek to chain this flow– priests, kings, hierophants, mystics, scientists & shopkeepers all brand the sorcerer enemy for threatening the power of their charade, the tensile strength of their illusory web.

A poem can act as a spell & vice versa–but sorcery refuses to be a metaphor for mere literature–it insists that symbols must cause events as well as private epiphanies. It is not a critique but a re-making. It rejects all eschatology & metaphysics of removal, all bleary nostalgia & strident futurismo, in favor of a paroxysm or seizure of presence.

Incense & crystal, dagger & sword, wand, robes, rum, cigars, candles, herbs like dried dreams–the virgin boy staring into a bowl of ink–wine & ganja, meat, yantras & gestures– rituals of pleasure, the garden of houris & sakis–the sorcerer climbs these snakes & ladders to a moment which is fully saturated with its own color, where mountains are mountains & trees are trees, where the body becomes all time, the beloved all space.

The tactics of ontological anarchism are rooted in this secret Art–the goals of ontological anarchism appear in its flowering. Chaos hexes its enemies & rewards its devotees…this strange yellowing pamphlet, pseudonymous & dust-stained, reveals all…send away for one split second of eternity.

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(Dosso Dossi – Circe)

Poetic Summonings…

“The true secret of natural goodness lies in the recognition of the contending rights of the Pairs of Opposites; there is no such antimony as between Good and Evil, but only balance between two extremes, each of which is evil when carried to excess, both of which give rise to evil if insufficient for equipoise.” – Dion Fortune

Open Sea

When my doing is over
Find me on the open sea…
Letting my being expand

Letting my mind sleep…
I’ll be in every drop of water
feeding off the sun…
– Lanxin Curto
—-

PRAYER

Sink down, sink down, sink deeper and more deep
Into eternal and primordial sleep.
Sink down, be still, forget and draw apart,
Into her inner earth’s most secret heart.

Drink the waters of Persephone,
The Secret well beside the Sacred Tree,
Waters of Life and Strength and Inner Light,
Eternal Joy born from the deeps of night.

Then rise made strong, with life and hope renewed,
Reborn from darkness and from solitude,
Blessed with the Blessings of Persephone,
The secret strength of Rhea Binah Ge.
– Dion Fortune
—

Love And Black Magic

To the woods, to the woods is the wizard gone;
In his grotto the maiden sits alone.
She gazes up with a weary smile
At the rafter-hanging crocodile,
The slowly swinging crocodile.
Scorn has she of her master’s gear,
Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere,
Phial, philtre—“Fiddlededee
For all such trumpery trash!” quo’ she.
“A soldier is the lad for me;
Hey and hither, my lad!

“Oh, here have I ever lain forlorn:
My father died ere I was born,
Mother was by a wizard wed,
And oft I wish I had died instead—
Often I wish I were long time dead.
But, delving deep in my master’s lore,
I have won of magic power such store
I can turn a skull—oh, fiddlededee
For all this curious craft!” quo’ she.
“A soldier is the lad for me;
Hey and hither, my lad!

“To bring my brave boy unto my arms,
What need have I of magic charms—
‘Abracadabra!’ and ‘Prestopuff’?
I have but to wish, and that is enough.
The charms are vain, one wish is enough.
My master pledged my hand to a wizard;
Transformed would I be to toad or lizard
If e’er he guessed—but fiddlededee
For a black-browed sorcerer, now,” quo’ she.
“Let Cupid smile and the fiend must flee;
Hey and hither, my lad.”
-Robert Graves
—
Invocation To Hecate

O Triple Form of Darkness
Sombre splendor!
Thou Moon unseen of men
Thou Crowned demon of the crownless dead.
O breasts of blood, too bitter and too tender
Unseen of gentle spring.
Let me the offering
Bring to Thine Shrine’s sepulcheral glittering.
I slay the swarth beast, I bestow the blood
Sown in the dusk and gathered in the gloom
Under the waning moon.
At midnight hardly lightenig the East:
And the black lamb from the black ewe’s womb
I bring and stir the slow infernal tune
Fit for Thy Chosen Priest.

Here…where the band of Ocean breaks the road
Black trodden, deeply stooping to the abyss.
I shall salute Thee with a Nameless Kiss
Pronounced toward the uttermost abode of Thy supreme Desire.
I shall illume the fire
Whence the wild stryges shall illume the lyre
Whence thy lemures shall gather and spring round
Girding me in a sad funereal ground
With faces turned back…
My face averted.
I shall consumate this awful act of worship
O renowned
Fear upon earth, and Fear in Hell,
And Black Fear in the Sky beyond fate

I hear the whining of Thy wolves! I hear
The howling of the hounds about Thy Form,
Who comest in the terror of Thy storm
And night falls faster, ere Thine eyes appear
Glittering through the mist,
O face of Woman unkissed
Save by the dead whose love is taken ere they wist!
Thee, Thee I call! O Dire One! O divine!
I, the sole mortal seek Thy deadly shrine;
Pour the dark stream of blood
A sleepy and a reluctant river
Even as Thou drawest with Thine Eyes on mine, To me
Across the sense bewildering flood
That holds my soul forever!
– Aleister Crowley (Edward Alexander Crowley)
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Nouvelle Vague – Love Will Tear Us Apart

(Neon Bliss by wild-rain-73.deviantart.com)

I shall tell you:
I am seeing and seeing strangers
Who are not strangers,
For there is something in their eyes,
And about their faces
That whispers to me
(But so low
That I can never quite hear)
Of the lost half of myself
Which I have been seeking since the beginning of earth;
And I could follow them to the end of the world,
Would they but lean nearer, nearer,
And tell me….
– Strangers
by: Mark Turbyfill (1896-1991)
—-

If There Is Re-Incarnation I Would Like To Request ‘Here’….

I love this place, with all it’s weirdness, strange inhabitants, and problems.

Saturday:
It’s beautiful here. The last few months have been a real ride on the ferris wheel. With all the changes going on in the world, and all the changes coming it promises to be a remarkable period for the dwellers on Momma Earth. I admit, I wake up in the morning and look at the news on the inter-tubes with equal parts anticipation and dread for what has occurred since I went to sleep. Today I woke up to London seeing Anti-Cuts Demonstrators in the hundreds of thousands gathering to make their voices heard. When social services are cut, and corporations are given tax cuts, and the tax burden falls on the lower classes what do the Gov’ts expect, that people are just going roll over?

Sunday:
Up early, Rowan’s friend from grade school Jake is here, they are playing a game at the table… music low in the living room with incense burning. Mary is getting herself ready for the day, which will consist of us getting stuff together for the back garden, the store etc. In the everyday chores, there is this flow that I enjoy. The time and concentration I observe that she puts into all of these things and events! I know we share in this character, mine are just a bit different. I am preparing canvasses and working on the magazine hopefully for the last time with this edition. Such a haul, but it looks very good. I have been printing giclées of my art for a customer over the last few days of the week. I can’t describe how much pleasure that gives me. I am so excited about the new projects.

I feel at times that I may be arriving where I should be. Instead of looking to distant horizon lines, I find them now within me, where perhaps they always were. If I extrapolate on that, perhaps all of the challenges we face really are interior?

Is anything even outside of our consciousness? Where do we start, and where do we end? What was our original face?

Today is my friend Terry’s Birthday! Have a good one Terry!

Stomacher – Untitled/Dark Divider from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

Blessings,
G
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On The Menu:
Marianne Faithfull – Sally Free And Easy
For Owsley…
Vision: Revolution Is “Unpredictable and As Beautiful as Spring”
Anna Akhmatova: A Revolutionaries Poems
Anna Akhmatova Bio Link
Marianne Faithfull – Come And Stay With Me
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Went through a Marianne Faithfull mood earlier this past week. Sure love her interpretations.

Marianne Faithfull – Sally Free And Easy

Sally, free and easy,
That should be her name.
Sally, free and easy,
That should be her name.
Took a sailor’s lovin’
For a nursery game.
Oh, the heart she gave him
Was not made of stone.
Oh, the heart she gave him
Was not made of stone.
It was sweet and hollow
Like a honeycomb.
Think I’ll wait till morning,
See the ensign down.

Think I’ll wait till sunrise,
See the ensign down.
See my coffin coming,
To my burial groun’.
Sally, free and easy,
That should be her name.
Sally, free and easy,
That should be her name.
Took a sailor’s lovin’,
For a nursery game.
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For Owsley…

Dear Owsley,

Thanks for the part you played in the intervention that changed my life. I was able to communicate with you a bit in the late 90′s and early 00′s via email, I would of been honored to have met you in person, but that didn’t happen. There was a lot I wanted to say, and maybe you got that a lot from people you met over the years. You produced pure magick it seemed.

I think you played a pivotal part in so many lives, and so many situations that your legacy of action tied to art, and attention will bear fruit for generations to come. Not to fill your head, but really. I hope your return home was a good one. Hope to catch up with you another time….

G
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Thanks To Rob Matthews for turning me onto this!

Vision: Revolution Is “Unpredictable and As Beautiful as Spring”
By Rebecca Solnit, Tomdispatch.com

Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.

Revolution is a phase, a mood, like spring, and just as spring has its buds and showers, so revolution has its ebullience, its bravery, its hope, and its solidarity. Some of these things pass. The women of Cairo do not move as freely in public as they did during those few precious weeks when the old rules were suspended and everything was different. But the old Egypt is gone and Egyptians’ sense of themselves — and our sense of them — is forever changed.

No revolution vanishes without effect. The Prague Spring of 1968 was brutally crushed, but 21 years later when a second wave of revolution liberated Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek, who had been the reformist Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, returned to give heart to the people from a balcony overlooking Wenceslas Square: “The government is telling us that the street is not the place for things to be solved, but I say the street was and is the place. The voice of the street must be heard.”

The voice of the street has been a bugle cry this year. You heard it. Everyone did, but the rulers who thought their power was the only power that mattered, heard it last and with dismay. Many of them are nervous now, releasing political prisoners, lowering the price of food, and otherwise trying to tamp down uprisings.

There were three kinds of surprise about this year’s unfinished revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and the rumblings elsewhere that have frightened the mighty from Saudi Arabia to China, Algeria to Bahrain. The West was surprised that the Arab world, which we have regularly been told is medieval, hierarchical, and undemocratic, was full of young men and women using their cell phones, their Internet access, and their bodies in streets and squares to foment change and temporarily live a miracle of direct democracy and people power. And then there is the surprise that the seemingly unshakeable regimes of the strongmen were shaken into pieces.

And finally, there is always the surprise of: Why now? Why did the crowd decide to storm the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and not any other day? The bread famine going on in France that year and the rising cost of food had something to do with it, as hunger and poverty does with many of the Middle Eastern uprisings today, but part of the explanation remains mysterious. Why this day and not a month earlier or a decade later? Or never instead of now?

Oscar Wilde once remarked, “To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.” This profound uncertainty has been the grounds for my own hope.

Hindsight is 20/20, they say, and you can tell stories where it all makes sense. A young Tunisian college graduate, Mohammed Bouazizi, who could find no better work than selling produce from a cart on the street, was so upset by his treatment at the hands of a policewoman that he set himself afire on December 17, 2010. His death two weeks later became the match that lit the country afire — but why that death? Or why the death of Khaled Said, an Egyptian youth who exposed police corruption and was beaten to death for it? He got a Facebook page that said “We are all Khaled Said,” and his death, too, was a factor in the uprisings to come.

But when exactly do the abuses that have been tolerated for so long become intolerable? When does the fear evaporate and the rage generate action that produces joy? After all, Tunisia and Egypt were not short on intolerable situations and tragedies before Bouazizi’s self-immolation and Said’s murder.

Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death at an intersection in Saigon on June 11, 1963, to protest the treatment of Buddhists by the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam. His stoic composure while in flames was widely seen and may have helped produce a military coup against the regime six months later — a change, but not necessarily a liberation. In between that year and this one, many people have fasted, prayed, protested, gone to prison, and died to call attention to cruel regimes, with little or no measurable consequence.

Guns and Butterflies

The boiling point of water is straightforward, but the boiling point of societies is mysterious. Bouazizi’s death became a catalyst, and at his funeral the 5,000 mourners chanted, “Farewell, Mohammed, we will avenge you. We weep for you today, we will make those who caused your death weep.”

But his was not the first Tunisian gesture of denunciation. An even younger man, the rap artist who calls himself El General, uploaded a song about the horror of poverty and injustice in the country and, as the Guardian put it, “within hours, the song had lit up the bleak and fearful horizon like an incendiary bomb.” Or a new dawn. The artist was arrested and interrogated for three very long days, and then released thanks to widespread protest. And surely before him we could find another milestone. And another young man being subjected to inhuman conditions. And behind the uprising in Egypt are a panoply of union and human rights organizers as well as charismatic individuals.

This has been a great year for the power of the powerless and for the courage and determination of the young. A short, fair-haired, mild man even younger than Bouazizi has been held under extreme conditions in solitary confinement in a Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia, for the last several months. He is charged with giving hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. documents to WikiLeaks and so unveiling some of the more compromised and unsavory operations of the American military and U.S. diplomacy. Bradley Manning was a 22-year-old soldier stationed in Iraq when he was arrested last spring. The acts he’s charged with have changed the global political landscape and fed the outrage in the Middle East.

As Foreign Policy put it in a headline, “In one fell swoop, the candor of the cables released by WikiLeaks did more for Arab democracy than decades of backstage U.S. diplomacy.” The cables suggested, among other things, that the U.S. was not going to back Tunisian dictator Ben Ali to the bitter end, and that the regime’s corruption was common knowledge.

Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, a 1958 comic book about the Civil Rights struggle in the American South and the power of nonviolence was translated and distributed by the American Islamic Council in the Arab world in 2008 and has been credited with influencing the insurgencies of 2011. So the American Islamic Council played a role, too — a role definitely not being investigated by anti-Muslim Congressman Peter King in his hearings on the “radicalization of Muslims in America.” Behind King are the lessons he, in turn, learned from Mohandas Gandhi, whose movement liberated India from colonial rule 66 years ago, and so the story comes back to the east.

Causes are Russian dolls. You can keep opening each one up and find another one behind it. WikiLeaks and Facebook and Twitter and the new media helped in 2011, but new media had been around for years. Asmaa Mahfouz was a young Egyptian woman who had served time in prison for using the Internet to organize a protest on April 6, 2008, to support striking workers. With astonishing courage, she posted a video of herself on Facebook on January 18, 2011, in which she looked into the camera and said, with a voice of intense conviction:

“Four Egyptians have set themselves on fire to protest humiliation and hunger and poverty and degradation they had to live with for 30 years. Four Egyptians have set themselves on fire thinking maybe we can have a revolution like Tunisia, maybe we can have freedom, justice, honor, and human dignity. Today, one of these four has died, and I saw people commenting and saying, ‘May God forgive him. He committed a sin and killed himself for nothing.’ People, have some shame.”

She described an earlier demonstration at which few had shown up: “I posted that I, a girl, am going down to Tahrir Square, and I will stand alone. And I’ll hold up a banner. Perhaps people will show some honor. No one came except three guys — three guys and three armored cars of riot police. And tens of hired thugs and officers came to terrorize us.”

Mahfouz called for the gathering in Tahrir Square on January 25th that became the Egyptian revolution. The second time around she didn’t stand alone. Eighty-five thousand Egyptians pledged to attend, and soon enough, millions stood with her.

The revolution was called by a young woman with nothing more than a Facebook account and passionate conviction. They were enough. Often, revolution has had such modest starts. On October 5, 1789, a girl took a drum to the central markets of Paris. The storming of the Bastille a few months before had started, but hardly completed, a revolution. That drummer girl helped gather a mostly female crowd of thousands who marched to Versailles and seized the royal family. It was the end of the Bourbon monarchy.

Women often find great roles in revolution, simply because the rules fall apart and everyone has agency, anyone can act. As they did in Egypt, where liberty leading the masses was an earnest young woman in a black veil.

That the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can shape the weather in Texas is a summation of chaos theory that is now an oft-repeated cliché. But there are billions of butterflies on earth, all flapping their wings. Why does one gesture matter more than another? Why this Facebook post, this girl with a drum?

Even to try to answer this you’d have to say that the butterfly is born aloft by a particular breeze that was shaped by the flap of the wing of, say, a sparrow, and so behind causes are causes, behind small agents are other small agents, inspirations, and role models, as well as outrages to react against. The point is not that causation is unpredictable and erratic. The point is that butterflies and sparrows and young women in veils and an unknown 20-year-old rapping in Arabic and you yourself, if you wanted it, sometimes have tremendous power, enough to bring down a dictator, enough to change the world.

Other Selves, Other Lives

2011 has already been a remarkable year in which a particular kind of humanity appeared again and again in very different places, and we will see a great deal more of it in Japan before that catastrophe is over. Perhaps its first appearance was at the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson on January 8th, where the lone gunman was countered by several citizens who took remarkable action, none more so than Giffords’s new intern, 20-year-old Daniel Martinez, who later said, “It was probably not the best idea to run toward the gunshots. But people needed help.”

Martinez reached the congresswoman’s side and probably saved her life by administering first aid, while 61-year-old Patricia Maisch grabbed the magazine so the shooter couldn’t reload, and 74-year-old Bill Badger helped wrestle him to the ground, though he’d been grazed by a bullet. One elderly man died because he shielded his wife rather than protect himself.

Everything suddenly changed and those people rose to the occasion heroically not in the hours, days, or weeks a revolution gives, but within seconds. More sustained acts of bravery and solidarity would make the revolutions to come. People would risk their lives and die for their beliefs and for each other. And in killing them, regimes would lose their last shreds of legitimacy.

Violence always seems to me the worst form of tyranny. It deprives people of their rights, including the right to live. The rest of the year so far has been dominated by battles against the tyrannies that have sometimes cost lives and sometimes just ground down those lives into poverty and indignity, from Bahrain to Madison, Wisconsin.

Yes, to Madison. I have often wondered if the United States could catch fire the way other countries sometimes do. The public space and spirit of Argentina or Egypt often seem missing here, for what changes in revolution is largely spirit, emotion, belief — intangible things, as delicate as butterfly wings, but our world is made of such things. They matter. The governors govern by the consent of the governed. When they lose that consent, they resort to violence, which can stop some people directly, but aims to stop most of us through the power of fear.

And then sometimes a young man becomes fearless enough to post a song attacking the dictator who has ruled all his young life. Or people sign a declaration like Charter 77, the 1977 Czech document that was a milestone on the way to the revolutions of 1989, as well as a denunciation of the harassment of an underground rock band called the Plastic People of the Universe. Or a group of them found a labor union on the waterfront in Gdansk, Poland, in 1980, and the first cracks appear in the Soviet Empire.

Those who are not afraid are ungovernable, at least by fear, that favorite tool of the bygone era of George W. Bush. Jonathan Schell, with his usual beautiful insight, saw this when he wrote of the uprising in Tahrir Square:

“The murder of the 300 people, it may be, was the event that sealed Mubarak’s doom. When people are afraid, murders make them take flight. But when they have thrown off fear, murders have the opposite effect and make them bold. Instead of fear, they feel solidarity. Then they ‘stay’ — and advance. And there is no solidarity like solidarity with the dead. That is the stuff of which revolution is made.”

When a revolution is made, people suddenly find themselves in a changed state — of mind and of nation. The ordinary rules are suspended, and people become engaged with each other in new ways, and develop a new sense of power and possibility. People behave with generosity and altruism; they find they can govern themselves; and, in many ways, the government simply ceases to exist. A few days into the Egyptian revolution, Ben Wedeman, CNN’s senior correspondent in Cairo, was asked why things had calmed down in the Egyptian capital. He responded: “[T]hings have calmed down because there is no government here,” pointing out that security forces had simply disappeared from the streets.

This state often arises in disasters as well, when the government is overwhelmed, shut down, or irrelevant for people intent on survival and then on putting society back together. If it rarely lasts, in the process it does change individuals and societies, leaving a legacy. To my mind, the best government is one that most resembles this moment when civil society reigns in a spirit of hope, inclusiveness, and improvisational genius.

In Egypt, there were moments of violence when people pushed back against the government’s goons, and for a week it seemed like the news was filled with little but pictures of bloody heads. Still, no armies marched, no superior weaponry decided the fate of the country, nobody was pushed from power by armed might. People gathered in public and discovered themselves as the public, as civil society. They found that the repression and exploitation they had long tolerated was intolerable and that they could do something about it, even if that something was only gathering, standing together, insisting on their rights as the public, as the true nation that the government can never be.

It is remarkable how, in other countries, people will one day simply stop believing in the regime that had, until then, ruled them, as African-Americans did in the South here 50 years ago. Stopping believing means no longer regarding those who rule you as legitimate, and so no longer fearing them. Or respecting them. And then, miraculously, they begin to crumble.

In the Philippines in 1986, millions of people gathered in response to a call from Catholic-run Radio Veritas, the only station the dictatorship didn’t control or shut down.

Then the army defected and dictator Fernando Marcos was ousted from power after 21 years.

In Argentina in 2001, in the wake of a brutal economic collapse, such a sudden shift in consciousness toppled the neoliberal regime of Fernando de la Rúa and ushered in a revolutionary era of economic desperation, but also of brilliant, generous innovation. A shift in consciousness brought an outpouring of citizens into the streets of Buenos Aires, suddenly no longer afraid after the long nightmare of a military regime and its aftermath. In Iceland in early 2009, in the wake of a global economic meltdown of special fierceness on that small island nation, a once-docile population almost literally drummed out of power the ruling party that had managed the country into bankruptcy.

Can’t Happen Here?

In the United States, the communion between the governed and the governors and the public spaces in which to be reborn as a civil society resurgent often seem missing. This is a big country whose national capital is not much of a center and whose majority seems to live in places that are themselves decentered.

At its best, revolution is an urban phenomenon. Suburbia is counterrevolutionary by design. For revolution, you need to converge, to live in public, to become the public, and that’s a geographical as well as a political phenomenon. The history of revolution is the history of great public spaces: the Place de la Concorde during the French Revolution; the Ramblas in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War; Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 (a splendid rebellion that was crushed); the great surge that turned the divide of the Berlin Wall into a gathering place in that same year; the insurrectionary occupation of the Zocalo of Mexico City after corrupt presidential elections and of the space in Buenos Aires that gave the Dirty War’s most open opposition its name: Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, the Mothers of the Plaza of May.

It’s all very well to organize on Facebook and update on Twitter, but these are only preludes. You also need to rise up, to pour out into the streets. You need to be together in body, for only then are you truly the public with the full power that a public can possess. And then it needs to matter. The United States is good at trivializing and ignoring insurrections at home.

The authorities were shaken by the uprising in Seattle that shut down the World Trade Organization meeting on November 30, 1999, but the actual nonviolent resistance there was quickly fictionalized into a tale of a violent rabble. Novelist and then-New Yorker correspondent Mavis Gallant wrote in 1968:

“The difference between rebellion at Columbia [University] and rebellion at the Sorbonne is that life in Manhattan went on as before, while in Paris every section of society was set on fire, in the space of a few days. The collective hallucination was that life can change, quite suddenly and for the better. It still strikes me as a noble desire…”

Revolution is also the action of people pushed to the brink. Rather than fall over, they push back. When he decided to push public employees hard and strip them of their collective bargaining rights, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker took a gamble. In response, union members, public employees, and then the public of Wisconsin began to gather on February 11th. By February 15th, they had taken over the state’s capitol building as the revolution in Egypt was still at full boil. They are still gathering. Last weekend, the biggest demonstration in Madison’s history was held, led by a “tractorcade” of farmers. The Wisconsin firefighters have revolted too. And the librarians. And the broad response has given encouragement to citizens in other states fighting similar cutbacks on essential services and rights.

Republicans like to charge the rest of us with “class war” when we talk about economic injustice, and that’s supposed to be a smear one should try to wriggle out of. But what’s going on in Wisconsin is a class war, in which billionaire-backed Walker is serving the interests of corporations and the super-rich, and this time no one seems afraid of the epithet. Jokes and newspaper political cartoons, as well as essays and talks, remark on the reality of our anti-trickle-down economy, where wealth is being pumped uphill to the palaces at a frantic rate, and on the reality that we’re not poor or broke, just crazy in how we distribute our resources.

What’s scary about the situation is that it is a test case for whether the party best serving big corporations can strip the rest of us of our rights and return us to a state of poverty and powerlessness. If the people who gathered in Madison don’t win, the war will continue and we’ll all lose.

Oppression often works — for a while. And then it backfires. Sometimes immediately, sometimes after several decades. Walker has been nicknamed the Mubarak of the Midwest. Much of the insurrection and the rage in the Middle East isn’t just about tyranny; it’s about economic injustice, about young people who can’t find work, can’t afford to get married or leave their parents’ homes, can’t start their lives. This is increasingly the story for young Americans as well, and here it’s clearly a response to the misallocation of resources, not absolute scarcity. It could just be tragic, or it could get interesting when the young realize they are being shafted, and that life could be different. Even that it could change, quite suddenly, and for the better.

There was a splendid surliness in the wake of the economic collapse of 2008: rage at the executives who had managed the economy into the ground and went home with outsized bonuses, rage at the system, rage at the sheer gratuitousness of the suffering of those who were being foreclosed upon and laid off. In this country, economic inequality has reached a level not seen since before the stock market crash of 1929.

Hard times are in store for most people on Earth, and those may be times of boldness. Or not. The butterflies are out there, but when their flight stirs the winds of insurrection no one knows beforehand.

So remember to expect the unexpected, but not just to wait for it. Sometimes you have to become the unexpected, as the young heroes and heroines of 2011 have. I am sure they themselves are as surprised as anyone. Since she very nearly had the first word, let Asmaa Mahfouz have the last word: “As long as you say there is no hope, then there will be no hope, but if you go down and take a stance, then there will be hope.”

Rebecca Solnit is the author of ‘Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities’.
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Anna Akhmatova: A Revolutionaries Poems

The Call

(From the “Middle Night Poems”)
1963
Which a sonata will you be
Hidden by me in – with a care?
How uneasily, for me
Will call you, utterly unfair
Because so close and so good
You were for me, tho’ for a moment…
Your dream – dissolving in a solvent,
Where death – just levy to the mute.
—
Four Seasons Of the Year

1959
I shall return today right there,
Where I had been at spring.
I’m neither sorry, nor unfair –
I only darkness bring.
It’s very deep, it’s like velvet,
It’s dearest to us
Like a dry leaf from a tree fled,
Like a wind’s whistle, that’s lone spread
Over the smooth of ice.
—

Requiem
1935-1940
Not under foreign skies protection
Or saving wings of alien birth –
I was then there – with whole my nation –
There, where my nation, alas! was.
1961

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE
In the awful days of the Yezhovschina I passed seventeen months in the outer waiting line of the prison visitors in Leningrad. Once, somebody ‘identified’ me there. Then a woman, standing behind me in the line, which, of course, never heard my name, waked up from the torpor, typical for us all there, and asked me, whispering into my ear (all spoke only in a whisper there):
“And can you describe this?”
And I answered:
“Yes, I can.”
Then the weak similarity of a smile glided over that, what had once been her face.
April 1, 1957; Leningrad

DEDICATION
The high crags decline before this woe,
The great river does not flow ahead,
But they’re strong – the locks of a jail, stone,
And behind them – the cells, dark and low,
And the deadly pine is spread.
For some one, somewhere, a fresh wind blows,
For some one, somewhere, wakes up a dawn –
We don’t know, we’re the same here always,
We just hear the key’s squalls, morose,
And the sentry’s heavy step alone;
Got up early, as for Mass by Easter,
Walked the empty capital along
To create the half-dead peoples’ throng.
The sun downed, the Neva got mister,
But our hope sang afar its song.
There’s a sentence… In a trice tears flow…
Now separated, cut from us,
As if they’d pulled out her heart and thrown
Or pushed down her on a street stone –
But she goes… Reels… Alone at once.
Where are now friends unwilling those,
Those friends of my two years, brute?
What they see in the Siberian snows,
In a circle of the moon, exposed?
To them I send my farewell salute.

PROLOGUE
In this time, just a dead could half-manage
A weak smile – with the peaceful state glad.
And, like some heavy, needless appendage,
Mid its prisons swung gray Leningrad.
And, when mad from the tortures’ succession,
Marched the army of those, who’d been doomed,
Sang the engines the last separation
With their whistles through smoking gloom,
And the deathly stars hanged our heads over
And our Russia writhed under the boots –
With the blood of the guiltless full-covered –
And the wheels on Black Maries’ black routes.

1
You were taken away at dawn’s mildness.
I convoyed you, as my dead-born child,
Children cried in the room’s half-grey darkness,
And the lamp by the icon lost light.
On your lips dwells the icon kiss’s cold
On your brow – the cold sweet … Don’t forget!
Like a wife of the rebel of old
On the Red Square, I’ll wail without end.

2
The quiet Don bears quiet flood,
The crescent enters in a hut.

He enters with a cap on head,
He sees a woman like a shade.

This woman’s absolutely ill,
This woman’s absolutely single.

Her man is dead, son – in a jail,
Oh, pray for me – a poor female!

3
No, ‘tis not I, ‘tis someone’s in a suffer –
I was ne’er able to endure such pain.
Let all, that was, be with a black cloth muffled,
And let the lanterns be got out … and reign
just Night.

4
You should have seen, girl with some mocking manner,
Of all your friends the most beloved pet,
The whole Tsar Village’s a sinner, gayest ever –
What should be later to your years sent.
How, with a parcel, by The Crosses, here,
You stand in line with the ‘Three Hundredth’ brand
And, with your hot from bitterness a tear,
Burn through the ice of the New Year, dread.
The prison’s poplar’s bowing with its brow,
No sound’s heard – But how many, there,
The guiltless ones are loosing their lives now…

5
I’ve cried for seventeen long months,
I’ve called you for your home,
I fell at hangmen’ feet – not once,
My womb and hell you’re from.
All has been mixed up for all times,
And now I can’t define
Who is a beast or man, at last,
And when they’ll kill my son.
There’re left just flowers under dust,
The censer’s squall, the traces, cast
Into the empty mar…
And looks strait into my red eyes
And threads with death, that’s coming fast,
The immense blazing star.

6
The light weeks fly faster here,
What has happened I don’t know,
How, into your prison, stone,
Did white nights look, my son, dear?
How do they stare at you, else,
With their hot eye of a falcon,
Speak of the high cross, you hang on,
Of the slow coming death?

7
THE SENTENCE

The word, like a heavy stone,
Fell on my still living breast.
I was ready. I didn’t moan.
I will try to do my best.

I have much to do my own:
To forget this endless pain,
Force this soul to be stone,
Force this flesh to live again.

Just if not … The rustle of summer
Feasts behind my window sell.
Long before I’ve seen in slumber
This clear day and empty cell.

8
TO DEATH

You’ll come in any case – why not right now, therefore?
I wait for you – my strain is highest.
I have doused the light and left opened the door
For you, so simple and so wondrous.
Please, just take any sight, which you prefer to have:
Thrust in – in the gun shells’ disguises,
Or crawl in with a knife, as an experienced knave,
Or poison me with smoking typhus,
Or quote the fairy tale, grown in the mind of yours
And known to each man to sickness,
In which I’d see, at last, the blue of the hats’ tops,
And the house-manager, ‘still fearless’.
It’s all the same to me. The cold Yenisei lies
In the dense mist, the Northern Star – in brightness,
And a blue shine of the beloved eyes
Is covered by the last fear-darkness.

9
Already madness, with its wing,
Covers a half of my heart, restless,
Gives me the flaming wine to drink
And draws into the vale of blackness.

I understand that just to it
My victory has to be given,
Hearing the ravings of my fit,
Now fitting to the stranger’s living.

And nothing of my own past
It’ll let me take with self from here
(No matter in what pleas I thrust
Or how often they appear):

Not awful eyes of my dear son –
The endless suffering and patience –
Not that black day when thunder gunned,
Not that jail’s hour of visitation,

Not that sweet coolness of his hands,
Not that lime’s shade in agitation,
Not that light sound from distant lands –
Words of the final consolations.

10
CRUCIFIXION
Don’t weep for me, Mother,
seeing me in a grave.

I
The angels’ choir sang fame for the great hour,
And skies were melted in the fire’s rave.
He said to God, “Why did you left me, Father?”
And to his Mother, “Don’t weep o’er my grave…”

II
Magdalena writhed and sobbed in torments,
The best pupil turned into a stone,
But none dared – even for a moment –
To sight Mother, silent and alone.

EPILOGUE

I
I’ve known how, at once, shrink back the faces,
How fear peeps up from under the eyelids,
How suffering creates the scriptural pages
On the pale cheeks its cruel reigning midst,
How the shining raven or fair ringlet
At once is covered by the silver dust,
And a smile slackens on the lips, obedient,
And deathly fear in the dry snicker rustles.
And not just for myself I pray to Lord,
But for them all, who stood in that line, hardest,
In a summer heat and in a winter cold,
Under the wall, so red and so sightless.

II
Again a memorial hour is near,
I can now see you and feel you and hear:

And her, who’d been led to the air in a fit,
And her – who no more touches earth with her feet.

And her – having tossed with her beautiful head –
She says, “I come here as to my homestead.”

I wish all of them with their names to be called;
But how can I do that? I have not the roll.

The wide common cover I’ve wov’n for their lot –
>From many a word, that from them I have caught.

Those words I’ll remember as long as I live,
I’d not forget them in a new awe or grief.

And if will be stopped my long-suffering mouth –
Through which always shout our people’s a mass –

Let them pray for me, like for them I had prayed,
Before my remembrance day, quiet and sad.

And if once, whenever in my native land,
They’d think of the raising up my monument,

I give my permission for such good a feast,
But with one condition – they have to place it

Not near the sea, where I once have been born –
All my warm connections with it had been torn,

Not in the tsar’s garden near that tree-stump, blessed,
Where I am looked for by the doleful shade,

But here, where three hundred long hours I stood for
And where was not opened for me the hard door.

Since e’en in the blessed death, I shouldn’t forget
The deafening roar of Black Maries’ black band,

I shouldn’t forget how flapped that hateful door,
And wailed the old woman, like beast, it before.

And let from the bronze and unmoving eyelids,
Like some melting snow flow down the tears,

And let a jail dove coo in somewhat afar
And let the mute ships sail along the Neva.
—

To Boris Pasternak
1960

2.
The echo-bird will give me answer – B.P.

It ceased – the voice, inimitable here,
The peer of groves left forever us,
He changed himself into eternal ear…
Into the rain, of that sang more than once.

And all the flowers, that grow under heavens,
Began to flourish – to meet the going death…
But suddenly it got the silent one and saddened –
The planet, bearing the humble name, the Earth.
—

1.

(From the “In the Fortieth Year”)
1940

When they are burying the century,
The mournful psalm doesn’t arise,
She will be ornamented sadly
By nettle’s and thistle’s green mass.
And just undertakers are hurried,
Because their dark business doesn’t wait,
And it is so quiet, so quiet,
That clearly heard is the time’s tread.
And she to the surface comes farther,
A corpse – in a river of flood…
A son won’t cognize his dead mother,
A grandson will take off his sight,
And all heads are drooped in deep sadness,
A pendulum-moon goes by.

Like that, over once perished Paris,
Such silence hangs now in sky.

A Nice Bio…
__________________________

Marianne Faithfull: Can And Stay With Me..

“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself”

My mind is dazzled —
Did you come to visit me?
Did I go to you?
Was our night a dream? Reality?
Was I sleeping? Or was I awake?
– Ise Shrine Priestess

Everything is coming up Blossoms…
A short entry, film, quotes, poetry…
Enjoy!
Gwyllm
__________________________
On The Menu:
2 Films by Kenneth Anger
Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes
Poetry Of Dogen…
On The Arrival Of Spring: Poetry and Prose
______________________________

Nobody in America, in the modern generation, has read their mythology or legends. – Kenneth Anger

One of the great ones….

A note on Kenneth Anger:

If you are not familiar with the works of Kenneth, perhaps you should acquaint yourself with his work. Born in Santa Monica in 1927… (From IMDB: Kenneth Anger grew up in Hollywood and started out as a child actor, but his interest in filmmaking was evident at an early age: he made his first film, “Who’s Been Rocking My Dreamboat?”, at age 9.

Anger developed into one of the pioneers of the American underground film movement. His gritty, violent, often homosexual-themed films were too strong for American audiences of the time, and many of his productions were filmed in Europe, mainly France. However, Anger is best known for authoring the landmark “Hollywood Babylon” books, which detailed a far more seamier side of the Hollywood film industry than most people were aware of.)

He is/was also a student of Aleister Crowley, hung out and scared the pants off of The Rolling Stones (The famous Gold Door incident, ask me about it sometimes) influenced Jimmy Page among others, and generally torn up the horizon line with his lust for life.

I first became aware of him when a teen-ager, and frankly most of it went over my head. I do love revisiting his works, and I hope you enjoy the snippets I have included in this post.

G

“The only person I had any trouble with was Gloria Swanson, and her objections were completely off the wall. She didn’t have any legal leg to stand on. And she took me to court, saying that I libeled her. There’s absolutely no libel in the chapter on her. She was the mistress of Joe Kennedy.”
_________________________

Kenneth Anger Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome 1954 with Anais Nin

——

Lucifer Rising (1973)

_____________________

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions”

“There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult”

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.

Who has not sat before his own heart’s curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart

The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.

_____________________

Poetry Of Dogen…

“Mind itself is buddha” — difficult to practice, but easy to explain;
“No mind, no buddha” — difficult to explain, but easy to practice.
—

Treading along in this dreamlike, illusory realm,
Without looking for the traces I may have left;
A cuckoo’s song beckons me to return home;
Hearing this, I tilt my head to see
Who has told me to turn back;
But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.
—

The moon reflected
In a mind clear
As still water:
Even the waves, breaking,
Are reflecting its light.
—

Drifting pitifully in the whirlwind of birth and death,
As if wandering in a dream,
In the midst of illusion I awaken to the true path;
There is one more matter I must not neglect,
But I need not bother now,
As I listen to the sound of the evening rain
Falling on the roof of my temple retreat
In the deep grass of Fukakusa.
—

Joyful in this mountain retreat yet still feeling melancholy,
Studying the Lotus Sutra every day,
Practicing zazen singlemindedly;
What do love and hate matter
When I’m here alone,
Listening to the sound of the rain late in this autumn evening.
—

In the stream,
Rushing past
To the dusty world,
My fleeting form
Casts no reflection.
—
___________________

On The Arrival Of Spring: Poetry and Prose

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.
~Rainer Maria Rilke

The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven –
All’s right with the world!
~Robert Browning

Yesterday the twig was brown and bare;
To-day the glint of green is there;
Tomorrow will be leaflets spare;
I know no thing so wondrous fair,
No miracle so strangely rare.
I wonder what will next be there!
~L.H. Bailey

And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Sensitive Plant”

“Each leaf,
each blade of grass
vies for attention.
Even weeds
carry tiny blossoms
to astonish us.”
– Marianne Poloskey, Sunday in Spring

“A light exists in Spring
Not present in the year
at any other period
When March is scarcely here.”
– Emily Dickinson

The seasons are what a symphony ought to be: four perfect movements in harmony with each other. ~Arthur Rubenstein

“A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.” — Emily Dickinson

“Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.”
– Robert Frost, A Prayer in Spring
(Robert Frost was the first modern poet that I read, before him, the divine Homer and then Virgil)

Dear Friends,

It has been over due this one. I am just happy to launch it, on this first full day after the Equinox. Everything is waxing, the buds, the flowers, the leaves, the allergies… Portland’s trees are bursting with beauty, the lawns, tired from winter are just waking up. The squirrels launch fevered assaults on the bird feeders when they are not chasing each other, and the crows are squabbling over the best trees for nesting in the neighborhood.

I love the return of life to the land, seeing people working their bit of earth, and to see the wildlife and bloom burst forth together. It is a good time.

This edition has some new music from “Therapies Son”, some Robert Anton Wilson (possibly a repeat, but what the heck), Ralph Waldo Emerson doing the poetic, and various images, quotes and links.

I hope you will enjoy it!

Blessings,
Gwyllm
_________________

On The Menu:
The Links
Albert Camus Quotes
Therapies Son – Touching Down
Dope and Divinity/A Lesson In Karma
Poetry: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Therapies Son – Rose Red Rose

_____________________
The Links:
Pee Wee In Tripoli
God’s Partner?
Researchers consider ancestry of recent fossil finds
US government denies entry visa to Afghan women’s rights activist and author Malalai Joya
______________________

Albert Camus Quotes:

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
______________________

Therapies Son – Touching Down

_____________________

Dope and Divinity

Robert Anton Wilson
The cumulative evidence in such books as Dr. Andrija Puharich’s The Sacred Mushroom, John Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, R. Gordon Wasson’s Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, Robert Graves’ revised fourth edition of The White Goddess, Professor Peter Furst’s Flesh of the Gods, Dr. Weston LaBarre’s The Peyote Cult and Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion, Margaret Murray’s The Witch Cult of Western Europe, etc., leaves little doubt that the beginnings of religion (awareness of, or at least belief in, Higher Intelligences) is intimately linked with the fact that shamans – in Europe, Asia, in the Americas, in Africa – have been dosing their nervous systems with metaprogramming drugs since at least 30,000 B.C.
The pattern is the same, among our cave-dwelling ancestors and American Indians, at the Eleusinian feasts in Athens and among pre-Vedic Hindus, in tribes scattered from pole to pole and in the contemporary research summarized by Dr. Walter Huston Clark in his Chemical Ecstacy: people take these metaprogramming substances and they soon assert contact with Higher Intelligences.

According the LaBarre’s Ghost Dance, the shamans of North and South America used over 2,000 different metaprogramming chemicals; those of Europe and Asia curiously, only used about 250. Amanita muscaria (the “fly agaric” mushroom) was the most widely used sacred drug in the Old World, and the peyote cactus in the New. Over the past 30-to-40,000 years countless shamans have been trained by older shamans (as anthropologist Carlos Castaneda is trained by brujo – witch-man – Don Juan Matus in the famous books) to use these chemicals, as Dr. Leary and Dr. Lilly have used them, to metaprogram the nervous system and bring in some of the signals usually not scanned. (On the visual spectrum alone ,it has been well known since Newton that we normally perceive less than 0.5 (one-half of one) per cent of all known pulsations.) It can safely be generalized that the link between such sensitive new scannings and personal belief in Higher Intelligences is the most probable explaination of the origins of religion.

That the turned on mind is cosmic in dimension is stated directly by Carlos Castaneda’s shamanic teacher, Don Juan Matus, in Tales of Power:

“Last night was the first time you flew on the wings of your perception. A sorcerer can use those wings to touch other sensibilities, a crow’s for instance, a coyote’s, a cricket’s, or the order of other worlds in that infinite space. (Emphasis added)

When professor Castaneda asked directly, “Do you mean other planets, Don Juan?” the old shaman answered without reservation: “Certainly.”
As Captain James T. Kirk once remarked, “Can all this just be an accident? Or could there be some alien intelligence behind it?”
—
A Lesson In Karma

an exerpt from… Cosmic Trigger : Final Secret of the Illuminati, by Robert Anton Wilson, et al

Lao-Tse says (at least in Leary’s translation) that the Great Tao is most often found with parents who are willing to learn from their children. This remark was to cause me considerable mental strain and dilation around this time in our narrative, because my children had become very self-directed adolescents and were getting into occultism with much more enthusiasm and much less skepticism than I thought judicious.
For a few years, we could not discuss these subjects without arguing, despite my attempts to remember good old Lao-Tse and really listen to the kids. They believed in astrology, which I was still convinced was bosh; in reincarnation, which I considered an extravagant metaphor one shouldn’t take literally; and in that form of the doctrine of Karma which holds, optimistically, that the evil really are punished and the good really are rewarded, which I considered a wishful fantasy no more likely than the Christian idea of Heaven and Hell. Worst of all, they had a huge appetite for various Oriental “Masters” whom I regarded as total charlatans, and an enormous disdain for all the scientific methodology of the West.

My own position was identical to that of Aleister Crowley when he wrote:

We place no reliance
On Virgin or Pigeon;
Our method is Science,
Our aim is Religion.
After every argument with one of the kids, I would vow again to listen more sympathetically, less judgmentally, to their Pop Orientalism. I finally began to succeed. I learned a great deal from them.
A “miracle” then happened. I know this will be harder for the average American parent to believe than any of my other weird yarns, but my horde of self-willed and self-directed adolescents began to listen to me. Real communication was established. Even though I was in my 40s and greying in the beard, I was able to talk intelligently with four adolescents about our philosophical disagreements, and our mutual respect for each other grew by leaps and bounds.

This, I think, is the greatest result I have obtained from all my occult explorations, even if the unmarried will not appreciate how miraculous it was.

Luna, our youngest-the one who might have levitated in Mexico and who had her first menstrual period synchronistically on the day Tim Leary was busted in Afghanistantaught me the hardest lesson of all. She had begun to paint m watercolors and everything she did charmed me: it was always full of sun and light, in a way that was as overpowering as Van Gogh.

“What do all these paintings mean?” I asked her one day.

“I’m trying to show the Clear Light,” she said.

Then, returning from school one afternoon, Luna was beaten and robbed by a gang of black kids. She was weeping and badly frightened when she arrived home, and her Father was shaken by the unfairness of it happening to her, such a gentle, ethereal child. In the midst of consoling her, the Father wandered emotionally and began denouncing the idea of Karma. Luna was beaten, he said, not for her sins, but for the sins of several centuries of slavers and racists, most of whom had never themselves suffered for those sins. “Karma is a blind machine,” he said. “The effects of evil go on and on but they don’t necessarily come back on those who start the evil.” Then Father got back on the track and said some more relevant and consoling things.

The next day Luna was her usual sunny and cheerful self, just like the Light in her paintings. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” the Father said finally.

“I stopped the wheel of Karma,” she said. “All the bad energy is with the kids who beat me up. I’m not holding any of it.”

And she wasn’t. The bad energy had entirely passed by, and there was no anger or fear in her. I never saw her show any hostility to blacks after the beating, any more than before.

The Father fell in love with her all over again. And he understood what the metaphor of the wheel of Karma really symbolizes and what it means to stop the wheel.

Karma, in the original Buddhist scriptures, is a blind machine; in fact, it is functionally identical with the scientific concept of natural law. Sentimental ethical ideas about justice being built into the machine, so that those who do evil in one life are punished for it in another life, were added later by theologians reasoning from their own moralistic prejudices. Buddha simply indicated that all the cruelties and injustices of the past are still active: their effects are always being felt. Similarly, he explained, all the good of the past, all the kindness and patience and love of decent people is also still being felt.

Since most humans are still controlled by fairly robotic reflexes, the bad energy of the past far outweighs the good, and the tendency of the wheel is to keep moving in the same terrible direction, violence breeding more violence, hatred breeding more hatred, war breeding more war. The only way to “stop the wheel” is to stop it inside yourself, by giving up bad energy and concentrating on the positive. This is by no means easy, but once you understand what Gurdjieff called “the horror of our situation,” you have no choice but to try, and to keep on trying.

And Luna, at 13, understood this far better than I did, at 43, with all my erudition and philosophy… I still regarded her absolute vegetarianism and pacifism as sentimentality.
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Poetry: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bacchus

Bring me wine, but wine which never grew
In the belly of the grape,
Or grew on vine whose taproots reaching through
Under the Andes to the Cape,
Suffered no savor of the world to ‘scape.
Let its grapes the morn salute
From a nocturnal root
Which feels the acrid juice
Of Styx and Erebus,
And turns the woe of night,
By its own craft, to a more rich delight.

We buy ashes for bread,
We buy diluted wine;
Give me of the true,
Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled
Among the silver hills of heaven,
Draw everlasting dew;
Wine of wine,
Blood of the world,
Form of forms and mould of statures,
That I; intoxicated,
And by the draught assimilated,
May float at pleasure through all natures,
The bird-language rightly spell,
And that which roses say so well.

Wine that is shed
Like the torrents of the sun
Up the horizon walls;
Or like the Atlantic streams which run
When the South Sea calls.

Water and bread;
Food which needs no transmuting,
Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting;
Wine which is already man,
Food which teach and reason can.

Wine which music is;
Music and wine are one;
That I, drinking this,
Shall hear far chaos talk with me,
Kings unborn shall walk with me,
And the poor grass shall plot and plan
What it will do when it is man:
Quickened so, will I unlock
Every crypt of every rock.

I thank the joyful juice
For all I know;
Winds of remembering
Of the ancient being blow,
And seeming-solid walls ot use
Open and flow.

Pour, Bacchus, the remembering wine;
Retrieve the loss of me and mine;
Vine for vine be antidote,
And the grape requite the lot.
Haste to cure the old despair,
Reason in nature’s lotus drenched,
The memory of ages quenched;—
Give them again to shine.
Let wine repair what this undid,
And where the infection slid,
And dazzling memory revive.
Refresh the faded tints,
Recut the aged prints,
And write my old adventures, with the pen
Which, on the first day, drew
Upon the tablets blue
The dancing Pleiads, and the eternal men.
—
The Forerunners

Long I followed happy guides,—
I could never reach their sides.
Their step is forth, and, ere the day,
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Keen my sense, my heart was young,
Right goodwill my sinews strung,
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
On and away, their hasting feet
Make the morning proud and sweet.
Flowers they strew, I catch the scent,
Or tone of silver instrument
Leaves on the wind melodious trace,
Yet I could never see their face.
On eastern hills I see their smokes
Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
I meet many travellers
Who the road had surely kept,—
They saw not my fine revellers,—
These had crossed them while they slept.
Some had heard their fair report
In the country or the court.
Fleetest couriers alive
Never yet could once arrive,
As they went or they returned,
At the house where these sojourned.
Sometimes their strong speed they slacken,
Though they are not overtaken:
In sleep, their jubilant troop is near,
I tuneful voices overhear,
It may be in wood or waste,—
At unawares ’tis come and passed.
Their near camp my spirit knows
By signs gracious as rainbows.
I thenceforward and long after
Listen for their harplike laughter,
And carry in my heart for days
Peace that hallows rudest ways.—
—
Mithridates

I cannot spare water or wine,
Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;
From the earth-poles to the Line,
All between that works or grows,
Every thing is kin of mine.

Give me agates for my meat,
Give me cantharids to eat,
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes.

From all natures, sharp and slimy,
Salt and basalt, wild and tame,
Tree, and lichen, ape, sea-lion,
Bird and reptile be my game.

Ivy for my fillet band,
Blinding dogwood in my hand,
Hemlock for my sherbet cull me,
And the prussic juice to lull me,
Swing me in the upas boughs,
Vampire-fanned, when I carouse.

Too long shut in strait and few,
Thinly dieted on dew,
I will use the world, and sift it,
To a thousand humors shift it,
As you spin a cherry.
O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry,
O all you virtues, methods, mights;
Means, appliances, delights;
Reputed wrongs, and braggart rights;
Smug routine, and things allowed;
Minorities, things under cloud!
Hither! take me, use me, fill me,
Vein and artery, though ye kill me;
God! I will not be an owl,
But sun me in the Capitol.
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Therapies Son – Rose Red Rose (video from Scenes from “The Holy Mountain” By Alejandro Jodorowsky)

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“O Love-star of the unbeloved March,
When cold and shrill,
Forth flows beneath a low, dim-lighted arch
The wind that beats sharp crag and barren hill,
And keeps unfilmed the lately torpid rill!”
– Aubrey De Vere, Ode to the Daffodil

Risk

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.
-Anaïs Nin

Dream Poem

Once in the dream of a night I stood
Lone in the light of a magical wood,
Soul-deep in visions that poppy-like sprang;
And spirits of Truth were the birds that sang,
And spirits of Love were the stars that glowed,
And spirits of Peace were the streams that flowed
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.

Excerpt from: Song of a Dream
Sarojini Naidu
——
Dear Readers…

One of those week of wonders, painting away, resubmitting the magazine for publishing (the second time! Oh pleaz oh pleaz!) and getting involved in more projects. I sorted out papers and art from the last 30 some years, and even though I cleaned out the un-necessary bits, I have so much more to go. I was surprised at the amount of sketches etc., for ideas not yet implemented. On those alone I could paint for a couple of years it would seem. Digging through the files I found pictures of friends years ago, and my thoughts were deeply stirred by the memories.

Lucid Dreams: There has been a series of these, which I am thankful for. Lucid Dreams are like gifts. I have found that they happen at proprietary times for me. Often, dreams will come that include the idea or experience of a visionary state. I may experience a heightened state of awareness through either, say a bit of grace, or I will experience a psychedelic state from ingesting a dream entheogen… I cherish these dream experiences.

Well, I have to cut this short. Part of the theme of this entry will become clear with the next one… this is actually part one of a larger theme… find it! Write me with where you think it’s going!

Blessings,
G
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On The Menu:
Dharma Rain Auction!
The Links
Love Under Law – The Pleasure Dome
Anaïs Nin Quotes
A Double Return
Al Ghazali Poetry & Prose
The Songs of Kabir, tr. by Rabindranath Tagore
Love Under Law – Love Syrup
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Dharma Rain Auction!

I painted “The Blessing”, at the request of my friend Terry for the Dharma Rain Auction, with is occurring This Saturday (see the Dharma Rain link above).

I am honoured to be asked to donate the painting, it helps bring around a spiral in my life.

In 1968, I met and spent time with Rev Master Jiyu Kennett, when she came to Mt. Shasta to locate property that was later to become the Shasta Abbey. I spent time with her at my friend Helen’s Wolfe’s house, (who had been part of the Harvard/Mexico/Milbrook nexus, as well as the early Haight Ashbury scene.) Helen had been connected to Rev. Master Jiyu Kennett through members of the San Francisco Zen Center. The time we spent talking at Helen’s house helped me clarify my vision and pointed me in new directions in my life. She was perhaps one of the kindest person I had met… What this leads to is that the founders & directors of Dharma Rain are her direct students, and after all this time, I finally will see some of the fruition of this great Teacher, and see how her students have faired. I am quite excited.

Please join us Saturday evening, the 5th of March at 6:30 for the silent auction at 2539 Southeast Madison Street, Portland!

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The Links:
Into The Heart Of The Kaleidescope!
Altar of the Twelve Gods sees the light…
To Dream Of Falling Upwards…
Wake Me Shake Me
What kind of times did the Ramayana exist in?
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Love Under Law – The Pleasure Dome

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Anaïs Nin Quotes:
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
“Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.”
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Arthur Machen: One of the stories that started his career…

A Double Return (1890)
One of the first of Machen’s new racy and very contemporary tales of the early 1890s, it succeeds in evoking eeriness and being (at least a little) salaciously shocking, though without the faintest touch of crudity. Oscar Wilde read this tale and was impressed with it; on its strength he took the young Machen out to dinner and encouraged him in his chosen career.

The express from the west rushed through Acton with a scream, whirling clouds of dust around it; and Frank Halswell knocked out the ashes from his pipe and proceeded to gather from various quarters of the carriage his newspapers, his hat-box, his handbag, and, chief of all, a large portfolio carefully packed in brown paper. He looked at his watch, and said to himself: “6.30; we shall be at Paddington in five minutes; and only five minutes late, for a wonder.” But he congratulated himself and the railway company rather too soon: a few minutes later and the train began to slacken, the speed grew slower and slower, and at last came the grinding sound of the brakes and a dead stop. Halswell looked out of the window over the dreary expanse of Wormwood Scrubbs, and heard someone in the next carriage explaining the cause of the delay with pardonable pride in his technical knowledge. “You see, them there signals is against us, and if we was to go on we should jolly well go to kingdom come, we should.” Halswell looked at his watch again and drummed his heels against the floor, wondering impatiently when they would be at Paddington, when, with a sudden whirl, a down train swept by them and the western express once more moved on. Halswell rubbed his eyes; he had looked up as the down train passed, and in one of the carriages he thought he had seen his own face. It was only for a second, and he could not be sure. “It must have been a reflection,” he kept on saying, “from the glass of one window to the other. Still, I fancied I saw a black coat, and mine is light. But of course it was a reflection.”

The express rolled into the terminus with dignity – it was only ten minutes late, after all; and Frank Halswell bundled himself and his traps into a hansom, congratulating himself on the paucity of his bags and the absence of his trunks as he watched the excited mob rushing madly at a Redan of luggage. “153, the Mall, Kensington!” he shouted to the driver above the hubbub of the platform; and they were soon threading deftly along the dingy streets that looked so much dingier than usual after the blue mist upon the sea, the purple heather and the sunny fields. Frank (he was a very popular artist in those days – a rising man, indeed) had been on a sketching tour in Devon and Cornwall: he had wandered along the deep sheltered lanes from hill to hill, by the orchards already red and gold, by moorland and lowland, by the rocky coast and combes sinking down to the wondrous sea.

On the Cornish roads he had seen those many ancient crosses, with their weird interlacing carving, which sometimes stand upon a mound and mark where two ways meet; and as he put his portfolio beside him he could not help feeling a glow of pride at its contents. “I fancy I shall make a pretty good show by next spring,” he thought, Poor fellow! he was never to paint another picture; but he did not know it. Then, as the hansom verged westward, gliding with its ringing bells past the great mansions facing the park, Halswell’s thoughts went back to the hotel at Plymouth and the acquaintance he had made there. “Yes; Kerr was an amusing fellow,” he thought; “glad I gave him my card. Louie is sure to get on with him. Curious thing, too, he was wonderfully like me, if he had been only clean shaven and not ‘bearded like the pard,’ Dare say we shall see him before long; he said he was going to pay a short visit to London. I fancy he must be an actor; I never saw such a fellow to imitate a man’s voice and gestures. I wonder what made him go off in such a hurry yesterday. Hullo! here we are; hi, cabman! there’s 153.”

The twin doors of the hansom banged open; the garden gate shrieked and clanged, and Halswell bounded up the steps and rapped loudly at the door. The maid opened it. Even as he said, “Thank you, Jane; your mistress quite well, I suppose?” he thought he noticed a strange look, half questioning, half surprised, in her eyes; but he ran past her, up the stairs, and burst into the pretty drawing-room. His wife was lying on the sofa; but she rose with a cry as he came in.

“Frank! Back again so soon? I am so glad! I thought you said you might have to be away a week.”

“My dear Louie, what do you mean? I have been away three weeks, haven’t I? I rather think I left for Devonshire in the first week of August.”

“Yes, of course, my dear: but then you came back late last night.”

“What! I came back last night? I slept last night at Plymouth. What are you talking about?”

“Don’t be silly, Frank. You know very well you rang us all up at twelve o’clock. Just like you, to come home in the middle of the night when nobody expected you. You know you said in your last letter you were not coming until to-day.”

“Louise dear, you must be dreaming. I never came here last night. Here is my bill at the hotel; you see, it is dated this morning.”
Mrs. Halswell stared blankly at the bill; then she got up and rang the bell. How hot it was! The close air of the London street seemed to choke her. Halswell walked a few paces across the room then suddenly stopped and shuddered.
“Jane, I want to ask you whether your master did not come here last night at twelve o’clock; and whether you did not get him a cab early this morning?”

“Yes, mum, at least -”

“At least what? You let him in yourself.”

“Yes, mum, of course I did. But, begging your pardon, sir, I thought as how your voice didn’t sound quite natural this morning when you called out to the cabman to drive to Stepney, because you had changed your mind, and didn’t want to go to Waterloo.”

“Good God! What are you thinking about? I never came here. I was in Plymouth.”

“Frank! You are joking! Look here, you left this behind you.”

She showed him a little silver cigarette case with his initials engraved on it. It was a present from his wife, he had missed it one day when he was strolling with Kerr, and had regretted it deeply, searching in the grass in vain.

Halswell held the toy in his hand. He thought he was indeed in a dream, and through the open window came the shrieks of the newsboys, “Extry speshal! extry speshal!” The light had faded; it was getting dark. But suddenly it all flashed upon him. He remembered Kerr and the face he had caught sight of in the passing train; he remembered the strange likeness; he knew who had found the cigarette case; he knew well who it was that had come to his house.

The maid was a good girl; she had stolen away. No one knows what manner of conversation Frank and his wife had together in the darkness; but that night he went away, as it was said, to America. Mrs. Halswell was dead before the next summer.
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Al Ghazali Poetry & Prose

Say unto brethren when they see me dead,
And weep for me, lamenting me in sadness:
‘Think ye I am this corpse ye are to bury?
I swear by God, this dead one is not I.
I in the spirit am, and this my body
My dwelling was, my garment for a time.
I am a treasure: hidden I was beneath
This talisman of dust, wherein I suffered.
I am a pearl; a shell imprisoned me,
But leaving it, all trials I have left.
I am a bird, and this was once my cage;
But I have flown, leaving it as a token.
I praise God who hath set me free, and made
For me a dwelling in the heavenly heights.
Ere now I was a dead man in your midst,
But I have come to life, and doffed my shroud.’
—

The Causes of Anger and It’s Medicine

Know, O dear readers, that the medicine of a disease is to remove the
root cause of that disease. Isa (Jesus Christ) -peace be upon him-
was once asked: “What thing is difficult?” He said: “God’s wrath.”
Prophet Yahya (John the Baptist) -peace be upon him- then asked:
“What thing takes near the wrath of God?” He said:”Anger”. Yahya –
peace be upon him- asked him:”What thing grows and increases anger?”
Isa -peace be upon him- said:”Pride, prestige, hope for honour and
haughtiness”

The causes which cause anger to grow are self-conceit, self-praise,
jests and ridicule, argument, treachery, too much greed for too much
wealth and name and fame. If these evils are united in a person, his
conduct becomes bad and he cannot escape anger.

So these things should be removed by their opposites. Self-praise is
to be removed by modesty. Pride is to be removed by one’s own origin
and birth, greed is to be removed by remaining satisfied with
necessary things, and miserliness by charity.

The prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “A strong man is not
he who defeats his adversary by wrestling, but a strong man is he who
controls himself at the time of anger.”

We are describing below the medicines of anger after one gets angry.
The medicine is a mixture of knowledge and action. The medicine based
on knowledge is of six kinds:

(1) The first medicine of knowledge is to think over the rewards of
appeasing anger, that have come from the verses of the Quran and the
sayings of the Prophet (pbuh). Your hope for getting rewards of
appeasing anger will restrain you from taking revenge.

(2) The second kind of medicine based on knowledge is to fear the
punishment of God and to think that the punishment of God upon me is
greater than my punishment upon him. If I take revenge upon this man
for anger, God will take revenge upon me on the Judgement Day.

(3) The third kind of medicine of anger based on knowledge is to take
precaution about punishment of enmity and revenge on himself. You
feel joy in having your enemy in your presence in his sorrows, You
yourself are not free from that danger. You will fear that your enemy
might take revenge against you in this world and in the next.

(4) Another kind of medicine based on knowledge is to think about the
ugly face of the angry man, which is just like that of the ferocious
beast. He who appeases anger looks like a sober and learned man.

(5) The fifth kind of medicine based on knowledge is to think that the
devil will advise by saying: ” You will be weak if you do not get
angry!” Do not listen to him!

(6) The sixth reason is to think: ” What reason have I got to get
angry? What Allah wishes has occurred!”

Medicine based on action

When you get angry, say: I seek refuge in God from the accursed evil
(A’oudhou billaahi min as shaytaan ir rajeem). The prophet (pbuh)
ordered us to say thus.

When Ayesha (RA) got angry, he dragged her by the nose and said: ” O
dear Ayesha, say: O God, you are the Lord of my prophet Muhammad,
forgive my sins and remove the anger from my heart and save me from
misguidance.”

If anger does not go by this means, you will sit down if you are
standing, lie down if you are sitting, and come near to earth, as you
have been created of earth. Thus make yourself calm like the earth.
The cause of wrath is heat and its opposite is to lie down on the
ground and to make the body calm and cool.

The prophet (pbuh) said: Anger is a burning coal. Don’t you see your
eyebrows wide and eyes reddish? So when one of you feels angry, let
him sit down if standing, and lie down if sitting.

If still anger does not stop, make ablution with cold water or take a
bath, as fire cannot be extinguished without water.

The prophet (pbuh) said : ” When one of you gets angry, let him make
ablution with water as anger arises out of fire.” In another
narration, he said:” Anger comes from the devil and the devil is made
of fire.”

Hazrat Ali (RA) said:
The prophet did not get angry for any action of the world. When any
true matter charmed him, nobody knew it and nobody got up to take
revenge for his anger. HE GOT ANGRY ONLY FOR TRUTH.
–

Life is nothing but an accumulation of many breaths. So every breath is just a precious diamond which cannot be purchased with anything in the world. It is a priceless jewel which has got no substitute in value. So in movements and talks, and in sorrows and happiness, such a priceless breath should not be spent in vain. To destroy it is to court destruction. An intelligent man cannot lose it. When a man gets up at dawn, he should enter into an agreement with himself just as a tradesman contracts with his partner. At that time, he should address his mind thus: O mind, you have been given no other property as precious as life. When it will end, the principal will end and despondency will come in seeking profit in business. Today is a new day. Allah has given you time, that is, He has delayed your death. He has bestowed upon you innumerable gifts. Think that you are already dead. So don’t waste time. Every breath is a precious jewel. Man has got for each day and night twenty-four treasure houses in twenty-four hours. Fill up these then find them filled up with divine sights in the world next. If they are not filled up with good works, they will be filled up with intense darkness wherefrom a bad stench will come out and envelop them all around. Another treasure house will neither give him happiness nor sorrow. That is an hour in which he slept, or was careless, or was engaged in any lawful work of this world. He will feel grieved for its remaining vacant.

[Taken from al-Ghazali: Meditation and Introspection, The Book of Constructive Virtues, Ihya Ulum-id-din.]

– Imam Al-Ghazali
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The Songs of Kabir, tr. by Rabindranath Tagore

O Sadhu! my land is a sorrowless land.
I cry aloud to all, to the king and the beggar, the emperor and the fakir–
Whosoever seeks for shelter in the Highest, let all come and settle in my land!
Let the weary come and lay his burdens here!

So live here, my brother, that you may cross with ease to that other shore.
It is a land without earth or sky, without moon or stars;
For only the radiance of Truth shines in my Lord’s Durbar.
Kabîr says: “O beloved brother! naught is essential save Truth.”

–
The shadows of evening fall thick and deep, and the darkness of love envelops the body and the mind.
Open the window to the west, and be lost in the sky of love;
Drink the sweet honey that steeps the petals of the lotus of the heart.
Receive the waves in your body: what splendour is in the region of the sea!
Hark! the sounds of conches and bells are rising.
Kabîr says: “O brother, behold! the Lord is in this vessel of my body.”
–
The flute of the Infinite is played without ceasing, and its sound is love:
When love renounces all limits, it reaches truth.
How widely the fragrance spreads! It has no end, nothing stands in its way.
The form of this melody is bright like a million suns: incomparably sounds the vina, the vina of the notes of truth.
–
O friend, awake, and sleep no more!
The night is over and gone, would you lose your day also?
Others, who have wakened, have received jewels;
O foolish woman! you have lost all whilst you slept.
Your lover is wise, and you are foolish, O woman!
You never prepared the bed of your husband:
O mad one! you passed your time in silly play.
Your youth was passed in vain, for you did not know your Lord;
Wake, wake! See! your bed is empty: He left you in the night.
Kabîr says: “Only she wakes, whose heart is pierced with the arrow of His music.”
—

When at last you are come to the ocean of happiness, do not go back thirsty.
Wake, foolish man! for Death stalks you. Here is pure water before you; drink it at every breath.
Do not follow the mirage on foot, but thirst for the nectar;
Dhruva, Prahlad, and Shukadeva have drunk of it, and also Raidas has tasted it:
The saints are drunk with love, their thirst is for love.
Kabîr says: “Listen to me, brother! The nest of fear is broken.
Not for a moment have you come face to face with the world:
You are weaving your bondage of falsehood, your words are full of deception:
With the load of desires which you. hold on your head, how can you be light?”
Kabîr says: “Keep within you truth, detachment, and love.”
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Love Under Law – Love Syrup

“Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world.” — Joseph Campbell

The Powers….
I was reading poetry the other night, a collection from a book that my friend Tomas Brawley gave me: “Earth Prayers” before I went to sleep, and I stumbled on a section regarding our four legged, winged, finned brothers and sisters… I went into a small trance state and found myself floating along with predators, herds, flocks in the sky, schools in the sea and river. I thought about the relationships in our lives that are non-human, yet so close. Rising the next day, I watched the birds and squirrels at the feeder, the crows disputing amongst themselves in the neighborhood tree, and Sophie and Buster in their loving interactions with the extended clan. It’s a wide community, and the hairless apes seem to be the only ones generally out of sorts about the getting along with the cousin thing.

So, I was thinking about the Animal Powers, Plant Powers & Mineral Powers (hence the title) and how they effect us on a constant basis with us generally being blind to what is happening. Sometimes in the dream state it becomes a coherent vision, otherwise, I am overran by my own filters. I will be sitting there completely distracted and Sophie or Buster will come up to me, and nuzzle me to bring me back to here and now. If I am half awake, I recognize what is happening. But, I am a sleeper. I know this. I am missing so much, and more so since when I drift off into machine and cyber land.

I think of the cave paintings, and especially these… Cave of Forgotton Dreams the paintings of within the Chauvet caves. Those connections… deep and ancient span the human and animal powers. How have we forgotten that we came out of the same womb as our fellow beings?

I puzzle over the loss that we have inflicted upon ourselves and our co-inhabitants…. How do we gain it back?

Blessings,
G

Kind of an eclectic gathering of info today… Hope you enjoy!
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On The Menu:
Visitors From Afar!
The Links
The Powers Of Love And Friendship…
Joseph Campbell Quotes
Exuma The Obeah Man
The Origin of Eternal Death (Wishram)
Poetry: In Celebration Of The Powers…
Exuma – Damn Fool – DJ Luis Mario “Flaco” Orellana
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Visitors From Afar!

Our friends Leslie and Robert came up from Nevada City on their way to Seattle for a gardening show. Leslie was taking a class in Encaustic Painting for a couple of days in Portland over the weekend. They arrived Friday evening, and headed up the road on Monday. They do some amazing work… from Leslie’s new passion for photography, to Robert’s fantasy buildings for the garden…. there is always something brewing up in those Sierra Foothills! Their Site: Hidden Springs Designs will give you just a small taste of the talent these two bring to the world.

We ran around Portland, hitting Powell’s (of course) and various galleries with Robert when Leslie was in class on Saturday and Sunday, to hanging out Saturday night over Mary’s wonderful Tamil Chicken Curry with home made Nan Bread… Our talks went deep into the evening, and it was a sheer delight to be in their company again. We got to explore some of the better beers from the local area, and checked out a couple of restaurants as well. They love Portland, but hates da weather! So… they drove away from Paradise, and headed north to the Emerald City…

Hurry Back!
Robert and Leslie hiding from me and my camera beside their Van just before heading to Seattle…

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The Links:
Do You Believe In Fairies…?
To Save The Land…
William Blake – Jim Morrison… What’s Not To Like?
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The Powers Of Love And Friendship…

I first met Henry when he was about to turn two years old or so. He was a most remarkable cat; I often felt that he was very conversant in his ways of interacting with the slower ones..(humans) It has been a few years since I saw him, but everytime I talked with Tom we’d discuss what Henry was up to, he was just that kind of cat. Everything is mortal, and cats are no exception… but I have noticed that their spirits linger about after they pass between worlds. Here is to Henry, a heck of cat. You’ll be missed by friends and family. Hope to make your acquaintance again someday…. G

I received this Tuesday from our friend Cheryl. I am toasting Henry later with a glass of absinthe and a burning candle. He will be missed… G

Today, with great sadness, Tom and I had to let Henry go Cat Heaven. His liver no longer functioned.

As you know, Henry was full of personality and life. He was an amazing companion and great lover of people.

Throughout his 18 years, he never tired of making us laugh, enjoying outdoor adventures, and traveling to see the scenery from our car. He drove with us from California to Oregon, from Oregon to Arizona, and three times–from Arizona to California, and finally—from Arizona to California. He saw the mountains, the desert, The Red Rocks, frolicked in the snow, danced in the rain, escaped with his life from a bobcat and raccoon, stood his ground when any neighborhood cats invaded his territory, and even survived an eathquake or two. He celebrated Tom’s 40th and 50th surprise parties, Christmas mornings, Thanksgiving dinners, and never missed one of the many gatherings we gave. On chilly nights, he (and Penelope) would lay in front of the fireplace or.look out the picture window with great contenment.

During the end of his life, he did what he enjoyed–watched the All Star Basketball Game with his best friend, Tom. He was a lover of music and television, got great pleasure to sleep and purr on top of Tom’s head–or steal Tom’s seat as soon as he vacated it!

Henry knew tricks. Yes, he was a smart and sensitive—-cat-dog. We trained him to sit on command, come when we whistled, stand on his hind leg and tap our hand for treats. He waited for us at the front door when we came home, followed us around the house, and when he wanted to go outside–stood on his hind legs and turned the door knob with his paw. We swore he was saying, “Out!” He knew how to pry open- unclosed drawers and doors, lick your hand when you were sad or to say, “I love you”, and comfort you when you were sick, by not leaving your side. His favorite hiding places were open boxes or open suitcases.

We found Henry at an organization in Los Angeles, called The Cat House, off Robertson near Culver City. A place where cats live out their lives (if not adopted). He joined us when he was not quite one years old as a companion for our other cat, Penelope (she died fiev years ago). Needless to say, within days he won her, us, and anyone who visited our home over with his charm. .

It’s hard to think that he won’t be with us, but we know his playing with Penelope and all the cats— in one great catnip house and yard—–where sickness and death just don’t exist.
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Joseph Campbell Quotes:

“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.”

“We’re not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.”

“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”

“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.”

“Regrets are illuminations come too late.”
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For My Friend, Dr. Con…

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The Origin of Eternal Death (Wishram)

(Edward S. Curtis, The North American Indian, Vol. 8 (1911).)

Coyote had a wife and two children, and so had Eagle. Both families lived together. Eagle’s wife and children died, and a few days later Coyote experienced the same misfortune. As the latter wept, his companion said: “Do not mourn: that will not bring your wife back. Make ready your moccasins, and we will go somewhere.” So the two prepared for a long journey, and set out westward.

After four days they were close to the ocean; on one side of a body of water they saw houses. Coyote called across, “Come with a boat!” “Never mind; stop calling,” bade Eagle. He produced an elderberry stalk, made a flute, put the end into the water, and whistled. Soon they saw two persons come out of a house, walk to the water’s edge, and enter a canoe. Said Eagle, “Do not look at those people when they land.” The boat drew near, but a few yards from the shore it stopped, and Eagle told his friend to close his eyes. He then took Coyote by the arm and leaped to the boat. The two persons paddled back, and when they stopped a short distance from the other side Eagle again cautioned Coyote to close his eyes, and then leaped ashore with him.

They went to the village, where there were many houses, but no people were in sight. Everything was still as death. There was a very large underground house, into which they went. In it was found an old woman sitting with her face to the wall, and lying on the floor on the other side of the room was the moon. They sat down near the wall.

“Coyote,” whispered Eagle, “watch that woman and see what she does when the sun goes down!” Just before the sun set they heard a voice outside calling: “Get up! Hurry! The sun is going down, and it will soon be night. Hurry, hurry!” Coyote and Eagle still sat in a corner of the chamber watching the old woman. People began to enter, many hundreds of them, men, women, and children. Coyote, as he watched, saw Eagle’s wife and two daughters among them, and soon afterward his own family. When the room was filled, Nikshiamchasht, the old woman, cried, “Are all in?” Then she turned about, and from a squatting posture she jumped forward, then again and again, five times in all, until she alighted in a small pit beside the moon. This she raised and swallowed, and at once it was pitch dark. The people wandered about, hither and thither, crowding and jostling, unable to see. About daylight a voice from outside cried, “Nikshiamshasht, all get through!” The old woman then disgorged the moon, and laid it back in its place on the floor; all the people filed out, and the woman, Eagle, and Coyote were once more alone.

“Now, Coyote,” said Eagle, “could you do that?” “Yes, I can do that,” he said. They went out, and Coyote at Eagle’s direction made a box of boards, as large as he could carry, and put into it leaves from every kind of tree and blades from every kind of grass. “Well,” said Eagle, “If you are sure you remember just how she did this, let us go in and kill her.” So they entered the house and killed her, and buried the body. Her dress they took off and put on Coyote, so that he looked just like her, and he sat down in her place. Eagle then told him to practice what he had seen, by turning around and jumping as the old woman had done. So Coyote tuned about and jumped five times, but the last leap was a little short, yet he managed to slide into the hole. He put the moon into his mouth, but, try as he would, a thin edge still showed, and he covered it with his hands. Then he laid it back in its place and resumed his seat by the wall, waiting for sunset and the voice of the chief outside.

The day passed, the voiced called, and the people entered. Coyote turned about and began to jump. Some thought there was something strange about the manner of jumping , but others aid it was really the old woman. When he came to the last jump and slipped into the pit, many cried out that this was not the old woman, but Coyote quickly lifted the moon and put it into his mouth, covering the edge with his hands. When it was completely dark, Eagle placed the box in the doorway. Throughout the long night Coyote retained the moon in his mouth, until he was almost choking, but at last the voice of the chief was heard from the outside, and the dead began to file out. Every one walked into the box, and Eagle quickly threw the cover over and tied it. The sound was like that of a great swarm of flies. “Now, my brother, we are through,” said Eagle. Coyote removed the dress and laid it down beside the moon, and Eagle threw the moon into the sky, where it remained. The two entered the canoe with the box, and paddled toward the east.

When they landed, Eagle carried the box. Near the end of the third night Coyote heard somebody talking; there seemed to be many voices. He awakened his companion, and said, “There are many people coming.” “Do not worry,” said Eagle; “it is all right.” The following night Coyote heard the talking again, and, looking about, he discovered that the voices came from the box which Eagle had been carrying. He placed his ear against it, and after a while distinguished the voice of his wife. He smiled, and broke into laughter, but he said nothing to Eagle. At the end of the fifth night and the beginning of their last day of traveling, he said to his friend, “I will carry the box now; you have carried it a long way.” “No,” replied Eagle, “I will take it; I am strong.” “Let me carry it,” insisted the other; “suppose we come to where people live, and they should see the chief carrying the load. How would that look?” Still Eagle retained his hold on the box, but as they went along Coyote kept begging, and about noon, wearying of the subject, Eagle gave him the box. So Coyote had the load, and every time he heard the voice of his wife he would laugh. After a while he contrived to fall behind, and when Eagle was out of sight around a hill he began to open the box, in order to release his wife. But no sooner was the cover lifted than it was thrown back violently, and the dead people rushed out into the air with such force that Coyote was thrown to the ground. They quickly disappeared in the west. Eagle saw the cloud of dead people rising in the air, and came hurrying back. He found one man left there, a cripple who had been unable to rise; he threw him into the air, and the dead man floated away swiftly.

“You see what you have done, with your curiosity and haste!” said Eagle. “If we had brought these dead all the way back, people would not die forever, but only for a season, like these plants, whose leaves we have brought. Hereafter trees and grasses will die only in the winter, but in the spring they will be green again. So it would have been with the people.” “Let us go back and catch them again,” proposed Coyote; but Eagle objected: “They will not go to the same place, and we would not know how to find them; they will be where the moon is, up in the sky.”
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Poetry: In Celebration Of The Powers…

Apprehend God in all things,
For God is in all things.
Every single creature
is full of God
And is a book about God
Every creature
is a word of God.
If I spent enough time with the
tiniest of creature—
Even a caterpillar—
I would never have to prepare
a sermon.
So full of God
Is every creature.

– Meister Eckhart
—

You are singing, little dove,
on the branches of the silk-cotton tree.
And there also is the cuckoo,
and many other little birds.
All are rejoicing,
the songbirds of our god, our Lord.
And our goddess
has her little birds,
the turtledove, the redbird,
the black and yellow songbirds, and the hummingbird.
These are the birds of the beautiful goddess, our Lady.
If there is such happiness
among the creatures,
why do our hearts not also rejoice?
At daybreak all is jubilant.
Let only joy, only songs,
enter our thoughts!

– Song Of Dzitbalche
—

Ah Power that swirls us together
Grant us Bliss
Grant us the great release
And to all Beings
Vanishing, wounded
In trouble on earth
We pass on this love
May their numbers increase.

– Gary Snyder
—

Unknown Bird

Out of the dry days
through the dusty leaves
far across the valley
those few notes never
heard here before

one fluted phrase
floating over its
wandering secret
all at once wells up
somewhere else

and is gone before it
goes on fallen into
its own echo leaving
a hollow through the air
that is dry as before

where is it from
hardly anyone
seems to have noticed it
so far but who now
would have been listening

it is not native here
that may be the one
thing we are sure of
it came from somewhere
else perhaps alone

so keeps on calling for
no one who is here
hoping to be heard
by another of its own
unlikely origin

trying once more the same few
notes that began the song
of an oriole last heard
years ago in another
existence there

it goes again tell
no one it is here
foreign as we are
who are filling the days
with a sound of our own

– W.S. Merwin
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For Dr. Con, again…. 80)

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
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This edition is dedicated to the people of Egypt, rising up and showing the world their great compassion, and yearnings. I have been profoundly moved, and shall continue to be so with what we are witnessing.

Yahia Lababidi has graciously lent his poems to us, including a live reading of his poem dedicated to his country and its struggle. It is an honor to have his work in this edition. We have a fairy tale from ancient Egypt as well, and much more.

I hope you enjoy “Rise”

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Tearing Up The Archives/Memorbilia
Kalabi: Found
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes
Yahia Lababidi _ Spoken Word “What Is To Give Light”
Poetry In The Streets… Video Interview with Yahia Lababidi
An Egyptian Fairy Tale: Tale of Two Brothers
The Poems of Yahia Lababidi
Kalabi – “Tommy Two Pints” (edit)
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Tearing Up The Archives/Memorbilia
(Notes on photos: Mary, 1978, late fall West Los Angeles/Gwyllm 1978 late spring Westwood retrieved from ancient proof sheets that Gwyllm developed back when…)


So I have spent the last two days sorting papers, letters etc… art work from the last 30 years. The recycling people will have a field day. I found art work that I had forgotten about, as well as advert stuff going back to Grey Pavilion days and earlier. I turned up a whole slew of photos from 1977 up through the mid 80′s including photos of The Kinks in performance from their 2nd to last tour if I am correct. I turned up flyers for “Bloc”, the band that Nels Cline, Steubig, Alex Cline and others worked in in the late 80′s, as well as papers from Thelemic groups, rituals etc. Art work from original art work for Grey Pavilion projects, DIY Press Proofs, the first test silk screen works, and collage work dating back forever.

I found a whole collection of Rowan art back to kindergarten as well… 80) Really, it was wonderful to find. I look at it, and try to sort out how he went from finger paints to filming. That is an odyssey all of its own. I decided to save it all, and to give it to him later..

I found notes from friends, birthday cards, death notices and memorabilia going back over the span of years. I found a genealogy listing from my mother, written up some 18 years ago, with notes… At the end of her life she was trying to get it down… I found an account book from the 1870′s of my Great Great Grandparents as well. Every item purchased, with the date and price, interspersed with prayers. Odd stuff really.

I turned up gads of art tending towards paganality… green men that I made for silkscreen t-shirts, eyes of Horus, Goddess figures, owls, and myriads of plants, mandalas and the like. I threw away pounds of photocopied illustrations (I have the majority on the computer) and I found lost treasures that I never completed.

The funniest things were the poetry and musings. I can certainly take myself waaaaayyy to seriously. Horribly so it seems at times. This awareness has curtailed me inflicting my poetic thoughts and musings on others as of late. 80) I realized how much dross I have to produce to find a bit of gold. Heaven loves a self-editor, and I was never that good at it until the last few years. Now I edit incessantly. Let’s say it is a gift to the future… 8o)

In turning up love letters, pictures and memorabilia that I’d let slip, I realized what a rich and wonderful time we have had together. This is not indulging in nostalgia, but viewing all of these bits ties stories together, moments that led us to where we are today. I have been blessed in my life, with the love, and the laughter and companionship of true beauty. We all have a rich tapestry woven through the driftings of time. Oh the sweetness, and joy, memories and thoughts, the meanders of the labyrinth that we dance, the years that have streamed by.
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Kalabi: Found

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes:

You can have power over people as long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in you power.
Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.
If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?
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Poetry In The Streets…

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An Egyptian Fairy Tale: Tale of Two Brothers

(One of the most interesting tales that have come down to us in Egyptian dress is the tale commonly called the “Tale of the Two Brothers.” It is found written in the hieratic character upon a papyrus preserved in the British Museum (D’Orbiney, No. 10,183), and the form which the story has there is that which was current under the nineteenth dynasty, about 1300 B.C. The two principal male characters in the story, Anpu and Bata, were originally gods, but in the hands of the Egyptian story-teller they became men, and their deeds were treated in such a way as to form an interesting fairy story. It is beyond the scope of this little book to treat of the mythological ideas that underlie certain parts of the narrative, and we therefore proceed to give a rendering of this very curious and important “fairy tale.”)

It is said that there were two brothers, [the children] of one mother and of one father; the name of the elder was Anpu, and Bata was the name of the younger. Anpu had a house and a wife, and Bata lived with him like a younger brother. It was Bata who made the clothes; he tended and herded his cattle in the fields, he ploughed the land, he did the hard work during the time of harvest, and he kept the account of everything that related to the fields. And Bata was a most excellent farmer, and his like there was not in the whole country-side; and behold, the power of the God was in him. And very many days passed during which Anpu’s young brother tended his flocks and herds daily, and he returned to his house each evening loaded with field produce of every kind. And when he had returned from the [197]fields, he set [food] before his elder brother, who sat with his wife drinking and eating, and then Bata went out to the byre and [slept] with the cattle. On the following morning as soon as it was day, Bata took bread-cakes newly baked, and set them before Anpu, who gave him food to take with him to the fields. Then Bata drove out his cattle into the fields to feed, and [as] he walked behind them they said unto him, “The pasturage is good in such and such a place,” and he listened to their voices, and took them where they wished to go. Thus the cattle in Bata’s charge became exceedingly fine, and their calves doubled in number, and they multiplied exceedingly. And when it was the season for ploughing Anpu said unto Bata, “Come, let us get our teams ready for ploughing the fields, and our implements, for the ground hath appeared,[1] and it is in the proper condition for the plough. Go to the fields and take the seed-corn with thee to-day, and at daybreak to-morrow we will do the ploughing”; this is what he said to him. And Bata did everything which Anpu had told him to do. The next morning, as soon as it was daylight, the two brothers went into the fields with their teams and their ploughs, and they ploughed the land, and they were exceedingly happy as they ploughed, from the beginning of their work to the very end thereof.

[1] i.e. the waters of the Inundation had subsided, leaving the ground visible.

Now when the two brothers had been living in this way for a considerable time, they were in the fields one day [ploughing], and Anpu said to Bata, “Run back to the farm and fetch some [more] seed corn.” And Bata did so, and when he arrived there he found his brother’s wife seated dressing her hair. And he said to her, “Get up and give me some seed corn that I may hurry back to the fields, for Anpu ordered me not to loiter on the way.” Anpu’s wife said to him, “Go thyself to the grain shed, and open the bin, and take out from it as much corn as thou wishest; I could fetch it for thee myself, only I am afraid that my hair would fall down on the way.” Then the young man went to the bin, and filled a very large jar full of grain, for it was his desire [198]to carry off a large quantity of seed corn, and he lifted up on his shoulders the pot, which was filled full of wheat and barley, and came out of the shed with it. And Anpu’s wife said to him, “How much grain hast thou on thy shoulders?” And Bata said to her, “Three measures of barley and two measures of wheat, in all five measures of grain; that is what I have on my shoulders.” These were the words which he spake to her. And she said to him, “How strong thou art! I have been observing thy vigorousness day by day.” And her heart inclined to him, and she entreated him to stay with her, promising to give him beautiful apparel if he would do so. Then the young man became filled with fury like a panther of the south because of her words, and when she saw how angry he was she became terribly afraid. And he said to her, “Verily thou art to me as my mother, and thy husband is as my father, and being my elder brother he hath provided me with the means of living. Thou hast said unto me what ought not to have been said, and I pray thee not to repeat it. On my part I shall tell no man of it, and on thine thou must never declare the matter to man or woman.” Then Bata took up his load on his shoulders, and departed to the fields. And when he arrived at the place where his elder brother was they continued their ploughing and laboured diligently at their work.

And when the evening was come the elder brother returned to his house. And having loaded himself with the products of the fields, Bata drove his flocks and herds back to the farm and put them in their enclosures.

And behold, Anpu’s wife was smitten with fear, because of the words which she had spoken to Bata, and she took some grease and a piece of linen, and she made herself to appear like a woman who had been assaulted, and who had been violently beaten by her assailant, for she wished to say to her husband, “Thy young brother hath beaten me sorely.” And when Anpu returned in the evening according to his daily custom, and arrived at his house, he found his wife lying on the ground in the condition of one who had been assaulted with violence. She did not [appear to] pour water [199]over his hands according to custom, she did not light a light before him; his house was in darkness, and she was lying prostrate and sick. And her husband said unto her, “Who hath been talking to thee?” And she said unto him, “No one hath been talking to me except thy young brother. When he came to fetch the seed corn he found me sitting alone, and he spake words of love to me, and he told me to tie up my hair. But I would not listen to him, and I said to him, ‘Am I not like thy mother? Is not thy elder brother like thy father?’ Then he was greatly afraid, and he beat me to prevent me from telling thee about this matter. Now, if thou dost not kill him I shall kill myself, for since I have complained to thee about his words, when he cometh back in the evening what he will do [to me] is manifest.”

Then the elder brother became like a panther of the southern desert with wrath. And he seized his dagger, and sharpened it, and went and stood behind the stable door, so that he might slay Bata when he returned in the evening and came to the byre to bring in his cattle. And when the sun was about to set Bata loaded himself with products of the field of every kind, according to his custom, [and returned to the farm]. And as he was coming back the cow that led the herd said to Bata as she was entering the byre, “Verily thy elder brother is waiting with his dagger to slay thee; flee thou from before him”; and Bata hearkened to the words of the leading cow. And when the second cow as she was about to enter into the byre spake unto him even as did the first cow, Bata looked under the door of the byre, and saw the feet of his elder brother as he stood behind the door with his dagger in his hand. Then he set down his load upon the ground, and he ran away as fast as he could run, and Anpu followed him grasping his dagger. And Bata cried out to Rā-Harmakhis (the Sun-god) and said, “O my fair Lord, thou art he who judgeth between the wrong and the right.” And the god Rā hearkened unto all his words, and he caused a great stream to come into being, and to separate the two brothers, and the water was filled with crocodiles. Now Anpu was on one side of the stream and Bata on the other, [200]and Anpu wrung his hands together in bitter wrath because he could not kill his brother. Then Bata cried out to Anpu on the other bank, saying, “Stay where thou art until daylight, and until the Disk (i.e. the Sun-god) riseth. I will enter into judgment with thee in his presence, for it is he who setteth right what is wrong. I shall never more live with thee, and I shall never again dwell in the place where thou art. I am going to the Valley of the Acacia.”

And when the day dawned, and there was light on the earth, and Rā-Harmakhis was shining, the two brothers looked at each other. And Bata spake unto Anpu, saying, “Why hast thou pursued me in this treacherous way, wishing to slay me without first hearing what I had to say? I am thy brother, younger than thou art, and thou art as a father and thy wife is as a mother to me. Is it not so? When thou didst send me to fetch seed corn for our work, it was thy wife who said, ‘I pray thee to stay with me,’ but behold, the facts have been misrepresented to thee, and the reverse of what happened hath been put before thee.” Then Bata explained everything to Anpu, and made him to understand exactly what had taken place between him and his brother’s wife. And Bata swore an oath by Rā-Harmakhis, saying, “By Rā-Harmakhis, to lie in wait for me and to pursue me, with thy knife in thy hand ready to slay me, was a wicked and abominable thing to do.” And Bata took [from his side] the knife which he used in cutting reeds, and drove it into his body, and he sank down fainting upon the ground. Then Anpu cursed himself with bitter curses, and he lifted up his voice and wept; and he did not know how to cross over the stream to the bank where Bata was because of the crocodiles. And Bata cried out to him, saying, “Behold, thou art ready to remember against me one bad deed of mine, but thou dost not remember my good deeds, or even one of the many things that have been done for thee by me. Shame on thee! Get thee back to thy house and tend thine own cattle, for I will no longer stay with thee. I will depart to the Valley of the Acacia. But thou shalt come to minister to me, therefore take heed to what I say. Now know that certain things are [201]about to happen to me. I am going to cast a spell on my heart, so that I may be able to place it on a flower of the Acacia tree. When this Acacia is cut down my heart shall fall to the ground, and thou shalt come to seek for it. Thou shalt pass seven years in seeking for it, but let not thy heart be sick with disappointment, for thou shalt find it. When thou findest it, place it in a vessel of cold water, and verily my heart shall live again, and shall make answer to him that attacketh me. And thou shalt know what hath happened to me [by the following sign]. A vessel of beer shall be placed in thy hand, and it shall froth and run over; and another vessel with wine in it shall be placed [in thy hand], and it shall become sour. Then make no tarrying, for indeed these things shall happen to thee.” So the younger brother departed to the Valley of the Acacia, and the elder brother departed to his house. And Anpu’s hand was laid upon his head, and he cast dust upon himself [in grief for Bata], and when he arrived at his house he slew his wife, and threw her to the dogs, and he sat down and mourned for his young brother.

And when many days had passed, Bata was living alone in the Valley of the Acacia, and he spent his days in hunting the wild animals of the desert; and at night he slept under the Acacia, on the top of the flowers of which rested his heart. And after many days he built himself, with his own hand, a large house in the Valley of the Acacia, and it was filled with beautiful things of every kind, for he delighted in the possession of a house. And as he came forth [one day] from his house, he met the Company of the Gods, and they were on their way to work out their plans in their realm. And one of them said unto him, “Hail, Bata, thou Bull of the gods, hast thou not been living here alone since the time when thou didst forsake thy town through the wife of thy elder brother Anpu? Behold, his wife hath been slain [by him], and moreover thou hast made an adequate answer to the attack which he made upon thee”; and their hearts were very sore indeed for Bata. Then Rā-Harmakhis said unto Khnemu,[1] “Fashion a wife for Bata, so that thou, O Bata, [202]mayest not dwell alone.” And Khnemu made a wife to live with Bata, and her body was more beautiful than the body of any other woman in the whole country, and the essence of every god was in her; and the Seven Hathor Goddesses came to her, and they said, “She shall die by the sword.” And Bata loved her most dearly, and she lived in his house, and he passed all his days in hunting the wild animals of the desert so that he might bring them and lay them before her. And he said to her, “Go not out of the house lest the River carry thee off, for I know not how to deliver thee from it. My heart is set upon the flower of the Acacia, and if any man find it I must do battle with him for it”; and he told her everything that had happened concerning his heart.

[1] The god who fashioned the bodies of men.

And many days afterwards, when Bata had gone out hunting as usual, the young woman went out of the house and walked under the Acacia tree, which was close by, and the River saw her, and sent its waters rolling after her; and she fled before them and ran away into her house. And the River said, “I love her,” and the Acacia took to the River a lock of her hair, and the River carried it to Egypt, and cast it up on the bank at the place where the washermen washed the clothes of Pharaoh, life, strength, health [be to him]! And the odour of the lock of hair passed into the clothing of Pharaoh. Then the washermen of Pharaoh quarrelled among themselves, saying, “There is an odour [as of] perfumed oil in the clothes of Pharaoh.” And quarrels among them went on daily, and at length they did not know what they were doing. And the overseer of the washermen of Pharaoh walked to the river bank, being exceedingly angry because of the quarrels that came before him daily, and he stood still on the spot that was exactly opposite to the lock of hair as it lay in the water. Then he sent a certain man into the water to fetch it, and when he brought it back, the overseer, finding that it had an exceedingly sweet odour, took it to Pharaoh. And the scribes and the magicians were summoned into the presence of Pharaoh, and they said to him, “This lock of hair belongeth to a maiden of Rā-Harmakhis, and the essence of every god is in her. It cometh to thee from a [203]strange land as a salutation of praise to thee. We therefore pray thee send ambassadors into every land to seek her out. And as concerning the ambassador to the Valley of the Acacia, we beg thee to send a strong escort with him to fetch her.” And His Majesty said unto them, “What we have decided is very good,” and he despatched the ambassadors.

And when many days had passed by, the ambassadors who had been despatched to foreign lands returned to make a report to His Majesty, but those who had gone to the Valley of the Acacia did not come back, for Bata had slain them, with the exception of one who returned to tell the matter to His Majesty. Then His Majesty despatched foot-soldiers and horsemen and charioteers to bring back the young woman, and there was also with them a woman who had in her hands beautiful trinkets of all kinds, such as are suitable for maidens, to give to the young woman. And this woman returned to Egypt with the young woman, and everyone in all parts of the country rejoiced at her arrival. And His Majesty loved her exceedingly, and he paid her homage as the Great August One, the Chief Wife. And he spake to her and made her tell him what had become of her husband, and she said to His Majesty, “I pray thee to cut down the Acacia Tree and then to destroy it.” Then the King caused men and bowmen to set out with axes to cut down the Acacia, and when they arrived in the Valley of the Acacia, they cut down the flower on which was the heart of Bata, and he fell down dead at that very moment of evil.

And on the following morning when the light had come upon the earth, and the Acacia had been cut down, Anpu, Bata’s elder brother, went into his house and sat down, and he washed his hands; and one gave him a vessel of beer, and it frothed up, and the froth ran over, and one gave him another vessel containing wine, and it was sour. Then he grasped his staff, and [taking] his sandals, and his apparel, and his weapons which he used in fighting and hunting, he set out to march to the Valley of the Acacia. And when he arrived there he went into Bata’s house, and he found his young brother there lying dead on his bed; and when he [204]looked upon his young brother he wept on seeing that he was dead. Then he set out to seek for the heart of Bata, under the Acacia where he was wont to sleep at night, and he passed three years in seeking for it but found it not. And when the fourth year of his search had begun, his heart craved to return to Egypt, and he said, “I will depart thither to-morrow morning”; that was what he said to himself. And on the following day he walked about under the Acacia all day long looking for Bata’s heart, and as he was returning [to the house] in the evening, and was looking about him still searching for it, he found a seed, which he took back with him, and behold, it was Bata’s heart. Then he fetched a vessel of cold water, and having placed the seed in it, he sat down according to his custom. And when the night came, the heart had absorbed all the water; and Bata [on his bed] trembled in all his members, and he looked at Anpu, whilst his heart remained in the vessel of water. And Anpu took up the vessel wherein was his brother’s heart, which had absorbed the water. And Bata’s heart ascended its throne [in his body], and Bata became as he had been aforetime, and the two brothers embraced each other, and each spake to the other.

And Bata said to Anpu, “Behold, I am about to take the form of a great bull, with beautiful hair, and a disposition (?) which is unknown. When the sun riseth, do thou mount on my back, and we will go to the place where my wife is, and I will make answer [for myself]. Then shalt thou take me to the place where the King is, for he will bestow great favours upon thee, and he will heap gold and silver upon thee because thou wilt have brought me to him. For I am going to become a great and wonderful thing, and men and women shall rejoice because of me throughout the country.” And on the following day Bata changed himself into the form of which he had spoken to his brother. Then Anpu seated himself on his back early in the morning, and when he had come to the place where the King was, and His Majesty had been informed concerning him, he looked at him, and he had very great joy in him. And he made a great festival, saying, [205]“This is a very great wonder which hath happened”; and the people rejoiced everywhere throughout the whole country. And Pharaoh loaded Anpu with silver and gold, and he dwelt in his native town, and the King gave him large numbers of slaves, and very many possessions, for Pharaoh loved him very much, far more than any other person in the whole land.

And when many days had passed by the bull went into the house of purification, and he stood up in the place where the August Lady was, and said unto her, “Look upon me, I am alive in very truth.” And she said unto him, “Who art thou?” And he said unto her, “I am Bata. When thou didst cause the Acacia which held my heart to be destroyed by Pharaoh, well didst thou know that thou wouldst kill me. Nevertheless, I am alive indeed, in the form of a bull. Look at me!” And the August Lady was greatly afraid because of what she had said concerning her husband [to the King]; and the bull departed from the place of purification. And His Majesty went to tarry in her house and to rejoice with her, and she ate and drank with him; and the King was exceedingly happy. And the August Lady said to His Majesty, “Say these words: ‘Whatsoever she saith I will hearken unto for her sake,’ and swear an oath by God that thou wilt do them.” And the King hearkened unto everything which she spake, saying, “I beseech thee to give me the liver of this bull to eat, for he is wholly useless for any kind of work.” And the King cursed many, many times the request which she had uttered, and Pharaoh’s heart was exceedingly sore thereat.

On the following morning, when it was day, the King proclaimed a great feast, and he ordered the bull to be offered up as an offering, and one of the chief royal slaughterers of His Majesty was brought to slay the bull. And after the knife had been driven into him, and whilst he was still on the shoulders of the men, the bull shook his neck, and two drops of blood from it fell by the jambs of the doorway of His Majesty, one by one jamb of Pharaoh’s door, and the other by the other, and they became immediately two mighty acacia trees, and each was of the greatest magnificence. [206]Then one went and reported to His Majesty, saying, “Two mighty acacia trees, whereat His Majesty will marvel exceedingly, have sprung up during the night by the Great Door of His Majesty.” And men and women rejoiced in them everywhere in the country, and the King made offerings unto them. And many days after this His Majesty put on his tiara of lapis-lazuli, and hung a wreath of flowers of every kind about his neck, and he mounted his chariot of silver-gold, and went forth from the Palace to see the two acacia trees. And the August Lady came following after Pharaoh [in a chariot drawn by] horses, and His Majesty sat down under one acacia, and the August Lady sat under the other. And when she had seated herself the Acacia spake unto his wife, saying, “O woman, who art full of guile, I am Bata, and I am alive even though thou hast entreated me evilly. Well didst thou know when thou didst make Pharaoh to cut down the Acacia that held my heart that thou wouldst kill me, and when I transformed myself into a bull thou didst cause me to be slain.”

And several days after this the August Lady was eating and drinking at the table of His Majesty, and the King was enjoying her society greatly, and she said unto His Majesty, “Swear to me an oath by God, saying, I will hearken unto whatsoever the August Lady shall say unto me for her sake; let her say on.” And he hearkened unto everything which she said, and she said, “I entreat thee to cut down these two acacia trees, and to let them be made into great beams”; and the King hearkened unto everything which she said. And several days after this His Majesty made cunning wood-men to go and cut down the acacia trees of Pharaoh, and whilst the August Lady was standing and watching their being cut down, a splinter flew from one of them into her mouth, and she knew that she had conceived, and the King did for her everything which her heart desired. And many days after this happened she brought forth a man child, and one said to His Majesty, “A man child hath been born unto thee”; and a nurse was found for him and women to watch over him and tend him, and the people rejoiced throughout the [207]whole land. And the King sat down to enjoy a feast, and he began to call the child by his name, and he loved him very dearly, and at that same time the King gave him the title of “Royal son of Kash.”[1] Some time after this His Majesty appointed him “Erpā”[2] of the whole country. And when he had served the office of Erpā for many years, His Majesty flew up to heaven (i.e. he died). And the King (i.e. Bata) said, “Let all the chief princes be summoned before me, so that I may inform them about everything which hath happened unto me.” And they brought his wife, and he entered into judgment with her, and the sentence which he passed upon her was carried out. And Anpu, the brother of the King, was brought unto His Majesty, and the King made him Erpā of the whole country. When His Majesty had reigned over Egypt for twenty years, he departed to life (i.e. he died), and his brother Anpu took his place on the day in which he was buried.

Here endeth the book happily [in] peace.[3]

[1] i.e. Prince of Kash, or Viceroy of the Sūdān.

[2] i.e. hereditary chief, or heir.

[3] According to the colophon, the papyrus was written for an officer of Pharaoh’s treasury, called Qakabu, and the scribes Herua and Meremaptu by Annana, the scribe, the lord of books. The man who shall speak [against] this book shall have Thoth for a foe!

Under the heading of this chapter may well be included the Story of the Shipwrecked Traveller. The text of this remarkable story is written in the hieratic character upon a roll of papyrus, which is preserved in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg. It is probable that a layer of facts underlies the story, but the form in which we have it justifies us in assigning to it a place among the fairy stories of Ancient Egypt. Prefixed to the narrative of the shipwrecked traveller is the following:

“A certain servant of wise understanding hath said, Let thy heart be of good cheer, O prince. Verily we have arrived at [our] homes. The mallet hath been grasped, and the anchor-post hath been driven into the ground, and the bow of the boat hath grounded on the bank. Thanksgivings have been offered up to God, and every man hath embraced [208]his neighbour. Our sailors have returned in peace and safety, and our fighting men have lost none of their comrades, even though we travelled to the uttermost parts of Uauat (Nubia), and through the country of Senmut (Northern Nubia). Verily we have arrived in peace, and we have reached our own land [again]. Hearken, O prince, unto me, even though I be a poor man. Wash thyself, and let water run over thy fingers. I would that thou shouldst be ready to return an answer to the man who addresseth thee, and to speak to the King [from] thy heart, and assuredly thou must give thine answer promptly and without hesitation. The mouth of a man delivereth him, and his words provide a covering for [his] face. Act thou according to the promptings of thine heart, and when thou hast spoken [thou wilt have made him] to be at rest.” The shipwrecked traveller then narrates his experiences in the following words: I will now speak and give thee a description of the things that [once] happened to me myself [when] I was journeying to the copper mines of the king. I went down into the sea[1] in a ship that was one hundred and fifty cubits (225 feet) in length, and forty cubits (60 feet) in breadth, and it was manned by one hundred and fifty sailors who were chosen from among the best sailors of Egypt. They had looked upon the sky, they had looked upon the land, and their hearts were more understanding than the hearts of lions. Now although they were able to say beforehand when a tempest was coming, and could tell when a squall was going to rise before it broke upon them, a storm actually overtook us when we were still on the sea. Before we could make the land the wind blew with redoubled violence, and it drove before it upon us a wave that was eight cubits (12 feet) [high]. A plank was driven towards me by it, and I seized it; and as for the ship, those who were therein perished, and not one of them escaped.

[1] The sea was the Red Sea, and the narrator must have been on his way to Wādī Maghārah or Sarābīt al-Khādim in the Peninsula of Sinai.

Then a wave of the sea bore me along and cast me up upon an island, and I passed three days there by myself, with none but mine own heart for a companion; I laid me down and [209]slept in a hollow in a thicket, and I hugged the shade. And I lifted up my legs (i.e. I walked about), so that I might find out what to put in my mouth, and I found there figs and grapes, and all kinds of fine large berries; and there were there gourds, and melons, and pumpkins as large as barrels (?), and there were also there fish and water-fowl. There was no [food] of any sort or kind that did not grow in this island. And when I had eaten all I could eat, I laid the remainder of the food upon the ground, for it was too much for me [to carry] in my arms. I then dug a hole in the ground and made a fire, and I prepared pieces of wood and a burnt-offering for the gods.

And I heard a sound [as of] thunder, which I thought to be [caused by] a wave of the sea, and the trees rocked and the earth quaked, and I covered my face. And I found [that the sound was caused by] a serpent that was coming towards me. It was thirty cubits (45 feet) in length, and its beard was more than two cubits in length, and its body was covered with [scales of] gold, and the two ridges over its eyes were of pure lapis-lazuli (i.e. they were blue); and it coiled its whole length up before me. And it opened its mouth to me, now I was lying flat on my stomach in front of it, and it said unto me, “Who hath brought thee hither? Who hath brought thee hither, O miserable one? Who hath brought thee hither? If thou dost not immediately declare unto me who hath brought thee to this island, I will make thee to know what it is to be burnt with fire, and thou wilt become a thing that is invisible. Thou speakest to me, but I cannot hear what thou sayest; I am before thee, dost thou not know me?” Then the serpent took me in its mouth, and carried me off to the place where it was wont to rest, and it set me down there, having done me no harm whatsoever; I was sound and whole, and it had not carried away any portion of my body. And it opened its mouth to me whilst I was lying flat on my stomach, and it said unto me, “Who hath brought thee thither? Who hath brought thee hither, O miserable one? Who hath brought thee to this island of the sea, the two sides of which are in the waves?”

Then I made answer to the serpent, my two hands being [210]folded humbly before it, and I said unto it, “I am one who was travelling to the mines on a mission of the king in a ship that was one hundred and fifty cubits long, and fifty cubits in breadth, and it was manned by a crew of one hundred and fifty men, who were chosen from among the best sailors of Egypt. They had looked upon the sky, they had looked upon the earth, and their hearts were more understanding than the hearts of lions. They were able to say beforehand when a tempest was coming, and to tell when a squall was about to rise before it broke. The heart of every man among them was wiser than that of his neighbour, and the arm of each was stronger than that of his neighbour; there was not one weak man among them. Nevertheless it blew a gale of wind whilst we were still on the sea and before we could make the land. A gale rose, which continued to increase in violence, and with it there came upon [us] a wave eight cubits [high]. A plank of wood was driven towards me by this wave, and I seized it; and as for the ship, those who were therein perished and not one of them escaped alive [except] myself. And now behold me by thy side! It was a wave of the sea that brought me to this island.”

And the serpent said unto me, “Have no fear, have no fear, O little one, and let not thy face be sad, now that thou hast arrived at the place where I am. Verily, God hath spared thy life, and thou hast been brought to this island where there is food. There is no kind of food that is not here, and it is filled with good things of every kind. Verily, thou shalt pass month after month on this island, until thou hast come to the end of four months, and then a ship shall come, and there shall be therein sailors who are acquaintances of thine, and thou shalt go with them to thy country, and thou shalt die in thy native town.” [And the serpent continued,] “What a joyful thing it is for the man who hath experienced evil fortunes, and hath passed safely through them, to declare them! I will now describe unto thee some of the things that have happened unto me on this island. I used to live here with my brethren, and with my children who dwelt among them; now my children and my brethren [211]together numbered seventy-five. I do not make mention of a little maiden who had been brought to me by fate. And a star fell [from heaven], and these (i.e. his children, and his brethren, and the maiden) came into the fire which fell with it. I myself was not with those who were burnt in the fire, and I was not in their midst, but I [well-nigh] died [of grief] for them. And I found a place wherein I buried them all together. Now, if thou art strong, and thy heart flourisheth, thou shalt fill both thy arms (i.e. embrace) with thy children, and thou shalt kiss thy wife, and thou shalt see thine own house, which is the most beautiful thing of all, and thou shalt reach thy country, and thou shalt live therein again together with thy brethren, and dwell therein.”

Then I cast myself down flat upon my stomach, and I pressed the ground before the serpent with my forehead, saying, “I will describe thy power to the King, and I will make him to understand thy greatness. I will cause to be brought unto thee the unguent and spices called aba, and hekenu, and inteneb, and khasait, and the incense that is offered up in the temples, whereby every god is propitiated. I will relate [unto him] the things that have happened unto me, and declare the things that have been seen by me through thy power, and praise and thanksgiving shall be made unto thee in my city in the presence of all the nobles of the country. I will slaughter bulls for thee, and will offer them up as burnt-offerings, and I will pluck feathered fowl in thine [honour]. And I will cause to come to thee boats laden with all the most costly products of the land of Egypt, even according to what is done for a god who is beloved by men and women in a land far away, whom they know not.” Then the serpent smiled at me, and the things which I had said to it were regarded by it in its heart as nonsense, for it said unto me, “Thou hast not a very great store of myrrh [in Egypt], and all that thou hast is incense. Behold, I am the Prince of Punt, and the myrrh which is therein belongeth to me. And as for the heken which thou hast said thou wilt cause to be brought to me, is it not one of the chief [products] of this island? And behold, it shall come to pass that when thou hast once [212]departed from this place, thou shalt never more see this island, for it shall disappear into the waves.”

And in due course, even as the serpent had predicted, a ship arrived, and I climbed up to the top of a high tree, and I recognised those who were in it. Then I went to announce the matter to the serpent, but I found that it had knowledge thereof already. And the serpent said unto me, “A safe [journey], a safe [journey], O little one, to thy house. Thou shalt see thy children [again]. I beseech thee that my name may be held in fair repute in thy city, for verily this is the thing which I desire of thee.” Then I threw myself flat upon my stomach, and my two hands were folded humbly before the serpent. And the serpent gave me a [ship-] load of things, namely, myrrh, heken, inteneb, khasait, thsheps and shaas spices, eye-paint (antimony), skins of panthers, great balls of incense, tusks of elephants, greyhounds, apes, monkeys, and beautiful and costly products of all sorts and kinds. And when I had loaded these things into the ship, and had thrown myself flat upon my stomach in order to give thanks unto it for the same, it spake unto me, saying, “Verily thou shalt travel to [thy] country in two months, and thou shalt fill both thy arms with thy children, and thou shalt renew thy youth in thy coffin.” Then I went down to the place on the sea-shore where the ship was, and I hailed the bowmen who were in the ship, and I spake words of thanksgiving to the lord of this island, and those who were in the ship did the same. Then we set sail, and we journeyed on and returned to the country of the King, and we arrived there at the end of two months, according to all that the serpent had said. And I entered into the presence of the King, and I took with me for him the offerings which I had brought out of the island. And the King praised me and thanked me in the presence of the nobles of all his country, and he appointed me to be one of his bodyguard, and I received my wages along with those who were his [regular] servants.

Cast thou thy glance then upon me [O Prince], now that I have set my feet on my native land once more, having seen and experienced what I have seen and experienced. Hearken [213]thou unto me, for verily it is a good thing to hearken unto men. And the Prince said unto me, “Make not thyself out to be perfect, my friend! Doth a man give water to a fowl at daybreak which he is going to kill during the day?”

Here endeth [The Story of the Shipwrecked Traveller], which hath been written from the beginning to the end thereof according to the text that hath been found written in an [ancient] book. It hath been written (i.e. copied) by Ameni-Amen-āa, a scribe with skilful fingers. Life, strength, and health be to him!

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The Poems of Yahia Lababidi

Fanciful creators

What fanciful creators we are:
bestowing shock absorbers on cars
sprinkling tenderizer on meats
and stitching wrinkle-resistant shirts

Such wishful thinking, this
gifting what we desire.
—

The Art of Storm-riding

I could not decipher the living riddle of my body
put it to sleep when it hungered, and overfed it
when time came to dream

I nearly choked on the forked tongue of my spirit
between the real and the ideal, rejecting the one
and rejected by the other

I still have not mastered that art of storm-riding
without ears to apprehend howling winds
or eyes for rolling waves

Always the weather catches me unawares, baffled
by maps, compass, stars and the entire apparatus
of bearings or warning signals

Clutching at driftwood, eyes screwed shut, I tremble
hoping the unhinged night will pass and I remember
how once I shielded my flame.
—

drylands

Tell me, have you found a sea
deep enough to swim in
deep enough to drown in

waters to engage you
distract you, keep you
from crossing to the other shore?
—

If

If there were more than one of me
I’d shave my head and grow my beard
I’d be a Doctor of Theology

In great coat of myth, impermeable to ridicule
I’d raise my voice and sing
hymns to the Unknown god

Another me would come undone voluptuously
submit to possessions, deliriously
mate with night in vicious delight

I would be, in a word, unspeakable
indulge an appetite artistically criminal
gloriously indifferent to utter: ruin!

Yet another me would take to stage
part animal, part angel in improbable outfit
strike ecstatic pose and fuse with masses

Or perhaps, at last, renounce words and self
occupy an eye, to better see
in silent awe, peripherally

But, there is only this ambitious pen, and playpen
fencing a mass of miscarriages
trembling from time in unquiet blood

And I, with reluctant fidelity, am guardian
looking over the restless, violent lot
for fear of fratricide.
—

Anatomy lesson

Like animals ritualistically gathered

helplessly mourning their dead,

museum-goers congregate to interrogate

flayed human cadavers

peeping toms and doubting thomases

peek behind a curtain at secrets

usually reserved for physicians

or God

a tense dance of tendons and nerves

immaculate architecture of musculature and bone

skins peeled to expose gruesome-majestic fruit:

creation’s inscrutable seed

transfixed, with car-wreck absorption

between life studies and momento mori

reverent, incredulous, implicated -we stand

mysteriously united.
_______________

Kalabi – “Tommy Two Pints” (edit)

“Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,
Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,
And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers;
A poet’s face asleep in this grey morn.
Now in the midst of the old world forlorn
A mystic child is set in these still hours.
I keep this time, even before the flowers,
Sacred to all the young and the unborn.”
– Alice Meynell, In February
—–

Here we are, on the Eve of the first day of Spring in the old calendar, Imbolc also known as St. Brides Day (Brigit/Brighid)… We are lighting candles and incense tonight to greet the new season. Funnily enough, the weather is changing everywhere, and the seasons are turning in ways we never imagined. Reading a note from my sister Rebecca who lives in Indiana, that the power has gone, and it is quite nasty. From the satellite pics the snow is just blanketing down from one end of middle America to the other. My thoughts are with those in the chill tonight.

We had a brilliant weekend, Victor and Heather came to visit from The Dalles, and we all went to The Portland Art Museum to see the Monet exhibition together. It was beautiful, along with the Rodin’s, and the other pieces from the period. We checked out the Buddhist exhibition on the way out, truly wonderful. Later, Mary fixed a brilliant dinner, which everyone enjoyed. Our friend Cheryl joined us for that and for hanging out afterwards before Victor and Heather headed back out east. It was a great day and evening!

I hope that the changing of the season brings some relief, and hope to people across the globe. My thoughts are with those out in the streets across the Middle East. We live in a time of accelerating wonders! I hope it turns out well for Egypt and elsewhere in the area; there is a great change coming down the road…

This entry has some interesting elements in it, from the “The Coming of Angus and Bride” to Karen Armstrong’s acceptance speech at Ted(tm) on..”what we need”. We have some quotes from Teilhard De Chardin, and perhaps one of the most beautiful pieces of music:Samuel Barber’s “Agnus Dei” (Adagio for strings).

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did in assembling this entry.. 80)

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Teilhard De Chardin Quotes
Karen Armstrong – What We Need
The Coming of Angus and Bride
Samuel Barber: Agnus Dei (Adagio for strings)
Poesy For Imbolc
Artist: John Duncan
_______________________________
Teilhard De Chardin Quotes:

“The age of nations has passed, our task now, should we not perish, is to build the Earth.”
“You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.”
“The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.”
“Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world… Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.”
“Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves”
“We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate each other.”
_______________________________
Karen Armstrong – What We Need

_________________________

The Coming of Angus and Bride
(Wonder Tales Of Scotland – Donald Alexander Mackenzie)

All the long winter Beira kept captive a beautiful young princess named Bride. She was jealous of Bride’s beauty, and gave her ragged clothing to wear, and put her to work among the servants in the kitchen of her mountain castle, where the girl had to perform the meanest tasks. Beira scolded her continually, finding fault with everything she did, and Bride’s life was made very wretched.

One day Beira gave the princess a brown fleece and said: “You must wash this fleece in the running stream until it is pure white.”

Bride took the fleece and went outside the castle, and began to wash it in a pool below a waterfall. All day long she laboured at the work, but to no purpose. She found it impossible to wash the brown colour out of the wool.

When evening came on, Beira scolded the girl, and said: “You are a useless hussy. The fleece is as brown as when I gave it to you.”

Said Bride: “All day long have I washed it in the pool below the waterfall of the Red Rock.”

“To-morrow you shall wash it again,” Beira said; “and if you do not wash it white, you will go on washing on the next day, and on every day after that. Now, begone! and do as I bid you.”

It was a sorrowful time for Bride. Day after day she washed the fleece, and it seemed to her that if she went on washing until the world came to an end, the brown wool would never become white.

One morning as she went on with her washing a grey-bearded old man came near. He took pity on the princess, who wept bitter tears over her work, and spoke to her, saying: “Who are you, and why do you sorrow?”

Said the princess: “My name is Bride. I am the captive of Queen Beira, and she has ordered me to wash this brown fleece until it is white. Alas! it cannot be done.”

“I am sorry for you,” the old man said.

“Who are you, and whence come you?” asked Bride.

“My name is Father Winter,” the old man told her. “Give me the fleece, and I shall make it white for you.”

Bride gave Father Winter the brown fleece, and when he had shaken it three times it turned white as snow. The heart of Bride was immediately filled with joy, and she exclaimed: “Dear Father Winter, you are very kind. You have saved me much labour and taken away my sorrow.”

Father Winter handed back the fleece to Princess Bride with one hand, and she took it. Then he said: “Take also what I hold in my other hand.” As he spoke he gave her a bunch of pure white snowdrops. The eyes of Bride sparkled with joy to behold them.

Said Father Winter: “If Beira scolds you, give her these flowers, and if she asks where you found them, tell her that they came from the green rustling fir-woods. Tell her also that the cress is springing up on the banks of streams, and that the new grass has begun to shoot up in the fields.”

Having spoken thus, Father Winter bade the princess farewell and turned away.

Bride returned to the mountain castle and laid the white fleece at Beira’s feet. But the old queen scarcely looked at it. Her craze was fixed on the snowdrops that Bride carried.

“Where did you find these flowers?” Beira asked with sudden anger.

Said Bride: “The snowdrops are now growing in the green rustling fir-woods, the cress is springing up on the banks of streams, and the new grass is beginning to shoot up in the fields.”

“Evil are the tidings you bring me!” Beira cried. “Begone from my sight!”

Bride turned away, but not in sorrow. A new joy had entered her heart, for she knew that the wild winter season was going past, and that the reign of Queen Beira would soon come to an end.

Meanwhile Beira summoned her eight hag servants, and spoke to them, saying: “Ride to the north and ride to the south, ride to the east and ride to the west, and I will ride forth also. Smite the world with frost and tempest, so that no flower may bloom and no grass blade survive. I am waging war against all growth.”

When she had spoken thus, the eight hags mounted on the backs of shaggy goats and rode forth to do her bidding. Beira went forth also, grasping in her right hand her black magic hammer. On the night of that very day a great tempest lashed the ocean to fury and brought terror to every corner of the land.

Now the reason why Beira kept Bride a prisoner was because her fairest and dearest son, whose name was Angus-the-Ever-Young, had fallen in love with her. He was called “the Ever Young” because age never came near him, and all winter long he lived on the Green Isle of the West, which is also called the “Land of Youth.”

Angus first beheld Bride in a dream, and when he awoke he spoke to the King of the Green Isle, saying: “Last night I dreamed a dream and saw a beautiful princess whom I love. Tears fell from her eyes, and I spoke to an old man who stood near her, and said: ‘Why does the maiden weep?’ Said the old man: ‘She weeps because she is kept captive by Beira, who treats her with great cruelty.’ I looked again at the princess and said: ‘Fain would I set her free.’ Then I awoke. Tell me, O king, who is this princess, and where shall I find her?”

The King of the Green Isle answered Angus, saying: “The fair princess whom you saw is Bride, and in the days when you will be King of Summer she will be your queen. Of this your mother, Queen Beira, has full knowledge, and it is her wish to keep you away from Bride, so that her own reign may be prolonged. Tarry here, O Angus, until the flowers been to bloom and the grass begins to grow, and then you shall set free the beautiful Princess Bride.”

Said Angus: “Fain would I go forth at once to search for her.”

“The wolf-month (February) has now come,” the king said. “Uncertain is the temper of the wolf.”

Said Angus: “I shall cast a spell on the sea and a spell on the land, and borrow for February three days from August.”

He did as he said he would do. He borrowed three days from August, and the ocean slumbered peacefully while the sun shone brightly over mountain and glen. Then Angus mounted his white steed and rode eastward to Scotland over the isles and over the Minch, and he reached the Grampians when dawn was breaking. He was clad in raiment of shining gold, and from his shoulders hung his royal robe of crimson which the wind uplifted and spread out in gleaming splendour athwart the sky.

An aged bard looked eastward, and when he beheld the fair Angus he lifted up his harp and sang a song of welcome, and the birds of the forest sang with him. And this is how he sang:–

Angus hath come–the young, the fair,
The blue-eyed god with golden hair–
The god who to the world doth bring
This morn the promise of the spring;
Who moves the birds to song ere yet
He bath awaked the violet,
Or the soft primrose on the steep,
While buds are laid in lidded sleep,
And white snows wrap the hills serene,
Ere glows the larch’s 1 vivid green
Through the brown woods and bare. All hail!
Angus, and may thy will prevail. . . .
He comes . . . he goes. . . . And far and wide
He searches for the Princess Bride.

Up and down the land went Angus, but he could not find Bride anywhere. The fair princess beheld him in a dream, however, and knew that he longed to set her free. When she awoke she shed tears of joy, and on the place where her tears fell there sprang up violets, and they were blue as her beautiful eyes.

Beira was angry when she came to know that Angus was searching for Bride, and on the third evening of his visit she raised a great tempest which drove him back to Green Isle. But he returned again and again, and at length he discovered the castle in which the princess was kept a prisoner.

Then came a day when Angus met Bride in a forest near the castle. The violets were blooming and soft yellow primroses opened their eyes of wonder to gaze on the prince and the princess. When they spoke one to another the birds raised their sweet voices in song and the sun shone fair and bright.

Said Angus: “Beautiful princess, I beheld you in a dream weeping tears of sorrow.”

Bride said: “Mighty prince, I beheld you in a dream riding over bens and through glens in beauty and power.”

Said Angus: “I have come to rescue you from Queen Beira, who has kept you all winter long in captivity.”

Bride said: “To me this is a day of great joy.”

Said Angus: “It will be a day of great joy to all mankind ever after this.”

That is why the first day of spring–the day on which Angus found the princess–is called “Bride’s Day”. (1)

Through the forest came a fair company of fairy ladies, who hailed Bride as queen and bade welcome to Angus. Then the Fairy Queen waved her wand, and Bride was transformed. As swiftly as the bright sun springs out from behind a dark cloud, shedding beauty all round, so swiftly did Bride appear in new splendour. Instead of ragged clothing, she then wore a white robe adorned with spangles of shining silver. Over her heart gleamed a star-like crystal, pure as her thoughts and bright as the joy that Angus brought her. This gem is called “the guiding star of Bride “. Her golden-brown hair, which hung down to her waist in gleaming curls, was decked with fair spring flowers–snowdrops and daisies and primroses and violets. Blue were her eyes, and her face had the redness and whiteness of the wild rose of peerless beauty and tender grace. In her right hand she carried a white wand entwined with golden corn-stalks, and in her left a golden horn which is called the “Horn of Plenty”.

The linnet was the first forest bird that hailed Bride in her beauty, and the Fairy Queen said: “Ever after this you shall be called the ‘Bird of Bride’.” On the seashore the first bird that chirped with joy was the oyster-catcher, and the Fairy Queen said: “Ever after this you shall be called the ‘Page of Bride’.”

Then the Fairy Queen led Angus and Bride to her green-roofed underground palace in the midst of the forest. As they went forward they came to a river which was covered with ice. Bride put her fingers on the ice, and the Ice Hag shrieked and fled.

A great feast was held in the palace of the Fairy Queen, and it was the marriage feast of Bride, for Angus and she were wed. The fairies danced and sang with joy, and all the world was moved to dance and sing with them. This was how the first “Festival of Bride” came to be.

“Spring has come!” the shepherds cried; and they drove their flocks on to the moors, where they were counted and blessed.

“Spring has come!” chattered the raven, and flew off to find moss for her nest. The rook heard and followed after, and the wild duck rose from amidst the reeds, crying: “Spring has come!”

Bride came forth from the fairy palace with Angus and waved her hand, while Angus repeated magic spells. Then greater growth was given to the grass, and all the world hailed Angus and Bride as king and queen. Although they were not beheld by mankind, yet their presence was everywhere felt throughout Scotland.

Beira was wroth when she came to know that Angus had found Bride. She seized her magic hammer and smote the ground unceasingly until it was frozen hard as iron again–so hard that no herb or blade of grass could continue to live upon its surface. Terrible was her wrath when she beheld the grass growing. She knew well that when the grass flourished and Angus and Bride were married, her authority would pass away. It was her desire to keep her throne as long as possible.

“Bride is married, hail to Bride!” sang the birds.

“Angus is married, hail to Angus!” they sang also.

Beira heard the songs of the birds, and called to her hag servants: “Ride north and ride south, ride east and ride west, and wage war against Angus. I shall ride forth also.”

Her servants mounted their shaggy goats and rode forth to do her bidding. Beira mounted a black steed and set out in pursuit of Angus. She rode fast and she rode hard. Black clouds swept over the sky as she rode on, until at length she came to the forest in which the Fairy Queen had her dwelling. All the fairies fled in terror into their green mound and the doors were shut. Angus looked up and beheld Beira drawing nigh. He leapt on the back of his white steed, and lifted his young bride into the saddle in front of him and fled away with her.

Angus rode westward over the hills and over the valleys and over the sea, and Beira pursued him.

There is a rocky ravine on the island of Tiree, and Beira’s black steed jumped across it while pursuing the white steed of Angus. The hoofs of the black steed made a gash on the rocks. To this day the ravine is called “The Horse’s Leap”.

Angus escaped to the Green Isle of the West, and there he passed happy days with Bride. But he longed to return to Scotland and reign as King of Summer. Again and again he crossed the sea; and each time he reached the land of glens and bens, the sun broke forth in brightness and the birds sang merrily to welcome him.

Beira raised storm after storm to drive him away. First she called on the wind named “The Whistle”, which blew high and shrill, and brought down rapid showers of cold hailstones. It lasted for three days, and there was much sorrow and bitterness throughout the length and breadth of Scotland. Sheep and lambs were killed on the moors, and horses and cows perished also.

Angus fled, but he returned soon again. The next wind that Beira raised to prolong her winter reign was the “Sharp Billed Wind” which is called “Gobag”. lasted for nine days, and all the land was pierced by it, for it pecked and bit in every nook and cranny like a sharp-billed bird.

Angus returned, and the Beira raised the eddy wind which is called “The Sweeper”. Its whirling gusts tore branches from the budding trees and bright flowers from their stalks. All the time it blew, Beira kept beating the ground with her magic hammer so as to keep the grass from growing. But her efforts were in vain. Spring smiled in beauty all around, and each time she turned away, wearied by her efforts, the sun sprang forth in splendour. The small modest primroses opened their petals in the sunshine, looking forth from cosy nooks that the wind, called “Sweeper”, was unable to reach. Angus fled, but he soon returned again.

Beira was not yet, however, entirely without hope. Her efforts had brought disaster to mankind, and the “Weeks of Leanness” came on. Food became scarce. The fishermen were unable to venture to sea on account of Beira’s tempests, and could get no fish. In the night-time Beira and her hags entered the dwellings of mankind, and stole away their stores of food. It was, indeed, a sorrowful time.

Angus was moved with pity for mankind, and tried to fight the hags of Beira. But the fierce queen raised the “Gales of Complaint” to keep him away, and they raged in fury until the first week of March. Horses and cattle died for want of food, because the fierce winds blew down stacks of fodder and scattered them over the lochs and the ocean.

Angus, however, waged a fierce struggle against the hag servants, and at length he drove them away to the north, where they fumed and fretted furiously.

Beira was greatly alarmed, and she made her last great effort to subdue the Powers of Spring. She waved her magic hammer, and smote the clouds with it. Northward she rode on her black steed, and gathered her servants together, and called to them, saying: “Ride southward with me, all of you, and scatter our enemies before us.”

Out of the bleak dark north they rode in a single pack. With them came the Big Black Tempest. It seemed then as if winter had returned in full strength and would abide for ever. But even Beira and her hags had to take rest. On a dusky evening they crouched down together on the side of a bare mountain, and, when they did so, a sudden calm fell upon the land and the sea.

“Ha! ha!” laughed the wild duck who hated the hag. “Ha! ha! I am still alive, and so are my six ducklings.”

“Have patience! idle chatterer,” answered the Hag. “I am not yet done.”

That night she borrowed three days from Winter which had not been used, for Angus had previously borrowed for Winter three days from August. The three spirits of the borrowed days were tempest spirits, and came towards Beira mounted on black hogs. She spoke to them, saying: “Long have you been bound! Now I set you at liberty.”

One after another, on each of the three days that followed, the spirits went forth riding the black hogs. They brought snow and hail and fierce blasts of wind. Snow whitened the moors and filled the furrows of ploughed land, rivers rose in flood, and great trees were shattered and uprooted. The duck was killed, and so were her six ducklings; sheep and cattle perished, and many human beings were killed on land and drowned at sea. The days on which these things happened are called the “Three Hog Days”.

Beira’s reign was now drawing to a close. She found herself unable to combat any longer against the power of the new life that was rising in every vein of the land. The weakness of extreme old age crept upon her, and she longed once again to drink of the waters of the Well of Youth. When, on a bright March morning, she beheld Angus riding over the hills on his white steed, scattering her fierce hag servants before him, she fled away in despair. Ere she went she threw her magic hammer beneath a holly tree, and that is the reason why no grass grows under the holly trees.

Beira’s black steed went northward with her in flight. As it leapt over Loch Etive it left the marks of its hoofs on the side of a rocky mountain, and the spot is named to this day “Horse-shoes”. She did not rein up her steed until she reached the island of Skye, where she found rest on the summit of the “Old Wife’s Ben” (Ben-e-Caillich) at Broadford. There she sat, gazing steadfastly across the sea, waiting until the day and night would be of equal length. All that equal day she wept tears of sorrow for her lost power, and when night came on she went westward over the sea to Green Island. At the dawn of the day that followed she drank the magic waters of the Well of Youth.

On that day which is of equal length with the night, Angus came to Scotland with Bride, and they were hailed as king and queen of the unseen beings. They rode from south to north in the morning and forenoon, and from north to south in the afternoon and evening. A gentle wind went with them, blowing towards the north from dawn till midday, and towards the south from midday till sunset. It was on that day that Bride dipped her fair white hands in the high rivers and lochs which still retained ice. When she did so, the Ice Hag fell into a deep sleep from which she could not awake until summer and autumn were over and past.

The grass grew quickly after Angus began to reign as king. Seeds were sown, and the people called on Bride to grant them a good harvest. Ere long the whole land was made beautiful with spring flowers of every hue.

Angus had a harp of gold with silver strings, and when he played on it youths and maidens followed the sound of the music through the woods. Bards sang his praises and told that he kissed lovers, and that when they parted one from another to return to their homes, the kisses became invisible birds that hovered round their heads and sang sweet songs of love, and whispered memories dear. It was thus that one bard sang of him:–

When softly blew the south wind o’er the sea,
Lisping of springtime hope and summer pride,
And the rough reign of Beira ceased to be,
Angus the Ever-Young,
The beauteous god of love, the golden-haired,
The blue mysterious-eyed,
Shone like the star of morning high among
The stars that shrank afraid
When dawn proclaimed the triumph that he shared
With Bride the peerless maid.
Then winds of violet sweetness rose and sighed,
No conquest is compared
To Love’s transcendent joys that never fade.

In the old days, when there was no Calendar in Scotland, the people named the various periods of winter and spring, storm and calm, as they are given above. The story of the struggle between Angus and Beira is the story of the struggle between spring and winter, growth and decay, light and darkness, and warmth and cold.
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Footnotes

The larch is the first tree in Scotland which turns a bright green in springtime.
February 1st old style, February 13th new style.
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Samuel Barber: Agnus Dei (Adagio for strings)

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Poesy For Imbolc

“From December to March, there are for many of
us three gardens:
the garden outdoors,
the garden of pots and bowls in the house,
and the garden of the mind’s eye.”
– Katherine S. White
—

“He knows no winter, he who loves the soil,
For, stormy days, when he is free from toil,
He plans his summer crops, selects his seeds
From bright-paged catalogues for garden needs.
When looking out upon frost-silvered fields,
He visualizes autumn’s golden yields;
He sees in snow and sleet and icy rain
Precious moisture for his early grain;
He hears spring-heralds in the storm’s ‘ turmoil­
He knows no winter, he who loves the soil.”
– Sudie Stuart Hager, He Knows No Winter
—

“Winter is nature’s way of saying, “Up yours.””
– Robert Byrne
—

“Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.”
– Pietro Aretino
—
“Dreaming time has reversed, I watch drowned snow
Appear to lift up from the lake;
Reshaping magnified, each risen flake
Looms in the air, deliberate and slow,
Allowing me to let your picture form and wake
Astonished that you have returned to go
To watch me watch drowned snow lift from the lake.
Dreaming time has reversed—and you,
Your red cheeks radiant against the wind,
Are gliding toward me on the ice into
A frame of glided twilight—I
Again awaken from your being gone to find
Your gloved hands covering your lips’ good-bye
So you can watch me watch uplifted snow
As if your absence now concluded long ago.”
– Robert Pack, Snow Rise
—
“Was it the smile of early spring
That made my bosom glow?
‘Twas sweet, but neither sun nor wind
Could raise my spirit so.

Was it some feeling of delight,
All vague and undefined?
No, ’twas a rapture deep and strong,
Expanding in the mind!”
– Anne Bronte, In Memory of A Happy Day in February
—

“Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do – or because you can now and then permit
yourself the luxury of thinking so.”
– Stanley Crawford
—

“See the falling snowflakes
drifting by the pane,
Winging glasslike angels
falling just like rain.
The air is crisp and stirring,
the freshly fallen snow.
And the warmth I’m feeling inside,
sets my eyes aglow.
This winter’s day has come before
and will come again.
It finds it’s way to Earth
every now and then.”
– Linda A. Copp, A Winter’s Day
—

“Be off!” say Winter’s snows;
“Now it’s my turn to sing!”
So, startled, quivering,
Not daring to oppose

(Our fortitude grows dim in
The face of a Quos ego),
Away, my songs, must we go
Before those virile women!

Rain. We are forced to fly,
Everywhere, utterly.
End of the comedy.
Come, swallows, it’s good-bye.

Wind, sleet. The branches sway,
Writhing their stunted limbs,
And off the white smoke swims
Across the heavens’ gray.

A pallid yellow lingers
Over the chilly dale.
My keyhole blows a gale
Onto my frozen fingers.”
– Victor Hugo, Be Off Winter Snow
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