Gwyllm.com

In fact, let us not mince words… The Management is terrible! We’ve had a string of embezzelers, frauds, liars and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact. But who elected them? It was you! You who elected these people! You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you! While I’ll admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate. You have encouraged these malicious incompetents, who have made your working life a shambles. You have accepted without question their senseless orders. You have allowed them to fill your workspace with dangerous and unproven machines. You could have stopped them. All you had to say was ‘No’….

V, in V for Vendetta.

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Radio Free EarthRites will be down for awhile. Whilst changing out phone lines in the UK, our server was cut off, and due to the British mindset, it isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon. I will keep you posted for when it will be back up.
Rowan starts school today at The Art Institute of Portland. We went out and picked up 3 books, to the tune of close to 300 dollars! Not a hardback to be found among them! Amazing….Anyway, he has had a hard time of it over the last few days, catching a stomach bug along with his Mom that I gifted them from who knows where. I think he is on the mend now…
Worked much of the weekend on the magazine. It is finally taking shape. It seemed to take longer to develop the theme for this edition. I have been sidelined frequently with other projects at this point…
Anyway, looking forward to this Wednesday!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Dale Pendell Will Be In Portland at Powells’ Hawthorne

The Links

Bells & Robes…

H.U.V.A Network live at Les Dominicains 2/6-07

Drag the Archaic into our Present for the sake of a Future

The Poetry Of The Dao Te Ching

h.u.v.a. network / time circles / distant system rmx

Art: John Duncan
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Be There Or Be Square:

Dale Pendell Will Be In Portland at Powells’ Hawthorne Wednesday, October 8th 2008 07:30 PM

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.
This should be a good one! If you haven’t heard Dale speak, you are in for a treat. Some of the most stimulating subject matter, and entertaining ideas I have come across… I am very excited to have Dale back in Portland. This is a must see event!
So we will see you there, right? Mary, Rowan & I will see ya there

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The Links:

Blue Light Info….!

It helps if your a bit toasted…

Make Believe Maverick…

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Bells and Robes
Ummon asked: `The world is such a wide world, why do you answer a bell and don ceremonial robes?’
Mumon’s Comment: When one studies Zen one need not follow sound or colour or form. Even though some have attained insight when hearing a voice or seeing a colour or a form, this is a very common way. It is not true Zen. The real Zen student controls sound, colour, form, and actualizes the truth in his everyday life.
Sound comes to the ear, the ear goes to the sound. When you blot out sound and sense, what do you understand? While listening with ears one never can understand. To understand intimately one should see sound.
When you understand, you belong to the family;

When you do not understand, you are a stranger.

Those who do not understand belong to the family,

And when they understand they are strangers.
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H.U.V.A Network live at Les Dominicains 2/6-07

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Drag the Archaic into our Present

for the sake of a Future

-jesse mabus
We Irish, born into that ancient sect

But thrown upon this filthy modem tide

And by its formless spawning fury wrecked

Climb to our proper dark, that we may trace

The lineaments of a plummet measured face

– W.B. Yeats, ‘The Statues’
Since we have been given the admonition to avoid the conquest, as there will be sorra’ galore soon enough, I will instead contain myself to elucidating the archaic qualities of the Irish, which for me represent examples of a world-view worth conserving and transplanting. First we will look at the Megalithic culture of the Atlantic coast of Europe and contrast it with the Iron age Celtic culture as seen in the Táin Bó Cuailnge. The most vital bit of information I discovered in Every Earthly Blessing relates how the saints were associated with the Druidic and Poetic schools, and consequently often used the leitmotifs, of these ancient ‘technicians of the sacred’ in their own hagiographic constructions. This consequently makes the Irish church and its patrons much closer to the Indo-European Paganism eradicated on the Continent by the Roman Church. The survival of this religious caste and its corpus into the 17th century, in both the manuscripts of the Irish Monasteries and the poetics of the Bardic Order, gives us an opportunity to reconstruct aspects of the Gaelic world-view prior to it being tossed in the boiling cauldron of the European Nation States. Much of the material we have on the religious castes of Ireland comes through the less then objective lens of their conquerors and would-be conquerors. Consequently we have a shadowy and biased view of them, especially the much-maligned final leg of their tripartite organization, the Vates or Seers. Yet in looking at them we can discern both the reason for their dismissal and their importance in the transition from archaic shamanism.
I
Isle a ho boys, let her go boys

swing her head round into the weather

Isle a ho boys, let her go boys

sailing homeward to Mingulay

-traditional (Casey Neill Trio), ‘Mingulay Boat Song’
Along the Atlantic seaboard of the European continent from Ireland to the Mediterranean islands of Malta are megalithic structures, which mark the steps of a migration of people from the cradle of civilization to the very periphery of the farthest Western shores. The purpose of these monuments, often described as communal burial tombs, remains an ambiguous assertion. Some call attention only to their contents of bones and material remains and maintain they were tombs for an elite social order. While others interpret their placement and architecture and suggest they are astronomical observatories designed to measure the solar year and thus act as an agricultural calendar. Some suggest that their purpose was more religious and the Winter Solstice ritual at Newgrange, or Brugh na Bóinne, in the interaction of dark and light, cave and sunbeam, the sacred marriage of the chthonic: feminine earth and the luminescent masculine sky is enacted.
In the film The Atlanteans, there is a concerted attempt to draw a connection between the North African and Mediterranean cultures with Ireland through the vehicle of maritime trade routes and cultural similarities. With only a brief mention of these megalithic structures, it is no wonder that the effort comes off as incomplete. These megaliths point to a cultural source for the ancient Irish not solely in the Celtic world of the European heartland, but in the wine-dark sea of the Mediterranean and the north coast of Africa. I see an important linguistic point to address in the argument; how long has the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language tree been separated from the main trunk, or from the branch associated with Greek and Italic? The American Heritage Dictionary suggests that Proto Indo-European was likely spoken around 5th millennia BCE, which fits approximately with the time this migration of the megalithic builders began. Perhaps this is also around the time of the first Kurgan invasions of the Indo-European lands, which began a major cultural shift from the matrilineal or kin relations to patriarchal or power relations, from an egalitarian to a domination model of social interaction.
In the Bronze Age the mythic template was the Goddess and her consort, the Dying God of Vegetation. This is itself an overlay on the Hymn to Demeter, or the relations between a Mother and Daughter, the major trope in Eavan Boland’s ‘Pomegranate’ (or see ‘Brugh na Bóinne and the Triple Irish Goddess’ by the author). It represents the turning of the agricultural round and the connectivity of life’s cycles, from birth to death and back again ? letting go and embracing change (a salmon leap?!). In the Iron Age the myth becomes the hero’s individual fame or infamy in cattle raids and the subjugation of women as possessions, whether in the battle for the Brown Bull in the Táin or the capture of Helen in the Trojan War. This is a move from the agency of being as seen in the Gaelic “ag”, to the subordination of having, not a descent of godhead into the individual as the hero’s birth represents, but the original fall from our connection to the universal.
Ironically even though the Táin is a heroic saga for an audience of prepubescent boys, being at its heart misogynist, it contains elements that point out the path this shift traversed. Deirdre, the self-possessed Maiden refusing to be a sacrifice to a vainglorious king’s pride and desire, and likewise the curse on Ulster by Macha’s “A mother bore each one of you,” in the film A Celtic Trilogy are examples of the agency and respect women had. As is the connection of Medb with the Goddess of Sovereignty and her claims of preeminence over Aillil’s in the ‘Pillow Talk’ section of the Táin. The agency of these women directly contradicts the image of women as chattel and the cause of men’s struggle for honor or infamy found in the Táin. In addition to these triune Goddesses, the story of Nes, mother of Conchobor, and her maneuvers to get her and the Druid Cathbad’s son on to her husband Fergus’ throne at Emain Macha, illustrates the agency women had in the political sphere. In fact without Lugh, who some sources suggest is actually a British solar deity not indigenous to Ireland, the only aspects of the divine present would be the triune Goddesses Nemain, Badb, and (as the) Morrigan; albeit their function is confined to the masculine arts of warfare. Morrigan is likely another manifestation of a Goddess of Sovereignty, her name being mor ‘great’ and rigan ‘queen(s)’. So why weren’t there queens in Ireland? Was it this masculine overlay that turns the maiden into “a sheep between two rams”, the pregnant mother into a horse race contestant, and the crone, as the sacred hills of Ath Lúain and Brugh na Bóinne, into the mutilated body of the Goddess of Sovereignty? If these stories are propaganda for the patriarchy, why are these remnants of a matrilineal culture where wisdom, inspiration, and agency, as seen in the blood which is not Gods, but instead belongs to thee all of creation, still remaining so prominently in the text? What lesson is learned by the juxtaposition of these starkly different foci in the tales, the misogyny of the warrior’s deeds of exploitation and honor, and the Goddess with her daughter a salmon’s leap up the great yew tree teaching the power of the Gae Bolga, to the hero?
II
I am the God who created in head the fire

Who is it that throws light into the meeting on the mountain?

Who announces the ages of the moon?

Who teaches the place where couches the sun? (If not I?)

– Amergin the Milesian, ‘The Mystery’
The first references we have to Druids, which is also concurrent with the first notice of the Keltoi is around the 4th century BCE, well into the Iron Age. The Indo-European root of Druid is deru – meaning tree (concrete), and solid, strong or true (abstract). The definition given for Druid is ’strong seer’ in turn points to the IE root weid – meaning to see (concrete) and wisdom or knowledge (abstract) (AmHer, 2099, 2131). Druids were part of the tripartite priestly class made up of themselves, the Poets or Bards, and the Vates or Seers. They encompassed the powers of the other two, with the additional responsibility of being king’s council and natural philosophers. Much of the lore we have of their function is seen through the occluded lens of their Roman adversaries and Christian commentators, for they were doubly damned by being the priestly class of the Pagan Celtic culture. As the Táin is a repository for certain elements of the pre-patriarchal, or matrilineal, so too the Christianity of Erigeana contains remnants of the Pagan cultural tradition of the Druids, Poets and Seers.
There is an argument in Indo-European studies that these ‘technicians of the sacred’ were the inheritors of a shamanism itself as old as the Neolithic. In effect the Oral Traditional material contains many references to the activity of this priestly class as mediators between the divine and the temporal, from the Indus to the Sinann. One of the common motifs of the Druidic references, and by default, due to the absorption of the Druidic/Bardic colleges, many of the lives of the Irish Saints, which points to this shamanism, is the shape changing and close association with animal totems. Whether it be Patrick’s transformed deer escaping the king’s insult and anger, Kevin’s mothering a nest of blackbirds, or Bede’s otter moccasin walk across the strand, these suggest not so much a connection to the “family of things” as the ages old accretion of Paganism. The frequency with which the early saints are associated, both with “animal presence”, and with or as Poets suggests that infiltration might be a more apt description of the process of Ireland’s conversion of Christianity.
An example of this difference between the animism of Druidry and the appropriation of animal motifs by the Irish saints is the fox. The fox is the original animal totem of a Poet named Crimthamn, who would later change that totem to a dove when he took the name Colm Cille. Likewise the fox is imaged in the stories of saints in Every Earthly Blessing as malicious and in need of forgiveness because of its innate tendencies. Is it these innate tendencies of cunning and wiliness that made them appropriate totems for a Poet or Druid? Oddly enough, the cat Pangur Ban is neither a vegetarian, nor criticized for cruelty towards the mouse. This need to ‘tame’ the wildness of these trickster animals is in essence an ongoing manichaeism between order and chaos. “That academic dichotomy gone forever/It is not that they are tame/But that we become wild.” And that was what was feared most and hence required eradication, the wildness of it all.
Another important indicator of Druidical residue is the frequency with which monasteries are associated with Oaks or dairí, which is most likely a cognate of the IE root daru Kildare or ‘Oak Church’ and Derry being the most obvious examples. In European Paganism it is suggested that the reason the Oak was singled out as sacral is its inability to ground lightning, often described as being ‘lightning-blasted’, showing the favor of the sky Gods. It is possible that the Oak is consequently to be associated with the Iron Age gods of “displaced responsibility”, and that a likely candidate for an earlier pre-Celtic world tree is the Yew. It is associated both with death and immortality, and its relative placement at burial sites, suggests use by Saxons, Celts or even the enigmatic Megalith builders of the late Neolithic.
III

Mise Rafteraí an file

Lán dóchais is grá

Le súil gan solas

Le ciúnas gan crá

Dul siar m’aistir

Le solas mo chroí
I am Raftery the poet

Full of hope and love

Eyes without light

Calm without sorrow

Going west on my journey

With light in my heart
Fán agus tuirseach

Go deireads mo shlí

Féach anois mé

Is m’agaith ar balla

Ag senim ceoil

Da phócaí folarnh
Wandering and weary

To the end of my way

Look at me now

With my face to the wall

Playing music

For empty pockets
– Anthony Raftery, ‘Mise Rafteraí’
A certain irony can be seen in the way that the Irish monks and many of the saints have affiliations with, were trained as, or maintain the traditions of the Poets. This further points to the possibility that the Druidic and Poetic functions of the Pagan religious caste infiltrated the Christian clergy in Celtic Ireland and consequently mediated the form it took there. Because of the power of this caste, whereas elsewhere in Europe the Church was bringing a destruction to Pagan venerated wells, sacred trees and groves, Pagan Ireland maintained these sacred spaces by converting their activities to Christian use; thereby preserving their ability to inform us of their earlier connections. In the same way that we can see the residue of Druidic shamanism in the use of animal totems by saints, the close connection between the Poets and the saints and monks highlights how thin the veneer of Christianity was on the Pagan practices of Celtic Ireland.
The Poets and the Bards were the information technology of their time because of their ability to encode and preserve the Oral Traditional material of Ireland. In their stories and songs we get a picture, although incomplete, of the Gaelic world-view. Their preservation of the Gaelic language made it possible for us to look back past the Greek and Roman models of social organization and see vestiges of an earlier Indo-European culture in the “psycholinguistics” of its syntax. Their destruction is illustrated in both the Raftery poem above, and in the Brian Friel play Translations, where the Gaelic names from the Dindshenchas are being Anglicized by the English. The repartee between the Hedge School master and his students could be taken as an example of how their academic discourse carried on. Before the monks copiously reproduced the classics, these Poetic students were trained to have the Greek, Latin and Celtic cultures all present and interacting in their education. Their importance to a conception of a national culture (which they were on the verge of birthing before the English exiled the Wild Geese), as well as the continued destruction of these sages of ages past is suggested in a poem by Ted Hughes ‘Hear it Again’ excerpt here:
Tyrants know where to aim/As Hitler poured his petrol and tossed his matches

Stalin collected the bards … /In other words the mobile and only libraries…

of all those enslaved peoples from the Black to/the Bering Sea

And made a bonfire/ Of the mainsprings of national identities to melt

the folk into one puddle/And the three seconds of the present moment

By massacring those wordy fellows whose memories were/bigger than armies.
Their colleges had to have been seats of great learning, for “invaders and conquerors don’t easily admit to the existence of admirable qualities”, and the tendency for Irish monks to establish monasteries and colleges as far afield as Russia is well established. Anytime one of these Poets or Bards passed into the West without transmitting their songs and stories what was lost amounted to an entire library being incinerated. A library, not simply filled with dusty old tomes and colorful manuscripts constructed by monks, but a multi-media collection, made up of poetry, song, and stories, covering history, genealogy, geography, and religion (a religion not based on the received and mediated word, but the manifest living word). These were not mere artifacts from a golden age long past, they were the living and breathing cultural traditions, which continued to interact with the people and shape their world-view; even in the face of outside attempts at cultural conquest from Roman Catholicism and the English.
IV

Sun’s in the mirror, red and gold

in the sky behind me,

one huge crimson blazing globe –

Glas Gaibhneach’s heart milk through a sieve

her drops of blood strained out

like a picture of the Sacred Heart.

Three scarlet brightnesses are there

and pain so sharp, and sob so short.

I stared at the drops

afraid but almost unaware –

like Sleeping Beauty when she gazed

at her thumb pricked by the wheel,

she turned it over, and over once more

as if her actions were unreal.

When Deirdre saw the blood on the snow

did she know the raven’s name?
Then I realize I drive towards you

my dearest friend and lovely man

(may nothing keep me from your bed tonight

but miles of road and truffic lights)

and your impatience like a stone

falls upon us from the skyand adds to our uneasiness

the awkward weight of my hurt pride.

And more great loads will fall on us

if the omen comes to pass

much greater than the great sun’s globe

that lately bled into glass

And so, Great Mother, cave of awe –

since it’s towards you we race –

is it the truth? Is your embrace

and kiss more fine

than honey, beer, or Spanish wine?

– Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, ‘An Rás’ (The Race)
Another aspects of the tripartite Indo-European religious caste, the vates, Ovates, or alternately in the Gaelic Literature, Seers, were incorporated in the new religious system, this is seen in the frequency with which saints prophecy. It is well known that the Romans made slander of these Seers, particularly the form of their prophecy, by the continual discussion of reading omens in the spilt organs of animals (and humans, if we can believe their claim to ubiquity in that). As European Paganism shows not only was this haruspicy practiced among the Romans, but human sacrifice was something they were familiar with as well. They had of course long since abandoned such barbarity, although this didn’t stop them from using their knowledge of it as political and religious propaganda to discredit the Celts. Prophecy and Seership is common among Indo-European cultures, including the Greek and Roman, the Pythian oracle at Delphi is one of the most well known examples.
This brings up another point, which illuminates the bias of the Roman historiographers. Many of the Celtic cultures, like the Romans and Greeks, had female Seers, yet few appear in their descriptions of this religious caste. Both genders were allowed access to their schools and women functioned within the caste as Seers, Poets, as well as Druids, yet few examples exist. One of the most powerful envisioning of a female Seer, or any seer for that matter is Fedelm the poet-seer who warns Medb of the disaster she was embarking on in the Táin. I am struck as much by her description as I am by the line “I am Fedelm. I hide nothing,” Is this perchance recognition of another role of these caste members responsibilities to, not only speak honestly, but to witness, or act as Brehons? The similarity between the functions of the Druids, Poets, and Seers, the tendency of these functions to overlap, and the close relationship with power, suggests in those words, not so much truth in prophecy as it does her responsibility to tell power of its would-be folly. The weaving-rod, which according to the notes is associated with prophecy, points to the potentiality that these traditions, particularly of prophecy being originally the purview of women. Weaving is perhaps one of the oldest arts and to my mind it is exclusively feminine. It is directly connected in numerous cultures with magick and the occult, or to use the Gaelic phrase, contact with the Otherworld.
This heightens the discrepancy we are given in the Táin with regard to the Iron Age Celtic culture, where women’s role, though still evident, are generally being eroded and replaced by the power of men, might, and kings. The Brehon laws suggest that this patrician attitude was not indigenous to Ireland, and is likely therefore a derivation from Greeco-Roman influence or the Continental Celtic culture. The ability of women to participate at the highest levels of the Indo-European religious caste in Ireland, at a time when Roman women were viewed as possessions, which had no place in the business of power, suggests that perhaps we lost something when we accepted the consolidation of power at the hands of European national interests and the Roman Church. Fedelm’s ability to face a Queen, if not The Queen of Ireland in the guise of Sovereignty, and to tell her that the course of action she was about to undertake would be disastrous, is representative of the degree of agency women once had in their relations with power. An agency we stepped away from in the twist of the matrilineal to the patriarchal, from the blood-line of a Mother, to the blood-sacrifice by the Father.
V

“We are merely restoring to the corpse buried in a manuscript

the soul that once animated it.”

– Kevin Collins, Cultural Conquest of Ireland
The title of this paper is my own personal raison d’être, it informs much of my academic work. I look for the connections, which point towards a world-view that is not dissimilar from that expressed among the Archaic Gael. This is a place where gender and ethnic considerations are moot in light of the concerns of the tribe or tuatha. A world-view invested in the place and space, in time and tide, of our spinning, hurtling spaceship earth. Where the realm of the Otherworld has as much importance and function as the boiling cauldron of the daily grind. The Archaic is manifest for me in the connection and connectivity of the blood, which is not God’s, from which we all spring. It is invoked and evoked by the efforts of various ‘technicians of the sacred’ who are “priests of the eternal imagination transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life” in poetry, in ritual, or in prophecy. They are the pontifex maximus the bridge builders who cross the boundaries others only see as obstacles and limitations. They are the bridges between the world-views of Pagan Ireland and Roman Christianity, because of them we have a fuller view of what Christianity could and should have been, and yet may be. My task is not to escape into the mists of prehistory in some fantastic transcendence of our ‘filthy modern tide’. It is to strive in hope of re-visioning a whole and healthy story which lives and breathes, and which is a model for right livelihood for all in this great tide of pulsing and throbbing life.
I hope that this has elucidated some of the differences I see between the early Indo-European Megalithic Builders and the Iron Age Continental Celts, and why they are important in relation to the change in gender focus seen in the Táin. Likewise, the discussion of how the Indo-European religious castes were instrumental in the adoption and adaptation of Christianity in Ireland. I realize that there is little of the I you might have been seeking in this paper, these are issues which are highly significant to me and the work I have done and will continue to do. They are not merely mediated through the obfuscating lens of academia, which has become my primary mode of discourse they are a passion. I still write poetry and sing and chant, participating in the living and breathing of these ideas as much as I dissect and reintegrate them for the academy’s gristmill. I leave you with a poem about the Patriarchs of the Old Testament:
Jacobite

That’s right sheep & goats, you too cows,

Eat the grass, eat it down to the ground.

Damnit I want sand I tell ya, sand.

The more sand there is, the more sons I get.

One day all this sand will be mine, & my sons.

We’ll destroy the cities, & take their goods,

All the old oaks and shrines in the hills,

We’ll build altars to YHVH and burn the animals,
It’ll be a great big party for all the family,

Everyone will talk about it for days, forever;

Because we have a blessing especially from God.

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The Poetry Of The Dao Te Ching

Whoever is planted in the Tao

will not be rooted up.

Whoever embraces the Tao

will not slip away.

Her name will be held in honor

from generation to generation.
Let the Tao be present in your life

and you will become genuine.

Let it be present in your family

and your family will flourish.

Let it be present in your country

and your country will be an example

to all countries in the world.

Let it be present in the universe

and the universe will sing.
How do I know this is true?

By looking inside myself.

—
He who is in harmony with the Tao

is like a newborn child.

Its bones are soft, its muscles are weak,

but its grip is powerful.

It doesn’t know about the union

of male and female,

yet its penis can stand erect,

so intense is its vital power.

It can scream its head off all day,

yet it never becomes hoarse,

so complete is its harmony.
The Master’s power is like this.

He lets all things come and go

effortlessly, without desire.

He never expects results;

thus he is never disappointed.

He is never disappointed;

thus his spirit never grows old.

—
Those who know don’t talk.

Those who talk don’t know.
Close your mouth,

block off your senses,

blunt your sharpness,

untie your knots,

soften your glare,

settle your dust.

This is the primal identity.
Be like the Tao.

It can’t be approached or withdrawn from,

benefited or harmed,

honored or brought into disgrace.

It gives itself up continually.

That is why it endures.

—
If you want to be a great leader,

you must learn to follow the Tao.

Stop trying to control.

Let go of fixed plans and concepts,

and the world will govern itself.
The more prohibitions you have,

the less virtuous people will be.

The more weapons you have,

the less secure people will be.

The more subsidies you have,

the less self-reliant people will be.
Therefore the Master says:

I let go of the law,

and people become honest.

I let go of economics,

and people become prosperous.

I let go of religion,

and people become serene.

I let go of all desire for the common good,

and the good becomes common as grass.

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h.u.v.a. network / time circles / distant system rmx

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“Nothing is true, everything is permitted”

Dear Friends,
Recovering from being down for a couple of days with a stomach bug, or massive sinus/allergies. Hard to tell the diff… A different entry today, including a speech from Tony Benn, one of my favourite Labour Party Members.

Some new music from Sophie and Ives…

And Art and Poetry from William Blake (a hero, a true star!)
We have moved into October, a wonderful time of the year. I love the changes, but I feel the grief of summer passing… ah.
Much Love,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Sophie & Ives

TONY BENN ON SLAVERY, RELIGION AND JUSTICE

The Poetry Of William Blake

Sophie & Ives – Clouds
_________________

Sophie & Ives – Awaken

__________________
TONY BENN ON SLAVERY, RELIGION AND JUSTICE

Tony Benn’s talk at the Victoria & Albert museum, May 2007
Thank you very much indeed for inviting me. May I just begin by describing how my interest in the abolition of slavery began? I learned to fly during the war in Zimbabwe, they sent RAF pilots there because it was safer than learning to fly there, than in Britain where you might be shot down.
When Zimbabwe was an English colony, Rhodesia, not a single black was allowed to vote. Cecil Rhodes was shown a land in the 1890s and seized all the land, handed it to the white farmers and in 1937, Southern Rhodesia, and laws of assembly, made it a criminal offence for an African to have a skilled job. So that interested me in the African cause and all my life I’ve worked with all the people that were involved in it.
And I’ve been interested in all the people we locked up. I met Gandhi once, we locked him up; I met Nehru, he was locked up, Mandela was locked up. I think Nicoma was locked up, certainly Kenneth Kaunda from Zambia was locked up, we locked up Nkrumah, and all the people we locked up ended their lives having tea with the Queen as head of Commonwealth countries. And so historical perspective helps a little bit.
Then I became a Member of Parliament for Bristol and, of course, Bristol was one of the great slave cities and the interesting thing about going to Bristol was it wasn’t discussable, oh no you couldn’t talk about slavery, they had all the statues of the benefactors, huge statues, who’d given money to churches and schools, who made all their money out of the slave trade. There was a very bright, black Bristolian called Paul Stevenson who led a boycott because they wouldn’t let blacks drive the buses and now he’s persuaded Bristol to have a Museum of Slavery and they’re coming to terms with what’s happened, and it’s quite a difficult thing because you don’t like finding you did the awful things, that you always assumed foreigners did [laughter].
And, of course, you musn’t think it’s so very long ago because I knew the son of a slave, his name will be familiar to you – Paul Robeson, he came to London in 1958, gave him tea at the House of Commons with my dad. He’d had his passport taken away because he was supporting the colonial freedom movement, so it’s living issue, it’s not just the past and I think that’s worth remembering. Then the other thing too, is to look at Wilberforce.
Now Wilberforce very interesting man, he was a Conservative, he supported Pitt, he voted for the Combination Act which made it a criminal offence for more than three people to get together to call for a trade union or political reform, and then he became a Christian and he was stirred by the injustice of it and campaigned, and that’s what we’re celebrating this year, the abolition of the slave trade. And, might I add, not the abolition of slavery, don’t think that Wilberforce brought about the abolition of slavery but only the slave trade.
And the funny thing is somebody sent me a leading article from The Economist the other day about the slave trade. Now as you know The Economist is a very responsible newspaper that everybody should read [laughter] and what it said was this – this is an edition from 1848, two years before my grandfather was born. The Economist said you can’t abolish the slave trade, ’cause there are all these ignorant blacks in Africa with nothing whatever to do and they’re needed on the plantations of America, so said The Economist, you should regulate the slave trade. And I thought of an organisation called Ofslave, headed by Chris Woodhead which would name and shame slave ships where the sanitary arrangements fell below acceptable standards.
But I mention it all because, you see, we are a bit Anglo oriented. Ten million Africans were shipped, ten million of them, many died on the way, were thrown overboard and we now claim the credit for ending it. I think that the denial of the role of the Africans themselves in ending the slave trade is something we really do have to take much more seriously. All sorts of people supported the slave trade, of course, at one time the churches thought the slave trade could be justified because the Africans could be converted to Christianity when they were slaves. It was interesting idea: you imprison them and then you persuade them that Jesus brought a message of love, but they were still slaves.
The other thing that interests me about Wilberforce and the slave trade was when slavery was abolished, which was a bit later, the Government compensated the slave owners but not the slaves. So if you’d had slaves like some bishops had, you got money from the Government for giving up your slave but the guys who’d been slaves got absolutely nothing at all.
It is, of course, a very old tradition, slavery’s as old as history because rich and powerful people, land owners, owned the land and they owned the workers on the land. The brutality of it was horrific, slaves who escaped were crucified. Slaves who had been made slaves were branded with the name of their owner and–, and when you bring it right up to date, because you have to, there are – according to the definition of slavery, which is that you lose the right to control your own life – there are 27 million slaves, still many of them, of course, women bought and trafficked. And that is part of the slave trade, and all sorts of bondage and indebtedness makes you a slave.
But just to come back for a moment to the question of how it ended. There were strikes by slaves in British colonies. In the 1730s, the 1760s, 1780s and the 1800s. When we talk about the role of Wilberforce – now I’m not belittling him in anyway because he was dedicated man who fought a wonderful parliamentary campaign. But in the 1780s, 27 years before that, the northern states in the United States abolished slavery. In 1787, as you’ve heard, there was the first British campaign against slavery, the Danes banished the slave trade in 1792, in 1794, after the French revolution, the revolutionary French abolished slavery and Haiti in 1804 was liberated by slaves, they just went against their owners and took over the country and liberated it from the slave trade. And so that’s the background against which you have to look at the achievements of Wilberforce, and I don’t belittle him at all. But you mustn’t think that every good thing comes from our race because we have been responsible for some of the things we now claim to have abolished.
The other thing to remember is this, it wasn’t just the black slaves, we sold white slaves to Ireland. We took convicted people and criminals and so on, and we shipped them off to Ireland as slaves. When Michael Manley, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, whom I knew very well, came to London I was asked to introduce him, which I did, and I gave a lot of examples of the slave trade and he said to me afterwards, “I’d like you to tell me more about this because I got a museum of slavery in Jamaica on black slavery.” And I said, “Oh Michael that wasn’t black slavery, that was slavery in Britain and Medieval times of slavery.” And so you have to think of slavery as being broader than colour though, of course, it’s identified very largely–, very largely in those terms. It was therefore an economic phenomenon, not just phenomenon of lack of political democracy. And remember this, that Africa, which is still rich in gold and copper and oil, was conquered for economic reasons. Indeed Bush is now following it out with his own version of the empire, he goes to the Middle East ’cause he wanted oil, and that’s quite straight forward.
Sir John Boyd-Orr a very, very famous Nobel prize winner, once said most empires conquer for physical resources, and that was why we went there. And there’s a very interesting aspect of this that links to the movement Make Poverty History. I think they asked the wrong question, they always say why are the poor poo
r? Right question to ask is why are the rich rich? This–, well you come to totally different conclusions, ’cause the rich are rich ’cause they live off the backs of the poor and if that sounds very controversial to you, Adam Smith said the rich are the pensioners of the poor, the rich live off the backs of the poor, so it’s not just a racial, it’s a class, in the economic sense, a class issue, and has always been that.
In this country, I come back to the Combination Act which made trade unionism illegal. Until 1834, it was illegal for people to form a union and if you were a worker in on a farm in Britain, the land owner owned the land, and he also owned the cottage. If you went to him and said, “I can’t live on the money, you’re treating me badly.” he’d get you off the farm and pinch your cottage, so you were homeless and poor. So they thought if we get together we might be able to solve it and, of course, trade unionism was illegal. So when the unions tried to be formed they were sent to Australia as convicts.
I’ve got an American friend who’s just been in Australia and I said, “How did you get on?” “Oh Tony,” he said, “the Oz’s were great but by God,” he said, “they’re really tough.” Said, “What do you mean?” “Well,” he said, “when I applied for a visa they asked me if I had any previous convictions and I said ‘no’, is it still required?”
So, you see, it all comes together it’s all part of a bigger picture and this is what happens whenever you take an issue, it seems very narrow, you suddenly find it explodes into a million other issues which are equally interesting and important.
Now the other thing that interests me very much is the role of religion in all this, and I know the question ‘am I my brother’s keeper’ has been raised. On the internet, from which, I get a lot of very useful information, I got the other day a summary of what all the religions of the world say. The Judaism, ‘what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow men’, that is the entire law, all the rest is commentary. Then Christianity, ‘all things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them’. Mohammed, where are we, yes, ‘no one of you is a believer until he desires to his brother what he desires for himself’. And the same with Brahmans, the same with Buddhists, the same with the Confucians, and that’s also what’s on every trade union banner, ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’.
So you can see it all coming together as a recognition that you cannot build a society on other than on a moral basis. And that I find very, very interesting because nowadays, you see, religion is being used as a way of dividing us, you only have to look at what’s said now about Islam and the use of God. Bush said God told him to go to Iraq, I didn’t know God worked in the White House, but apparently he did, and then they say Moses went up Mount Siani and got Palestine allocated to the Jews, I didn’t know God was an estate agent. But the way in which you use religion to justify your power is a tremendously important question.
If you now look at it in a cultural sense, all the religions apart from people who control them, all the religions are part of our culture. I was brought up as a Christian and when I go to church I like the churches, I like seeing bishops in funny outfits. I sing hymns like ‘onward Christian soldiers marching as to war with the cross of Jesus going on before’,
Now if anyone sang ‘onward Muslim soldiers going as to war’ with Mohammed’s banner going’…., they’d all be locked up at once by John Reid and so you have to recognise that there is, in every religion, a culture. There’s nothing whatsoever in the culture of religion to divide one from another. The people I’m nervous of are the people who use religion to get control of us, and that is the difference.
I mentioned that I was bought up as a Christian, my mother taught me that the story in the bible was the story of the conflict between the kings who had power and the prophets who preached riotousness, and she taught me to support the prophets against the kings. It’s got me into a lot of trouble in my life but it explained so much. Because it’s one thing to be told love your neighbours as yourself, it’s another thing to be told be a bishop, “If you don’t do what I tell you, you will rot in hell.”
Using religion to get control of people is an abuse, I think, of religious teaching and to rediscover Moses and Jesus, Carpenter – of Nazareth and Mohammed, rediscover what they were saying gives you some opportunity to learn how to live your life in peace, but it has to relate to the present. You can’t just have some dream of the future because in the old days you went to a bishop and you said, “Bishop it’s a very unfair world.” And the bishop would say, “I know my child, but if only the rich were kind and the poor are patient, we shall all be rewarded in heaven.” And people said, “That’s wonderful news bishop, but could we possibly have it while we’re still alive?” And out of that came a political movement, where heaven on earth is what people want.
And so that is a conflict and that’s why I think the use of religion for political purposes is such a desperately dangerous thing to do and it goes on all the time. One of the ways in which you control people of course is to frighten them, divide them and demoralise them and those are instruments of control that have been used from the time the slavery right through to the present time. And so then you say, well what did this lead to?
And, of course, it led to a demand for justice. When I look back is in every period of history, two flames have always been burning in the human heart, the flame of anger against injustice and the flame of hope that you can build a better world and those two flames are really material by which we make progress and to understand that is very, very important, because if you don’t have some aspiration then you find yourself in a position, which I think about most of the time now – and that is how the human race is going to cope with its problems.
We live in a very remarkable period, quite unlike any other in history, when the human race has the capacity to destroy itself, and you can kill one man with a spear, a few more with a bayonet, one or two with a machine gun or a plane, but with chemical, nuclear and biological weapons it is possible to destroy the human race, that has never, ever been true before.
But it’s also the first generation in history which has the technology and the know-how and the money to solve the problems of the human race. And that’s where you really come right into the contemporary political scene, because a fraction of the cost of the war now would see that everyone in Africa with Aids would have free drugs. A fraction of the cost of the war would see everyone in America has a health service, would protect New Orleans from the Katrina Hurricane and that is the choice.
So the question then you have to ask yourself is, well how do you change the situation? ‘Cause there are only three interesting questions in politics, what’s going on? Which is not always easy to find out, why is it going on? Which is harder to find out and the third question is, what are you going to do about it? And if you look at the way in which it all developed, it developed really with the greatest revolution of all, far more revolutionary than the French or Russian or American revolution, it was the revolution of democracy and the reason.
I mention it is because throughout the 19th Century a huge change in power occurred, in the olden days all the power was in the hands of the rich and if you were rich you didn’t need a school, you hired tutors, you didn’t have a mortgage from a local authority for your castle because you owned it, you didn’t have to bother about anything else, if you were ill you hired a doctor, when you were old you were okay, you were never unemployed because you never did any work anyway, and that was the basis of society and what happened
during the 19th Century explains everything, I think, including the national independence movements.
Power, when people had the vote power was transferred from the people with money to the people who didn’t have money. In 1837 when the Birmingham Corporation became law the people of Birmingham, or some of them anyway, had the vote, so how did they use the vote? They used to the vote to buy with their vote what they couldn’t afford personally, municipal hospitals, municipal schools, municipal fire brigade, municipal museums, municipal art gallery and what democracy did was to transfer power from the market place to the polling station, from the wallet to the ballot.
What then happened was the whole prospect changed, that’s how the welfare state came about, of course, in the end, the idea of a national health service, idea of state education, the idea, even, of a fire brigade, in the olden days there was no fire brigade, you–, you–, you insured your own house was an insurance company. So if your neighbours house burned down they didn’t bother to put that out ’cause he wasn’t insured and that would obviously threaten your house and this idea of–, of welfare, which is looked down on in mockery, is on the basis that actually the interest of all of us are in the interests of all of us.
If you meet a diseased person your health is threatened, if you work with an uneducated person your work is threatened and so the recognition of the common interests we have in survival and prosperity was a product of democracy, and nobody really likes democracy very much, nobody in power likes democracy very much. I mean, Hitler didn’t like it, Stalin didn’t like it, the Pope doesn’t allow the clergy to elect the Pope, it’s all done by shares of cardinals whom he appoints. I can’t say I find all that much enthusiasm for democracy even in a capitalist society of where the market is everything, because the thing about having a market society is that you don’t have systems, you only have consumers. Now to be a consumer you have to have some money, I mean homeless people in the streets of London need homes more than anybody else but as they can’t afford them they’re not consumers, and the language used to belittle collective activity is very noticeable.
Now when I look again at the future I think of what’s called ‘cultural diversity’, when I was born it was terribly boring, everybody–, they were all white, they had fish and chips, they watched cricket, a little bit of ballroom dancing, and now we’ve got such a fantastic cultural diversity in Britain. Two of my granddaughters are at a primary school in London with 77 nationalities in the school and a refugee centre in the school, so when I go and talk at the school it’s like addressing a meeting of the General Assembly [of the United Nations]. My granddaughters have got Russian friends, American friends, Malaysian friends, West Indian, for them that’s normal, that is the world we live in. It’s complete generational change because I think younger people understand it, very often, much, much better than older people who were brought up in a different tradition.
That’s really what we have to try and–, and utilise, which is why I think the internet is very, very valuable because you get access to things which you wouldn’t necessarily find described in The Sun or The Mail and the information you get allows you to reach a judgement of your own which is independent and probably puts you in the category of the prophets against the king. So I warn you don’t use the internet too loosely or you’ll be in trouble yourself.
I mentioned the trade unions and apartheid. I spoke in Trafalgar Square in 1964 in support of a very, very well known terrorist and I got denounced in the tabloids, I didn’t meet him for a bit, next time I met him he had an Nobel peace prize and was president of South Africa. Well look at the suffragettes who were locked up for just wanting votes for women.
The way I think progress occurs, you see, is this: to begin with is you’ve got a sensible idea like abolishing slavery or votes for women or trade unions or end apartheid, and they ignore you. Then if you go on you’re stark staring bonkers, I’ve had a touch of that myself, then if you go on after that you’re dangerous, then there’s a pause and then you can’t find anyone at the top who doesn’t claim to have thought of it in the first place – and that is how progress is made.
It’s made by movements, by people who understand the world, who feel a sense of commonality with other people and say, “Why don’t we get together and do it ourselves”. In order for that to succeed you need to have encouragement and I think encouragement is the most important quality in political leadership, because they do try, all the time, to put you down. I don’t know what you feel but the league tables in schools, this idea that a school has failed, well I know schools have problems, but a school has failed.
I went the other day to a failed school, they were utterly demoralised and I had an example of it myself which I might mention. I went to the Labour conference 18 months ago and the Prime Minister made a speech which I listened to and I got up to go to the loo and I collapsed, and I was taken to the Brighton hospital and given a pacemaker. I had a letter from the Prime Minister saying “hope my speech didn’t cause it” and I was too polite to reply.
The interesting thing was this, when I left I discovered that was the worst hospital in Britain under the league tables. Well what if you’re the nurse or a sister or a doctor or porter, what do you make of it if you’re told you work in the worst hospital in Britain?
People want encouragement and that’s what they don’t always want to give you, but if we encourage each other, my God there’s nothing you cannot do. And so that’s how the slave trade really ended, people got together and saw the truth and realised we’re brothers and sisters and then we made an advance.
But one final warning, every generation has to do it for themselves again, there is no railway station called justice that if you catch the right train you get there, every generation has to fight for their rights because rights are taken away. They concede what they have to, and then when the pressure’s off, they try and recapture the territory they’ve lost. So it’s an ongoing struggle and at my age, I’m 82 now, (and its wonderful, if I’d known what fun it was to be 80 I’d have done it years ago) because you have a bit of experience and you don’t want anything. And when I speak, as I do tonight to you, I say you can relax, I am not asking you to vote for me and there’s a great sigh of relief and people saying, “Well if he doesn’t want anything we may as well listen to him.” So that is really the function of the old, I think it’s to encourage people and understand. So thank you for asking me and I do hope we have some questions, and as I’m a bit deaf [to V&A staff] you’re going to tell me what the questions are otherwise you’ll all say typical politician he doesn’t answer the questions. Thank you very much.

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The Poetry Of William Blake

Ah! Sun-Flower

Ah, Sun-flower! weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the Sun,

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the traveller’s journey is done:
Where the Youth pined away with desire

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow

Arise from their graves, and aspire

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

—
A Song

Sweet dreams, form a shade

O’er my lovely infant’s head!

Sweet dreams of pleasant streams

By happy, silent, moony beams!
Sweet Sleep, with soft down

Weave thy brows an infant crown

Sweet Sleep, angel mild,

Hover o’er my happy child!
Sweet smiles, in the night

Hover over my delight!

Sweet smiles, mother’s smile,

All the livelong night beguile.
Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,

Chase not slumber from thine eyes!

Sweet moan, sweeter smile,

All the dovelike moans beguile.
Sleep, sleep, happy child!

All creation slept and smiled.

Sleep, sleep, happy sleep,

While o’er thee doth mother weep.
Sweet babe, in thy face

Holy image I can trace;

Sweet babe, once like thee

Thy Maker lay, and wept for me:
Wept for me, for thee, for all,

When He was an infant small.

Thou His image ever see,

Heavenly face that smiles on thee!
Smiles on thee, on me, on all,

Who became an infant small;

Infant smiles are his own smiles;

Heaven and earth to peace beguiles.

—
To The Accuser Who is The God of This World

Truly My Satan thou art but a Dunce

And dost not know the Garment from the Man

Every Harlot was a Virgin once

Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan
Tho thou art Worship’d by the Names Divine

Of Jesus & Jehovah thou art still

The Son of Morn in weary Nights decline

The lost Travellers Dream under the Hill

—
The Angel

I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?

And that I was a maiden Queen

Guarded by an Angel mild:

Witless woe was ne’er beguiled!
And I wept both night and day,

And he wiped my tears away;

And I wept both day and night,

And hid from him my heart’s delight.
So he took his wings, and fled;

Then the morn blushed rosy red.

I dried my tears, and armed my fears

With ten-thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again;

I was armed, he came in vain;

For the time of youth was fled,

And grey hairs were on my head.

—
Love’s Secret

Never seek to tell thy love,

Love that never told can be;

For the gentle wind does move

Silently, invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love,

I told her all my heart;

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,

Ah! she did depart!
Soon as she was gone from me,

A traveler came by,

Silently, invisibly

He took her with a sigh.

__________________
Sophie & Ives – Clouds

__________________

Well, I had all kinds of things to say last night when I finished this up, but I left it for this morning to write, and I am absolutely empty of thoughts. Odd.
Anyway, just a couple of points. Watching the inception of the new Republican ‘Trickle Up Theory‘ of Economics is exciting beyond belief. I always feel privileged to insure that the shackles of Capitalism stay in place and I am honoured to do my bit to keep someone else in guccis’, penthouses, lear jets and cocaine. I feel it is our patriotic duty to keep that boot on our neck and pass it on to our posterity, don’t you? You too can do your part to keep the inequality going by not commenting on this to your local gov’t rep (who probably is in on this little dance), and to top it off kids, the Democrats capitulated on drilling for oil off our coast! Wow, both sides of the corporate party are dancing to this tune!
On our front: Sophie was found, and she is home. Rowan’s friends have all headed off to college, the leaves are falling, the cat is staying in for the night and the garden has reached it’s peak.
May your day be filled with love….
More Later!

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Where the hell is Matt?

The Fairy Dance

The Bard Of Ireland: William Butler Yeats

Jette – Ives: Darker than You

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Now… this is a bit of loveliness. Major Loveliness. We need lunacy. I mean real Lunacy. Dancing in water lunacy, digging for ponies in horse manure lunacy. Lunacy to transform the world. Lunacy, that dares to live beautifully with all the crushing weight of the madness of civilization bearing down on you lunacy. Matt, has that gift of Divine Lunacy, yeah, now that is the type that gets it done.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
Thanks to Graham St. John for sharing this! Here is some info:Matt Dancing!

Here is some more! Where The Hell Is Matt?

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The Fairy Dance

The following story is from the Irish, as told by a native of one of the Western Isles, where the primitive superstitions have still all the freshness of young life.
One evening late in November, which is the month when spirits have most power over all things, as the prettiest girl in all the island was going to the well for water, her foot slipped and she fell, it was an unlucky omen, and when she got up and looked round it seemed to her as if she were in a strange place, and all around her was changed as if by enchantment. But at some distance she saw a great crowd gathered round a blazing fire, and she was drawn slowly on towards them, till at last she stood in the very midst of the people; but they kept silence, looking fixedly at her; and she was afraid, and tried to turn and leave them, but she could not. Then a beautiful youth, like a prince, with a red sash, and a golden band on his long yellow hair, came up and asked her to dance.
“It is a foolish thing of you, sir, to ask me to dance,” she said, “when there is no music.”
Then he lifted his hand and made a sign to the people, and instantly the sweetest music sounded near her and around her, and the young man took her hand, and they danced and danced till the moon and the stars went down, but she seemed like one floating on the air, and she forgot everything in the world except the dancing, and the sweet low music, and her beautiful partner.
At last the dancing ceased, and her partner thanked her, and invited her to supper with the company. Then she saw an opening in the ground, and a flight of steps, and the young man, who seemed to be the king amongst them all, led her down, followed by the whole company. At the end of the stairs they came upon a large hall, all bright and beautiful with gold and silver and lights; and the table was covered with everything good to eat, and wine was poured out in golden cups for them to drink. When she sat down they all pressed her to eat the food and to drink the wine; and as she was weary after the dancing, she took the golden cup the prince handed to her, and raised it to her lips to drink. Just then, a man passed close to her, and whispered–
“Eat no food, and drink no wine, or you will never reach your home again.”
So she laid down the cup, and refused to drink. On this they were angry, and a great noise arose, and a fierce, dark man stood up, and said–
“Whoever comes to us must drink with us.”
And he seized her arm, and held the wine to her lips, so that she almost died of fright. But at that moment a red-haired man came up, and he took her by the hand and led her out.
“You are safe for this time,” he said. “Take this herb, and hold it in your hand till you reach home, and no one can harm you.” And he gave her a branch of a plant called the Athair-Luss (the ground ivy). [a]
This she took, and fled away along the sward in the dark night; but all the time she heard footsteps behind her in pursuit. At last she reached home and barred the door, and went to bed, when a great clamour arose outside, and voices were heard crying to her–
“The power we had over you is gone through the magic of the herb; but wait–when you dance again to the music on the hill, you will stay with us for evermore, and none shall hinder.”
However, she kept the magic branch safely, and the fairies never troubled her more; but it was long and long before the sound of the fairy music left her ears which she had danced to that November night on the hillside with her fairy lover.
[a] In Ancient Egypt the ivy was sacred to Osiris, and a safeguard against evil.

_______________________
The Bard Of Ireland: William Butler Yeats

THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG
The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears

Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,

And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries

Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.

We who still labour by the cromlec on the shore,

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

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

Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.

—
THE SECRET ROSE
Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,

Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those

Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,

Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir

And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep

Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep

Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold

The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold

Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes

Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise

In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;

Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him

Who met Fand walking among flaming dew

By a grey shore where the wind never blew,

And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;

And him who drove the gods out of their liss,

And till a hundred morns had flowered red,

Feasted and wept the barrows of his dead;

And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown

And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown

Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;

And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,

And sought through lands and islands numberless years,

Until he found with laughter and with tears,

A woman, of so shining loveliness,

That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,

A little stolen tress. I, too, await

The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.

When shall the stars be blown about the sky,

Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?

Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,

Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

—
HE TELLS OF A VALLEY FULL OF LOVERS
I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,

For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;

And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood

With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:

I cried in my dream, O women, bid the young men lay

Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair,

Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair

Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away.

—
THE BLESSED
Cumhal called out, bending his head,

Till Dathi came and stood,

With a blink in his eyes at the cave mouth,

Between the wind and the wood.

And Cumhal said, bending his knees,

“I have come by the windy way

To gather the half of your blessedness

And learn to pray when you pray.
“I can bring you salmon out of the streams

And heron out of the skies.”

But Dathi folded his hands and smiled

With the secrets of God in his eyes.
And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke

All manner of blessed souls,

Women and children, young men with books,

And old men with croziers and stoles.
“Praise God and God’s mother,” Dathi said,

“For God and God’s mother have sent

The blessedest souls that walk in the world

To fill your heart with content.”
“And which is the blessedest,” Cumhal said,

“Where all are comely and good?

Is it these that with golden thuribles

Are singing about the wood?”
“My eyes are blinking,” Dathi said,

“With the secrets of God half blind,

But I can see where the wind goes

And follow the way of the wind;
“And blessedness goes where the wind goes,

And when it is gone we are dead;

I see the blessedest soul in the world

And he nods a drunken head.
“O blessedness comes in the night and the day

And whither the wise heart knows;

And one has seen in the redness of wine

The Incorruptible Rose,
“That drowsily drops faint leaves on him

And the sweetness of desire,

While time and the world are ebbing away

In twilights of dew and of fire.”

—
THE POET PLEADS WITH THE ELEMENTAL POWERS
The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows

Have pulled the Immortal Rose;

And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,

The Polar Dragon slept,

His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:

When will he wake from sleep?
Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,

With your harmonious choir

Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,

That my old care may cease;

Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight

The nets of day and night.
Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be

Like the pale cup of the sea,

When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim

Above its cloudy rim;

But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow

Whither her footsteps go.
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Jette – Ives
Darker than You Promo Video

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The Moorish Orthodox Catechism consists of no rules or dogmas, but only of adherance to the “Five Pillars” of Moorish Science as listed by Noble Drew: LOVE, TRUTH, PEACE, FREEDOM, JUSTICE to which we add a sixth, “Beauty.”—History & Catechism of the Moorish Orthodox Church of America

Come now, luxuriant Graces, and beautiful-haired Muses – Sappho
Well… this has been the longest with posting in quite awhile. Turfing went down, (the updating with photos etc., earlier last week. So, I had to pull a few things out of the hat and deal with providers to get it back up. I have been playing with this entry since Sunday. Sometimes it takes awhile to get it going. There are a couple of smaller entries before this that I didn’t notify people of… short and sweet, check them out.
Busy weekend; Rowan was filming at our house off and on from 10-6 on Saturday with a full crew, and then he hosted a D&D session on Sunday here. The house was packed for the whole weekend, it was nice, but loud.
Worked on the new system, and the house over the weekend. The change in weather here is nothing if not melodramatic! The cat stays in all night, I want to sleep and when awake just sit and read.
Deep Peace to You all.
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Raoul Vaneigem Quotes

Erik Satie – Away – Monkmus

Account of Sappho

Poems Of Sappho….

Satiemania, by Zdenkó Gasparovich

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Raoul Vaneigem Quotes
Raoul Vaneigem & Guy Debord
“Everything has been said yet few have taken advantage of it. Since all our knowledge is essentially banal, it can only be of value to minds that are not.”
“In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.”
“In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption. The dictatorship of consumer goods has finally destroyed the barriers of blood, lineage and race.”
“Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.”

________________
Erik Satie – Away – Monkmus

Account of Sappho

Sappho, whom the ancients distinguished by the title of the Tenth Muse, was born at Mytilene in the island of Lesbos, six hundred years before the Christian era. As no particulars have been transmitted to posterity, respecting the origin of her family, it is most likely she derived by little consequence from birth of connection. At an early period of her life she was wedded to Cercolus, a native of the isle of Andros; he was possessed of considerable wealth, and though the Lesbian Muse is said to have been sparingly gifted with beauty, he became enamoured of her, more perhaps on account of mental, than personal charms. By this union she is said to have given birth to a daughter; but Cercolus leaving her, while young, in a state of widowhood, she never after could be prevailed on to marry. The Fame which her genius spread even to the remotest parts of the earth, excited the envy of some writers who endeavoured to throw over her private character, a shade, which shrunk before the brilliancy of her poetical talents. Her soul was replete with harmony, that harmony which neither art nor study can acquire; she felt the intuitive superiority, and to the Muses she paid unbounded adoration. The Mytilenians held her poetry in such high veneration, and were so sensible of the hour conferred on the country which gave her birth, that they coined money with the impression of her head; and at the time of her death, paid tribute to their memory, such as was offered to sovereigns only. The story of Antiochus has been related as an unequivocal proof of Sappho’s skill in discovering, and powers of describing the passions of the human mind. That prince is said to have entertained a fatal affection for his mother-in-law Stratonice; which, though he endeavoured to subdue it’s influence, preyed upon his frame, and after many ineffectual struggles, at length reduced him to extreme danger. His physicians marked the symptoms attending his malady, and found them so exactly correspond with Sappho’s delineation of the tender passion, that they did not hesitate to form a decisive opinion of the cause, which had produced so perilous an effect. That Sappho was not insensible to the feelings she so well described , is evident in her writings but it was scarcely possible, that a mind so exquisitely tender, so sublimely gifted, should escape those fascinations which even apathy itself has been awakened to acknowledge. The scarce specimens now extant, from the pen of the Grecian Muse, have by the most competent judges been esteemed as the standard for the pathetic, the glowing, and the amatory. The ode, which has been so highly estimated, is written in a measure distinguished by the title of the Sapphic. Pope made it his model in his juvenile production, beginning—
“Happy the man—whose wish and care”—
Addison was of opinion, that the writings of Sappho were replete with such fascinating beauties, and adorned with such a vivid glow of sensibility, that, probably, had they been preserved entire, it would have been dangerous to have perused them. They possessed none of the artificial decorations of a feigned passion; they were the genuine effusions of a supremely enlightened soul, laboring to subdue a fatal enchantment; and vainly opposing the conscious pride of illustrious fame, against the warm susceptibility of a generous bosom. Though few stanzas from the pen of the Lesbian poetess have darted through the shades of oblivion: yet, those that remain are so exquisitely touching and beautiful, that they prove beyond dispute the taste, feeling, and inspiration of the mind which produced them. In examining the curiosities of antiquity, we look to the perfections, and not the magnitude of those relics, which have been preserved amidst the wrecks of time: as the smallest gem that bears the fine touches of a master, surpasses the loftiest fabric reared by the labours of false taste, so the precious fragments of the immortal Sappho, will be admired, when the voluminous productions of inferior poets are mouldered into dust. When it is considered, that the few specimens we have of the poems of the Grecian Muse, have passed through three and twenty centuries, and consequently through the hands of innumerable translators: and when it is known that Envy frequently delights in the base occupation of depreciating merit which it cannot aspire to emulate; it may be conjectured, that some passages are erroneously given to posterity, either by ignorance or design. Sappho, whose fame beamed round her with the superior effulgence which her works had created, knew that she was writing for future ages; it is not therefore natural that she should produce any composition which might tend to tarnish her reputation, or lessen that celebrity which it was the labour of her life to consecrate. The delicacy of her sentiments cannot find a more eloquent advocate than in her own effusions; she is said to have commended in the most animated panegyric, the virtues of her brother Lanychus; and with the most pointed and severe censure, to have contemned the passion which her brother Charaxus entertained for the beautiful Rhodope. If her writings were, in some instances, too glowing for the fastidious refinement of modern times; let it be her excuse, and the honour of her country, that the liberal education of the Greeks was such, as inspired them with an unprejudiced enthusiasm for the works of genius: and that when they paid adoration to Sappho, they idolized the Muse, and not the Woman. I shall conclude this account with an extract from the works of the learned and enlightened Abbé Barthelemi; at once the vindication and eulogy of the Grecian Poetess. “Sappho undertook to inspire the Lesbian women with a taste for literature; many of them received instructions from her, and foreign women increased the number of her disciples. She loved them to excess, because it was impossible for her to love otherwise; and she expressed her tenderness in all the violence of passion: your surprize at this will cease, when you are acquainted with the extreme sensibility of the Greeks; and discover, that amongst them the most innocent connections often borrow the impassioned language of love.” A certain facility of manners, she possessed; and the warmth of her expressions were but too well calculated to expose her to the hatred of some women of distinction, humbled by her superiority; and the jealousy of some of her disciples, who happened to be the objects of her preference. To this hatred she replied by truths and irony, which completely exasperated her enemies. She repaired to Sicily, where a statue was erected to her; it was sculptured by Silanion, one of the most celebrated staturists of his time. The sensibility of Sappho was extreme! she loved Phaon, who forsook her; after various efforts to bring him back, she took the leap of Leucata, and perished in the waves!
“Death has not obliterated the stain imprinted on her character; for Envy, which fastens on Illustrious Names, does not expire; but bequeaths her aspersions to that calumny which Never Dies. “Several Grecian women have cultivated Poetry, with success, but none have hitherto attained to the excellence of Sappho. And among other poets, there are few, indeed, who have surpassed her.”
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The moon shone full

And when the maidens stood around the altar…

Poems Of Sappho….

HYMN TO APHRODITE
Throned in splendor, immortal Aphrodite!

Child of Zeus, Enchantress, I implore thee

Slay me not in this distress and anguish,

Lady of beauty.

Hither come as once before thou camest,

When from afar thou heard’st my voice lamenting,

Heard’st and camest, leaving thy glorious father’s Palace golden,

Yoking thy chariot. Fair the doves that bore thee;

Swift to the darksome earth their course directing,

Waving their thick wings from the highest heaven

Down through the ether.

Quickly they came. Then thou, O blessed goddess,

All in smiling wreathed thy face immortal,

Bade me tell thee the cause of all my suffering,

Why now I called thee;

What for my maddened heart I most was longing.

“Whom,” thou criest, “dost wish that sweet Persuasion

Now win over and lead to thy love, my Sappho?

Who is it wrongs thee?

“For, though now he flies, he soon shall follow,

Soon shall be giving gifts who now rejects them.

Even though now he love not, soon shall he love thee

Even though thou wouldst not.”

Come then now, dear goddess, and release me

From my anguish. All my heart’s desiring

Grant thou now. Now too again as aforetime,

Be thou my ally.
—
THE MOON
The stars about the lovely moon

Fade back and vanish very soon,

When, round and full, her silver face

Swims into sight, and lights all space.

—
ODE TO A LOVED ONE
Blest as the immortal gods is he,

The youth who fondly sits by thee,

And hears and sees thee, all the while,

Softly speaks and sweetly smile.

‘Twas this deprived my soul of rest,

And raised such tumults in my breast;

For, while I gazed, in transport tossed,

My breath was gone, my voice was lost;

My bosom glowed; the subtle flame

Ran quick through all my vital frame;

O’er my dim eyes a darkness hung;

My ears with hollow murmurs rung;

In dewy damps my limbs were chilled;

My blood with gentle horrors thrilled:

My feeble pulse forgot to play;

I fainted, sunk, and died away.

—
TO ONE WHO LOVED NOT POETRY
Thou liest dead, and there will be no memory left behind

Of thee or thine in all the earth, for never didst thou bind

The roses of Pierian streams upon thy brow; thy doom

Is now to flit with unknown ghosts in cold and nameless gloom.

—
SONG OF THE ROSE
If Zeus chose us a King of the flowers in his mirth,

He would call to the rose, and would royally crown it;

For the rose, ho, the rose! is the grace of the earth,

Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it!

For the rose, ho, the rose! is the eye of the flowers,

Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair,

Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowers
On pale lovers that sit in the glow unaware.

Ho, the rose breathes of love! ho, the rose lifts the cup

To the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest!

Ho, the rose having curled its sweet leaves for the world

Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up,

As they laugh to the wind as it laughs from the west.

—

Satiemania, by Zdenkó Gasparovich 1978

Zdenko Gasparovich’s 1978 film, Satiemania, set to the music of Eric Satie. Part of the Zagreb animation school. Presumably copywritten by Mr Gasparovich..
You can find the full version on rapidshare, with some searching.

Only as Bill Hicks could see it….!

Enjoy!
Gwyllm

The weekend started out beautifully, with a gathering for Scot Taylor with his companion Amanda visiting from Australia. Cymon hosted the gathering, and it was very nice. Scot gave an impassioned talk on the Cetacean Nation as well. Something has happened to Turfing so I cannot up load new pics, but once I get that sorted out, I will have some nice shots…. The local EarthRites members were there, even from as far as the Dalles and Eugene! Nice to see everyone! Scot and Amanda have since flown back to Australia…
The next day, well… things changed. We were moving furniture and re arranging stuff, and Sophie, our dog got out the front door. We now understand that she was picked up by some street kids down by the 7-11 on Saturday. We have been posting flyers, and driving around but to no avail at this point. Light a candle for our pup!
Talk Later….
Gwyllm
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Psychedelic Prayers -Timothy Leary

d’après le Tao Te Ching
I)Prayers for preparation – Homage to Lao Tse

I.5 All Things Pass
All things pass

A sunrise does not last all morning

All things pass

A cloudburst does not last all day

All things pass

Nor a sunset all night
But Earth… sky… thunder…

wind… fire… lake…

mountain… water…

These always change
And if these do not last

Do man’s visions last?

Do man’s illusions?
During the session

Take things as they come
All things pass

—
I.6 The Message Of Posture
During the session

Observe your body

Mandala of the universe
Observe your body

Of ancient design

Holy temple of consciousness

Central stage of the oldest drama
Observe its structured wonders

Skin… hair… tissus…

Bone… vein… muscle…

Net of nerve
Observe its message

Does it merge or does it strain?

Does it rest serene on sacred ground?

Or tilt, propped up by wire and sticks?
On tiptoe one cannot stand for long

Tension retards the flow
Superfluous noise and redundant action

Stand out-square, proud, cramped

Against the harmony
Observe the mandala of your body

—
II) The experience of elemental energy – Homage to the atom

II.5 Sheating The Self
The play of energy endures

Beyond striving
The play of energy endures

Beyond body
The play of energy endures

Beyond life
Out here

Float timeless

Beyond striving

—
II.8 Hold Fast To The Void
Notice how this space

Between Heaven and Earth

Is like a bellows
Always full, always empty
Come in here, go out there
Breathing…

Silence
This is no time for talk

Better to hold fast to the void

—
II.9 Take In-Let Go
To breathe in

You must first breathe out

Let go
To hold

You must first open your hand

Let go
To be warm

You must first be naked

Let go

—
III) The experience of seed-cell energy – Homage to DNA

III.3 Clear Water
The seed of mystery

Lies in muddy water
How can we fathom this muddiness?

Water becomes clear through stillness
How can we become still?

By moving with the stream

—
III.8 Fourfold Representation Of The Mystery
Before Heaven and Earth

There was something nebulous

Tranquil… effortless

Permeating universally

Revolving soundlessly

Fusing
It may be regarded as the Mother

Of all organic forms
Its name is not known nor its language

But it is called Tao
The ancient sages called it “great”

The Great Tao
Great means in harmony

In harmony means tuned in

Tuned in means going far

Going far means returning

To the harmony
The Tao is great

The coil of life is great
The body is great

The human is designed to be great
There are in existence four great notes

The human is made to be one thereof
When you place yourself in harmony with your body

The body tunes itself to the slow unfolding of life

Life flows in harmony with the Tao
All proceeds

Naturally

In tune

—
III.10 This Is It
The seed moves so slowly and serenely

Moment to moment

That it appears inactive
The garden at sunrise breathing

The quiet breath of twilight

Moment to moment to moment
When we are in tune with this blissfull rhythm

The ten thousand forms flourish

Without effort
It is all so simple

Each next moment…

This is it!

—-
III.11 Gate Of The Soft Mystery
Valley of life

Gate of the Soft Mystery

Beginnings in the lowest place

Gate of the Soft Mystery

Gate of the Dark Woman

Gate of the Soft Mystery

Seed of all living

Gate of the Soft Mystery

Constantly enduring

Gate of the Soft Mystery

Enter

Gently…

—
III.12 The Lesson Of Seed
The soft overcomes the hard

The small overcomes the large

The gentle survives the strong

The invisible survives the visible
Fish should be left in deep water

Fire and iron kept under ground

Seed should be left free

To grow in the rhythm of life
IV) The experience of neural energy – Homage to the external senses

IV.1 Seeing
Open naked eye

Light… radiant… pulsating…

“I’ve been blind all my life to this radiance”
Retinal mandala

Swamp mosaic of rods and cones

Light rays hurtle into retina 186,000 miles per second
Cross scope

Retinal scripture
The Blind I

Recoils at glittering energy

Impersonal, mocking

Illusions of control

“Too bright! Turn it off!

Bring back the shadow world!”
The Seer Eye

Vibrates to the trembling web of light

Merges with the seen

Merges with the scene

Slides down optical whirlpool

Through central needle point

—
IV.2 Hearing

Sound waves, sound waves

Uncover lotus membrane

Trembling tattoo of

Sympathetic vibrations

Float along liquid canals
Single piano note

Meteor of delight

Collides with quivering membrane
Eternal note

Spins slowly

On vibrating thread
Ear you are

Sound waves

—
V) The experience of the chakras – Homage to the internal senses

V.1 The Root Chakra
Can you float through the universe of your body

and not lose your way?

Can you dissolve softly?

Decompose?

Can you rest

dormant seed-light

buried in moist earth?

Can you drift

single-celled

in soft tissue swamp?

Can you sink

into your dark

fertile marsh?

Can you spiral slowly

down the great central river?

—
V.3 The Heart Chakra
Can you float through the universe of your body

and not lose your way?

Flow with fire-blood

Through each tissued corridor?
Can you let your heart

pump down red tunnels

stream into cell chambers?
Can you center on this

Heart-fire of love?
Can you let your heart

pulse for all love

beat for all sorrow

throb for all pain

thud for all joy

swell for all mankind?
Can you let it flow

With compassion

for all life?

—
V.4 The Throat Chakra
Can you float through the universe of your body

and not lose your way?

Breathing

Can you drift into free air?

Rise on the trembling vibration

of inhale and exhale?
Can you ascend the fragile thread of breath

into cloud-blue bliss?

Can you spiral up through soft atmosphere

Breathing

Catch the moment between in-breath and out-breath

Just there…
Can you float beyond life and death

Breathing

—
V.6 Ascending Ladder Of Chakras
Drift along your body’s soft swampland

where warm mud sucks lazily
Feel each cell in your body communicating

in serpent-coiled rainbow orgasm
Feel the sensuous rhythm of time

pulsing life along the arterial network
Bring the ethereal breath of life into

the white rooms of your brain
Radiate golden light out to

the four corners of creation
VI) Re-entry: the experience of the imprinted world – Homage to the symbolic mind

VI.1 The Moment Of Fullness
Grab hold tightly

Let go lightly
The full cup can take no more

The candle burns down

The taut bow must be loosed

The razor edge can no long endure
Nor this moment re-lived
So now…

Grab hold tightly

So now…

Let go lightly

—
VI.5 The Lesson Of Water
What one values in the game

is the play
What one values in the form

is the moment of forming
What one values in the house

is the moment of dwelling
What one values in the heart

is the beating
What one values in the action

is the timing
Indeed

Because you flow like water

You can neither win nor lose

—
VI.6 The Utility of Nothing
The Nothing at the center of the thirty-spoke wheel…
The Nothing of the clay vase…

The Nothing within the four walls…
The goal of the game is to go beyond the game
You lose your mind

To use your head
You lose your mind

To use your head

—
VI.10 Illustration Of A Tao Imprint
He stands apart

serene

curiously observing
He stands quietly

looking forlorn

like an infant who has not yet

learned to know what to smile at
He is a little sad for what he sees
While others enjoy their possessions

he lazily drifts, a homeless

do-nothing, owning nothing
Or he moves slowly close to the land
While others are crisp and definite

he seems indecisive
He does not appear to be making his way

in the world
He is different
A wise infant nursing at the breast

Of all life
Inside

—
VI.11 Keep In Touch
The Tao flows everywhere
Keep in touch

Be at home

Everywhere
He who loses the contact

Is alone

Everywhere
Keeping in touch with the Tao

Is called

Harmony

—
IV.13 The Conscious Application Of Strength
Force recoils

But

The time comes

When there is nothing to do

Except act consciously

With courage

—
VI.14 Victory Celebration
Celebrate your victory

with funeral rites

for your slain illusions
Wear some black at your wedding

—
VI.15 Along The Grain
The Tao is nameless

Like uncarved wood
As soon as it is carved

There are names
Carve carefully

Along the grain

—
VI.16 He Who Knows The Center Endures
Who knows the outside is clever

Who knows the center endures

Who masters others gains robot power

Who comes to the center has flowering strength
Faith of consciousness is freedom

Hope of consciousness is strength

Love of consciousness evokes the same in return
Faith of seed frees

Hope of seed flowers

Love of seed grows

Well…

Life moves at a pace. I completed another yearly revolution around the sun on Thursday, I awoke almost to the minute I came into the world. Later on after a day of working, Mary, Rowan and I went to a great restaurant for a quiet celebration. Wonderful place: Vindalho ‘Spice Route Cuisine’ (Yum!). I would suggest it to anyone! It was a lovely way to ease into another year.
Somehow I also managed to tweak the old back again, which has hampered any and all activities for the last three days. Saturday was almost a complete wash. Still dealing with it today…
Working on various projects, setting up the new computer system (a nice quad-core!) to handle the publishing end of things…

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Radio Free EarthRites: Lots of nice stuff on their recently, you should check it out. I listened to Jack Kerouac reciting poetry yesterday when I was laid out….

So… for today, I have picked a few items that you might like. There are two Niyaz remixes of note (if Youtube.com stays up) to check out. I have a real thing for Azam Ali… I have listened to her music for a very long time, from the first album of Vas until now. She gets better and better! We have a variety of linkage… and poetry as well.
Have a nice autumn day!
Blessings,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Links

Niyaz – Khuda Ki Marzi

Enchanted Woods

Poetry For The Early Days Of Autumn…

Niyaz – Allahi Allah ( Midival Pundiz Remix)

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The Links:

Drug expert facing criticism for claiming ecstasy better than binge drinking

Animal Lovers Angry Over Puppy (Body Bag) Offer

Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

Spy Software Could ID You By Your Shadow

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This is an interesting remix… Not keen on the time spent on the images, but the music is very sweet. If you have a copy of this… let me know!
Niyaz – Khuda Ki Marzi

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Enchanted Woods

-William Butler Yeats

I
LAST summer, whenever I had finished my day’s work, I used to go wandering in certain roomy woods, and there I would often meet an old countryman, and talk to him about his work and about the woods, and once or twice a friend came with me to whom he would open his heart more readily than to me, He had spent all his life lopping away the witch elm and the hazel and the privet and the hornbeam from the paths, and had thought much about the natural and supernatural creatures of the wood. He has heard the hedgehog–’grainne oge,’ he calls him–’grunting like a Christian,’ and is certain that he steals apples by rolling about under an apple tree until there is an apple sticking to every quill. He is certain too that the cats, of whom there are many in the woods, have a language of their own–some kind of old Irish. He says, ‘Cats were serpents, and they were made into cats at the time of some great change in the world. That is why they are hard to kill, and why it is dangerous to meddle with them. If you annoy a cat it might claw or bite you in a way that would put poison in you, and that would be the serpent’s tooth.’ Sometimes he thinks they change into wild cats, and then a nail grows on the end of their tails; but these wild cats are not the same as the marten cats, who have been always in the woods. The foxes were once tame, as the cats are now, but they ran away and became wild. He talks of all wild creatures except squirrels–whom he hates–with what seems an affectionate interest, though at times his eyes will twinkle with pleasure as he remembers how he made hedgehogs unroll themselves when he was a boy, by putting a wisp of burning straw under them.
I am not certain that he distinguishes between the natural and supernatural very clearly. He told me the other day that foxes and cats like, above all, to be in the ‘forths’ and lisses after nightfall; and he will certainly pass from some story about a fox to a story about a spirit with less change of voice than when he is going to speak about a marten cat–a rare beast now-a-days. Many years ago he used to work in the garden, and once they put him to sleep in a garden-house where there was a loft full of apples, and all night he could hear people rattling plates and knives and forks over his head in the loft. Once, at any rate, be has seen an unearthly sight in the woods. He says, ‘One time I was out cutting timber over in Inchy, and about eight o’clock one morning when I got there I saw a girl picking nuts, with her hair hanging down over her shoulders, brown hair, and she had a good, clean face, and she was tall and nothing on her head, and her dress no way gaudy but simple, and when she felt me coming she gathered herself up and was gone as if the earth had swallowed her up. And I followed her and looked for her, but I never could see her again from that day to this, never again.’ He used the word clean as we would use words like fresh or comely.
Others too have seen spirits in the Enchanted Woods. A labourer told us of what a friend of his had seen in a part of the woods that is called Shanwalla, from some old village that was before the weed. He said, ‘One evening I parted from Lawrence Mangan in the yard, and he went away through the path in Shanwalla, an’ bid me goodnight. And two hours after, there he was back again in the yard, an’ bid me light a candle that was in the stable. An’ he told me that when he got into Shanwalla, a little fellow about as high as his knee, but having a head as big as a man’s body, came beside him and led him out of the path an’ round about, and at last it brought him to the lime-kiln, and then it vanished and left him.’
A woman told me of a sight that she and others had seen by a certain deep pool in the river. She said, ‘I came over the stile from the chapel, and others along with me; and a great blast of wind came and two trees were bent and broken and fell into the river, and the splash of water out of it went up to the skies. And those that were with me saw many figures, but myself I only saw one, sitting there by the bank where the trees fell. Dark clothes he had on, and he was headless.’
A man told me that one day, when he was a boy, he and another boy went to catch a horse in a certain field, full of boulders and bushes of hazel and creeping juniper and rock-roses, that is where the lake side is for a little clear of the woods. He said to the boy that was with him, ‘I bet a button that if I fling a pebble on to that bush it will stay on it,’ meaning that the bush was so matted the pebble would not be able to go through it. So he took up ‘a pebble of cow-dung, and as soon as it hit the bush there came out of it the most beautiful music that ever was heard.’ They ran away, and when they had gone about two hundred yards they looked back and saw a woman dressed in white, walking round and round the bush. ‘First it had the form of a woman, and then of a man, and it was going round the bush.’

II
I often entangle myself in argument more complicated than even those paths of Inchy as to what is the true nature of apparitions, but at other times I say as Socrates said when they told him a learned opinion about a nymph of the Illissus, ‘The common opinion is enough for me.’ I believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and that these are not far away when we are walking in pleasant and quiet places. Even when I was a boy I could never walk in a wood without feeling that at any moment I might find before me somebody or something I had long looked for without knowing what I looked for. And now I will at times explore every little nook of some poor coppice with almost anxious footsteps, so deep a hold has this imagination upon me. You too meet with a like imagination, doubtless, somewhere, wherever your ruling stars will have it, Saturn driving you to the woods, or the Moon, it may be, to the edges of the sea. I will not of a certainty believe that there is nothing in the sunset, where our forefathers imagined the dead following their shepherd the sun, or nothing but some vague presence as little moving as nothing. If beauty is not a gateway out of the net we were taken in at our birth, it will not long be beauty, and we will find it better to sit at home by the fire and fatten a lazy body or to run hither and thither in some foolish sport than to look at the finest show that light and shadow ever made among green leaves. I say to myself, when I am well out of that thicket of argument, that they are surely there, the divine people, for only we who have neither simplicity nor wisdom have denied them, and the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them. They live out their passionate lives not far off, as I think, and we shall be among them when we die if we but keep our natures simple and passionate. May it not even be that death shall unite us to all romance, and that some day we shall fight dragons among blue hills, or come to that whereof all romance is but
‘Foreshadowings mingled with the images

Of man’s misdeeds in greater days than these,’
as the old men thought in The Earthly Paradise when they were in good spirits.

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Poetry For The Early Days Of Autumn…
A blade of grass

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams.”
Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”
Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again — and she was a blade of grass.
And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves! They make such a noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.”

-K. Gibran

—-
Autumn Song
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf

How the heart feels a languid grief

Laid on it for a covering,

And how sleep seems a goodly thing

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain

Falters because it is in vain,

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf

Knowest thou not? and how the chief

Of joys seems–not to suffer pain?
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf

How the soul feels like a dried sheaf

Bound up at length for harvesting,

And how death seems a comely thing

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

-Dante

—-
10,000
Ten thousand flowers in spring,

the moon in autumn,

a cool breeze in summer,

snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded

by unnecessary things,

this is the best season of your life.

-Wu Men

—-

Autumn
The autumn comes, a maiden fair

In slenderness and grace,

With nodding rice-stems in her hair

And lilies in her face.

In flowers of grasses she is clad;

And as she moves along,

Birds greet her with their cooing glad

Like bracelets’ tinkling song.

A diadem adorns the night

Of multitudinous stars;

Her silken robe is white moonlight,

Set free from cloudy bars;

And on her face (the radiant moon)

Bewitching smiles are shown:

She seems a slender maid, who soon

Will be a woman grown.

Over the rice-fields, laden plants

Are shivering to the breeze;

While in his brisk caresses dance

The blossomed-burdened trees;

He ruffles every lily-pond

Where blossoms kiss and part,

And stirs with lover’s fancies fond

The young man’s eager heart.

-Kalidasa

—-
Echoing Light
When I was beginning to read I imagined

that bridges had something to do with birds

and with what seemed to be cages but I knew

that they were not cages it must have been autumn

with the dusty light flashing from the streetcar wires

and those orange places on fire in the pictures

and now indeed it is autumn the clear

days not far from the sea with a small wind nosing

over dry grass that yesterday was green

the empty corn standing trembling and a down

of ghost flowers veiling the ignored fields

and everywhere the colors I cannot take

my eyes from all of them red even the wide streams

red it is the season of migrants

flying at night feeling the turning earth

beneath them and I woke in the city hearing

the call notes of the plover then again and

again before I slept and here far downriver

flocking together echoing close to the shore

the longest bridges have opened their slender wings

– W.S.Merwin

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Another tasty Niyaz remix!

Niyaz – Allahi Allah ( Midival Pundiz Remix)

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Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.

-William James

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On The Menu:
The Links
William James Quotes
The Other Gods
Selected Poetry: For A Monday Afternoon…
Art: Henry Siddons Mowbray

_____________
The Links:

‘Lost towns’ discovered in Amazon
Cthulhu’s Holiday Photos
A wonderful collection of H.P. Lovecraft!
EPA is Hiding Colony Collapse Disorder Information
How to explain Consciousness Shifts
Priest’s potty gift from God

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William James Quotes:

Belief creates the actual fact.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

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___________

The Other Gods

-H.P. Lovecraft

Atop the tallest of earth’s peaks dwell the gods of earth, and suffer not man to tell that he hath looked upon them. Lesser peaks they once inhabited; but ever the men from the plains would scale the slopes of rock and snow, driving the gods to higher and higher mountains till now only the last remains. When they left their old peaks they took with them all signs of themselves, save once, it is said, when they left a carven image on the face of the mountain which they called Ngranek.
But now they have betaken themselves to unknown Kadath in the cold waste where no man treads, and are grown stern, having no higher peak whereto to flee at the coming of men. They are grown stern, and where once they suffered men to displace them, they now forbid men to come; or coming, to depart. It is well for men that they know not of Kadath in the cold waste; else they would seek injudiciously to scale it.
Sometimes when earth’s gods are homesick they visit in the still of the night the peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to play in the olden way on remembered slopes. Men have felt the tears of the gods on white-capped Thurai, though they have thought it rain; and have heard the sighs of the gods in the plaintive dawn-winds of Lerion. In cloud-ships the gods are wont to travel, and wise cotters have legends that keep them from certain high peaks at night when it is cloudy, for the gods are not lenient as of old.
In Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, once dwelt an old man avid to behold the gods of earth; a man deeply learned in the seven cryptical books of earth, and familiar with the Pnakotic Manuscripts of distant and frozen Lomar. His name was Barzai the Wise, and the villagers tell of how he went up a mountain on the night of the strange eclipse.
Barzai knew so much of the gods that he could tell of their comings and goings, and guessed so many of their secrets that he was deemed half a god himself. It was he who wisely advised the burgesses of Ulthar when they passed their remarkable law against the slaying of cats, and who first told the young priest Atal where it is that black cats go at midnight on St. John’s Eve. Barzai was learned in the lore of the earth’s gods, and had gained a desire to look upon their faces. He believed that his great secret knowledge of gods could shield him from their wrath, so resolved to go up to the summit of high and rocky Hatheg-Kla on a night when he knew the gods would be there.
Hatheg-Kla is far in the stony desert beyond Hatheg, for which it is named, and rises like a rock statue in a silent temple. Around its peak the mists play always mournfully, for mists are the memories of the gods, and the gods loved Hatheg-Kla when they dwelt upon it in the old days. Often the gods of earth visit Hatheg-Kla in their ships of clouds, casting pale vapors over the slopes as they dance reminiscently on the summit under a clear moon. The villagers of Hatheg say it is ill to climb the Hatheg-Kla at any time, and deadly to climb it by night when pale vapors hide the summit and the moon; but Barzai heeded them not when he came from neighboring Ulthar with the young priest Atal, who was his disciple. Atal was only the son of an innkeeper, and was sometimes afraid; but Barzai’s father had been a landgrave who dwelt in an ancient castle, so he had no common superstition in his blood, and only laughed at the fearful cotters.
Banzai and Atal went out of Hatheg into the stony desert despite the prayers of peasants, and talked of earth’s gods by their campfires at night. Many days they traveled, and from afar saw lofty Hatheg-Kla with his aureole of mournful mist. On the thirteenth day they reached the mountain’s lonely base, and Atal spoke of his fears. But Barzai was old and learned and had no fears, so led the way up the slope that no man had scaled since the time of Sansu, who is written of with fright in the moldy Pnakotic Manuscripts.
The way was rocky, and made perilous by chasms, cliffs, and falling stones. Later it grew cold and snowy; and Barzai and Atal often slipped and fell as they hewed and plodded upward with staves and axes. Finally the air grew thin, and the sky changed color, and the climbers found it hard to breathe; but still they toiled up and up, marveling at the strangeness of the scene and thrilling at the thought of what would happen on the summit when the moon was out and the pale vapours spread around. For three days they climbed higher and higher toward the roof of the world; then they camped to wait for the clouding of the moon.
For four nights no clouds came, and the moon shone down cold through the thin mournful mist around the silent pinnacle. Then on the fifth night, which was the night of the full moon, Barzai saw some dense clouds far to the north, and stayed up with Atal to watch them draw near. Thick and majestic they sailed, slowly and deliberately onward; ranging themselves round the peak high above the watchers, and hiding the moon and the summit from view. For a long hour the watchers gazed, whilst the vapours swirled and the screen of clouds grew thicker and more restless. Barzai was wise in the lore of earth’s gods, and listened hard for certain sounds, but Atal felt the chill of the vapours and the awe of the night, and feared much. And when Barzai began to climb higher and beckon eagerly, it was long before Atal would follow.
So thick were the vapours that the way was hard, and though Atal followed at last, he could scarce see the gray shape of Barzai on the dim slope above in the clouded moonlight. Barzai forged very far ahead, and seemed despite his age to climb more easily than Atal; fearing not the steepness that began to grow too great for any save a strong and dauntless man, nor pausing at wide black chasms that Atal could scarce leap. And so they went up wildly over rocks and gulfs, slipping and stumbling, and sometimes awed at the vastness and horrible silence of bleak ice pinnacles and mute granite steeps.
Very suddenly Barzai went out of Atal’s sight, scaling a hideous cliff that seemed to bulge outward and block the path for any climber not inspired of earth’s gods. Atal was far below, and planning what he should do when he reached the place, when curiously he noticed that the light had grown strong, as if the cloudless peak and moonlit meetingplace of the gods were very near. And as he scrambled on toward the bulging cliff and litten sky he felt fears more shocking than any he had known before. Then through the high mists he heard the voice of Barzai shouting wildly in delight:
“I have heard the gods. I have heard earth’s gods singing in revelry on Hatheg-Kla! The voices of earth’s gods are known to Barzai the Prophet! The mists are thin and the moon is bright, and I shall see the gods dancing wildly on Hatheg-Kla that they loved in youth. The wisdom of Barzai hath made him greater than earth’s gods, and against his will their spells and barriers are as naught; Barzai will behold the gods, the proud gods, the secret gods, the gods of earth who spurn the sight of man!”
Atal could not hear the voices Barzai heard, but he was now close to the bulging cliff and scanning it for footholds. Then he heard Barzai’s voice grow shriller and louder:
“The mist is very thin, and the moon casts shadows on the slope; the voices of earth’s gods are high and wild, and they fear the coming of Barzai the Wise, who is greater than they… The moon’s light flickers, as earth’s gods dance against it; I shall see the dancing forms of the gods that leap and howl in the moonlight… The light is dimmer and the gods are afraid…”
Whilst Barzai was shouting these things Atal felt a spectral change in all the air, as if the laws of earth were bowing to greater laws; for though the way was steeper than ever, the upward path was now grown fearsomely easy, and the bulging cliff proved scarce an obstacle when he reached it and slid perilously up its convex face. The light of the moon had strangely failed, and as Atal plunged upward through the mists he heard Barzai the Wise shrieking in the shadows:
“The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth’s gods… There is unknown magic on Hatheg-Kla, for the screams of the frightened gods have turned to laughter, and the slopes of ice shoot up endlessly into the black heavens whither I am plunging… Hei! Hei! At last! In the dim light I behold the gods of earth!”
And now Atal, slipping dizzily up over inconceivable steeps, heard in the dark a loathsome laughing, mixed with such a cry as no man else ever heard save in the Phlegethon of unrelatable nightmares; a cry wherein reverberated the horror and anguish of a haunted lifetime packed into one atrocious moment:
“The other gods! The other gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth!… Look away… Go back… Do not see! Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses… That cursed, that damnable pit… Merciful gods of earth, I am falling into the sky!”
And as Atal shut his eyes and stopped his ears and tried to hump downward against the frightful pull from unknown heights, there resounded on Hatheg-Kla that terrible peal of thunder which awaked the good cotters of the plains and the honest burgesses of Hatheg, Nir and Ulthar, and caused them to behold through the clouds that strange eclipse of the moon that no book ever predicted. And when the moon came out at last Atal was safe on the lower snows of the mountain without sight of earth’s gods, or of the other gods.
Now it is told in the moldy Pnakotic Manuscripts that Sansu found naught but wordless ice and rock when he did climb Hatheg-Kla in the youth of the world. Yet when the men of Ulthar and Nir and Hatheg crushed their fears and scaled that haunted steep by day in search of Barzai the Wise, they found graven in the naked stone of the summit a curious and cyclopean symbol fifty cubits wide, as if the rock had been riven by some titanic chisel. And the symbol was like to one that learned men have discerned in those frightful parts of the Pnakotic Manuscripts which were too ancient to be read. This they found.
Barzai the Wise they never found, nor could the holy priest Atal ever be persuaded to pray for his soul’s repose. Moreover, to this day the people of Ulthar and Nir and Hatheg fear eclipses, and pray by night when pale vapors hide the mountain-top and the moon. And above the mists on Hatheg-Kla, earth’s gods sometimes dance reminiscently; for they know they are safe, and love to come from unknown Kadath in ships of clouds and play in the olden way, as they did when earth was new and men not given to the climbing of inaccessible places.
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Selected Poetry: For A Monday Afternoon…

Kore

-Frederic Manning
Yea, she hath passed hereby, and blessed the sheaves,
And the great garths, and stacks, and quiet farms,
And all the tawny, and the crimson leaves.
Yea, she hath passed with poppies in her arms,
Under the star of dusk, through stealing mist,
And blessed the earth, and gone, while no man wist.
With slow, reluctant feet, and weary eyes,
And eye-lids heavy with the coming sleep,
With small breasts lifted up in stress of sighs,
She passed, as shadows pass, among the sheep;
While the earth dreamed, and only I was ware
Of that faint fragrance blown from her soft hair.
The land lay steeped in peace of silent dreams;
There was no sound amid the sacred boughs.
Nor any mournful music in her streams:
Only I saw the shadow on her brows,
Only I knew her for the yearly slain,
And wept, and weep until she come again.
(This poem was published under the title of ‘Persephone’ in the December 1909 edition of the ‘English Review’.)

—
A Cosmic Outlook

-Frederick William Henry Myers (1843-–1901)

Backward!—beyond this momentary woe!—
Thine was the world’s dim dawn, the prime emprize;
Eternal aeons gaze thro’ these sad eyes,
And all the empyreal sphere hath shaped thee so.
Nay! all is living, all is plain to know!
This rock has drunk the ray from ancient skies;
Strike! and the sheen of that remote sunrise
Gleams in the marble’s unforgetful glow.
Thus hath the cosmic light endured the same
Ere first that ray from Sun to Sirius flew;
Aye, and in heaven I heard the mystic Name
Sound, and a breathing of the Spirit blew;
Lit the long Past, bade shine the slumbering flame
And all the Cosmorama blaze anew.
Onward! thro’ baffled hope, thro’ bootless prayer,
With strength that sinks, with high task half begun,
Things great desired, things lamentable done,
Vows writ in water, blows that beat the air.
On! I have guessed the end; the end is fair.
Not with these weak limbs is thy last race run;
Not all thy vision sets with this low sun;
Not all thy spirit swoons in this despair.
Look how thine own soul, throned where all is well,
Smiles to regard thy days disconsolate;
Yea; since herself she wove the worldly spell,
Doomed thee for lofty gain to low estate;—
Sown with thy fall a seed of glory fell;
Thy heaven is in thee, and thy will thy fate.
Inward! aye, deeper far than love or scorn,
Deeper than bloom of virtue, stain of sin,
Rend thou the veil and pass alone within,
Stand naked there and feel thyself forlorn!
Nay! in what world, then, Spirit, wast thou born ?
Or to what World-Soul art thou entered in ?
Feel the Self fade, feel the great life begin,
With Love re-rising in the cosmic morn.
The inward ardour yearns to the inmost goal;
The endless goal is one with the endless way;
From every gulf the tides of Being roll,
From every zenith burns the indwelling day;
And life in Life has drowned thee and soul in Soul;
And these are God, and thou thyself art they.

—
A Memory of Loss

-William Wilsey Martin
I
The Beauty-cup that held his Joy was frail,
He knew, and brittle under shock or strain;
This knowledge gripp’d his heart till heat of pain
Burnt up his Joy and left him only bale.

II
His Beauty-cup still smiles–a dream of bright
Art-woven rays; but all it held has fled;
A ghostly fear has kill’d it, and instead
A Memory of Loss cries through the night.

—
A New Orphic Hymn

-Sir Lewis Morris
The peaks, and the starlit skies, the deeps of the fathomless seas,

Immanent is He in all, yet higher and deeper than these.
The heart, and the mind, and the soul, the thoughts and the yearnings of Man,

Of His essence are one and all, and yet define it who can?
The love of the Right, tho’ cast down, the hate of victorious Ill,

All are sparks from the central fire of a boundless beneficient Will.
Oh, mystical secrets of Nature, great Universe undefined,

Ye are part of the infinite work of a mighty ineffable Mind.
Beyond your limitless Space, before your measureless Time,

Ere Life or Death began was this changeless Essence sublime.
In the core of eternal calm He dwelleth unmoved and alone

‘Mid the Universe He has made, as a monarch upon his throne.
And the self-same inscrutable Power which fashioned the sun and the star

Is Lord of the feeble strength of the humblest creatures that are.
The weak things that float or creep for their little life of a day,

The weak souls that falter and faint, as feeble and futile as they;
The malefic invisible atoms unmarked by man’s purblind eye

That beleaguer our House of Life, and compass us till we die;
All these are parts of Him, the indivisible One,

Who supports and illumines the many, Creation’s Pillar and Sun!
Yea, and far in the depths of Being, too dark for a mortal brain,

Lurk His secrets of Evil and Wrong, His creatures of Death and of Pain.
A viewless Necessity binds, a determinate Impetus drives

To a hidden invisible goal the freightage of numberless lives.
The waste, and the pain, and the wrong, the abysmal mysteries dim,

Come not of themselves alone, but are seed and issue of Him.
And Man’s spirit that spends and is spent in mystical questionings,

Oh, the depths of the fathomless deep, oh, the riddle and secret of things,

And the voice through the darkness heard, and the rush of winnowing wings!

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. —Albert Einstein

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Caer Llywdd’s Late August Activities….
Click On The Images For Larger Pics…..

So you have to start somewhere…. this is a bit of an update and all. Here is a picture of the Absinthe fountain that Mary got me this last Winter Solstice, with the 50 centime coasters as well… this is a very sweet fountain, and has greatly added to the Absinthe Ceremony at Caer Llwydd….
There has been a bit of Absinthe imbibing as of late around here, leading to late starts, fuzzy thinking and general hilarity…
Both my friends Ryan and Terry have been by over the last couple of weeks for the celebrations….

—

The weekend before this one, I went with Gordon K to see STS-9. A wonderful show, great crowd and excellent location (McMenamins Edgefield) Nothing like an outdoor concert that fades brilliantly into the gloaming and then the darkness…
Gordon just moved to Portland from Eugene, with his lovely wife Heather and his son Zane. It is great seeing the community enlarge, and grow in such a nice way…
The show flowed nicely, with good sound, and a churning crowd of dancers… Incenses of various flavours wafted through the crowd as they danced and it was a beautiful evening in the Peoples Republic of Portland!

—

Rowan with his close friend Austyn Dancing….

We celebrated Rowan’s 18th this last weekend at the Redwing Cafe on Sunday evening… It was an overdue celebration, as Julie and Mike’s wedding occurred the night of Rowan’s birthday… so we waited a couple of weeks, and had a nice time together.
Mary prepared some great food, and I did a punch that everyone seemed to like (non-alcoholic) Rowan chose to have friends his own age, and members of our older community. It was a great evening filled with food, laughter, games, dancing and various other pleasantries…
Rowan said it was his best party ever… It had been planned to be a dance party, but for some reason the Cafe’s sound system wouldn’t play the mix disc that I had produced. We will be playing the whole 4 hour mix on Radio Free EarthRites soon!

—-
Carly, our nephews’ Ethan friend/Girlfriend of several years has arrived in Portland from her recent forays in Japan. Whilst there, she was riding a bicycle near Mt. Fuji where she got hit by a hit and run car-driver….
She is well, and settling in to Portland to do her last year of Architectural Studies for the U of O. I understand that she just got an apartment after some frantic searching this past week.
We had her and Ethan over this past Wednesday. It was a very pleasant evening!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Caer Llywdd’s Late August Activities….

Forty Two Years Ago Today….

The Links…

Ustad Ail Akbar Khan

Chapter 21: Open Ending

The Poetry of Attar

Above &amp; Beyond presents OceanLab – Miracle [album edit]

Art: Rick Griffin

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Forty Two Years Ago Today….

Gwyllm as a young psychonaut….

Today marks the 42nd year from my first Psychedelic – Entheogenic Experience… I took a dose of LSD in Berkeley California, about 6:00pm, wandered down to The Jabberwocky Cafe with friends from the commune I was staying in, and as some say, the rest is history. I will not go over it all again, and you can read about it from the links at the bottom of this piece.
So, this is a time that I use to reflect on my life, and the changes wrought by Albert’s wondrous molecule; how this intervention of divine proportions weighing less than a hundred angels dancing on a pin transformed my consciousness to a point where the world as I knew it fell away forever.
Every act, moment, and thought had been altered by that moment in time… it is a bit like the prisoner emerging from confinement, to find an endless horizon of possibilities opening on a view of eternity unfolding. (over the top but you might catch my drift)
The world was indeed changed forever, and I moved into a territory uncharted in our times. It was never easy, and there were times when I wish the blinders had not been torn from my eyes. When I preferred to go asleep, I fell into patterns of self-annihilation. When I resumed/continued the quest, life expanded, and inner change moved my life forward in new and novel ways. Many moved into these uncharted waters of consciousness, and their efforts and lives have brought much value to the world.
Over the years I have revisited that space in various ways, but those first times leave an indelible mark. All that came before, and all that proceeded after….
Read The Story Here:

Teeming With Gods

The Story Finally Told 39 years ago…

________________
The Links…

Burning Man?

Mohegans’ ancient burial ground reclaimed and blessed

Religion and its mortifying history of self-inflicted pain

Theocratic Sect Prays for Real Armageddon

__________________

Ustad Ail Akbar Khan

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Chapter 21: Open Ending

-Terence McKenna
A Lost Chapter of True Hallucinations….

My own ideas concerning the mechanics by which the oversoul creates the UFO encounters might take the following form. Dimethyltriptamine when smoked, snuffed, or injected induces a brief and extremely intense psychedelic experience whose overwhelming sense of contact with the Other is unparalleled. For the last decade or so this extraordinary property of DMT has made it seem to many who sought a chemical basis for schizophrenia as the long sought schizotoxin. Studies have proved inconclusive however. DMT concentration has not been proven to differ significantly in schizophrenic and normal controls. Studies have established the presence of DMT in the human body, however the origin and significance of the DMT is unknown. Although it may reflect endogenous synthesis, it could also result from diet, bacterial byproducts, human laboratory error, or other sources. Bearing in mind the bizarre power of the DMT experience, its presence and unknown role in human metabolism, add one more fact: the strange aura of suggestibility that can precede the onset of the intense hallucination phase of the DMT experience. This period of suggestibility may last 15 seconds to a minute, and is a time during which the assumptions which the experient projects concerning the unusual shift of sensory input acquires enormous power. A few moments later the power of the now numinous assumption overwhelmes the consciousness of the observer with a scenario while totally bizarre and outrageous nevertheless is somehow a complete psychological fulfillment of the expectations formed in the few minutes of transition that preceded the visionary engulfment.
What I am proposing is that something like this happens during a UFO close encounter and the cause may very well be something which must be partially sought in the human organism. Imagine a person wandering alone in unfamiliar country: suddenly there’s a hackle-raising sense of weirdness, then a feeling of numbness in the limbs, followed by a clearing of vision and a loud crackling sound. At this point the sense of strangeness within and without the body would trigger a fear reaction in most people. The fear reaction causes a rapid and automatic search for a culturally-validated explaination of what is going on, and an explaination will always be found. It may range from, ‘I am being bewitched by a demon,’ to ‘Surely it is a visitation of the Holy Mother,’ to ‘My God! It must be a UFO!’ In each case the abandonment of the ego to a culturally prescribed explaination of the experience of the Other causes the experience to exfoliate, exploit and elaborate all the themes that the culture’s current myth of the Other entails. It is known that DMT binds preferentially to certain tissue when introduced into the human body. Is it not possible that we human beings are occasionally susceptible to a kind of visionary seizure? When for reasons of stress or diet these factors combine with psychodynamic factors to initiate a sudden dumping of accumulated DMT? Pheremones may play a part in this experience and isolation may be its trigger. Whatever its cause, our conditioning as individuals causes the experience to plunge us into a numinous scenario that reflects the deepest concerns and yearnings of the current culture toward the Other. In our own time this has given rise to the hope of friendly visiting extraterrestrials. As late as 1917 the miracle at Fatima was interpreted worldwide as a manifestation of the Virgin Mary. Today it would surely be hailed as an extraterrestrial contact. If my suggestion regarding DMT were found to be correct, it would provide insight into the way in which the cultural feedback thermostat explaination of UFOs put forth by Vallee and others actually works. Those people who experience the DMT seizure and are plunged into the current myth of the Other actually return as apostles of that myth, able to clarify and refine it, and by those means to exert the tuning and control of historical development that may be the purpose of the agency behind the UFOs.
Stress, generalized as an impending sense of historical crisis, may be the factor that induces the UFO/close-contact experience. As the historical crisis deepens the number of contacts will increase until the atemporal portion of the mass psyche has effected enough individuals that there is actually a turning away from the stress-causing course of action. How well is the Superego able to play the role of God? Can it come in saucerian splendor to save the world from the flames at the end of time? Or can it only beckon and warn with visions and dire prophesy? These are questions that we might answer if we diligently explore the states of mind that DMT and psilocybin make available. Perhaps the UFO encounters involve nothing more than an autonomous and negative psychic complex able to emerge during the situation of unusual energy dynamics induced in the psyche by psilocybin. However, a different explainatory approach merges psyche and world by involving a continuum whose modalities bisect each other with equal ease. This is the approach which grants the phenomenological existence of the constructs seen in the Stropharia trance and in UFO encounters. Indeed, the vast and dreamy world that we call imagination, or the unconscious, may merge imperceptibly into autonomously existing worlds we would call ‘hyperdimensional’, indicating the paradox of their simultaneous invisibility and their here-and-nowness in the psilocybin trance with a presence which belies the term hallucination.
Ahead of us lies the future, where we can expect the ingression of the alternative dimension to intensify. It is therefore important for us to have a sense of the powers in that Other world and their shifting agencies. In a traditional society, our exploration of these matters would be firmly imbedded in the extant shamanic mythos concerning these forces. Techniques tried and true would be available to fortify our psychic constitution. Since we are members of a profane society whose relation to the unconscious is one of estrangement, we have no such consolation. No dispelling ritual or words of proven self-empowerment. By reason and intuition we must attempt to conquer the fears that attend journeys into the unknown. But reason and intuition need data with which to construct maps of reality. If we outdistance the inflow of fact we move beyond the safety zone of the conjuring rod of intuition and reason. For these reasons we move slowly and steadily. We are human factors in a multi-variable equation where the shift of unseen parameters can trigger large perturbations and resonances of unexpected types. Knowing this, and knowing how little we do know, we should be excused for this defense of caution when taking to ourselves the visions which the Stropharia brings.
Carl Jung’s ‘Mysterium Coniunctionis’ reminds us of the reality of the situation that insues once the psyche is hooked into making the transference to the alchemical or saucerian goal. Jung, citing Gerhart Dorn, stresses that the materialization of the stone is only a prologue to the experience of the perfected self in a state of illumination. Jung wrote, ‘Though we know from experience that psychic processes are related to material ones, we are not in a position to say in what this relationship consists, or how it is possible at all. Precisely because the psyche and the physical are mutually dependent it has often been conjectured that they may be identical somewhere beyond our present experience.’ Of what does this relationship consist? My own hunch, and it is only a hunch, is that an explicitly spatial dimension – of a co-dimension inclusive of our continuum – allows a hologram of other realized forms of organization, far distant, to become visible at certain levels of quantum resonance in the synaptic field. These levels have been damped by selection in favor of mo
re directly relevant lines of information relating to animal survival. Evolution does not reinforce selectively the ability of an organism to perceive at a distance since such an ability has no selective advantage, unless the information it conveys falls upon the receptors of an organism already sophisicated enough in its use of symbols to abstract concepts for later application in different contexts.
Thus, these quantum resonances carrying intimations of events at a distance only begin to acquire genetic reinforcement once a species has already achieved sufficient sophistication to be called conscious and mind-possessing. The use of hallucinogens can be seen as an attempt at medical engineering which amplifies, for inspection by consciousness, the quantum resonance of the other parts of the spatial continuum holographically at hand. This experience is the vision which the UFOs and psilocybin impart: visions of strange planets, life forms, perspectives and societies, machines, ruins, landscapes. The hierophanies all unfold in a ‘nunc-stans’ that has all space—standing in it—like a frozen hologram. Thus, experimentation with hallucinogens by human beings and the rise in endogenously produced hallucinogens as one advances through the primate phylogeny could both be due to a slow focusing on the phenomenon of imagination. Imagination being the deepening involvement of the species with things beheld but not actually existing in the present at hand.
The conclusion such an idea makes necessary is that it is upon the ideological content of specific visions that empirical attention should center. What are the working details of the worlds whose presence impinges on ours so strongly? What of the beings sometimes confronted often furtively sensed, who seem to have some existence in a world of their own revealed by the psilocybin and in UFO contact? There may exist a vast communication network in the topological nature of things. A network that becomes a fact only for those species or individuals who will but have the intelligence enough to seek this vision. It will by them be found to be persistent in the nature of things. Alchemy thrives in a climate of such ideas. To validate the idea of the worth of the visions of worlds at a distance one must emerge with some idea spawned by the visionary Other but with a utility in the here and now. The wave quantification of the I Ching is the only idea of this sort that I personally have glimpsed in completeness. It took years to elaborate and its relation to the here and now is still elusive. Fragmentary themes abound: symbiosis, saucer-lens vehicles whose possessors navigate the higher topological oceans in our heads. All this could be transference and fantasy. In the classical sense of the word the experimenter with hallucinogens pursues gnosis: privileged knowledge concerning nature and vouchsafed by her in ecstacy.
The history of consciousness is the halting exploration of the once irrational images and processes met in dreams and trance. Such images become concepts and discoveries as information flows through the multiple-continuum of being seeking equilibrium, yet paradoxically carrying everywhere images of ways the flow towards entropy was locally reversed by this being or that society or phenomenon. We are immersed in a holographic ocean of places and ideas. We can understand this to whatever depth we are able. The ocean of images and the intricacy of their connections is infinite. It is perhaps why great genius preceeds by apparent leaps. Because the revolutionary idea which inspires the genius comes upon one complete, entire by itself, from the ocean of mind. History is the story of the search for the intuitive leap that will reveal the very mechanism of that other dimension. The need for such a leap by humanity will grow as we exhaust complexity in all realms save the microphysical and the psychological. My own method has been immersion in the images and self- examination of the phenomenon of tryptamine hallucinogenesis. This means taking the Stropharia psilocybe and pondering just what this all may mean. With confidence that as more people come to share this experience time will deepen our understanding, if not answer all questions. For psilocybin argues that hallucinogens are windows into higher dimensions. That even as a cone can yield circle, ellipse or parabola to an act of two-dimensional sectioning and yet remain intrinsically a cone, so reality is something that changes according to the angle of regarding. It argues that human beings are many forms over vast scales of time, that all life is unified at some level, and all intelligence in the universe are but facets of the mystery called humanness. In probing the Other we shall always come back with images of ourselves. In probing ourselves we shall return with images of the Other. In the phenomenon of being itself no less than in the phenomenon of the UFO encounters we are merely privileged observers of a relationship between what is naively called the world and the transpersonal portion of the human psyche. How this relationship came to be, and what its limitations are, we cannot know until we gain access to the transpersonal and atemporal part of the psyche. Of what this consists we do not know and no hypothesis can be ruled out. My hunch is that if we could really comprehend death then we could understand the UFO. But that neither can be understood unless they are looked at in light of the question, what is humanness? I believe that the transpersonal component of the human psyche is not distinct from matter and that therefore it can literally do anything. It is not subject to the will of any individual. It has a will and an understanding that is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than any one of the individuals who compose it as cells compose a body. It has a plan, glimpsed by individuals only as vision or religious hierophany. Nevertheless, the plan is unfolding. There will be many more UFO sightings, many more close contacts. Our belief systems are undergoing accelerated evolution via increased input from the other. Somewhere ahead of us there is a critical barrier where we will at last have enough data to obtain an integrating insight into the riddle of humanity’s relation to the UFO. I believe that as this happens the childhood of our species will pass away and when this is done we will be free to use the staggering understanding that humankind and the UFO are one.

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The Poetry of Attar

Invocation
We are busy with the luxury of things.

Their number and multiple faces bring

To us confusion we call knowledge. Say:

God created the world, pinned night to day,

Made mountains to weigh it down, seas

To wash its face, living creatures with pleas

(The ancestors of prayers) seeking a place

In this mystery that floats in endless space.
God set the earth on the back of a bull,

The bull on a fish dancing on a spool

Of silver light so fine it is like air;

That in turn rests on nothing there

But nothing that nothing can share.

All things are but masks at God’s beck and call,

They are symbols that instruct us that God is all.

—
The Triumph of the Soul
Joy! Joy! I triumph! Now no more I know

Myself as simply me. I burn with love

Unto myself, and bury me in love.

The centre is within me and its wonder

Lies as a circle everywhere about me.

Joy! Joy! No mortal thought can fathom me.

I am the merchant and the pearl at once.

Lo, Time and Space lie crouching at my feet.

Joy! Joy! When I would reveal in a rapture.

I plunge into myself and all things know.

—
Looking for your own face
Your face is neither infinite nor ephemeral.

You can never see your own face,

only a reflection, not the face itself.
So you sigh in front of mirrors

and cloud the surface.
It’s better to keep your breath cold.

Hold it, like a diver does in the ocean.

One slight movement, the mirror-image goes.
Don’t be dead or asleep or awake.

Don’t be anything.
What you most want,

what you travel around wishing to find,

lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,

and you’ll be that.

—
Mystic Silence
From each, Love demands a mystic silence.

What do all seek so earnestly? Tis Love.

Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts,

In Love no longer “Thou” and “I” exist,

For self has passed away in the Beloved.

Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,

And in the temple of mine inmost soul

Behold the Friend, Incomparable Love.

He who would know the secret of both worlds

Will find that the secret of them both is Love.

__________
Attar, Farid al-Din Muhammad ibn Ibrahim (1145?-1221?), Persian poet, a strong believer in the principles of Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism. He was born in present-day Khorasan Province, Iran. Attar’s most celebrated work is The Conference of the Birds, a poem consisting of 4600 couplets. The poem uses allegory to illustrate the Sufi doctrine of union between the human and the divine. His other important writings include Divan and Tazakor-ol-Oliah ( Biographies of the Saints), a prose work about the early Sufis.
Farid Od-din Attar Neyshaburi was one of the greatest Muslim mystical poets and thinkers of the 12th century. He has written at least 45,000 couplets and many brilliant prose works.
Attar travelled extensively, visiting Egypt, Syria, Arabia, India and Central Asia and finally settled in his native town Neishabour, northeastern Iran, where he spent many years collecting the verses and sayings of famous Muslim mystics.

As said before the greatest of his works is his well-known Manteq-u-ttair (the conference of the birds), which is an allegorical poem describing the quest of the birds. his other works include Elahinameh (divine book).

From the point of view of ideas, literary themes and style, Attar’s influence was strongly felt not in Persian literature but in other Islamic literatures.

His grand book of Tazakor-ol-Oliah is in prose and his most famous works in verse include: Asrarnameh, Elahinameh, Mosibatnameh, Manteq-u’ttair, Bulbulnameh, Heydarnameh, Mokhtarnameh and Khosrownameh.

Manteq-u-ttair or the Conference of Birds, sung in iambic hexameter, is an elegantly versified book. Following Solomon’s tradition the poet puts tongue in the mouths of the birds and enables them to warble his theme and fly high and high towards Mount Ghaf in search of the invincible Simorgh or Phoenix which he ascribes to the Almighty God, and by this metaphor Attar brings his episode to a surprising climax. Led by the unwavering hoopoe or Hod Hod, thirty birds out of many thousands manage to cross the seven fatal valleys in the Path and arrive at the majestic court of the Prince of Universe on the verge of annihilation.

What they see in amazement there is an enormous phantom mirror of a thousand molten planets which reflects their own shapes and purified selfs. Here they dissolve in the mirror and join the eternity.

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Above &amp; Beyond presents OceanLab – Miracle [album edit]

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Not much to say… This has been building since Tuesday….
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
On The Menu:

The Links

Aquelarre: A Tale From Basque Lands…

Poetry For The Dying Summer: Alfred Perceval Graves

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The Links:

Portal to mythical Mayan underworld found in Mexico

Clash Of Clusters Provides New Dark Matter Clue

Pictured: Divers discover amazingly preserved shipwreck of HMS London on bottom of Thames

Sabertooth Cousin Found in Venezuela Tar Pit — A First

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Aquelarre: A Tale From Basque Lands…
I.
In the territory which stands between the towns of Zuggaramurdi and Echalar, a mountainous tract covered with woods, crossed by rivulets, and divided by narrow and very deep valleys, will be found, isolated and darksome, the mountain of Aquelarre, overgrown with brambles and thorns, and surrounded by rocks and waterfalls.
The position of the mountain and its conical form invites the attention of geologists visiting these rugged places; and in effect it is curious to notice that while other mountains, branches of the Pyrenees, are joined to-ether by defiles which form undulations full of various accidents, in some, of soft, ever-green brows, while in other instances their heights are perfect plains, and in some again peaked Aquelarre is roughly different from. the general form of these mountains, so that it stands an exception in the midst of them.
It is said that “Ariel,” the titular genius of the Biscayans, one day stretched out his powerful arm and wrenched from its base this singular mountain, placing it at a distance from its companion, so that they should not become contaminated by any contact with this accursed mountain. In fact Aquelarre is an accursed mountain. If you believe it not, remark the colour of the brambles which cover its enormous sides. It is not a green that pleases the sight, the colour in which the noble oak clothes its branches. Neither is it the silvery hue of the white poplar. Much less is it the brilliant green of the handsome beech-tree. Nor does it approach to the green which covers the cherry, the pear, and the nut-trees, full of white, fragrant flowers, in whose salyx shines the drop of dew, like a pure diamond.
The colour of the brushwood of Aquelarre, sombre, lugubrious, darksome, resembles the gigantic peak of Lithuania, or of the cypress which grows in the fissures of the stony hills of Arabia Petrea–a funereal sinister hue which saddens the spirit and represses the expansion of soul of the poet, that in a rapture contemplates the sumptuous gifts and graces of nature in the woods, or the smiling and simple glory of the flower-strewn valleys.
Why this notable contrast? Why this dark phantom in the midst of such beautifully bedecked nature? Because all things that are in contact with the genius of evil carry with them the seal of reprobation, substituting for their ancient beauty forms at once repugnant and loathsome.
Aquelarre finds itself in this sad state. Its heights are frequented by the prince of darkness, and in the crevices of the mountains are repeated the echoes of the irreligious songs which are entoned in his praise.
Many in terror and fear have heard these songs resounding in the mountains, and breaking the majestic silence of the night.
There are some who have seen columns of black smoke rising, and have perceived a nauseous smell emanating from the confines of this accursed mountain, and have with reason conjectured, that the smoke was produced by the holocausts offered to the genius of evil by his wicked worshippers in some mysterious sacrifices.
Nevertheless, who were these spirits? From whence do they come to celebrate their nocturnal revels?
The simple dweller of the mountains shrugs his shoulders on being asked these questions, and contents himself with replying laconically–”Eztaquit” (“I do not know”).
Suddenly a report was spread from mouth to mouth, and which gained ground and soon became general, to the effect, that the discovery had been made of what passed on the heights of the accursed mountain by a child.
Behold how tradition tells us this was effected.
Izar and Lañoa were two orphan children; the first was seven years of age and the latter nine. These poor children, true wandering bards, frequented the mountains, earning a livelihood by singing ballads and national airs in sweet infantile voices, in return for a bed of straw and a cupful of meal. Throughout the district these children were known and loved on account of their sad state, as well as for their graceful forms and winning ways.
There was, however, a difference between the two. Izar, the younger brother, was fair as jasper; his long hair fell in curls, pale as the stems of the maize, down his shoulders and back; his eyes were of the purest sky-blue, while from them shot glances at once sweet and suppliant of irresistible force; his lips were red as the flower of the wild pomegranate, around which hovered a smile as gentle as the light puff of an expiring breeze, and, on contracting them, two dimples appeared in his rosy cheeks. Izar was the more patient of the brothers, the meeker, and the more beautiful; his voice had a purer tone, and for that reason was the favourite of the inhabitants of the mountains.
Lañoa was as handsome as his brother, but Nature had dowered him with a different style of beauty. His figure was more lithe, and his limbs of stronger make; the looks he cast out of his black eyes were haughty–at times even arrogant and full of daring. The way he curled his upper lip revealed a passionate, proud character, his hair was black with the bluish shade seen on the feathers of the raven; his long eye-lashes somewhat softened the fire of his eagle eye. Nevertheless, Lañoa was a good lad, and loved his younger brother, notwithstanding that at times he would treat him roughly.
It was on a sad, cloudy day in November that these two were walking towards Aranaz, crossing with difficulty the mountains enveloped in a fog, and covered with snow.
Izar grew very tired climbing the heights, and the poor child had not the courage to ask his brother to help him up. Lañoa, on his part, was not disposed to offer any help, however much in his heart he desired Izar to ask assistance, which he could then give without to his pride.
“Poor fellow, he is tired,” he would say to himself; “but he does not wish to humble himself to ask me to help him up. If he expects me to offer it—-.”
Musing in this way, he increased his speed, thus lengthening the distance which separated him from Izar. The latter endeavoured to reach him by taking great strides to do so; but he could barely keep on his delicate feet, until by a great effort he sought to keep within hearing of his voice.
All at once a gust of wind brought down large masses of wet, heavy snow into the defile through which walked the brothers, and Lañoa was compelled to suspend the rapid speed he had sustained, and thus enabled Izar in a short time to come up to him.
“What shall we do?” he timidly asked.
“Do what you please, lazy boy,” Lañoa replied, roughly; “for my part I shall continue my walk as soon as the fog clears away a little.”
“Very well, my brother,” replied Izar, gently but meanwhile sit down at my feet and I will cover you with my capusay, 1 for you are in such a heat with your efforts.”
“Women and lazy children like yourself require to be sheltered from the wind; as for me, I am a man, and I am not frightened with the cold.”
Saying this, he uncovered his head, and exposed his wavy hair to the freezing gusts of the north wind.
“What are you doing, my brother?” cried Izar, rising from the broken rock upon which he had sat, and covering with his cap the head of Lañoa. “Oh, please let me cover you from the cold,” he continued. “I well know that you are stronger than I am, and for that very reason should you take care of yourself, so that you may help me that am so weak.”
“Be off!” cried Lañoa, pushing his brother away, who slipped and fell to the ground. And with bare head he resolutely commenced anew his march across the deep, cold snow.
Izar did not reply a word, nor did he even utter a cry of pain as his head was wounded by falling upon a stone. He rose up to renew his good work of abnegation and charity; and then he noticed with deep sorro
w that his brother had disappeared from view. He ran in all directions, calling him with loud cries; but the fog, was so dense that he was unable to find him. Then, half dead with fatigue, in despair, and shivering with the cold, the poor child looked around him, and perceived through the fog that at a short distance from him stood an immense tree, and that its trunk was hollow.
Night was rapidly closing in, covering with its dark mantle these solitary places. The fog grew more heavy and damp; and instead of dispersing, remained stationary, clinging to the branches of the trees, and descending like the waters of a stream into the marshes and valleys.
From the hollow of the tree in which our young hero had taken shelter could be seen an extensive tract of land covered with a white mist; in places it remained still like the waters of a lake; in others it rose and fell like the sea waves that break on the rocky promontories.
In that veritable ocean of fog could be perceived here and there black points like so many dark islands, which no doubt were the peaked heights of that range of mountains.
The silence was deep and solemn. The night was fast increasing in darkness.
In the distance, and above the fog, could be seen a yellow line of light presaging the rising of the moon, which at that time of the year was of opaque brilliancy, and more so seen in that atmosphere full of fog and mist.
Izar understood, from what he could descry, that he was standing on the top of a mountain; so quitting his shelter he reconnoitred the surroundings.
The protecting tree stood in the centre of a small plain, surrounded on all sides by thick shrubs and brushwood, so tangled and close that he could discover no opening or path by which he could possibly descend from its height down to the base.
How did that lost child find his way into such a spot?
He could not tell.
Feeling hungry and thirsty, and, moreover, finding himself in a spot which was totally unknown to him, he began to cry from anguish and fear; but at length, convinced that all this was unavailing, he returned to the worm-eaten hollow of that tree, fully determined to pass the night in its hospitable shelter. He fervently commended his soul to God; he thought in sadness of his. mother, who had loved him so tenderly, and he prayed to the All-powerful to deliver his elder brother of whatever danger he might find himself in. Having done this, he sat down, and wrapping himself as comfortably as he could in his poor coat, he huddled up in his hiding-place, and the sleep of innocence very soon closed his eyelids.
At the moment when he placed his soul and body trustingly in the safe keeping of a God full of goodness, the heavens were rent open and an angel beautiful as are all the angels, descended in a rapid flight and alighted on the branches of the tree. Then he extended his white wings, and with loving solicitude watched the sleep of the innocent child.
For a length of time did Izar sleep calmly and sweetly under the loving care of the angel. At length he was suddenly aroused by a singular and incessant uproar which seemed to fill space. He cautiously peeped out of the hollow trunk of the tree, and an incomprehensible spectacle presented itself to his view. The moon was shining on the plain, and, casting a pale reflection over space, imparted a weird appearance and fantastic form to all objects.
From the point in the heavens occupied by the planet of night, and extending along the vast line of the horizon, the tints were becoming more and more sombre, passing from light grey to the deepest black. Out of the four cardinal points of the horizon rose up four extremely long lines of fantastic shadows, from which issued terrible unearthly cries, and these shadows with astounding rapidity all travelled to meet in a concentric point. This point was actually the very plain which we have just described. To depict in words the strange cavalcade upon which these fantastic shadows were mounted, would be a work superior to human ability. The one would press between its fleshless knees the skeleton of a mammoth of huge proportions; the other rode a horrible monstrous owl; others, again, divided the air riding on broomsticks; while some were perched on the backs of serpents bearing enormous wings, long tails, and with brilliant eyes.
All these shadows joined one another until the four lines formed an immeasurable chain. And thus they whirled until they gathered together at a distance of about a hundred feet from the ground; then they greeted one another with frenzied cries, ringing shrieks of laughter, deafening shouts, and hideous yells. After this they began a circular flight in a confused disorder, and little by little they began to descend to the ground.
The astonishment and terror of Izar increased when he perceived that all these shadows were so many forms of decrepit old women. Their faces, blackened and wrinkled, were repulsive, while their hideous bodies inspired disgust, their short matted hair and fleshless limbs were truly fearful to see. The terror which all this scene inspired in the heart of Izar who was an unwilling witness, increased to a terrible degree when he noticed that all these women were preparing to execute some unearthly dance, taking one another’s hands, and forming a large circle around the hollow tree in which he had taken refuge. And, what was more strange still to him, was the fact that this immense crowd fitted perfectly in the plain without requiring to widen its circuit or to diminish the size of their figures. As Izar had feared, it was not long before the dance commenced. At first this dance was of slow movements, and all kept time stepping together, now on one foot now on the other.
Little by little the leaps became more violent, the turns more rapid, until at length this nameless dance turned into a sort of whirlwind, increasing in speed, until it caused dizziness to attempt to follow the movements.
Jumps, cries, terrible contortions, turns–all were supernatural, all horrible to the sight, all was a confused, incomprehensible jargon to the ear.
Poor Izar could no longer support that spectacle, and he fell fainting to the ground. When he recovered consciousness the moon had disappeared. The night was pitch dark, a sepulchral silence reigned throughout the plain. He looked out again from his hiding-place, judging that these fiendish women who had so alarmed him must have disappeared; but he perceived in terror that they still occupied the same spot as before, but in more strange attitudes, if possible. They were all ranged in a circle, huddled up close together, around a throne of ebony, upon which was seen calmly sitting an enormous he-goat, From this throne gleamed a few rays of yellow light, the only light which illumined the scene. The old women were successively approaching the throne, and as they did so they each respectfully kissed the hairy cloven foot of the goat. Then, after this long ceremony was concluded, the goat shook his head, and one by one each of these creatures commenced to relate what she had done.
Izar, horrified at being compelled to listen to their hideous narratives of premeditated deaths, mutilation of babes, profanation of cemeteries, and other crimes, was once more about to faint away with horror, when he heard a sweet voice which seemed to come from among the branches of the tree, and which pronounced his name. Astonished at this, he arose, and raising his eyes to the direction from whence came the voice, he saw among the branches a young man of celestial beauty, who was gazing upon Izar with tender, loving looks.
“Listen, and do not fear,” the young man said, “for I am here to guard and watch over you.”
Then Izar bent his ear to listen to what was said by the women, and he heard the following conversation.
“All my sisters,” one of the witches was saying in a hissing voice, “have obeyed your commands. There was not a single one of them who did not send you, oh sovereign master, some victims
, but I challenge any of them to do what I can.”
“Speak, my daughter,” murmured the goat: “I well know that you are one of my most devoted worshippers.”
“You know, my lord,” continued the witch, “that the grand reigning Duke of F—— and his lady are both zealous Christians, faithful and true, and you are also aware that they have a daughter lovely as the sun, whom they idolize. What a joy to me to make this beautiful creature die by inches; to wither that flower in all its youth and freshness, and to sow despair in the hearts of her parents, and so deliver them up to your powerful temptations! Would it not be a masterly stroke to kill them also after two or three months of cruel sufferings? What would it cost you, my lord, to impel them to destroy their own life?”
A horrible grimace, which no doubt was intended to be a smile of satisfaction, overspread the countenance of the goat, and his eyes darted gleams of fire impossible to describe.
“Should you do so,” replied the author of evil, “you will become the best beloved of my daughters.”
“Well, then, give me my reward, my lord. It is now a week since the princess began to suffer, and no one is able to discover the cause of her complaint, and still less can they find the remedies to effect her cure.”
“Are you not afraid that some one will discover it?
“No, my lord, because the spell which binds her consists in the existence of an enormous toad which lies concealed under a broken statue, which has been abandoned and cast away in a corner of the garden of the ducal residence. So long as this toad is not destroyed, the sickness will follow its course and the princess will die.”
“This that you tell me pleases me greatly, Bazzioti, and I desire to have frequent and exact accounts given me of what happens. I give you my thanks for what you do,” continued the genius of evil, “and I summon you to come next Saturday.”
Saying this, the evil one shook his head; a terrible thunder-clap was heard, and the throne disappeared along with he who sat upon it. All things became enveloped in a complete obscurity.
Soon after this Izar heard the noise of the witches rising up and taking to flight on the winds, and by the now dim light of the moon he descried the fantastic line of shadows that in silence were departing towards the points of the horizon from whence they came, and slowly disappeared among the mass of black clouds.
Izar then looked up to the branches of the tree and saw there the young man who had bidden him have no fear. This angelic youth then said to him, “Fulfil your mission as I have fulfilled mine!” Then, spreading his wings, he rose to the sky, casting behind him sparks of brilliant light, and leaving a celestial fragrance which comforted the child’s benumbed limbs and instilled warmth and courage into his heart.

II.
A month had passed since Izar had been a witness to this strange conventicle. Full of faith in the words of the angel, he walked on to perform the charitable act which was so much in harmony with his good heart. Determined to overcome all the obstacles which might beset his path, he continued his march night and day towards Italy, for it was in one of its small States that the Grand Duke of F—— reigned.
How was he able to traverse great nations without means, and without even knowing the languages which were spoken in them? Tradition does not tell us anything concerning this particular. What is affirmed by the inhabitants of the Basque Provinces is, that he reached his destination and to the gates of the palace of the reigning grand duke.
It would certainly have been a difficult feat for our young adventurer to succeed in approaching the person of so high a personage, had not the duchess, who was returning from a neighbouring church, whither she had resorted to pray for the restoration of the health of her daughter, at that moment entered into the palace, and, noticing that a poor child was at the gates, supposed it was to solicit alms that he had come; so she beckoned to him and gave him a silver coin, saying, “Take this alms, poor child, and ask our dear Lord to grant that my daughter may be restored to health. The prayers of an innocent child are very pleasing to God, and will assuredly obtain the boon from Him which he refuses to us.”
“Is it your daughter that is sick?” sweetly asked Izar.
“Yes, my own darling daughter.”
“Very well, then,” Izar rejoined, “I will cure her.”
“You?” cried the duchess, in astonishment. “Poor child! perhaps you do not know that the first physicians of the land and the cleverest have despaired of effecting a cure?”
“I certainly was not aware of this; but all I know is that I have come here expressly to cure the princess, and cure her I will!”
The duchess, mute with astonishment, looked fixedly at Izar, who stood there surrounded by her servitors, yet calm, erect, but with a modest bearing, and uncovered head, his golden hair falling over his; shoulders in curls.
The clear look in his eyes manifested truth and candour; the smile that hovered around his lips was so gentle and winning, that the noble lady, after consulting for a few moments with the ladies of honour who accompanied her, and who all tacitly assented to the duchess allowing the child to carry out the purport of his words, took Izar by the hand and led him up the sumptuous stairs of the palace.
While this singular scene was taking place at the palace gates the duke sat by the bedside of his dying child.
The invalid was about eight years of age. Her large, almond-shaped eyes had already lost the light and life which was the delight of her parents, and were sinking in their sockets. A dark circle could be seen around her eyelids, and the extreme pallor of her delicate face clearly indicated the approaching end of that sweet flower prematurely fading away. The parched lips had lost their rosy colour. It was distressing to gaze upon that painful scene.
Nothing could be more terrible than the sorrow of the father as he witnessed the slow agony of his beloved daughter. A sorrow mute, it is true, but deep; a grief which, finding no vent in tears, was all the more fearful in its results. Because a father, besides endeavouring to stifle the grief which anguishes him, has at the same time to alleviate another pain–the sorrow of the mother.
At this moment the door of the sick chamber is opened, and the duchess was just entering, leading Izar by the hand, and followed by her ladies and pages, who, attracted by the novelty of the affair, had come to see the end of all this singular episode.
Izar did not manifest the least astonishment while treading the soft carpets of that regal house, or when crossing the chambers covered with damasks and velvets, gold and marbles.
On seeing him thus calmly following the duchess, without manifesting the least surprise or curiosity, and without opening his rosy lips, except to smile whenever she looked at him, none would have suspected for a moment that this lovely golden-haired boy had passed days and nights walking through woods covered with briars, or that he had slept under no better shelter or bed than the blackened thatch of rough cabins and huts of the Basque mountains and upon the hard ground. But this circumstance did not escape the observation of the duchess, and this very fact lit up a ray of hope in her heart.
Scarcely had the duchess entered the chamber than she was met by the duke, who, going to meet her, said in a sad tone: “My lady, we must lose all hope now; our beloved daughter will assuredly die!”
“Oh, my friend, be comforted,” she replied; “who knows but she will yet be spared?”
“Alas! no, I have no hope whatever,” said the duke “she is dying, my lady, she is fast dying.”
The duchess then turned towards Izar, who stood behind her, and as she did so noticed that he was casting a look full of smiles towards the duke.
“Whoever you are,” the duchess exclaimed, as she took Izar by the hand and drew him close to her, “is it true that you will cure our daughter?”
“I have come to do so,” quietly replied Izar.
“You perceive,” said the duchess to her husband, “that there is still some hope left.”
“Who is this boy?” asked the duke, greatly astonished.
“I do not know,” replied the duchess; “I met him on my return from the church, and on asking him to pray to God for our child, he replied that he had come to cure her!”
“Can this be so?” exclaimed the duke.
“It is,” replied Izar.
“Who are you?” rejoined the duke. “Perchance are you an angel sent by God to comfort us?
“I am a poor orphan, my lord.” Where do you come from? “I have come from distant lands.”
To cure my daughter?” demanded the sorrow-stricken father.
“Yes, that has been the only object of my journey, and I have walked the whole way, and day and night for a month.”
All the persons present at this singular interview gave a cry of surprise. The duke passed his hand across his brow like a man who is mentally agitated; then, after a few moments of thought, he took his resolve, and led the way towards where the sick child lay unconscious and fast dying away, and made a sign for Izar to approach.
The extraordinary replies of the boy, coupled with his self-possession, greatly excited the curiosity of all who, witnessed the scene, and the ladies and servitors were gathered together in a group at the door of the bedchamber.
Izar approached the bed, and in silence gazed for some time upon the unconscious form of the princess, who scarcely gave signs of life.
“Here is the invalid–can you cure her? ” said the duke to Izar.
Izar did not reply. He stood contemplating her. At length he murmured, in a scarcely audible voice–
“So this is the flower that is to wither away!”
The general anxiety was great.
Suddenly all the bystanders uttered a cry of joy. The princess was smiling sadly: certainly that smile was the first sign of life she had shown for days. The duchess, in obedience to a sudden impulse, fell on her knees before the boy, and, with a look on her face which it is impossible to describe, cried, in a tone of voice that made them all tremble–
“In the name of God, save our Sophia!”
“Rise up, poor sorrowing mother,” replied Izar, in a solemn voice; “I have come to save your daughter, and save her I will!”
“Do you hear, my daughter?” said the duchess, pressing to her lips the icy hand of the dying child. “This lad
has come to cure you.”
The sick girl opened her eyes, from which the light had almost departed, smiled faintly, and put out her hand to the orphan boy.
The excitement of those present reached its climax. The duke then placed both his hands on the curly head of that orphan boy, and in a solemn voice said, “I swear by my ducal crown that if you save my daughter you shall be her brother!”
Izar thanked him by an inclination of the head and swiftly left the chamber, requesting that none should follow him. All present respectfully made way for him to pass.
The boy descended the stairs and went into the garden. He searched every nook and corner, and the most retired spots under trees, until, after a diligent search, he discovered, hidden away, a broken statue, covered with overgrown masses of tangled thorns and briars. He cleared away, as well as he could, all these weeds, and by a great effort was able to raise the broken statue, when, to his great delight, he found the loathsome toad, which, on being discovered, glared at Izar with fierce, wild looks.
Izar jumped on the toad and crushed it dead. Then he quickly returned to the sick-room, where all were awaiting the return of the lad, anxious at his long absence.
When they heard the door opened, and saw that Izar had returned, every face beamed with joy. They awaited the mysterious child, and there he stood before them, calm and as self-possessed as ever. He approached the bed. of the sick girl, and said–
“Sophia, my sister, do you hear me?”
“Yes,” replied the princess; “I no longer feel that heavy weight here–here, on my chest.”
“Oh, my God! may you be praised cried the duchess, shedding a torrent of tears my Sophia is saved!”
“Do you hear what your mother says, my sister? Rise up, for now you are cured.”
The princess rose up slowly and sat on her bed, then looked around her as one awaking from a heavy sleep, rubbed her eyes, and said, smiling, ” Yes, I am well.”
Then the duke clasped Izar in his arms and said–
“In the name of the all-powerful God of heaven, I adopt as my own son this orphan, who has shed so much happiness on our house. Do you consent to this, duchess?”
The only reply of the grateful lady was to kneel before the orphan lad, and to say–
“My son, bless your mother.”
– – – –
The fame of this marvellous event soon spread throughout Italy, traversed the Alps, and became the theme for the improvisatores of the provinces, who narrated it in tender strophes. From thence it passed on to the Basque bards, and these again so distributed the legend and tale in the neighbourhood of the mountains, that the dwellers and inhabitants of the surrounding districts of Aquelarre, where this story had its first beginning, within a few months were well acquainted with all its details.

III.
We said in the first part of this narrative that Lañoa, after pushing back his young brother, started off in spite of the dense fog. He very soon became aware that Izar was not following him, and he stopped in his walk, hoping that in a short time he should be able to rejoin him. But after some considerable time had passed, and there were no signs of his brother returning, he began to feel uneasy, and commenced to call him, in hopes that he should hear his voice. He called his name many times, but all was in vain–there was no response. The silence of the mountains remained unbroken by any reply, and seeing that it was useless to call him, as the fog prevented his voice from piercing space, he felt very anxious, and returned to the spot where he had left him. But the child was no longer there, and then a violent fit of despair and remorse took possession of Lañoa.
He wept bitterly for his brother whom he had forsaken: the excited imagination of the youth conjured him dying of cold and hunger on those bleak mountains, imploring his help and accusing him of unfeeling, harsh conduct.
Poor Lañoa became desperate: he ran all about the place, calling Izar in frenzied cries; then he threw himself on the ground, tearing his hair. Yet all was in vain. He spent the long night on that rock, a prey to fever and remorse.
On the following day he searched throughout the neighbouring mountains, but he could discover no vestige or track of footsteps to indicate to him that a human being had passed that way. Then a deep melancholy settled on his spirit, and from that day no one ever heard him sing his favourite ballads. He became a. misanthrope and a savage; he fled from every one, and hapless he who would have the hardihood to ask him tidings of Izar!
Five months passed away in this wandering, solitary manner, ever searching the woods and lonely places; and the shepherds who knew him began to suspect that he had committed the crime of Cain.
When these suspicions began to gain ground, the ballad and tale about the life of Izar, and the beautiful mysterious Sophia, were already sung in good Basque verses. This ballad was an exact narrative of all that had occurred from the separation of the brothers to the adoption of the orphan boy by the grand reigning duke.
It was not long before this song reached the ears of Lañoa, to whom it afforded an immense joy, and relieved his heart of its heavy weight of sorrow. He would follow those who sang this ballad, and, when it was ended, used to ask humbly that it be repeated.
His character suddenly altered: he became gentle and tractable. Meantime the beauty of spring had succeeded the bleakness of winter, the sweet perfumed breeze of April to the violent snowstorms of December. The mountains were clothed in freshness and verdure, and the birds were saluting with joyful songs the return of their season of love. “Aquelarre” alone remained sad and bleak as ever in the midst of that joyous nature. It was said that Aquelarre, jealous of the universal joy of nature, took delight in saddening the smiling scene by showing a sinister face, dark, and bleak in opposition, and as a striking contrast to the merry, laughing aspect of its neighbouring mountain companions. No bird sang on its trees; no playful roe ever climbed the rugged sides of the accursed mountain. All was solitude; all things were silent.
One day, at the twilight hour of evening, the shepherds of the valleys perceived in fear and astonishment that on the solitary heights of Aquelarre wandered a human form. Struck by the oblique rays of the setting sun, this form acquired gigantic proportions. Side by side with this figure was seen another of similar form and size, which faithfully followed all its movements. This was simply, the effect of an optical illusion, a phenomenon sufficiently common to those elevated regions where objects acquire colossal dimensions that become duplicated by the refraction of the solar rays crossing subtle masses of vapours.
Nevertheless, the simple shepherds ignore all this, and only see in that phenomena a warning for them to be on their guard against some coming evil. Moreover, fearful lest the night should surprise them in the immediate neighbourhood of the accursed mountain, in which, so they said, some sinister event of ill omen was being prepared, they hastened to collect together all their cattle, and shut themselves up in their huts and cabins. The solitary figure that wandered on the top of Aquelarre was Lañoa. From the moment that he heard the ballad which narrated the history of his brother, he was assailed by a yearning wish to see Izar, but his pride resisted this desire, and deceived him in respect to the passion which domineered over him, by saying, “No, no; I cruelly abandoned him when he was poor and weak. I should not, now that he is rich and in position, go and seek him. When, like Izar, I shall have performed some generous noble act, then will I go to him, ask his pardon, and I know that he will pardon me, he is so good. I shall go up to the accursed mountain and listen for some secret spoken in the conventicle and then I will set to work.”
It were necessary for any one who fostered such a thought as this, and moreover decided to carry it out, be dowered. with supernatural courage, and a strength of character above all proof; and Lañoa the bold most certainly possessed these qualities in a high degree. Another motive existed besides the above to impel him to attempt such an undertaking. It was vanity.
“What!” he used to say to himself, “shall I be less than my brother? He so weak–I so strong? He so gentle and meek–I so brave and hardy? No, no; I will ascend the rugged mountain, and challenge all the dangers which may beset me, until I attain to my end at any cost!”
The night was approaching, and Lañoa, following the route described in the ballad, found the tree, and concealed himself in its hollow trunk. It chanced that it was Saturday, and therefore the night set aside for assembling a conventicle. And so it happened. Towards midnight Lañoa began to hear a strange incessant noise that each moment approached nearer. He began to tremble when he descried the long lines of fantastic shadows which were directing their course towards the spot where he lay concealed. A cold perspiration ran down his forehead when the shadows saluted each other and formed the confused whirling dance that had so greatly surprised Izar. The cries and fiendish laughter of the witches increased his terror, and when at length he saw them descend on to the plain, and was able to distinguish their repugnant forms, the poor lad knew not what to do. The witches commenced their unearthly dances, and Lañoa was bitterly repenting that he had lent a willing ear to the counsels of pride. However, the evil was done, and now there was no help for it but to bear the consequences of his dire mistake, and he resolved to await as calmly as he could the unravelling of this fearful drama.
He had not long to wait. A fearful detonation shook the mountain to its base, and was quickly followed by the appearance of an ebony throne, and seated upon this throne was a figure, the most horrible that human eyes had ever beheld. The head of the prince of darkness was of an enormous size; his eyes, which were glaring and wide open, resembled the burning crater of a volcano; immense ears fell down on his shoulders; while out of the mouth, bereft of lips, issued volumes of dense smoke, across which could be descried now and again rows of long yellow pointed teeth. His hands and feet were covered with sharp nails, curved and long. The rest of his body corresponded to the hideousness of his countenance.
He cast a ferocious glance at the numerous retinue which tremblingly awaited the commands of their sovereign, and in a deep, cavernous voice cried out:
“Bazzoti! Bazzoti!”
One of the witches that were huddled together then rose and placed herself opposite the throne of ebony.
“Ha! ha!&#82
21; exclaimed the genius of evil. “What became of all your fine promises, you deceitful one?”
“They could not be carried out,” tremblingly replied the witch.
“Listen,” rejoined the one who sat on the throne: “the princess was cured, and her parents, far from thinking of destroying themselves through despair, each day are happier, and idolize more and more their child and my direst enemy!”
“Lord!” murmured the witch, half dead with fear.
“Silence!” replied the devil. “As I see that you are of no use to me in this world, go, and await me in the next.”
Saying this, he struck the ground with his foot, and the witch disappeared down a deep pit which opened at his feet.
The other witches lowered their heads to the very ground, and remained silent.
“Now,” he added, “I shall proceed to examine the tree.”
Lañoa trembled from head to foot on hearing those words, and judged that he was lost. And indeed very quickly did he feel that he was being grasped by a number of these witches, who commenced to torture him in every way, and with Satanic mirth carried him bodily to the foot of the throne of the prince of darkness,
“Ha! so here we have another inquisitive mortal, it appears!” he cried, making a horrible grimace. “Approach, you profane one, approach!”
Lañoa in that terrible situation made a supreme effort, and assumed an expression on his countenance of satirical jesting,
“It appears that you do not fear us?” continued Lusbel, grinding his teeth.
Lañoa as his only reply contemptuously shrugged his shoulders.
It was a terrible wrestling that which was imminent between the lad, who had as his only weapon of defence his character of iron, and Lusbel armed with all the powers of hell.
“What were you doing in that tree?” he asked, after looking fixedly at Lañoa for a considerable time.
“I was deriding you,” replied Lañoa, laughing.
“Profanation!” roared the witches.
“Silence! silence!” cried Satan; and the witches were hushed. “So you were deriding me?” he asked, after a moment of silence.
“Yes, I was, by my faith!”
“Do you perchance think that any one has ever been able to boast that he has derided me with impunity?” rejoined Lusbel.
“Yes, I do, seeing that my brother has done so with a good result,” replied Lañoa.
“Oh! oh! so you are brother to the one who saved the life of the Italian princess?”
Lañoa did not reply.
“Answer quickly, cursed one!” said the witch nearest to him.
Lañoa turned quick as thought, grasped the witch by the hair of her head, threw her down on the ground, and placed his foot across her throat, then folded his arms in a defiant manner, and looked fixedly at Satan.
The latter remained perfectly stupefied on witnessing this rapid action, and to behold the imperturbable calm of the lad.
“By my kingship, lad, but you interest me,” he at length said.
“Well, if I interest you, I on my part thoroughly despise you!” replied Lañoa.
“You dare to despise me?”
“Yes, I do!”
“You say this because you are not aware who I am!”
The lad curled his lip in sign of supreme contempt.
“Approach, if you dare, and touch my hand,” he added, as he extended a hand armed with sharp nails.
Lañoa pushed aside with his foot the loathsome form of the witch, and fearlessly took the hand of Satan.
“Does it burn you?” he asked.
“I do not feel any heat,” replied Lañoa, with the most perfect indifference; but nevertheless the lad’s hair had stood on end when it felt the contact of that scorching hand.
“It is passing strange!” murmured Lusbel.
“You can well perceive,” rejoined Lañoa, “that I do not fear you!”
“I own to that, certainly,” he replied, releasing the hand of the youth, “but nevertheless that is no proof that you despise me.”
“Do you wish for a proof?” arrogantly demanded L ah o a.
“Let us have one, certainly.”
“There you have one!” cried the youth, and he spat at the face of Lusbel.
To describe the expression of fiendish rage which appeared on the monstrous countenance of Satan is not given to any pen to do. He uttered a roar, in comparison of which the violent eruption of a volcano would be no more than a soft melody. He wrathfully rose from his throne, grasped the boy in his clutches, and cast him headlong, like to a catapult, down the precipice which stands more than a league from that spot. The body of Lañoa rebounded and fell down the fearful descent a lifeless form, but his soul, purified in that trial rose up to heaven.

– – – –
Since then the above-mentioned precipice is known under the appellation of Infernu erreca, and the shepherds of the mountains affirm that at the hour of midnight on all Saturdays, with the exception of Easter Eve, there is heard rising up from that depth a tender wailing, and a noise resounds similar to that which is produced by the falling of a body.

Footnotes
19:1 Aquelarre. A word composed of larre, pasture land, and Aquerra, buck goat; hence the word Aquelarre signifies the pasture land of the goat. It is well known that this animal figures in all the conventicles of witches as representing the Evil One.
24:1 Capusay. A sort of dalmatic of very thick cloth furnished with a hood.

____________
Poetry For The Dying Summer: Alfred Perceval Graves

How Speeds the Wooing?
Passionate lover, prithee, tell

How speeds the wooing?

Passing well.

She entrancing,

I admiring,

I advancing,

She retiring.

Lover, of thy heart beware;

Too swift haste is slow despair.
Pensive lover, ere we pass,

How speeds the wooing?

Ill, alas!

I complaining,

Pleading, sighing,

She disdaining

Frowning, flying.

Little hast thou recked my rede,

Such fond haste has scanty speed.
Come, what luck, Sir Lover, now?

For thou bear’st a braver brow.

I returning

Flout with flouting,

She her spurning

Changed to pouting.

Now, if thou would conquer quite,

Rail until she weep outright.
How speeds the wooing? By thine air

Thou to-day hast tidings rare.

My denier,

Scouter, scorner

Sits a sigher

In the corner.

Then the suit is sped indeed,

May the marriage have like speed.

—
My Mountain Lake
My own lake of lakes,

My lone lake of lakes,

When the young blushing day

Beside you awakes,

The cold hoary mist

To gold glory kissed

Lifts laughing away

O’er your cool amethyst
My fair lake of lakes,

My rare lake of lakes,

How your tartan red-gold

In the summer air shakes;

Fold fluttering on fold

Of purple heath bloom

And gay, glancing broom,

A joy to behold.
My sad sleeping lake!

My mad leaping lake!

When the palled Tempest Powers

Into agony break,

Their tears scalding showers,

Thunder-moans their lament,

Their garments grief-rent
Thy broken hill bowers.
Bright, faint-heaving breast,

By fond visions possessed,

Not a wave frets thy beach

Scarce one ripple’s unrest!

Dim, weltering reach,

Where the Priestess of Heaven

And the steadfast Star-Seven

Hold Sibylline speech.

—

The Song of the Fairy King

From ‘Songs of the Sidhe’.
Bright Queen of Women, oh, come away!

Oh, come to my kingdom strange to see:

Where tresses flow with a golden glow,

And white as snow is the fair body.

Beneath the silky curtains of arching ebon brows,

Soft eyes of sunny azure the heart enthral,

A speech of magic songs to each rosy mouth belongs,

And sorrowful sighing can ne’er befall.
Oh, bright are the blooms of thine own Innisfail,

And green is her garland around the West;

But brighter flowers and greener bowers

Shall all be ours in that country blest.

Or can her streams compare to the runnels rich and rare

Of slow yellow honey and swift red wine,

That softly slip to the longing lip

With magic flow through that land of mine?
We roam the earth in its grief and mirth,

But move unseen of all therein;

For before their gaze there hangs the haze,

The heavy haze of their mortal sin.

But, oh! our age it wastes not; since our beauty tastes not

Of Evil’s tempting apple and droops and dies.

Cold death shall slay us never but for ever and for ever

Love’s stainless ardours shall illume our eyes.
Then, Queen of Women, oh, come away!

Far, far away to my fairy throne,

To my realm of rest in the magic West,

Where sin and sorrow are all unknown.

—
The Song of Niamh Of The Golden Tresses

From ‘Songs of the Sidhe’.
Down in the shades of Lene dark bowering

Hunting red deer through the glades gold flowering;

Oh, Finn! oh, Oscur, our glee!

When on a palfrey milk-white, a whiter one,

Shapely and slight, ah, no shapelier, slighter one,

Waved her sceptre star bright, the far brighter one—

Waved, waved in suppliant plea.

“Niamh am I of the locks gold glittering”—

O, at her cry the birds ceased twittering—

“Sole Child of The King of Youth.

Oiseen’s dark eyes in dreams have haunted me,

Oiseen’s song streams all day have daunted me!

I, who scatheless of Love long have vaunted me,

Ah! now know his searching truth.”

“Oscur and Finn, this long farewell from me!

Nought now can win this strong, sweet spell from me!

Ochone, ochone, ollalu!”

Panting with love to make my dear bride of her,

Murmuring dove, I leaped to the side of her!

Forth, forth our white palfrey flew.

On through the tangled and tost cloud armament

Into star-spangled deeps of the firmament;

While sweet rang Niamh’s lay,

“Come, O Oiseen, where sorrow shadeth not,

Scorn is unseen, and anger upbraideth not;

Come with thy Queen where beauty fadeth not,

Where Youth and Love are for aye!”