Gwyllm.com

Tintern Abbey – Samuel Colman

Maybe I am just high on all of the recent events and what, but I have a sense of elation, and hope and that old fear running through the neural passages all at once. (or is he off his meds? 80} ) I feel like I am on the edge of something new in time….
There is so much beauty yet to uncover, and for the young ones coming up, a bright, bright beautiful psychedelic future, almost perfectly encapsulated by our featured musical artist today: MGMT
We cover some older tales, back to ancient Ireland, and then a couple of quick takes on some of the elders that helped get us here today….
May you who live in the US go out and VOTE, and may the best candidate for our futures win.
Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Allen Ginsberg Quotes

MGMT -Electric Feel

MGMT – Mental Mystics

Cuchulain of Muirthemne: Cruachan

And now a special poem from Allen Ginsberg..

Ken Kesey on Neal Cassady

MGMT “Kids” Video

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Allen Ginsberg Quotes:
Poets are Damned… but See with the Eyes of Angels.
The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive.
The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.
The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.
Ultimately Warhol’s private moral reference was to the supreme kitsch of the Catholic church.
Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.
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MGMT -Electric Feel

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Interview:

MGMT – Mental Mystics…

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Cuchulain of Muirthemne: Cruachan
Now as to Cruachan, the home of Ailell and of Maeve, it is on the plain of Magh Ai it was, in the province of Connaught.
And this is the way the plain came by its name. In the time long ago, there was a king whose name was Conn, that had the Druid power, so that when the Sidhe themselves came against him, he was able to defend himself with enchantments as good as their own. And one time he went out against them, and broke up their houses, and carried away their cattle, and then, to hinder them from following after him, he covered the whole province with a deep snow.
The Sidhe went then to consult with Dalach, the king’s brother, that had the Druid knowledge even better than himself; and it is what he told them to do, to kill three hundred white cows with red ears, and to spread out their livers on a certain plain. And when they had done this, he made spells on them, and the heat the livers gave out melted the snow over the whole plain and the whole province, and after that the plain was given the name of Magh Ai, the Plain of the Livers.
Ailell was son of Ross Ruadh, king of Leinster, and Maeve was daughter of Eochaid, king of Ireland, and her brothers were the Three Fair Twins that rose up against their father, and fought against him at Druim Criadh. And they were beaten in the fight, and went back over the Sionnan, and they were overtaken and their heads were cut off, and brought back to their father, and he fretted after them to the end of his life.
Seven sons Ailell and Maeve had, and the name of every one of them was Maine. There was Maine Mathremail, like his mother, and Maine Athremail, like his father, and Maine Mo Epert, the Talker, and Maine Milscothach, the Honey-Worded, and Maine Andoe the Quick, and Maine Mingor, the Gently Dutiful, and Maine Morgor, the Very Dutiful. Their own people they had, and their own place of living.
This now was the appearance of Cruachan, the Royal house of Ailell and of Maeve, that some called Cruachan of the poets; there were seven divisions in the house, with couches in them, from the hearth to the wall; a front of bronze to every division, and of red yew with carvings on it; and there were seven strips of bronze from the foundation to the roof of the house. The house was made of oak, and the roof was covered with oak shingles; sixteen windows with glass there were, and shutters of bronze on them, and a bar of bronze across every shutter. There was a raised place in the middle of the house for Ailell and Maeve, with silver fronts and strips of bronze around it, and four bronze pillars on it, and a silver rod beside it, the way Ailell and Maeve could strike the middle beam and check their people.
And outside the royal house was the dun, with the walls about it that were built by Brocc, son of Blar, and the great gate; and it is there the houses were for strangers to be lodged.
And besides this, there was at Cruachan the Hill of the Sidhe, or, as some called it, the Cave of Cruachan. It was there Midhir brought Etain one time, and it is there the people of the Sidhe lived; but it is seldom any living person had the power to see them.
It is out of that hill a flock of white birds came one time, and everything they touched in all Ireland withered up, until at last the men of Ulster killed them with their slings. And another time enchanted pigs came out of the hill, and in every place they trod, neither corn nor grass nor leaf would sprout before the end of seven years, and no sort of weapon would wound them. But if they were counted in any place, or if the people so much as tried to count them, they would not stop in that place, but they would go on to another. But however often the people of the country tried to count them, no two people could ever make out the one number, and one man would call out, “There are three pigs in it,” and another, “No, but there are seven,” and another that it was eleven were in it, or thirteen, and so the count would be lost. One time Maeve and Ailell themselves tried to count them on the plain, but while they were doing it, one of the pigs made a leap over Maeve’s chariot, and she in it. Every one called out, “A pig has gone over you, Maeve!” “It has not,” she said, and with that she caught hold of the pig by the shank, but if she did, its skin opened at the head, and it made its escape. And it is from that the place was called Magh-mucrimha, the Plain of Swine-counting.
Another time Fraech, son of Idath, of the men of Connaught, that was son of Boann’s sister, Befind, from the Sidhe, came to Cruachan. He was the most beautiful of the men of Ireland or of Alban, but his life was not long. It was to ask Findabair for his wife he came, and before he set out his people said: “Send a message to your mother’s people, the way they will send you clothing of the Sidhe.” So he went to Boann, that was at Magh Breagh, and he brought away fifty blue cloaks with four black ears on each cloak, and a brooch of red gold with each, and pale white shirts with looped beasts of gold around them; and fifty silver shields with edges, and a candle of a king’s house in the hand of each of the men, knobs of carbuncle under them, and their points of precious stones. They used to light up the night as if they were sun’s rays.
And he had with him seven trumpeters with gold and silver trumpets, with many coloured clothing, with golden, silken, heads of hair, with coloured cloaks; and three harpers with the appearance of a king on each of them, every harper having the white skin of a deer about him and a cloak of white linen, and a harp-bag of the skins of water-dogs.
The watchman saw them from the dun when they had come into the Plain of Cruachan. “I see a great crowd,” he said, “coming towards us. Since Ailell was king and Maeve was queen, there never came and there never will come a grander or more beautiful crowd than this one. It is like as if I had my head in a vat of wine, with the breeze that goes over them.”
Then Fraech’s people let out their hounds, and the hounds found seven deer and seven foxes and seven hares and seven wild boars, and hunted them to Rath Cruachan, and there they were killed on the lawn of the dun.
Then Ailell and Maeve gave them a welcome, and they were brought into the house, and while food was being made ready, Maeve sat down to play a game of chess with Fraech. It was a beautiful chess-board they had, all of white bronze, and the chessmen of gold and silver, and a candle of precious stones lighting them.
Then Ailell said: “Let your harpers play for us while the feast is being made ready.” “Let them play, indeed,” said Fraech.
So the harpers began to play, and it was much that the people of the house did not die with crying and with sadness. And the music they played was the Three Cries of Uaithne. It was Uaithne, the harp of the Dagda, that first played those cries the time Boann’s sons were born. The first was a song of sorrow for the hardness of her pains, and the second was a song of smiling and joy for the birth of her sons, and the third was a sleeping song after the birth.
And with the music of the harpers, and with the light that shone from the precious stones in the house, they did not know the night was on them, till at last Maeve started up, and she said: “We have done a great deed to keep these young men without food.” “It is more you think of chess-playing than of providing for them,” said Ailell; “and now, let them stop from the music,” he said, “till the food is given out.”
Then the food was divided. It was Lothar used to be sitting on the floor of the house, dividing the food with his cleaver, and he not eating himself, and from the time he began dividin
g, food never failed under his hand.
After that, Fraech was brought into the conversation-house, and they asked him what was it he wanted.
“A visit to yourselves,” he said, but he said nothing of Findabair. So they told him he was welcome, and he stopped with them for a while, and every day they went out hunting, and all the people of Connaught used to come and to be looking at them.
But all this time Fraech got no chance of speaking with Findabair, until one morning at daybreak, he went down to the river for washing, and Findabair and her young girls had gone there before him. And he took her hand, and he said: “Stay here and talk with me, for it is for your sake I am come, and would you go away with me secretly?” “I will not go secretly,” she said, “for I am the daughter of a king and of a queen.”
So she went from him then, but she left him a ring to remember her by. It was a ring her mother had given her.
Then Fraech went to the conversation-house to Ailell and to Maeve. “Will you give your daughter to me?” he said. “We will give her if you will give the marriage portion we ask,” said Ailell, “and that is, sixty black-grey horses with golden bits, and twelve milch cows, and a white red-eared calf with each of them; and you to come with us with all your strength and all your musicians at whatever time we go to war in Ulster.” “I swear by my shield and my sword, I would not give that for Maeve herself,” he said; and he went away out of the house.
But Ailell had taken notice of Findabair’s ring with Fraech, and he said to Maeve: “If he brings our daughter away with him, we will lose the help of many of the kings of Ireland. Let us go after him and make an end of him before he has time to harm us.” “That would be a pity,” said Maeve, “and it would be a reproach on us.” “It will be no reproach on us, the way I will manage it,” said he. And Maeve agreed to it, for there was vexation on her that it was Findabair that Fraech wanted, and not herself. So they went into the palace, and Ailell said: “Let us go and see the hounds hunting until mid-day.” So they did so, and at mid-day they were tired, and they all went to bathe in the river. And Fraech was swimming in the river, and Ailell said to him: “Do not come back till you bring me a branch of the rowan-tree there beyond, with the beautiful berries.” For he knew there was a prophecy that it was in a river Fraech would get his death.
So he went and broke a branch off the tree and brought it back over the water, and it is beautiful he looked over the black water, his body without fault, and his face so nice, and his eyes very grey, and the branch with the red berries between the throat and white face. And then he threw the branch to them out of the water. “It is ripe and beautiful the berries are,” said Ailell; “bring us more of them.”
So he went off again to the tree, and the water-worm guarded the tree caught a hold of him. “Let me have a sword,” called out, but there was not a man on the land would dare to give it to him, through fear of Ailell and of Maeve. But Findabair made a leap to go into the water with a gold knife she had in her hand but Ailell threw a sharp-pointed spear from above, through her plaited hair, that held her; but she threw the knife to Fraech, and he cut off the head of the monster, and brought it with him to land, but he himself had got a deep wound. Then Ailell and Maeve went back to the house. “It is a great deed we have done,” said Maeve. “It is a pity, indeed, what we have done to the man,” said Ailell “And let a healing-bath be made for him now,” he said, “of the marrow of pigs and of a heifer.” Fraech was put in the bath then, and pleasant music was played by the trumpeters, and a bed was made for him.
Then a sorrowful crying was heard on Cruachan, and they saw three times fifty women with purple gowns, with green head-dresses, and pins of silver on their wrists, and a messenger went and I asked them who was it they were crying for “For Fraech, son of Idath,” they said, “boy darling of the king of the Sidhe of Ireland”
Then Fraech heard their crying, and he said: “Lift me out of this, for that is the cry of my mother, and of the women of Boann.” So they lifted him out, and the women came round him and brought him away into the Hill of Cruachan.
And the next day he came out, and he whole and sound, and fifty women with him, and they with the appearance of women of the Sidhe. And at the door of the dun they left him, and they gave out their cry again, so that all the people that heard it could not but feel sorrowful. It is from this the musicians of Ireland learned the sorrowful cry of the women of the Sidhe.
And when he went into the house, the whole household rose up before him and bade him welcome, as if it was from another world he was come. And there was shame and repentance on Ailell and on Maeve for trying to harm him, and peace was made, and he went away to his own place.
And it was after that he came to help Ailell and Maeve, and that he got his death in a river as was foretold, at the beginning of the war for the Brown Bull of Cuailgne.
And one time the Hill was robbed by the men of Cruachan, and this is the way it happened.
One night at Samhain, Ailell and Maeve were in Cruachan with their whole household, and the food was being made ready.
Two prisoners had been hanged by them the day before, and Ailell said: “Whoever will put a gad round the foot of either of the two men on the gallows, will get a prize from me.”
It was a very dark night, and bad things would always appear on that night of Samhain, and every man that went out to try came back very quickly into the house. “I will go if I will get a prize,” said Nera, then. “I will give you this gold-hilted sword,” said Ailell.
So Nera went out and he put a gad round the foot of one of the men that had been hanged. Then the man spoke to him. “It is good courage you have,” he said, “and bring me with you where I can get a drink, for I was very thirsty when I was hanged.” So Nera brought him where he would get a drink, and then he put him on the gallows again, and went back to Cruachan.
But what he saw was the whole of the palace as if on fire before him, and the heads of the people of it lying on the ground, and then he thought he saw an army going into the Hill of Cruachan, and he followed after the army. “There is a man on our track,” the last man said. “The track is the heavier,” said the next to him, and each said that word to the other from the last to the first. Then they went into the Hill of Cruachan. And they said to their king: “What shall be done to the man that is come in?” “Let him come here till I speak with him,” said the king. So Nera came, and the king asked him who it was had brought him in. “I came in with your army,” said Nera. “Go to that house beyond,” said the king: “there is a woman there will make you welcome. Tell her it is I myself sent you to her. And come every day,” he said, “to this house with a load of firing.”
So Nera went where he was told, and the woman said: “A welcome before you, if it is the king sent you.” So he stopped there, and took the woman for his wife. And every day for three days he brought a load of firing to the king’s house, and on each day he saw a blind man, and a lame man on his back, coming out of the house before him. They would go on till they were at the brink of a well before the Hill. “Is it there?” the blind man would say. “It is, indeed,” the lame man would say. “Let us go away,” the lame man would say then.
And at the end of three days, as he t
hought, Nera asked the Woman about this. “Why do the blind man and the lame man go every day to the well?” he said. “They go to know is the crown safe that is in the well. It is there the king’s crown is kept.” “Why do these two go?” said Nera. “It is easy to tell that,” she said; “they are trusted by the king to visit the crown, and one of them was blinded by him, and the other was lamed. And another thing,” she said, “go now and give a warning to your people to mind themselves next Samhain night, unless they will come to attack the hill, for it is only at Samhain,” she said, “the army of the Sidhe can go out, for it is at that time all the hills of the Sidhe of Ireland are opened. But if they will come, I will promise them this, the crown of Briun to be carried off by Ailell and by Maeve.”
“How can I give them that message,” said Nera, “when I saw the whole dun of Cruachan burned and destroyed, and all the people destroyed with it?” “You did not see that, indeed,” she said “It was the host of the Sidhe came and put that appearance before your eyes. And go back to them now,” she said, “and you will find them sitting round the same great pot, and the meat has not yet been taken off the fire.”
“How will it be believed that I have gone into the Hill?” said Nera. “Bring flowers of summer with you,” said the woman. So he brought wild garlic with him, and primroses and golden fern.
So he went back to the palace, and he found his people round the same great pot, and he told them all that had happened him, and the sword was given to him, and he stopped with his people to the end of a year.
At the end of the year Ailell said to Nera: “We are going now against the Hill of the Sidhe, and let you go back,” he said, “if you have anything to bring out of it.” So he went back to see the woman, and she bade him welcome. “Go now,” she said, “and bring in a load of firing to the king, for I went in myself every day for the last year with the load on my back, and I said there was sickness on you.” So he did that.
Then the men of Connaught and the black host of the exiles of Ulster went into the Hill and robbed it and brought away the crown of Briun, son of Smetra, that was made by the smith of Angus, son of Umor, and that was kept in the well at Cruachan, to save it from the Morrigu. And Nera was left with his people in the hill, and he has not come out till now, and he will not come out till the end of life and time.
Now one time the Morrigu brought away a cow from the Hill of Cruachan to the Brown Bull of Cuailgne, and after she brought it back again its calf was born. And one day it went out of the Hill, and it bellowed three times. At that time Ailell and Fergus were playing draughts, for it was after Fergus had come as an exile from Ulster, because of the death of the sons of Usnach, and they heard the bellowing of the bull-calf in the plain. Then Fergus said: “I do not like the sound of the calf bellowing. There will be calves without cows,” he said, “when the king goes on his march.”
But now Ailell’s bull, Finbanach, the White-Horned, met the calf in the plain of Cruachan, and they fought together, and the calf was beaten and it bellowed. “What did the calf bellow?” Maeve asked her cow-herd Buaigle. “I know that, my master, Fergus,” said Bricriu. “It is the song that you were singing a while ago.” On that Fergus turned and struck with his fist at his head, so that the five men of the chessmen that were in his hand went into Bricriu’s head, and it was a lasting hurt to him. “Tell me now, Buaigle, what did the calf bellow?” said Maeve. “It said indeed,” said Buaigle, “that if its father the Brown Bull of Cuailgne would come to fight with the White-Horned, he would not be seen any more in Ai, he would be beaten through the whole plain of Ai on every side.” And it is what Maeve said: “I swear by the gods my people swear by, I will not lie down on feathers, or drink red or white ale, till I see those two bulls fighting before my face.”

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And now a special poem from Allen Ginsberg…

A poem written as an aftermath of a cosmic voyage…

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I stumbled upon this poem whilst reading ‘Albion Rising’(A popular history LSD in Britain) written by Andy Roberts… It was midnight, and I went into the living room and snagged the Allen Ginsberg collected off the shelf and made my way to bed. I think midnight is a magick moment anyway, and reading this poem absolutely transformed my consciousness. I find it incredibly evocative of that state of spiritual bliss…

-Gwyllm

Wales Visitation
White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow

Trees moving in rivers of wind

The clouds arise

as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist

above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed

along a green crag

glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—
Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught

but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,

of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,

the wisdom of earthly relations,

of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible

orchards of mind language manifest human,

of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry

flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny

bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs—
Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower

& network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self

the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating

heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness

clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—

Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!
All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind

undulating on mossy hills

a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels

on the mountainside

whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway

in granitic undertow down—

and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees

and lifted the grasses an instant in balance

and lifted the lambs to hold still

and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave
A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,

a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,

the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean

tonned with cloud-hang,

—Heaven balanced on a grassblade.

Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,

One Being on the mountainside stirring gently

Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,

one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies,

one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering

to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down

through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—
No imperfection in the budded mountain,

Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,

daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,

grass shimmers green

sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,

horses dance in the warm rain,

tree-lined canals network live farmland,

blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills,

pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern—
Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air,

Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!

Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,

each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,

myriad-formed—

Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells dropped

doubled down the stem trembling antennae,

& look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare

breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—

I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,

smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,

tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—

One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath

moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,

trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,

lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught

hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,
Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart

Calling our Presence together

The great secret is no secret

Senses fit the winds,

Visible is visible,

rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,

gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala

Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,

rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,

breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,

Heaven breath and my own symmetric

Airs wavering thru antlered green fern

drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,

Sounds of Aleph and Aum

through forests of gristle,

my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal,

All Albion one.
What did I notice? Particulars! The

vision of the great One is myriad—

smoke curls upward from ashtray,

house fire burned low,

The night, still wet & moody black heaven

starless

upward in motion with wet wind.
July 29, 1967 (LSD)—August 3, 1967 (London)

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Ken Kesey on Neal Cassady

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MGMT “Kids” Video

Sent to me by my friend Diana in L.A….
Stand By Me – International Version

What… 9 days to go to the US elections? I don’t believe I have ever been quite so concerned as to the direction a single election could take us, but these are ‘interesting times’. I will not slag McCain, or Palin as I feel they both truly believe that their way is correct. You must give them their due; they are products of a mind-set that has worked remarkably well for over the century or so, even to the detriment of the planet as a whole.
They are the remnants of a tattered meme that exends back to the Neolithic Agrarian Upheaval that brought us priest-craft, organized military, hierarchies and division by class and race…. Which leads one to ask, what is coming then?
If Obama/Biden wins, what does it portend? A major shift surely? I Think I see hints of it; something along the lines of what Riane Eisler, a feminist revisionist of history, coined the term ‘Gylanic Revival’ (GR) in her book The Chalice and the Blade…
We stand at a crossroads, that may determine the fate of our poor beleaguered planet. This is a moment perhaps like no other in the history of the US. We are offered a choice that has been played out ad nauseaum for centuries, and a choice where we move into a world of multi-lateral cooperation, of multi-cultural integration, and a world where we look to the futures needs, a world of bold sacrifice perhaps, but a world made better for those who come after.
On that note, I dream of Shift, of dissolving memes, and of a brave new future.
For Your Enjoyment: (an example of memes that change….)
Wassup – @008

Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Sufi Quotes

Azam Ali – innal malak

A Curriculum of a School – Idries Shah

A Blessing Of Love: The Poetry Of Rumi

Niyaz – Sadrang

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Sufi Quotes:
Asking good questions is half of learning.

Muhammad (Essential Sufism)
A donkey with a load of holy books is still a donkey.

Traditional (Essential Sufism)
Whatever you have in your mind – forget it;

Whatever you have in your hand – give it;

Whatever is to be your fate – face it!

Abu Sa’id (Essential Sufism)
For every sin but the killing of Time there is forgiveness.

Traditional (Essential Sufism)
If someone remarks: “What an excellent man you are!” and this pleases you more than his saying, “What a bad man you are!” know that you are still a bad man.

Sufyan al Thawri (Essential Sufism)
A seeker went to ask a sage for guidance on the Sufi way.
The sage counseled,
“if you have never trodden the path of love, go away and fall in love;

then come back and see us.”

Jami (Essential Sufism)
“The sun never says to the earth,

‘You owe me.’
Look what happens with a love like that.

It lights up the whole sky.”

The poet Hafiz
“I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God”.

Sufi Proverb

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Azam Ali – innal malak

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A Curriculum of a School

– Idries Shah

“Q: Could you give us a view of the curriculum of a School, from ‘inside the School’ so to speak?”
“A: In our teaching, we must group correctly these elements: the pupils, the teacher and the circumstances of study. Only at the right time and place, with the teacher suitable to these, and with the right body of students, can our studies be said to be capable of coherent development.”
“Does this sound difficult or unreasonable? Let us compare these requirements with an analogy of our needs: the ordinary educational institution.”
“If we are learning, say, physics, we must have a man skilled in physics [having successfully completed his own training; able also to teach; and with a mandate to teach]; students who want to learn and who have capacity and some background for the study; and adequate laboratories and other facilities for the studies to take place.”
“A physics teacher could not make any real progress with a class of idiots, or people who primarily wanted power or fame or gain through physics. These factors would be getting in the way of the teaching. A class of brilliant students, faced with a man who knew no physics, or who only had a smattering, would make little progress. A good teacher, with a student body, could do little unless the instruments and equipment, the building and so on, were available as and when needed.”
“Yet this principle, so well established in conventional studies of all kinds, is largely passed over and has fallen into disuse, among esotericists. Why? Because they have a primitive and unenlightened attitude towards teaching. Like an oaf who has just heard of physics or only seen some of its manifestations, the would-be student wants it all *now*. He does

not care about the necessary presence of other students. He wants to skip the curriculum and he sees no connection between the building and the subject of physics. So he does not want a laboratory.”
“Just observe what happens when people try to carry on learning or teaching without the correct grouping of the three essentials:”
“Would-be students always try to operate their studies with only one, or at the most two, of the three factors. Teachers try to teach those who are unsuitable, because of the difficulties of finding enough people to form a class. Students who have no teacher try to teach themselves. Transpose this into a group of people trying to learn physics, and you will see some of their problems. Others group themselves around the literature and methodology of older schools, trying to make the scrap material of someone else’s physics laboratory work. They formalize rituals, become obsessed by principles and slogans, assign disproportionate importance to the elements which are only tools, but which they regard as a more significant heritage.”
“Anyone can think of several schools, cults, religions, systems of psychology or philosophy which fall into the above classifications.”
“We must categorically affirm that it is impossible to increase human knowledge in the higher field by these methods. The statistical possibility of useful gains within a reasonable time is so remote as to be excluded from one’s calculations.”
“Why, then, do people insist on raking over the embers and looking for truth when they have little chance of finding it? Simply because they are using their conditioning propensity, not their capacity for higher perception, to try to follow the path. There is intellectual stimulus and emotional attraction in the mere effort to plumb the unknown. When the ordinary human mind encounters evidences of a higher state of being, of even when it conceives the possibility of them, it will invariably conclude that there is some possibility of progress for that mind without the application of the factors of teaching-teacher-students-time-and-place which are essentials.”
“Man has few alternatives in his search for truth. He may rely upon his unaided intellect, and gamble that he is capable of perceiving truth or even the way to truth. This is a poor, but an attractive, gamble. Or he can gamble upon the claims of an individual or institution which claims to have such a way. This gamble, too, is a poor one. Aside from a very few, wo/men in general lack a sufficiently developed perception to tell them:”
1. Not to trust their own unaided mentation;

2. Who or what to trust.
“There are, in consequence, two main schools of thought in this matter. Some say ‘Follow your own promptings’; the other says: ‘Trust this or that intuition’. Each is really useless to the ordinary wo/man. Each will help him use up his time.”
“The bitter truth is that before man can know his own inadequacy, or the competence of another man or institution, he must first learn something which will enable him to perceive both. Note well that his perception itself is a product of right study; not of instinct or emotional attraction to the individual, nor yet of desiring to ‘go it alone’. This is ‘Learning How To

Learn.”
“All this means, of course, that we are postulating here the need for preparatory study before school work takes place. We deny that a man can study and properly benefit from school work until he is equipped for it: any more than a person can study space-navigation unless he has a grasp of mathematics.”
“This is not to say that a man (or a woman) cannot have a sensation of truth. But the unorganized and fragmented mind which is most people’s heritage tends to distort the quality and quantity of this sensation, leading to almost completely false conclusions about what can or should be done.”
“This is not to say, either, that man cannot take part in studies and activities which impinge upon that portion of him which is connected with a higher life and cognition. But the mere application of special techniques [often to everyone, regardless of their current state and requirements] will not transform that man’s consciousness. It will only feed into, and disturb, more or less permanently, centers of thought and feeling where it does not belong. Thus it is that something which should be a blessing becomes a curse. Sugar, shall we say, for a normal person is nutritionally useful. To a diabetic, it can be poison.”
“Therefore, before the techniques of study and development are made available to the student, he must be enabled to profit by them in the direction in which they are supposed to lead, not in short-term indulgence.”
“Thus our curriculum takes two parts: the first is in the providing of materials of a preparatory nature, in order to equip the individual to become a student. The second is the development itself.”
“If we, or anybody else, supply such study or preparatory material prematurely, it will only operate on a lower level than it could. The result will be harmless at best. At worst, it will condition, train, the mind of the individual to think and behave in patterns which are nothing less than automatic. In this latter way one can make what seem to be converts, unwittingly play upon emotions, on lesser desires and the conditioning propensity; train people to loyalty to individuals, found and maintain institutions which seem more or less serious or constructive. But no real progress towards knowledge of the human being and the other dimension in which he partly lives will in fact be made… … ….”

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A Blessing Of Love: The Poetry Of Rumi

O heart let go of your soul

Until you see the soul maker

Leave behind this deceptive faker

So you reach your real goal.
Unless you pass through here

You will never reach the beyond

Free yourself from worldly bond

Doubtless clear, to you appear.
If it is a sign that you seek

In this path, my dear friend

Yourself you must transcend

And signs to you will speak.
Go past the four and five

From six and seven look away

Rise above this earth and clay

Seven skies become alive.
When you’ve seen the seventh sky

Go to the eighth sphere

Step upon the things that appear

You’ll find the void nearby.
Within the void you shall see

The souls of dear friends

Disembodied floating heads

In the spaceless roaming free.
Close the critical eye

Appeal to the inner sight

From yourself briefly take flight

The beloved will appear nigh.
You who have never taken a pace

On the path of misfortune

To soul’s treasure won’t attune

Unless this costly pain embrace.
O hear ye, Shams-e Tabriz

Silently speak the word

With your soul be in accord

Which you’ll see joyously frees.

—

Alas that now from our midst you are gone

In spite of the pain you resist, you are gone

Once the circle of friends you blissed

Now with the dust of ants and snakes blissed, you are gone.

What of all the knowledge you endlessly list

What of such mind, in the secret list you are gone.

What of the helping hand the once would assist

What of the feet that gardens assist, you are gone.

Gentle and kind, people you charmed and wist

Then earth’s dust your dust wist, you are gone.

Your sweet replies no more persist

No more tongue that can persist, you are gone.

Jealously repented, strove to desist

Pilgrim of death, from living itself desist, you are gone.

Whither to, can’t see your dust nor your mist

This bloody path, disappearing mist, you are gone.

Silent O heart, tongue shackles your soul’s wrist

What use the flames that turn and twist, you are gone.

—
O heart, when the secrets themselves unveiled

No more exerted yourself, nor travailed

In your imagination and madness remain

Why senses regain, why your mind hailed?

Like Romeo in senseless chaos

All orders before you failed.

Ingesting spirits if you refrain

Why in the market drunken wailed?

Idleness and sitting brings you no gain

If with the seafarers forward you sailed.

Go to the desert and try to cross

You’ve seen what these ruins entailed.

Your neighbors of wine reek and stain

Drunken fragrance of wine staled.

Follow this aroma to the tavern lane

Light as the wind, the lanes brailled

Go to Shams-e Tabriz’s abode of loss

Idle, unemployed, round the world trailed.

—

To this world you have brought the fragrance

Yet perfume you have hidden from appearance

A million excitements this aroma belies

That you have thrown upon the earth and the skies.

From thy own radiant light and heat

You have set fire to the mind and soul’s seat

From taking thy life-giving jewel

The mine and the ocean have lost their cool.

Millions of souls with radiant faces

Have been confined to dark spaces.

You take the certainty of fools

And give them doubt with mental tools.

They ply themselves with their own hand

And with sweetness take a bloody stand.

The heartful find their hearts broken

The heartless with cries of alas are woken.

Shams-e Tabrizi from thy kindness

To lovers have given this madness.

________
Niyaz – Sadrang

________

With Love For You All…..

John Riley
Fair young maid all in a garden

Stange young man, passerby

He said, “Fair maid, will you marry me?”

This then, sir, was her reply:
Oh, no, kind sir, I cannot marry thee

For I’ve a love who sails all on the sea.

He’s been gone for seven years

Still no man shall marry me
What if he’s in some battle slain

Or if he’s drowned in the deep salt sea

What if he’s found another love

And he and his love both married be?
Well, if he’s in some battle slain

I will die when the moon doth wane

And if he’s drowned in the deep salt sea

I’ll be true to his memory
And if he’s found another love

And he and his love both married be

I’ll wish them health and happiness

Where they dwell across the sea
He picked her up all in his arms

Kisses gave her: One, two, three

Said, weep no more, my own true love

I am your long-lost John Riley!
Joan Baez – John Riley

Wednesday. It is incredibly beautiful in Portland today. Clear skies, crisp air… Wish you were here! (if ya aren’t already)
My friend Rik should be arriving this afternoon, and this edition of Turfing is dedicated to him. It has been a long 3 years!
I hope you enjoy the selection today, it was lots of fun putting it together….
Blessings,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Links

Sacred Intentions: Inside The Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Studies

Fotheringay (Sandy Denny) – Banks of the Nile

Orgies Of The Hemp Eaters

Arthur Rimbaud Poetry….

Fairport Convention – White Dress

Art: Alexander Cabanel

—–
Alexandre Cabanel (28 September 1823–23 January 1889) was a French painter.
Cabanel was born in Montpellier, Hérault. He painted historical, classical and religious subjects in the academic style. He was also well-known as a portrait painter. According to Diccionario Enciclopedico Salvat, Cabanel is the best representative of the L’art pompier and Napoleon III’s preferred painter.
He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of seventeen. Cabanel studied with François-Édouard Picot and exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time in 1844, and won the Prix de Rome scholarship in 1845 at the age of twenty two. Cabanel was elected a member of the Institute in 1863 and appointed professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in the same year.
Cabanel won the Grande Médaille d’Honneur at the Salons of 1865, 1867, and 1878.
He was closely connected to the Paris Salon: “He was elected regularly to the Salon jury and his pupils could be counted by the hundred at the Salons. Through them, Cabanel did more than any other artist of his generation to form the character of belle époque French painting” . His refusal together with William-Adolphe Bouguereau to allow the impressionist painter Édouard Manet and other painters to exhibit their work in the Salon of 1863 lead to the establishment of the Salon des Refusés.
A successful academic painter, his 1863 painting Birth of Venus is one of the best known examples of 19th century academic painting. The picture was bought by the emperor Napoleon III; there is also a smaller replica (painted in 1875 for a banker, John Wolf) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was gifted to them by Wolf in 1893.

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The Links:

The Entrances To Hell…

Designed?

Jericho may hold the key to treatment of tuberculosis

Worlds’ Oldest Temple?

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Sacred Intentions: Inside The Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Studies

An article from our friend Michael Hughes. I do hope you get a chance to read it. Fine article on important matters!

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Fotheringay (Sandy Denny) – Banks of the Nile (1970)

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Orgies Of The Hemp Eaters

Hashish Dreamers’ Festival in Northwestern Syria Occurs at the Time of the Full Moon.
Women Join The Ceremony

Scenes at the Sacred Dance That Surpass the Wildest Ecstasy of Any Opium Dream.
THE DRUG AND ITS EFFECTS

Standing in the outskirts of the little town of Latakieh, in Northwestern Syria, famous everywhere for the excellent tobacco which takes its name from the otherwise obscure and insignificant place – and turning his back on the ramshackle houses the flea infested caravansary, the malodorous bazaar and garbage strewn streets, where the scavenger dogs lie stretched out [in the] noonday sun – the traveller sees in the distance, beyond a wide stretch of green slope and alternate level, a low range of hills, on which a soft purple haze seems always to linger. These hills lie between the Lebanon, where the fierce Druses dwell in their highland fastnesses, and the Nahr-el-kebir, “The Mighty River.” They are known nowadays as the Nosairie Mountains, the home of the so-called Nosairiyeh tribesmen, the modern “Assassins,” or “Hemp Eaters,” as they should be designated from their ceremonial use of hemp, in Arabic “hashish.”
AT THE TIME OF THE FULL MOON.

The festival or gathering of the hemp eaters is celebrated monthly, at the time of the full moon, the moon being then supposed to exert a specific influence upon human beings. The sectaries meet under a sacred oak tree growing upon a hill, about equidistant from Latakieh and the valley of the Orontes, and close to a tiny village inhabited by some twenty families of the tribe.
There is an enormous drum, some three feet in diameter, standing at the entrance to the village, a couple of hundred yards off, and as soon as it begins to darken and the westering sun appears to have fairly sunk in the waters of the Mediterranean, which is clearly visible from the elevated hilltop on which the Nosarriyeh are gathered, a deafening boom comes from the instrument and rolls over the mountain tops like the rumble of thunder, rousing the tribesmen to activity, and in a moment they are on the alert. Lamps are quickly lit and suspended to the branches of the sacred oak among the dangling rags and buttons and feathers and metal scraps that decorate it. A square heap of wood is built up in front of the tree about a dozen yards from it. A sheep is brought forward by one of the men, and the rest of the tribesmen then gather around, the lamps throwing a dim light on their picturesque figures and grim countenances. The Sheikh puts his hand gently on the head of the bleating animal, it is thrown down, its throat cut, after the fashion of the Moslems, and in little more time than it takes to write the words the fleece is off, the carcass is divided and placed on the wood heap, to which fire is applied and kept up till all flesh as well as timber is utterly consumed. Now the Nosarriyeh seat themselves in a circle upon the earth, the Shiekh in the centre, with an attendant on either hand, one holding a large earthenware bowl containing a liquid, the other a bundle of stems to which leaves are attached – the leaves of the sacred hemp plant. The chief takes the stems in his left and the bowl in his right hand and slowly walks around the circle, stopping in front of each man present, who takes from him, first the greenery, at which he sniffs gently, then the bowl, the contents of which he sips. The vessel contains a sweetened infusion of hemp, strong and subtle in its action.
WHAT THE DECOCTION IS LIKE

The taste of the decoction is sweet, nauseously so, not unlike some preparations of chloroform, and its first effects are anything but pleasant, for it produces a distict tendency to vomit, not unlike a strong dose of ipecacuahna. As soon as all have in succession partaken of the drink, which is termed “homa”, big horns are produced containing spirits, for the Nosarriyeh are great dram drinkers. The horns of liquor are passed about and in a few moments the effects are apparent, following upon the hemp. The eyes brighten, the pulse quickens, the blood seems to bound more actively in the veins, and a restlessness takes possession of the whole body. At this moment the booming of a giant drum is heard again, giving the signal for the sacred dance which is the next item in the ceremonial of the evening. From each of the dozen parties or so into which the clansmen are divided one steps out, and the dozen individuals so designated form up against a gentle declivity in rear of them. Two of the tribe with a “reba,” one string fiddle, and a tambourine, seat themselves and start a peculiar air in a minor key, which all those around take up, clapping their hands the while rhythmically, and to this rhythm the dancers, joining hands as they stand, begin to move gently to and fro.
The moonlight is full on them, showing up their white nether garments, but leaving the dusky faces and dark upper garments in a semi-shadow. First the dancers move slowly, a few steps to the right and further to the left they go each time, till the movement becomes a positive allegro. Faster goes the music, faster the dancers, until with a finale furioso the men stop, panting and out of breath, at the signal of the Sheikh. He claps his hands and twelve others step out, and the figure begins as before. When these are exhausted a fresh set take their place, and this is continued until each of the clansmen has taken part in the dance. In conclusion all join hands and go seven times round the sacred oak in the direction left to right.
A CRAZY FESTIVAL

The solemn supper is now ready, and is served by the wives of the tribesmen, who have been busy preparing it in huge earthernware dishes placed upon the ground in the middle of each group. And the moonlight meal in the shade of the sacred oak is none the less striking by reason of its being dished up by women who wear in their shash-bands a sharp yataghan, of which the handle shows clearly, and a brace of pistols in the girdle. The plates are peculiar. First there is fried liver, eaten to the accompaniment of fiery arrack – the favorite spirit of the hemp eaters. Then comes “leben” – a species of sour cooked cream, with more “arak;” afterward the “kibabs” of mutton, in slices on little wooded sticks, like the familiar ware of the cat’s meat man; eggs filled with a force meat of rice, tomato, mutton and onions and “pillau.” Each person has a wooden spoon to eat with, and the etiquette of the table requires one to eat much and eat quickly, and to drink as much as one eats. The appetites of the Nosairiyeh are proverbial in Syria, the usual allowance of meat being a sheep or two. I can vouch for their tippling powers. Scores of them finish their pint horn of arrack in a couple of draughts, taking a couple of quarts in the course of their supper. The meal is really a match against time, and, with such good trencher men as the hemp eaters, is quickly finished.
The real business of the evening now begins. The hemp, powdered and mixed with sirup, is brought round in bowls, together with the decoction of the leaves well sweetened. Each of the tribesmen secures a vessel of arrack – for it quickens and heightens the action of the drugs – and disposes himself in the most comfortable attitude he can think of. Then, taking a good spoonful of the hemp, and washing it down with an equally good drink from the liquor receptable, he lies or leans back to allow it to operate. I take a reasonable allowance of the compound (it tastes very much like raw tea leaves flavored with sugar water), and then lie back to note the action on my own person, and watch, so far as I can, its effects upon the modern assassins whose systems are seasoned and more accustomed to the drug. Five, ten minutes pass, and there is no sensation; the men around me, with closed eyes, look like waxwork figures. Another ten minutes, and the pulse begins to beat rapidly, the heart commences to thump against the sides of the chest, the blood seems to rush to the head, and there is a sensation of fullness, as if the skull would be burst asunder at the base. There is a roaring in the ears, and strange lights, blurred and indistinct, pass before the eyes. In a moment and quite suddenly all of this passes off, leaving a feeling of delicious languor, and an idea that one is rising from the ground and floating in space. Little things assume an enormous size, and things seem far off.
EFFECTS OF THE DRUG.

The oak tree close by appears to be a mile off, and the cup of drink looks a yard across, the size of a big barrel. One’s hands and feet feel heavy and cumbersome, and then feel as if they were dropping off, leaving one free to soar away from the earth skyward, where the clouds seem to open to receive one, and one long perspective of light shines before the eyes. The feeling is one of estactic restfulness, contented unconsciousness, suggesting the “ninirvana” of the Buddhist. This marks always the end of the first stage of hemp eating. The aphrodisiac effects, the visions of fair faces and beauteous forms, the voluptuous dreams and languishing fancies which the Easterns experience – these are the results of larger and oft repeated doses of the drug.
Already the larger quantities of the compound, repeated many times in the meantime and stimulated by frequent draughts of arrack, are beginning to show their results upon the hitherto immobile figures of the Nosiariyeh round the sacred oak. Again and again they seize the spoon and convey it to their mouths, until the hemp craze is fully upon them. One or two stir uneasily; then another screams for “Ali, Ali!” (their founder Ali), who is identical, they say with Allah. A half a dozen respond lustily, “Ali hu Allah!” then empty the arrack cups beside them. A few move about with outstretched arms as though they were in the clouds trying to clutch the houris, whose imaginary forms they see, and disappointed, sink back, after a fresh supply of the drug has been swallowed. From the extremity beyond, where the women are located, come the sound of singing and of laugher and the rhythmic patter of feet upon the ground. The ladies have been indulging on their own account, and the noise they make rouses the men from their dreams. Three or four jump up from the floor at a single bound, and, seized by the dance mania, begin capering away as for very life. They jig here and there, they twine and twist, and writhe and wriggle and distort themselves, awakening […fragment missing…] blows off his matchlock as he capers merrily round, while his neighbor stretches out his fingers for the arrack.
END OF THE HASHISH DEBAUCH

In the distance we hear the sound of the women’s voices as they scream and sing and dance in a noisy whirl under the influence also of the intoxicating hemp. Again and yet again the tribesmen quaff from the hashish bowl, and the riot grows wilder and madder than before. It becomes a veritable saturnalia. Flushed and inflamed, they fly from side to side, tear to and fro, whirl round on the heels, skipping in the air and jumping feet high above the ground, to the banging of the great drum in the village; the shouting of those unable to move, the screeching of the “Reba,” or fiddle, which still plays on, and the crackling of the guns as they go off. Scimitars are drawn, yataghans flourished, half a dozen engage in mimic combat, slashing and cutting at each other with an all too earnest resolve to draw blood – a result speedily obtained – while yet another batch dance round and round on their heels spinning like tops in play. Faster and furious grows the corybantic rout, and in their mad excitement the men tear the garments from their bodies, throw away their weapons, fling the turbans from their heads and, naked to the waist, with dishevelled hair and eyes ablaze and extended arms, they continue their mad antics, until foaming at the mouth and bleeding from the nostrils, they sink to the earth and lie huddled in heaps, hopelessly and helplessly intoxicated with the hemp.

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Arthur Rimbaud Poetry….

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.

—
Ophelia
I
On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping

White Ophelia floats like a great lily;

Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils…

– In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.
For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia

Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.

For more than a thousand years her sweet madness

Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.
The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath

Her great veils rising and falling with the waters;

The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,

The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.
The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her;

At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,

Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings;

– A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.
II
O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow!

Yes child, you died, carried off by a river!

– It was the winds descending from the great mountains of Norway

That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom.
It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair,

Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind;

It was your heart listening to the song of Nature

In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights;
It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,

That shattered your child’s heart, too human and too soft;

It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman

Who one April morning sate mute at your knees!
Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl!

You melted to him as snow does to a fire;

Your great visions strangled your words

– And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eye!
III
– And the poet says that by starlight

You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked

And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils

White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.

—

Sun and Flesh (Credo in Unam)

Birth of Venus
I
The Sun, the hearth of affection and life,

Pours burning love on the delighted earth,

And when you lie down in the valley, you can smell

How the earth is nubile and very full-blooded;

How its huge breast, heaved up by a soul,

Is, like God, made of love, and, like woman, of flesh,

And that it contains, big with sap and with sunlight,

The vast pullulation of all embryos!
And everything grows, and everything rises!
– O Venus, O Goddess!

I long for the days of antique youth,

Of lascivious satyrs, and animal fauns,

Gods who bit, mad with love, the bark of the boughs,

And among water-lilies kissed the Nymph with fair hair!

I long for the time when the sap of the world,

River water, the rose-coloured blood of green trees

Put into the veins of Pan a whole universe!

When the earth trembled, green,beneath his goat-feet;

When, softly kissing the fair Syrinx, his lips formed

Under heaven the great hymn of love;

When, standing on the plain, he heard round about him

Living Nature answer his call;

When the silent trees cradling the singing bird,

Earth cradling mankind, and the whole blue Ocean,

And all living creatures loved, loved in God!
I long for the time of great Cybele,

Who was said to travel, gigantically lovely,

In a great bronze chariot, through splendid cities;

Her twin breasts poured, through the vast deeps,

The pure streams of infinite life.

Mankind sucked joyfully at her blessed nipple,

Like a small child playing on her knees.

– Because he was strong, Man was gentle and chaste.
Misfortune! Now he says: I understand things,

And goes about with eyes shut and ears closed.

– And again, no more gods! no more gods! Man is King,

Man is God! But the great faith is Love!

Oh! if only man still drew sustenance from your nipple,

Great mother of gods and of men, Cybele;

If only he had not forsaken immortal Astarte

Who long ago, rising in the tremendous brightness

Of blue waters, flower-flesh perfumed by the wave,

Showed her rosy navel, towards which the foam came snowing

And , being a goddess with the great conquering black eyes,

Made the nightingale sing in the woods and love in men’s hearts!

—
My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)
I went off with my hands in my torn coat pockets;

My overcoat too was becoming ideal;

I travelled beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal;

Oh dear me! what marvellous loves I dreamed of!
My only pair of breeches had a big whole in them.

– Stargazing Tom Thumb, I sowed rhymes along my way.

My tavern was at the Sign of the Great Bear.

– My stars in the sky rustled softly.
And I listened to them, sitting on the road-sides

On those pleasant September evenings while I felt drops

Of dew on my forehead like vigorous wine;
And while, rhyming among the fantastical shadows,

I plucked like the strings of a lyre the elastics

Of my tattered boots, one foot close to my heart
_________________

Fairport Convention – White Dress

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You Know Who You Are….

The Stones at Carnac…

I have been playing with this entry for a couple of days…
Our good friends Rik and Christel are coming for a visit starting Wednesday, and we are all very excited at Caer Llwydd. Rik and I go back 40 years, having been in High School together in Mt. Shasta. He and Christel live in Cathar country in the South of France in a 1000 year old house. They are state side visiting friends family, and newly arrived babies.
Rik and I share a passion for folk music, especially the British Folk Tradition. Whereas, I tended towards Pentangle he tended towards Fairport Convention. Anyway, I am going to run some selections from both over the next few days, including side projects, solo careers etc.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:

Emma Goldman Quotes

‘Bert Jansch – Black Waterside’

Folk Tale From Britanny: The Changeling

Moonshine – Bert Jansch

Bert Jansch Lyrics

Travelling Song – Pentangle

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Emma Goldman Quotes

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.
Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony
Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.
No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.
No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

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‘Bert Jansch – Black Waterside’

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Folk Tale From Britanny: The Changeling

MARIANNIK and her husband lived in a thatched cottage. It was hidden in a lonely heath like a bird’s nest in a tree. In the summer the thatch was covered with flowers and matched the heath itself. in winter it looked like a rough, furry coat thrown over the cottage’s shoulders to keep it warm.
Within, the cottage danced in firelight. Here was an ancient linen press on which were carved curious figures. In the corner stood the box bed, its sliding doors cut in fanciful lace patterns. The chest, the table, and the benches were polished till they shone in the light from the burning logs. Near the fireplace was the cradle, also of carved wood, and in the cradle was Mariannik’s and her husband’s treasure, the darling of the cottage, Loik, their little son.
One day Loik was sleeping peacefully, the fire was crackling merrily, and the cat seated on the warm hearthstone was purring and washing her face. Mariannik got up and looked out of the window.
“The sun is shining now,” she said, “but I know it is going to rain, because pussy is washing behind her ears; that is a sure sign. I’ll go and fetch a bucket of water before the rain muddies the spring.”
She kissed Loik and set out for the fountain where she filled her bucket. As she was coming back she saw a tiny, crested bird singing on a hawthorn bush, and this is what he sang:
“Mariannik, be quick, be quick,

For in the cradle is no Loik.”
“You silly bird!” exclaimed Mariannik, “Loik cannot walk,” but all the same with a flutter at her heart she hurried across the heath to the cottage.
She opened the door and felt at once that something terrible had happened. The fire had gone out. The cat’s back was bristling. She hastened to the cradle where, instead of seeing Loik’s round and rosy face, Oh, lack-a-day! she beheld a hideous dwarf with a dark and spotted face. He had a huge and gaping mouth; his hands and feet were evil, threatening, jagged claws.
“Merciful heavens!” cried Mariannik. “Who, are you? What have you done with my blessed child?”
The dwarf answered never a word, but grinned a wicked grin.
When Mariannik’s husband came in from the fields he found her weeping, the baby gone, the dwarf howling, the cat spitting, and the cottage cold.
They took counsel together and decided that Mariannik must go back to the hawthorn bush where the bird had sung to her.
So back she went and when she got there, sure enough, there sat the crested bird perched on a swinging twig.
“Little bird, little bird,” cried Mariannik, “my Loik is lost, and a wicked dwarf is in his cradle. Pray tell me what to do.”
“Mariannik, Mariannik,” chirped the little bird, “your Loik is not lost, he has been stolen by the Queen of the Dwarfs. Before he can be rescued you must make the changeling speak. Now mark well what I say. Go home and in an eggshell prepare a meal for ten strong ploughmen. Then will the dwarf demand of you what you are doing. Quickly, Mariannik, seize him and beat him with all your strength. Beat him till he screams for help. His mother, the Queen of the Dwarfs, will come and give you back your Loik.”
So Mariannik hurried to the cottage, and without a word she took an eggshell and in it began to prepare a meal for ten strong ploughmen.
“What are you doing, mother, what are you doing? shrieked the ugly dwarf, sitting upright in the cradle.
“What am I doing, hideous creature, what am I doing? I am preparing a meal for ten ploughmen in an eggshell.”
“A meal for ten ploughmen in an eggshell, mother? I saw the egg before I saw the white hen. I saw the acorn before I saw the oak tree. I saw the tree in the enchanted woods, but I never saw a sight such as this.”
“You have seen too many things, thou hideous one. Thou son of evil, I have you now!” And Mariannik beat him with all the power of her arm.
“Help! help!” screeched the creature, calling for his mother, the Queen of all the Dwarfs.
“Mariannik, Mariannik! Forbear from beating of my son,” cried a shrill, excited voice. “Behold I give you Loik!”
Breathless, Mariannik stopped. The yells had ceased. She looked at the cradle in amazement. The ugly dwarf had disappeared and Loik, her beloved child Loik, was there again. As Mariannik bent over him to kiss him he stretched out his arms to her and said:
“Mother, mother, dear little mother, what a long sleep I have had.”

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Moonshine – Bert Jansch

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Bert Jansch Lyrics

Some of these Bert wrote, and some he added on to. A coulple of these, well they are absolutely ancient.
Reynardine
One evening as I rambled

Among the leaves so green

I overheard a young woman

Converse with Reynardine
Her hair was black, her eyes were blue

Her lips as red as wine

And he smiled to gaze upon her

Did that sly old Reynardine
She said, “Kind sir, be civil

My company forsake

For in my own opinion

I fear you are some rake”
“Oh no,” he said, “no rake am I

Brought up in Venus’ train

But I’m seeking for concealment

All along the lonesome plane”
“Your beauty so enticed me

I could not pass it by

So it’s with my gun I’ll guard you

All on the mountains high”
“And if by chance you should look for me

Perhaps you’ll not me find

For I’ll be in my castle

Inquire for Reynardine”
Sun and dark, she followed him

His teeth did brightly shine

And he led her up a-the mountains

Did that sly old Reynardine
Sylvie
As Sylvie was walking down by the riverside

As Sylvie was walking down by the riverside

And looking so sadly

looking so sadly

looking so sadly

All upon the swift tide
She thought on her lover that left her in pride

She thought on her lover that left her in pride

On the banks of the meadow

On the banks of the meadow

On the banks of the meadow

She sat down and cried
And as she sat weeping a young man came by

And as she sat weeping a young man came by

What ails you my jewel

What ails you my jewel

What ails you my jewel

And makes you to cry
Well I once had a sweetheart and now I have none

I once had a sweetheart and now I have none

He’s gone and leave me

Gone and leave me

Gone and leave me

In sorrow to mourn
Last night in sweet slumber I dreamed that I did see

Last night in sweet slumber I dreamed that I did see

Mine own dearest true love

Mine own dearest true love

Mine own dearest true love

Come smiling to me
But when I awokened I found it not so

But when I awokened I found it not so

Mine eyes were like fountains

Mine eyes were like fountains

Mine eyes were like fountains

Where the waters do flow
I’ll set sail of silver and steer towards the sun

I’ll set sail of silver and steer towards the sun

And my false love will weep

My false love will weep

My false love will weep

For me after I’m gone.

—-
Rosemary Lane
When I was in service in Rosemary Lane

I won the goodwill of my master and did I

Till a sailor came there one night to lay

And that was the beginning of my misery
He called for a candle to light him to bed

And likewise a silk handkerchief to tie up his head

To tie up his head as sailors will do

And he said my Pretty Polly will you come too
Now this maid being young and foolish she thought it no harm

For to lie into bed to keep herself warm

And what was done there I will never disclose

But I wish that short night had been seven long years
Next morning this sailor so early arose

And into my apron three guineas did throw

Saying take this I will give and more I will do

If you’ll be my Polly wherever I go
Now if it’s a boy he will fight for the king

And if it’s a girl she will wear a gold ring

She will wear a gold ring and a dress all aflame

And remember my service in Rosemary Lane
When I was in service in Rosemary Lane

I won the goodwill of my master and did I

Till a sailor came there one night to lay

And that was the beginning of my misery

—
Tree Song
I wish I had a photograph

To let you see the way you smile

Upon my foolish heart
The words I do not know enough

I hope that you will find my song

A pleasing to your ear
You step beneath the midnight moon

To gather dewdrops for the sun

A Waiting until morn
Oh if I was a branched tree

I’d be the oak tree fast and strong

To win your gentle heart
And If I was one grain of corn

I’d wait till you did come along

To throw me to the wind
And if I was one silken thread

Embroidered all in cherry red

Upon your breast I’d lie
And if I was the alder tree

I’d burn it fiercely over thee

Our love would surely last
And if I was the hawthorn bush

And you did shelter under me

I would not do you harm
And if I was one glass of wine

One sip from you would give me time

To take you by the hand
And all across the hills we’d go

In search of what no-one does know

Except for you and I

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Travelling Song – Pentangle

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Thirty Years On
So… Thirty years on. Mary and I were wed at Chelsea-Kensington Registry Office (since closed by the Thatcherite Gov’t a couple of years later) on this day in 1978 at about 11:45 in the morning. It seems so long ago, and then just yesterday. I can’t tell you all the details, but it was a smashing time. Our bridesmaids all wore motorcycle jackets, but then again they were all guys, Mary’s ex-roomates. You can see Fernley with the champagne bottle over our heads, His partner Tony is taking the photo as I remember. The girl next to Fernley is Fizzle, who at that time was Jake Rivera’s assistant over at Stiff Records. On the far left is Philip, who was a member of the Golden Dawn, his father a black GI during the war, his mum a young lady from Golders Green. On the far right is Jim Doherty, who went to school with Mary in Glasgow.
There are so many stories on those stairs. People who grew up with Mary, friends who lived in the flats all over London… and they adored her. I was a shock to their system, but I was accepted in time.
Shortly after this photo in a month and a half we would hop on a jet and fly to L.A. to seek our fortunes together in the new world. (Fleeing the bread strike, the sugar strike, and dossing on friends floors) We arrived in L.A. to start up a press and start publishing books together within a year, then moved on to form a band to record music and perform together, and still are at it in some way or another all these years on. Along the way we moved back and forth to Britain, up and down the west coast of the USA somehow taking time to bring in to the world and raise a fine son.
Little Details: Mary was wearing part of a womans’ tuxedo, and my ties’ pattern was the Jacobite Plaid of the 1845 uprising. (Small gestures, nods and winks) With Mary, I discovered our place in the his-her/storical context~continuum. Everything she did was and is to this day art. She made the dreams real.
She was, and is the most beautiful woman I have had the privilege of knowing & loving, I swear. Count me blessed many times over.
Much Love,
Gwyllm
Mary and I sharing a joke with friends after the ceremony…
Just before the wedding party headed out to The Green Room, the winebar across from The Young Vic near Waterloo Station (Mary and I had both worked there together)

Mary with that incredible smile… 80)

___________________________
Okay… every couple seems to have a song when they are courting. This was ours:
Because The Night: Patti Smith Group

___________________________
Our First Shared Poet: Hugh MacDiarmid

‘Facing The Chair’
Here under the rays of the sun

Where everything grows so vividly

In the human mind and in the heart,

Love, life, and all else so beautifully,

I think again of men as innocent as I am

Pent in a cold unjust walk between steel bars,

Their trousers slit for the electrodes

And their hair cut for the cap

Because of the unconcern of men and women,

Respectable and respected and professedly Christian,

Idle-busy among the flowers of their gardens here

Under the gay-tipped rays of the sun.

And I am suddenly completely bereft

Of la grande amitié des choses créés,

The unity of life which can only be forged by love

—
The Outlaw
I am the outlawed conscience of Scotland,

The voice that must not be heard,

The bane of all time-servers and trimmers,

Helot-usurpers of the true aristocracy of awareness.
Full of the confidence that is the cure

For cowardice and its twin, conceit.

‘De gustibus…’ means that properly probed

There can be no two minds; pressed au fond, all men agree.

—
“The little white rose”
The rose of all the world is not for me.

I want for my part

Only the little white rose of Scotland

That smells sharp and sweet – and breaks the heart

—
“A Vision of Scotland”
I see my Scotland now, a puzzle

Passing the normal of her sex, going erect

Unscathed through fire, keeping her virtue

Where temptation works with violence, walking bravely,

Offering loyalty and demanding respect.

Every now and again in a girl like you,

Even in the streets of Glasgow or Dundee,

She throws her headsquare off and a mass

Of authentic flaxen hair is revealed,

Fine spun as newly-retted fibres

On a sunlit Irish bleaching field.

—
The Watergaw

One wet, early evening in the sheep-shearing season

I saw that occasional, rare thing–

A broken shaft of a rainbow with its trembling light

Beyond the downpour of the rain

And I thought of the last, wild look you gave

Before you died.
The skylark’s nest was dark and desolate,

My heart was too

But I have thought of that foolish light

Ever since then

And I think that perhaps at last I know

What your look meant then.

Listen To Hugh Speak Here…

Venice Beach, Lysergic Morning? 1978

Milarepa – “Hasten slowly and ye shall soon arrive.”

Fighting a cold, along with Mary. Someone gifted us all with it this week… ack. Anyway, went out last night for Mary’s B’day! and had a delightful meal at Vindaho over on Clinton & 20th. Try it out! Great place.
Rowan is getting into his college work, doing art and generally settling in to the new regime.
I think you may enjoy this edition, it took quite a bit of work, (been plugging away for a couple of days) but each section has some real treasures!
More later, so stay tuned.
Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm
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On The Menu:

Dale & Laura’s Visit

The Buddha’s Words on Kindness (Metta Sutta)

Grant Morrison at DisInfo Conference, circa 1999

The Questions of King Milinda

Nagarjuna’s Poetry…

Eyestorm – Are You For Real?
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Dale & Laura’s Visit

Our friend Jan who runs the spoken word events at Powell’s Hawthorne introducing Dale.

We have known Jan for some 16 years! Her daughter is visiting this weekend with her husband and their new baby!
It was a quick but very fun day and a half. Dale was up in Portland with Laura to promote his new book: ‘Walking with Nobby (Conversations with Norman O. Brown) -Mercury House Publishers… It was a great reading, and the largest crowd yet I have seen for one of Dales presentations. It lasted some 2 hours, and he read extensively from the book, with commentary. I have cracked “Nobby”, and found it to be a true delight. The format is really great. I recommend it.
After the speaking event, there was a small gathering at Caer Llwydd. Some of the usual suspects, but pretty much a new crowd in many ways.
Just click on the pictures for a larger version…!
Dale presenting his reading at Powell’s.
Lynzee and young Solomon before the reading!
Andrew & Ethan at the reading, giving their best smiles…. 80)
Dale & Jan
Dale & Victor at the gathering at Caer Llwydd later…
Gordon & Gayle hanging out…
Tom, Dale & Ethan talking…
Rowan & Dale watching the action…
The Caer Llwydd Absinthe Fountain…

Carlie & Ethan…
Ray Soulard, editor of ‘The Cenacle’ taking his leave from the evening’s proceedings…
Mo, Laura & Dale. Mo creates Zines, CD’s and various other media around her experiences of fishing in Alaska! (Great bear stories!)

Gwyllm, Mary, Dale & Laura… The next day before Dale & Laura took off Arcata on Thursday. We had earlier gone to Anita’s shop: Dava Bead & Trade now at 21st & NE Broadway. (Anita is Lynzee’s mum) We had a great time with Dale & Laura, hopefully on our trip south this year we’ll get to spend some time with them again.
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The Buddha’s Words on Kindness (Metta Sutta)

This is what should be done

By one who is skilled in goodness,

And who knows the path of peace:

Let them be able and upright,

Straightforward and gentle in speech.

Humble and not conceited,

Contented and easily satisfied.

Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.

Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,

Not proud and demanding in nature.

Let them not do the slightest thing

That the wise would later reprove.

Wishing: In gladness and in saftey,

May all beings be at ease.

Whatever living beings there may be;

Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,

The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,

The seen and the unseen,

Those living near and far away,

Those born and to-be-born,

May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another,

Or despise any being in any state.

Let none through anger or ill-will

Wish harm upon another.

Even as a mother protects with her life

Her child, her only child,

So with a boundless heart

Should one cherish all living beings:

Radiating kindness over the entire world

Spreading upwards to the skies,

And downwards to the depths;

Outwards and unbounded,

Freed from hatred and ill-will.

Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down

Free from drowsiness,

One should sustain this recollection.

This is said to be the sublime abiding.

By not holding to fixed views,

The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,

Being freed from all sense desires,

Is not born again into this world.
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I recommend you view this after you read the rest of Turfing. It is 45 minutes long, but extremely captivating. Grant Morrison is a unique talent! Worth the time I do believe!
Grant Morrison at DisInfo Conference, circa 1999

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The Questions of King Milinda

Translated from the Milindapañha

As a consequence of the conquest of the Persian empire, the Greeks gained control of Bactria, modern Afghanistan, together with northern India. The local Greek rulers managed to establish their independence from the Seleucid empire which first held control over the area. Greek rule of Bactria continued until about 165 BC when the Shakas destroyed the Bactrian kingdom. Greeks continued to rule, however, in southern Afghanistan and northwestern India for another 150 years. The most important of these kings was Menander, known as Milinda in Buddhist sources, who ruled about 115-90 BC. Buddhism had reached the area as a consequence of the missionaries which the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka had sent more than a century earlier.
There Is No Self
Then drew near Milinda the king to where the venerable Nagasena was; and having drawn near, he greeted the venerable Nagasena, and having passed the compliments of friendship and civility, he sat down respectfully at one side. And the venerable Nagasena returned the greeting, by which, verily, he won the heart of king Milinda.
And Milinda the king spoke to the venerable Nagasena as follows:—
“How is your reverence called? Bhante, what is your name?”
“Your majesty, I am called Nagasena, my fellow-monks, your majesty, address me as Nagasena: but whether parents give one the name Nagasena, or Surasena, or Virasena, or Sihasena, it is, nevertheless, your majesty, but a way of counting, a term, an appellation, a convenient designation, a mere name, this Nagasena, for there is no self here to be found.”
Then said Milinda the king,—
“Listen to me, my lords, you five hundred Yonakas, and you eighty thousand monks! Nagasena here says thus: ‘There is no self here to be found.’ Is it possible, pray, for me to assent to what he says?”
And Milinda the king spoke to the venerable Nagasena as follows:—
“Bhante Nagasena, if there is no self to be found, who is it then furnishes you monks with the monkly requisites, —robes, food, bedding, and medicine, the reliance of the sick? who is it makes use of the same? who is it keeps the precepts? who is it applies himself to meditation? who is it realizes the Paths, the Fruits, and Nirvana? who is it destroys life? who is it takes what is not given him? who is it commits immorality? who is it tells lies? who is it drinks intoxicating liquor? who is it commits the five crimes that constitute ‘proximate karma?’1 In that case, there is no merit; there is no demerit; there is no one who does or causes to be done meritorious or demeritorious deeds; neither good nor evil deeds can have any fruit or result. Bhante Nagasena, neither is he a murderer who kills a monk, nor can you monks, bhante Nagasena, have any teacher, preceptor, or ordination. When you say, ‘My fellow-monks, your majesty, address me as Nagasena,’ what then is this Nagasena? Pray, bhante, is the hair of the head Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is the hair of the body Nagasena ? “
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Are nails . . . teeth . . . skin . . . flesh . . . sinews . . . bones . . . marrow of the bones . . . kidneys . . . heart . . . liver . . . pleura . . . spleen . . . lungs . . . intestines . . . mesentery . . . stomach . . . faeces . . . bile. .. phlegm . . . pus . . . blood . . . sweat . . . fat . . . tears . . . lymph . . . saliva . . . snot . . . synovial fluid . . .urine . . . brain of the head Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is now, bhante, form Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is sensation Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is perception Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Are the psychic constructions Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is consciousness Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Are, then, bhante, form, sensation, perception, the psychic constructions, and consciousness unitedly Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Is it, then, bhante, something besides form, sensation, perception, the psychic constructions, and consciousness, which is Nagasena?”
“Nay, verily, your majesty.”
“Bhante, although I question you very closely, I fail to discover any Nagasena. Verily, now, bhante, Nagasena is a mere empty sound. What Nagasena is there here? Bhante, you speak a falsehood, a lie: there is no Nagasena.”
Then the venerable Nagasena spoke to Milinda the king as follows:—
“Your majesty, you are a delicate prince, an exceedingly delicate prince; and if, your majesty, you walk in the middle of the day on hot sandy ground, and you tread on rough grit, gravel, and sand, your feet become sore, your body tired, the mind is oppressed, and the body-consciousness suffers. Pray, did you come afoot, or riding?”
“Bhante, I do not go afoot: I came in a chariot.”
“Your majesty, if you came in a chariot, declare to me the chariot. Pray, your majesty, is the pole the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is the axle the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Are the wheels the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is the chariot-body the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is the banner-staff the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is the yoke the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Are the reins the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is the goading-stick the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Pray, your majesty, are pole, axle, wheels, chariot-body, banner-staff, yoke, reins, and goad unitedly the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Is it, then, your majesty, something else besides pole; axle, wheels, chariot-body, banner-staff, yoke, reins, and goad which is the chariot?”
“Nay, verily, bhante.”
“Your majesty, although I question you very closely, I fail to discover any chariot. Verily now, your majesty, the word chariot is a mere empty sound. What chariot is there here? Your majesty, you speak a falsehood, a lie: there is no chariot. Your majesty, you are the chief king in all the continent of India; of whom are you afraid that you speak a lie? Listen to me, my lords, you five hundred Yonakas, and you eighty thousand monks! Milinda the king here says thus: ‘I came in a chariot;’ and being requested, ‘Your majesty, if you came in a chariot, declare to me the chariot,’ he fails to produce any chariot. Is it possible, pray, for me to assent to what he says?”
When he had thus spoken, the five hundred Yonakas applauded the venerable Nagasena and spoke to Milinda the king as follows:—
“Now, your majesty, answer, if you can.”
Then Milinda the king spoke to the venerable Nagasena as follows:—
“Bhante Nagasena, I speak no lie: the word ‘chariot’ is but a way of counting, term, appellation, convenient designation, and name for pole, axle, wheels, chariot-body, and banner-staff.”
“Thoroughly well, your majesty, do you understand a chariot. In exactly the same way, your majesty, in respect of me, Nagasena is but a way of counting, term, appellation, convenient designation, mere name for the hair of my head, hair of my body . . . brain of the head, form, sensation, perception, the psychic constructions, and consciousness. But in the absolute sense there is no self here to be found. And the priestess Vajira, your majesty, said as follows in the pr
esence of The Blessed One:—
Even as the word of “chariot” means

That members join to frame a whole

So when the Groups appear to view,

We use the phrase, “A living being.”
“It is wonderful, bhante Nagasena! It is marvelous, bhante Nagasena! Brilliant and prompt is the wit of your replies. If The Buddha were alive, he would applaud. Well done, well done, Nagasena! Brilliant and prompt is the wit of your replies.”
1Translated from the Sarasangaha, as quoted in Trenckner’s note to this passage:
“By proximate karma is meant karma that ripens in the next existence. To show what this is, I [the author of the Sarasangaha] give the following passage from the Atthanasutta of the first book of the Anguttara-Nikaya:—”It is an impossibility, O monks, the case can never occur, that an individual imbued with the correct doctrine should deprive his mother of life, should deprive his father of life, should deprive a saint of life, should in a revengeful spirit cause a bloody wound to a Tathagata, should cause a schism in the church. This is an impossibility.”’

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Nagarjuna’s Poetry…

Body
I have no body apart

From parts which form it.

I know no parts

Apart from a “body.”
A body with no parts

Would be unformed,

A part of my body apart from my body

Would be absurd.
Were the body here or not,

It would need no parts.

Partless bodies are pointless.

Do not get stuck in the “body.”
I cannot say,

“My body is like its parts.”

I cannot say,

“It’s something else.”
Feelings, perceptions,

Drives, minds, things

Are like this body

In every way.
Conflict with emptiness

Is no conflict;

Objections to emptiness,

No objections.

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Change
If something has an essence–

How can it ever change

Into anything else?
A thing doesn’t change into something else–

Youth does not age,

Age does not age.
If something changed into something else–

Milk would be butter

Or butter would not be milk.
Were there a trace of something,

There would be a trace of emptiness.

Were there no trace of anything,

There would be no trace of emptiness.
Buddhas say emptiness

Is relinquishing opinions.

Believers in emptiness

Are incurable.

~-~-~-~-~
Space
No trace of space

Is there before

The absence of obstruction

Which describes it.
With no obstruction,

How can there be

Absence of obstruction?

Who distinguishes between them?
Space is not obstruction

Or an absence of it,

Nor is it a description

Or something to describe.
Fluidity and heat,

Energy and gravity

Are just like space.
In seeing things

To be or not to be

Fools fail to see

A world at ease.

~-~-~-~-~-~

and some of his thoughts….
What is never cast off, seized, interrupted, constant, extinguished, and produced–this is called Nirvana.

Indeed, Nirvana is not strictly in the nature of ordinary existence for, if it were, there would wrongly follow the characteristics of old age and death. For, such an existence cannot be without those characteristics.
If Nirvana is strictly in the nature of ordinary existence, it would be of the created realm. For, no ordinary existence of the uncreated realm ever exists anywhere at all.
If Nirvana is strictly in the nature of ordinary existence, why is it non-appropriating? For, no ordinary existence that is non-appropriating ever exists.
If Nirvana is not strictly in the nature of ordinary existence, how could what is in the nature of non-existence be Nirvana? Where there is no existence, equally so, there can be no non-existence.
If Nirvana is in the nature of non-existence, why is it non-appropriating? For, indeed, a non-appropriating non-existence does not prevail.
The status of the birth-death cycle is due to existential grasping [of the skandhas] and relational condition [of the being]. That which is non-grasping and non-relational is taught as Nirvana.
The Teacher has taught the abandonment of the concepts of being and non-being. Therefore, Nirvana is properly neither [in the realm of] existence nor non-existence.
If Nirvana is [in the realm of] both existence and non-existence, then liberation will also be both. But that is not proper.
If Nirvana is [in the realm of] both existence and non-existence, it will not be non-appropriating. For, both realms are always in the process of appropriating.
How could Nirvana be [in the realm of] both existence and non-existence? Nirvana is of the uncreated realm while existence and non-existence are of the created realm.
How could Nirvana be [in the realm of] both existence and non-existence? Both cannot be together in one place just as the situation is with light and darkness.
The proposition that Nirvana is neither existence nor non-existence could only be valid if and when the realms of existence and non-existence are established.
If indeed Nirvana is asserted to be neither existence nor non-existence, then by what means are the assertions to be known?
It cannot be said that the Blessed One exists after nirodha (release from worldly desires). Nor can it be said that He does not exist after nirodha, or both, or neither.
It cannot be said that the Blessed One even exists in the present living process. Nor can it be said that He does not exist in the present living process, or both, or neither.
Samsara (the empirical life-death cycle) is nothing essentially different from Nirvana. Nirvana is nothing essentially different from Samsara.
The limits of Nirvana are the limits of Samsara. Between the two, also, there is not the slightest difference whatsoever.
The various views concerning the status of life after nirodha, the limits of the world, the concept of permanence, etc., are all based on [such concepts as] Nirvana, posterior and anterior states of existence.

Since all factors of existence are in the nature of Emptiness (sunya), why assert the finite, the infinite, both finite and Infinite, and neither finite nor infinite?
Why assert the identity, difference, permanence, impermanence, both permanence and impermanence, or neither permanence nor impermanence?

All acquisitions [i.e., grasping] as well as play of concepts [i.e., symbolic representation] are basically in the nature of cessation and quiescence. Any factor of experience with regards to anyone at any place was never taught by the Buddha.

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Eyestorm – Are You For Real?

Are you for Real? from eyestorm on Vimeo.
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Yesterday was pretty busy… Andy stopped by with his books for Dale to sign, and we got to hang out for awhile, which doesn’t happen. I went out and did some prints at Doran & Sue’s, who are rearranging the house now that Katherine has moved out with her young gentleman.
Victor and his lady friend stopped by, bringing his books for Dale to sign, and we sat around for awhile catching up. I tried to convince him to come in from the Dalles for the talk, but he starts work at 4:30AM (Ack!)
Later on I went and helped my sister get a bed with the assistance of Andrew, and we got to spend some time on the road going up above PSU to venture down a road that more resembled a road in a mountain pass in the Siskiyous than in the heart of Portland. I am always surprised to find new locations in Portland. What a fine city!
Rowan came by from his house-sitting (for Trish & Kyle) for dinner, and to talk about his first day at Art School. This seems like a deal made in heaven for him. He was positively Glowing. It makes my heart happy to see that!
Mary has been performing her special magick around the house. I love the atmosphere she gives a place.
Dale and Laura will be arriving today. Everyone is pretty excited!
See ya all tonight!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
PS: Radio Free Earthrites is back up! Thanks Doug!

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On The Menu:

Dale Pendell in Portland

The Links

Guy Debord Quotes

The Stranglers: Get A Grip On Yourself

Dale Pendell: Green Flames – Thoughts on Burning Man, the Green Man, and Dionysian Anarchism, with Four Proposals

The Poetry of Laura Pendell

The Stranglers – No More Heroes

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Dale Pendell in Portland

So… Dale and Laura will be arriving in Portland today for Dales’ talk.
Here is the info again:

Dale Pendell October 8th 2008 07:30 PM

(at Powell’s Hawthorne)

In Walking with Nobby (Mercury House), retired professor Norman O. Brown and author Dale Pendell, during walks taken along the coast of California, discuss many concepts and characters, including paganism and world religions, Dionysus, Marx, and Freud, presented as footnoted conversations.
We hope to see you. This will a great event, free, and will give you an opportunity to meet with Dale & Laura.
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The Links:

Spider eats snake

Payday….

Possession….

ATT Shenanigans…

You’ve Been Left Behind…

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Guy Debord Quotes

Boredom is always counter-revolutionary. Always.
Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.
Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit.
Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs. 80)
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Changes are coming… I suggest you –Get A Grip On Yourself–

The Stranglers… of course.

>
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Dale Pendell: Green Flames – Thoughts on Burning Man, the Green Man, and Dionysian Anarchism, with Four Proposals

(originally posted on Turfing last year)

Burning Man as a “temporary autonomous zone.”
Burning Man was born in free and visionary revelry, and matured on the Black Rock Desert into a great gathering of the tribes, from the cyber-freaks to the lushy rednecks to the altered-consciousness pentathletes to the nasty punks to the fuckin’ hippies. And everything in between. This alone, from a historical perspective, is a matter of wonder and for rejoicing.
There was another big event, not as big as Burning Man in numbers, but also historically important, in Golden Gate Park, forty years ago, that was called “Gathering of the Tribes.” Gary Snyder spoke at that event, as did Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, and others.
Such gatherings often take place in what Hakim Bey calls a “temporary autonomous zone,” in cracks and hidden openings overlooked by the guardians of the State. Bey was careful to refrain from defining TAZ rigorously, but it is clear that TAZ is applicable to the free spirit and the festive excesses of Burning Man:
The TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it.

–Hakim Bey
Other forces besides the State can quell a temporary autonomous zone: it can be co-opted by the market; it can exhaust its imagination and good will; or it can compromise itself into a more acceptable form. All of these forces continue to exert tremendous pressure on Burning Man.
Many burners feel that the “true TAZ” aspect of Burning Man peaked in the mid-1990s, and has declined ever since. Others, of course, say “stop complaining and party.” Whatever the truth, Burning Man is still a vibrant force with far-reaching social, political, and artistic potential.

Dionysian Anarchism

There has been a debate going on in philosophy for 2500 years about human nature. In fact, it is the only really crucial question of philosophy. At stake is the rationalization for a hierarchical, oppressive state. Before philosophers, religion imputed that human society should be like that of the gods, usually with a top god, and with the others doing their respective parts. These early state religions stressed that the kings on earth, if not divine themselves, were reflections of the order of heaven.
Plato, in the Republic, introduced the “Noble Lie,” that the wise should tell the commoners lies and myths to keep them in their place. A corollary is that if you don’t assist this process, you are not one of the wise, and you will be punished, if not with death or imprisonment, at least with marginalization.
Thomas Hobbes said that people were rapacious beasts, who would start killing and eating each other if it weren’t for an armed police force. Our mainstream culture seems desperate to maintain this viewpoint. During Hurricane Katrina, while the self-organizing cooperative efforts of thousands and tens of thousands of citizens to help each other went largely unreported, a scene of looting was replayed over and over. The clear message is “see, people can’t be trusted. We need the police.” In fact, police (or private security goons) broke up, and even fired on, the emerging cooperatives.
So who is on the other side? Many, actually. First off, we have the evidence of anthropology and human prehistory, which is overwhelmingly cooperative. We have the core teachings of deep mystical traditions.
Jean Jacques Rousseau offered that much of the sickness, the antisocial, and criminal behavior in society was not the result of our intrinsic natures, but of the society itself. Many are quick to dismiss Rousseau with a put-down—“ahh, the Noble Savage.” Rousseau never talked about any noble savage. The term was invented by a mid-nineteenth century pro-slavery American anthropologist, and has been an astoundingly effective little lie to cut off discussion on this topic.
Dionysian anarchism sides with the mystics and with anthropology. It sides with the way that people carry on their affairs most of the time: that is, cooperatively, and generally with a sense of good will. It sides with the spirit of DIY: do-it-yourself. Dionysian anarchists stress that means and ends have to be in accord, and if we can just stop things from getting worse, society will spontaneously realign itself towards freedom. That is our nature. As long as we have free horizons, as long as we are headed towards freedom and not away from it, we can relax a little with a long term view.
Forty years ago poet Gary Snyder, in answer to those who say that cooperative, non-coercive living is against human nature, wrote that we must patiently remind such people that they must know their own true natures first, before they can say that. That those who have gone furthest into deep mind, into deep nature–mystics, meditators, and visionary explorers—have been reporting for several thousand years that we have nothing to fear.
Gary’s solution included Buddhism and other inward-looking spiritual traditions, working within the context of tribal community, and opening to the radical teachings of the wild: wild places, wild animals, and wild plants—the true sources of our culture from our earliest beginnings. Timothy Leary stressed psychedelic visioning. Alan Watts talked about a philosophical sensualism. Ginsberg modeled the ecstatic spontaneity of the dancing bhakti.
But let’s look briefly at where we are.
Despite the pervasive rhetoric of progress from our politicians and media, for most people in the United States, for most plant and animal species, things are not getting better.
Real wages have been declining for over a generation. Measures of the quality of life have been declining. How much someone has to work to get by has been increasing. Infant mortality has been increasing. The percentage of the population in poverty has been increasing. Both the number of people and the percentage of the population in prison has risen dramatically. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, both in numbers and by percentage. Plants, animals, and habitat are being consumed at an ever increasing rate by global corporations which, by their definition and legal charter, can never have enough.
There is of course an upside—for those near the top of the heap, things are better than ever. There is sort of a choice here, aristos vs. demos. One can get with the program, stop complaining, and with some smarts and a good birth you can join the winners.
The Aztecs had a pathway for the commoners to gain entrance to the elite by becoming warriors and capturing sacrificial victims in the “flower wars”—wars maintained not for conquest of territory but for just that reason of providing victims. (One had to capture five victims to gain the highest ranking, with its attendant privileges, such as the right to drink chocolate.)

Freeing the Imagination
The first anarchist act is to free the imagination, to cut through our years of conditioning about what is “unthinkable.” By imagination, we do not mean mere reverie, but our imaging of the world, our mental picturing of who we are and the fundamental nature of existence, of reality. This is imagination in the sense that Blake used the word: the fire of consciousness, the fire of mind. Freeing the imagination means that you can act spontaneously in the world, not only artistically but in all of your interactions.
This is not as easy as it sounds. How to do that?
For poets, artists, musicians, dancers, meditators, and visionaries, it is a matter of continuing practice: plumbing the depths of mind, learning how to listen, and then sharing our insights through performance. This is the ancient wisdom of all gift economies.

Ecology and Deep Ecology
The Black Rock Desert was one of Gary Snyder’s favorite places to come and camp long before Burning Man ever came here, and it is one of the major inspirations for his poem “Mountains and Rivers without End.”
On the Black Rock, the environment is impossible to ignore: it fills our eyes and tents and drinking cups with every dust storm. It roasts us or freezes us. On the Playa, the spirit of place is never far away, even for newbies who have never heard of Lake Lahontan.
At first glance, Burning Man, with its penchant for fire, excess, inebriation, celebration, sexuality, radical self-expression, and generators, hardly seems a candidate for greenness. But there is a connection—a connection in mythopoesis, at a deeper level than our laudable efforts at recycling and solar electricity and “leave no trace.”
This connection relates to the difference between management ecology and deep ecology. Management ecology we need, desperately, but deep ecology we need even more. The Green Man is deep ecology—his leafy speaking is animistic. Plant intelligence, with its sense of place, and wild intelligence, with its sense of freedom, speak through his mouth.
The Green Man is the bridge, and the Green Man is madness. Ecstatic madness. Madness that recognizes that the earth is alive. What do we mean by that? Not that the earth is composed of cells with a DNA library, but that the earth is not a separate thing, distinct from our own living minds. Buddhists state that, ultimately, the seeming objectivity of the “external” world, is an illusion, that our own true nature and the salt of the playa are not separate. This is the message that mystics and yogis and shamans have maintained for millennia. Once this is realized, the problems don’t go away, but cutting away a hillside, building a house or factory, putting explosives into the earth, are all recognized as having a transgressive nature. We then have a tendency to try to ask permission—what does the earth have to say about what we are doing, the hillside, the animal that we are going to eat? And then we try to make things right, with a sense of gratitude and perhaps a bit of shame, or even guilt, to bring things back into harmony with the spirits. We recognize that we are being gifted, that countless generations of effort, sacrifice, and imagination make possible our birth and our sustenance. So we want to give something back. Snyder states: “Performance is currency in the deep world’s gift economy.”
The Green Man, Dionysus, and Divine Madness
In his last published essay, “Dionysus in 1990,” philosopher Norman O. Brown extended ideas of Georges Bataille and Marcel Mauss and others to invert the Marxist focus on production to that of consumption–more to the point, “wasteful consumption.” The idea of wasteful consumption is anathema to conservationists (and to all sane and rational people). The idea is, frankly, madness. Brown bets all with Socrates that if the madness is inspired by a god, that is, divine madness, it is the source of our greatest blessings. We might say that divine madness is the “wild” of consciousness.
The name of the god, for Brown, is Dionysus. Iconographically, it is easy to recognize Dionysus in the Green Man, the one whose very speech is wild nature.
Now Brown is not expecting people to actually bow down and worship Dionysus. For Brown, Dionysus is a shorthand for an irrepressible wild and joyful energy. The opposite of this energy is the Grand Inquisitor, with his benevolent lies. Success or failure seems to pivot on the issue of passive entertainment—Blake’s “spectral enjoyment.” The Inquisitor is betting that circuses will satisfy the masses. The Dionysian bets he is wrong. That is the idea behind “no spectators.”
The traditional manifestation of Dionysian energy has always been through festivals. Barbara Ehrenreich points out that in medieval Spain a third of the days of the year were holidays for festivals. There was a backwards day, a Feast of Fools when a donkey was led into the cathedral and the bishop’s miter placed on his head. Blasphemies were uttered, echoes of the Dionysian festivals of Greece. The Greeks were wise enough to recognize that although Dionysus meant trouble, the suppression of Dionysus was even worse—that trying to suppress the Dionysian spirit entirely, to end all licentiousness, all blasphemy, all risk, led to false madness, profane madness, and the sacrifice of children. Moloch. That is the true idolatry, when the blasphemies of art are petrified into literalism. The Romans, by the way, an Apollonian people, suppressed the Bacchanalia with much bloodshed—perhaps the first “War on Drugs.”
The church made occasional attempts to suppress the festivals—these moves mostly coming from Rome. The local priests generally resisted this suppression, saying that without the festivals they would have no congregation. Festivals, it should not surprise us, were sometimes the springboards for political rebellion.
A hardier force against the festival was the Enlightenment, along with mercantilism, and the Industrial Revolution. “Reason,” remember. Lenin even went so far as to praise the capitalists for disciplining the working classes.
We must remember that anytime large groups of people can get together cooperatively, it puts the lie to the Hobbesian thesis that people are innately irresponsible and dangerous. That is the real reason that the government insists on police presence—even though they are clearly unnecessary. Free festivals are a threat to the whole rationalization for the existence of the armed, coercive forces of “internal security.” Such a free festival would be a light to the world for centuries: proof that cooperative living, free from armed coercion, is not “unthinkable,” but the way things should be. Free the imagination!
In Brown’s system (which I go into more deeply in my Inspired Madness, The Gifts of Burning Man, published last year by North Atlantic Books), the rites of Dionysus, with their attendant licentiousness, danger, fire, blasphemy, and wasteful consumption (combustion for its own sake), must be seen as prophylactic: they protect us from calamity—the Greeks certainly understood them thus. I like to joke that in a more enlightened age Burning Man would be given a grant from the Defense Department, in gold. The alternative worship, as Brown clearly stated, is war.
There is, alas, no proof for this thesis. The mythopoetic foundation is very strong, but in the end it comes down to a wager. Everyone must choose a square.
A Few Proposals for Burning Man, LLC.
1. Stop the undercover stings by police. If you can’t stop them, at least speak out against them, LOUDLY and PUBLICLY. This violation of trust and goodwill is the opposite of everything that Burning Man stands for. Smoking cannabis may be illegal, but lying and violating another’s trust—“hey man, you got any weed you can share?”—is immoral and despicable. It is a poison that spreads distrust and division. It is the worst model of civic behavior. In the face of such behavior for Burning Man to state “we have an excellent relationship with law enforcement” amounts to collusion.
Personally, I believe that all police presence should be reduced. And reduced again. Let’s free our imaginations and not dismiss this possibility as “impossible.” Why do we let police strut through the dance clubs? It’s time to push back. Tell the BLM we’ll take the festival somewhere else—see what they say then. (The High Sierra Music Festival had some remarkable success with this tactic.)
2. Stop the car searches. This one is easy. It’s wrong that the very first encounter upon arriving at Burning Man is someone demanding to search one’s car, someone who tells me “I can’t take your word for it.” That’s “spectator” thinking.
How big a problem would it be if a few people who can’t afford a ticket sneak in? Maybe they should be there. Maybe they have something important to contribute. How many would there be? Three percent?
Five percent? I’ll pay five percent more to cover them, until they can get their acts together. Isn’t our way to educate by example? Let’s see if we can make it work through the peer pressure of responsibility and good citizenship. Spirit of giving, anyone?
3. Consider dropping charges against Paul Addis (the man who set fire to the Man on Monday night). Perhaps such a benevolent act of clemency could bring him back into the fold. Make him do community service at Camp Arctica to cool him off and help him make some new friends. At least talk to the guy—he clearly wants to say something.
4. Wouldn’t ”Dreaming America” or just “Dreaming” be a better theme for 2008 than “The American Dream.” Consider the contradictions in the theme announcement.
Beneath a background of red, white, and blue (originally the flag of the East India Company, the English-speaking world’s first transnational corporation), Burning Man has announced that next year’s theme will be “about patriotism.” While one might pledge some allegiance to “the soil of Turtle Island,” the Burning Man theme is presented entirely in a nationalistic context. This kind of patriotism is one of the greatest diseases of civilization, responsible not only for the deaths of many millions of persons, but for wide scale scorching of the earth.
While waving a flag, Burning Man says this theme is not about flag worship (and, as well, that “flag burning [will] play no part in this year’s theme,” a rather ironic proscription). Presenting us with ideology, they say “leave ideology at home.” They seem to think that politics has to do with “the blue states and the red,” politics only in its most myopic and degenerate condition.
Astonishingly, beneath this banner of patriotism and the American Dream, we are given a (misquoted) fragment of Robinson Jeffers’ poem “Shine, Perishing Republic.” Jeffers, a wise man, is not turning in his grave, but, rather, “sadly smiling.” The point is the next line of the poem (not quoted):
“But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption Never has been compulsory.”
Time for a regional?
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The Poetry of Laura Pendell

– Originally published in ‘The Invisible College’ 1st edition

MASK of SHARDS
I have been broken and crushed.

I am tired of closing my eyes.

I am tired of closing my mouth.
I think life is a series of steps.

I think the sky is a compass of remedies.

I think water overflows with offers,

and the river is fringed with answers.
Perhaps the answer is too deep

the river’s banks are muddy

the weeds work their way between.
Then it is time to be still.

Then it is time to sit with the earth.

Let the days stretch beyond shadow

and into a season of light.
This is the practice of self-reflection.

This is the practice of not following

the illusive thread of suffering.
Do not stray.

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INNER ALCHEMY
reddened reflection

of time before space

and cycles

transformed
semen of cinnabar

sulfur sentience

meditation

and breath
cavernous sky doors

pour dimensions

of purple ichor

gold and jade
Eight Gems soar

elixir flows

and flowers breathe

the Dragon Fetus
finds its secret place

lunar liquor

the spiritual feather

of a Phoenix flown
peruse the pattern

follow the mandala

and glow

—
GRATITUDE
the gold film

that washes across vision

the shimmer that swims

across time

whispers or shouts

the only language

o carillon of color

spinning/swirling

across the ceiling of infinity

with the geometric precision

of ancient arabian cupolas

crescents squares and triangles

all iridescence and incense

space roils around us

billowing howls

and exclamations of rainbow

premonitions of the sacrament

of bedlam and insight

both amplitudes and maxitudes

wonderment and wows
whirring extremities

of shape shifters

rosewood and cordwood

and myrrh

and waves of time

sense thickened
and spherical

swelling and thrusting

and white capped

the blinding broth

of unimagined horizons
and then finally

the sunrise

well traveled and bright

its innocence

cruising and actual

precarious and enough
I am drowsy, irrational,

sated by the singular beauty

of the earth

birdsong and wonder

all that green

the long swell into daylight

the long spell of you

everything still a sparkle

rippling and lyrical

relinquished

remembering

festooned in mirth

scattered and gleaming
miseries unfamiliar

at least for this day

this life conjectured

imagined, the illusion

complete/so sweet.

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No More Heroes… The Stranglers

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