Gwyllm.com

“As perfume doth remain In the folds where it hath lain, So the thought of you, remaining Deeply folded in my brain, Will not leave me: all things leave me: You remain.”

– Arthur Symons

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A quick one… (well, not really) Not much to say, except it has been a social and work whirl around the digs… 2 days of celebration of Mike & Julie’s wedding (more on this below), followed by Rowan’s gang showing up for D&D on Sunday going until 10, mixed with working on Saturday… I needed to go back to work on Monday just to get rested.
Rowan got a wonderful and most generous present of a Ford Taurus 97′ from our friends the Nixon’s for his graduation and 18th birthday, a wonderful gift! He is determined to get his license so he can use it when he needs it for filming etc. The Taurus is in spotless condition and Rowan’s head is spinning with it all.
Working on the magazine again finally, and will have a listing of articles etc. soon to share.
The emphasis on this edition (stories & poetry) centers on Wales and Cymric culture and mythology. I am excited about bringing you the poetry of Arthur Symons, a British Symbolist Poet from Wales. Wonderful stuff.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Mike & Julie Get Married!

The Shepherd of Myddvai

From Fairy-Faith In Celtic Countries…Wales

Welsh Symbolist Poet: Arthur Symons

Art: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

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Mike & Julie Get Married!
So this past Friday we attended the wedding of our friends Julie and Mike. We have known Julie for 16 years, and Mike for 3-4 years. They have been the best of friends, and constant parts of our lives. The wedding was a wonderful event, and I am very happy that we were invited. We saw many friends, Randy and Deirdre with their daughter Bailey were up from Medford, John Gunn and Sebong were there, and up from Ashland: Karen and Emil, along with their daughter Alex, and son CoCo. Our friends the Rizzo’s were in attendance, and it was a very happy time. We met Mike’s parents up from Chattanooga, and Julies’ brother for the first time.
Mike and Julie are like peas in a pod, they go together so well. Here is wishing them much love and happiness! We will have a few more pictures of the wedding and the party the next evening as well in our next Turfing.
On Marriage

–Kahlil Gibran

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

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The Shepherd of Myddvai

This tale tells how a young shepherd won and lost a fairy bride from Lynn y Fan Fach (Van Vach), the fairy lake of the Brecon Beacons. This version was collected and told by Joseph Jacobs and appeared in his book Celtic Fairy Tales published in 1892 (David Nutt). The tale also appears in the chapter on Lake Fairies in British Goblins by Wirt Sikes 1881, as well as a synopsis of similar tales.
Up in the Black Mountains in Carmerthenshire lies the lake known as Lyn y Van Vach. To the margin of this lake the shepherd of Myddvai once led his lambs, and lay there whilst they sought pasture. Suddenly, from the dark waters of the lake, he saw three maidens rise. Shaking the bright drops from their hair and gliding to the shore, they wandered about amongst his flock. They had more than mortal beauty, and he was filled with love for her that came nearest to him. He offered her the bread he had with him, and she took it and tried it, but then sang to him:
Hard-baked is thy bread,’Tis not easy to catch me,

and then ran off laughing to the lake.
Next day he took with him bread not so well done, and watched for the maidens. When they came ashore he offered his bread as before, and the maiden tasted it and sang:
Unbaked is thy bread,I will not have thee,

and again disappeared in the waves.
A third time did the shepherd of Myddvai try to attract the maiden, and this time he offered her bread that he had found floating about near the shore. This pleased her, and she promised to become his wife if he were able to pick her out from among her sisters on the following day. When the time came the shepherd knew his love by the strap of her sandal. Then she told him she would be as good a wife to him as any earthly maiden could be unless he should strike her three times without cause. Of course he deemed that this could never be; and she, summoning from the lake three cows, two oxen, and a bull, as her marriage portion, was led homeward by him as his bride.
The years passed happily, and three children were born to the shepherd and the lake-maiden. But one day here were going to a christening, and she said to her husband it was far to walk, so he told her to go for the horses.
“I will,” said she, “if you bring me my gloves which I’ve left in the house.”
But when he came back with the gloves, he found she had not gone for the horses; so he tapped her lightly on the shoulder with the gloves, and said, “Go, go.”
“That’s one,” said she.
Another time they were at a wedding, when suddenly the lake-maiden fell a-sobbing and a-weeping, amid the joy and mirth of all around her.
Her husband tapped her on the shoulder, and asked her, “Why do you weep?”
“Because they are entering into trouble; and trouble is upon you; for that is the second causeless blow you have given me. Be careful; the third is the last.”
The husband was careful never to strike her again. But one day at a funeral she suddenly burst out into fits of laughter. Her husband forgot, and touched her rather roughly on the shoulder, saying, “Is this a time for laughter?”
“I laugh,” she said, “because those that die go out of trouble, but your trouble has come. The last blow has been struck; our marriage is at an end, and so farewell.”

And with that she rose up and left the house and went to their home. Then she, looking round upon her home, called to the cattle she had brought with her:
Brindle cow, white speckled,

Spotted cow, bold freckled,

Old white face, and gray Geringer,

And the white bull from the king’s coast,

Grey ox, and black calf,

All, all, follow me home,
Now the black calf had just been slaughtered, and was hanging on the hook; but it got off the hook alive and well and followed her; and the oxen, though they were ploughing, trailed the plough with them and did her bidding. So she fled to the lake again, they following her, and with them plunged into the dark waters. And to this day is the furrow seen which the plough left as it was dragged across the mountains to the tarn.
Only once did she come again, when her sons were grown to manhood, and then she gave them gifts of healing by which they won the name of Meddygon Myddvai, the physicians of Myddvai.
The physicians of Myddvai were famous throughout the middle Ages, their power and knowledge thought to have its roots in the power of the fairy race. Their last surviving descendant was said to have died in the 19th century.

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From Fairy-Faith In Celtic Countries…Wales

Testimony From An Anglesey Seeress
At Pentraeth, Mr. Gwilyn Jones said to me :- ‘ It always was and still is the opinion that the Tylwyth Teg are a race of spirits. Some people think them small in size, but the one my mother saw was ordinary human size.’ At this, I immediately asked Mr. Jones if his mother was still living, and he replying that she was, gave me her address in Llanfair. So I went directly to interview Mr. Jones’s mother, Mrs. Catherine Jones, and this is the story about the one of the Tylwyth Teg she saw :-
‘Tylwyth Teg’ Apparition.-‘
I was coming home at about half-past ten at night from Cemaes, on the path to Simdda Wen, where I was in service, when there appeared just before me a very pretty young lady of ordinary size. I had no fear, and when I came up to her put out my hand to touch her, but my hand and arm went right through her form. I could not understand this, and so tried to touch her repeatedly with the same result; there was no solid substance in the body, yet it remained beside me, and was as beautiful a young lady as I ever saw. When I reached the door of the house where I was to stop, she was still with me. Then I said “Good night” to her. No response being made, I asked, “Why do you not speak?”
And at this she disappeared. Nothing happened afterwards, and I always put this beautiful young lady down as one of the Tylwyth Teg. There was much talk about my experience when I reported it, and the neighbours, like myself, thought I had seen one of the Tylwyth Teg. I was about twenty-four years old at the time of this incident.’ (1)
TESTIMONY FROM A PROFESSOR OF WELSH
Just before crossing the Menai Straits I had the good fortune to meet, at his home in Llanfair, Mr. J. Morris Jones, M.A. (Oxon.), Professor of Welsh in the University College at Bangor, and he, speaking of the fairy-belief in Anglesey as he remembers it from boyhood days, said :-
‘Tylwyth Teg.’- ‘
In most of the tales I heard repeated when I was a boy, I am quite certain the implication was that the Tylwyth Teg were a kind of spirit race having human characteristics, who could at will suddenly appear and suddenly disappear. They were generally supposed to live underground, and to come forth on moonlight nights, dressed in gaudy colours (chiefly in red), to dance in circles in grassy fields. I cannot remember having heard changeling stories here in the Island: I think the Tylwyth Teg were generally looked upon as kind and good-natured, though revengeful if not well treated. And they were believed to have plenty of money at their command, which they could bestow on people whom they liked.’
(1) After this remarkable story, Mrs. Jones told me about another very rare psychical experience of her own, which is here recorded because it Illustrates the working of the psychological law of the association of ideas: – ‘My husband, Price Jones, was drowned some forty years ago, within four miles of Arms Head, near Bangor, on Friday at midday; and that night at about one o’clock he appeared to me in our bedroom and laid his head on my breast. I tried to ask him where he came from, but before I could get my breath he was gone. I believed at the time that he was out at sea perfectly safe and well. But next day, Saturday, at about noon, a message came announcing his death. I was as fully awake as one can be when I thus saw the spirit of my husband. He returned to me a second time about six months later.’ Had this happened in West Ireland, it is almost certain that public opinion would have declared that Price Jones had been taken by the ‘gentry’ or ‘good people’.

EVIDENCE FROM NORTH CARNARVONSHIRE
Upon leaving Anglesey I undertook some investigation of the Welsh fairy-belief in the country between Bangor and Carnarvon. From the oldest Welsh people of Treborth I heard the same sort of folk-lore as we have recorded from Anglesey, except that prominence was given to a flourishing belief in Bwganod, goblins or bogies. But from Mr. T. T. Davis Evans, of Port Dinorwic, I heard the following very unusual story based on facts, as he recalled it first hand :-
Jones’s Vision .-
William Jones, who some sixty years ago declared be had seen the Tylwyth Teg in the Aberglaslyn Pass near Beddgelert, was publicly questioned about them in Bethel Chapel by Mr. Griffiths, the minister; and he explained before the congregation that the Lord had given him a special vision which enabled him to see the Tylwyth Teg, and that, therefore, he had seen them time after time as little men playing along the river in the Pass. The minister induced Jones to repeat the story many times, because it seemed to please the congregation very much; and the folks present looked upon Jones’s vision as a most wonderful thing.’
EVIDENCE FROM SOUTH CARNARVONSHIRE
To Mr. E. D. Rowlands, head master of the schools at Afonwen, I am indebted for a summary of the fairy-belief in South Carnarvonshire :-
‘Tylwyth Teg.’- ‘
According to the belief in South Carnarvonshire, the Tylwyth Teg were a small, very pretty people always dressed in white, and much given to dancing and singing in rings where grass grew. As a rule, they were visible only at night; though in the day-time, if a mother while hay-making was so unwise as to leave her babe alone in the field, the Tylwyth Teg might take it and leave in its place a hunchback, or some deformed object like a child. At night, the Tylwyth Teg would entice travellers to join their dance and then play all sorts of tricks on them.’ (1)
Fairy Cows and Fairy Lake-Women.- ‘
Some of the
(1) Here we find the Tylwyth Teg showing quite the same characteristics as Welsh elves in general, as Cornish pixies, and as Breton corrigans or lutins; that is, given to dancing at night, to stealing children, and to deceiving traveller.
Tylwyth Teg
lived in caves; others of them lived in lake-bottoms. There is a lake called Llyn y Morwynion, or “Lake of the Maidens “, near Festiniog, where, as the story goes, a farmer one morning found in his field a number of very fine cows such as he had never seen before. Not knowing where they came from, he kept them a long time, when, as it happened, he committed some dishonest act and, as a result, women of the Tylwyth Teg made their appearance in the pasture and, calling the cows by name, led the whole herd into the lake, and with them disappeared beneath its waters. The old people never could explain the nature of the Tylwyth Teg, but they always regarded them as a very mysterious race, and, according to this story of the cattle, as a supernatural race.’

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Welsh Symbolist Poet: Arthur Symons

Amends to Nature
I have loved colours, and not flowers;

Their motion, not the swallows wings;

And wasted more than half my hours

Without the comradeship of things.
How is it, now, that I can see,

With love and wonder and delight,

The children of the hedge and tree,

The little lords of day and night?
How is it that I see the roads,

No longer with usurping eyes,

A twilight meeting-place for toads,

A mid-day mart for butterflies?
I feel, in every midge that hums,

Life, fugitive and infinite,

And suddenly the world becomes

A part of me and I of it.

—
The Opium Smoker
I am engulfed, and drown deliciously

Soft music like a perfume, and sweet light

Golden with audible odours exquisite

Swathe me with cerements for eternity

Time is no more, I pause and yet I flee

A million ages wrap me round with night.

I drain a million ages of delight

I hold the future in my memory.

—
At Fontainebleau
IT was a day of sun and rain,

Uncertain as a child’s swift moods;

And I shall never spend again

So blithe a day among the woods.
Was it because the Gods were pleased

That they were awful in our eyes,

Whom we in very deed appeased

With barley-cakes of sacrifice?
The forest knew her and was glad,

And laughed for very joy to know

Her child was with her; then, grown sad,

She wept, because her child must go.
And Alice, like a little Faun,

Went leaping over rocks and ferns,

Coursing the shadow-race from dawn

Until the twilight-flock returns.
And she would spy and she would capture

The shyest flower that lit the grass;

The joy I had to watch her rapture

Was keen as even her rapture was.
The forest knew her and was glad,

And laughed and wept for joy and woe.

This was the welcome that she had

Among the woods of Fontainebleau.

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By Loe Pool
The pool glitters, the fishes leap in the sun

With joyous fins, and dive in the pool again;

I see the corn in sheaves, and the harvestmen,

And the cows coming down to the water one by one.

Dragon-flies mailed in lapis and malachite

Flash through the bending reeds and blaze on the pool;

Sea-ward, where trees cluster, the shadow is cool;

I hear a singing, where the sea is, out of sight;

It is noontide, and the fishes leap in the pool.

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By the Pool of the Third Rosses
I heard the sighing of the reed

In the grey pool in the green land,

The sea-wind in the long reeds sighing

Between the green hill and the sand.
I heard the sighing of the reeds

Day after day, night after night;

I heard the whirring wild ducks flying,

I saw the sea-gull’s wheeling flight.
I heard the sighing of the reeds

Night after night, day after day,

And I forgot old age, and dying,

And youth that loves, and love’s decay.
I heard the sighing of the reeds

At noontide and at evening,

And some old dream I had forgotten

I seemed to be remembering.
I hear the sighing of the reeds:

Is it in vain, is it in vain

That some old peace I had forgotten

Is crying to come back again?

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The Loom of Dreams
I broider the world upon a loom,

I broider with dreams my tapestry;

Here in a little lonely room

I am master of earth and sea,

And the planets come to me.
I broider my life into the frame,

I broider my love, thread upon thread;

The world goes by with its glory and shame,

Crowns are bartered and blood is shed;

I sit and broider my dreams instead.
And the only world is the world of my dreams,

And my weaving the only happiness;

For what is the world but what it seems?

And who knows but that God, beyond our guess,

Sits weaving worlds out of loneliness?

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Born on Feb. 28th, 1865 at Milford Haven, Wales. Arthur Symons was the son of a Wesleyan minister.
English poet and critic, considered a leader of the symbolists in England. In 1884-1886 he edited four of Quaritch’s Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles, and in 1888-1889 seven plays of the “Henry Irving” Shakespeare. He became a member of the staff of the Athenaeum in 1891, and of the Saturday Review in 1894.
His first volume of verse, Days and Nights (1889), consisted of dramatic monologues. His later verse is influenced by a close study of modern French writers, of Baudelaire and especially of Verlaine. He reflects French tendencies both in the subject-matter and style of his poems, in their eroticism and their vividness of description. ..

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So here we are on the edge of a beautiful weekend…. Julie and Mike are getting married tonight, and we’ll be there to share in the moment. As I said, they are a lovely couple. It is gonna be a wild ride for the next few days!
Rowan turned 18 today! Time has flown, and here it all is, from a child to a man. He is heading off this next week to Ashland for a bit of adventure at the Seminar finals in Ashland that he attended last year with the Shakespearean Festival. His friend Ivy is attending, and he is going to be there to cheer her on and to celebrate the two weeks that she just went through. Truly, the seminar changes young lives, and Rowan is still feeling the effects from last year.

Rowan & Ivy

Well… I Gotta Hop… take a shower, get dressed, and take care of biz before we head to the wedding. I hope your weekend is wonderful!
Bright Blessings, more on the way!
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:

The Links

Amorphous Androgynous – the Emptiness of Nothingness

Wanderings Of The Young Dragon

Amorphous Androgynous – Light Beyond Sound part1

Afghan Poets: The Poems Of Æabd-Ur-RaḤmĀn…

Æabd-Ur-RaḤmĀn Biography

Amorphous Androgynous – The Peppermint Tree

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The Links:

The Masked Little People?

The Hollow Moon…

4,000-year-old Canaanite warrior found in Sidon dig…

Lord of the Memes

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Amorphous Androgynous – the Emptiness of Nothingness

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Wanderings Of The Young Dragon

On the assumption, which seems fair, that the historic traces of the dragon have led us back to Egypt and Babylonia–and very likely would lead us much farther could we penetrate the obscurities of a remoter past–it is fitting to inquire next how we may account for its presence and varied development elsewhere. Two theories oppose one another in respect to the fact that this and other myths, prejudices, and customs that appear alike, not to say identical, are encountered in widely separated regions, often half the globe apart. One theory explains it on the principle of the general uniformity of human nature and methods of thought, that is, namely: that peoples not at all in contact but under like mental and physical conditions will arrive independently at much the same conclusions as to the origin and causes of natural phenomena, will interpret mysteries of experience and imagination, and will meet daily problems of life, much as unknown others do. This is the older view among ethnologists, and in certain broad features it finds much support, as, for example, in the almost universal respect paid to rainfall and the influences supposed to affect this prime necessity.
Contrary to this view, most students, possessing broader information than formerly, now believe that such resemblances–strikingly numerous–are not mere coincidences arising from a postulated unity of human nature, but are the result of a spread of travellers and instruction from centres where new and impressive ideas or useful inventions have arisen. One of the foremost advocates of this theory of the geographical dispersion of myths and culture, as opposed to local independence of origin, is Professor Smith, quoted in the first chapter, whose books have been of much use to me in this connection. The theory does not deny the occasional independent rise of similar notions and practices here and there, but asserts that it alone accounts for all the important cases, particularly the central nature-myths, of which this of the dragon is esteemed the most important. The doctrine derives its main strength from its ability to show that in the very early, virtually prehistoric, times much closer contact and more frequent intercommunication than was formerly known or considered probable existed among primitive peoples all over the inhabited world. Assuming that at the dawn of history the most advanced communities were those of Egypt and Mesopotamia (with Elam), which were certainly in communication with one another both by land and by sea forty or fifty centuries before Christ, let us see how widespread, if at all, was their influence.
That the Egyptians were building large, sea-going ships as early as 2000 B.C. is well known. In them they traded with Crete and Phoenicia (whence the Phoenicians probably first learned the art of navigation) and with western Mediterranean ports. They sailed up and down the Red Sea, exploring Sinai and Yemen; visited Socotta, where grew the dragon-blood tree; went far south along the African shore; searched the Arabian coast, gathering frankincense (said to be guarded in its growth by small winged serpents); and made voyages back and forth between the Red Sea and the ports of Babylonia and Elam on the Persian Gulf. What surprise could there be were records available that these Egyptian mariners or those in the ships of the people about the Gulf of Persia sometimes continued on to India. Indeed Colonel St. Johnston elaborates a theory that not only the Malay Archipelago but the islands of the South Pacific, especially Polynesia, were colonized prehistorically by a stream of immigrants from Africa and India, who crept along the shore of the Indian Ocean, and from island to island in the East Indies, gradually reaching Australia and going on thence to the sea-islands beyond; and he and others believe that they carried with them ancestral ideas of supernatural beings, whence they made for themselves fish-gods and sea-monsters which some ethnologists regard as not only analogues, but descendants, of dragons. It is stoutly held, furthermore, that the religion of the half-civilized tribes of Mexico owes its characteristic features of serpent-worship and dragon-like symbols to the teaching of Asiatic visitors reaching middle America via Polynesia; but this is disputed, and I shall be content to avoid this controversy–also as far as possible serpent-worship per se–and confine myself to continental Asia and Europe.
The southwestern part of Persia, or Elam, was inhabited contemporaneously with early Babylonia, if not before, by a people of equal or superior culture, and holding a like religion. Their capital, Susa, was the most important city east of the lofty mountains between them and the valleys of Mesopotamia, and attracted traders and visitors from a great surrounding space. Most numerous, probably, were those from the north, from Iran, the country about the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains–inhabited by a race that used to be called Aryans; but many came also from Turanic nomads wandering with their cattle in the valley of the Oxus and eastward to the foot of the Hindoo Koosh, and still others from the eastern plains and coast-lands stretching to the Indus valley.
We may suppose these herdsmen and hunters to have been very simple-minded and crude, and their only semblance of religion to have been the rudest fetishism, animated by fear of ghosts and magic. Only the most enterprising among them, or prisoners of war brought back as slaves, would be likely to visit the more educated South, but there they would hear of definite ‘gods’ with stories behind them of the creation of the world, the gift of precious rain, and of unseen beings of immeasurable power; and they would learn the reason for representing these divine heroes in the forms they saw inscribed on monuments and temples, or in little images given them, thus getting some notion of the philosophy of worship. They would talk of these things by the camp-fire, when they had returned to Iran or Bactria or the Afghan hills, along with their tales of the civilization in Susa, and gradually plainsmen and mountaineers would grow wiser and more imitative. Sailors and merchants also carried enlightening information and ideas, crude as they may seem to us, into the minds of the natives of the shores of India and along the banks of the navigable Indus, whence this news from the West percolated into the more or less savage interior of the peninsula. Later we shall meet with some results of this slow and accidental propaganda.
Meanwhile, a stronger influence was affecting the North Persians. Soon after we first become acquainted with the Sumerians settled in Ur and other places on the lower Euphrates, we learn that they were conquered by Semitic tribes from the West, who created the Babylonian empire. After a while this was overthrown by still more powerful forces higher up the river, until finally the Assyrians became rulers of the whole valley, and ultimately of all Asia Minor north of the Arabian desert. The ancient gods received new names, but the old ideas remained. The antique dragon still stood at the gates of the Assyrian king’s palace, and Ea, the fish-god, reappeared on the shores of the Mediterranean as Dagon of the Philistines. But this is running ahead of my story.
North of Assyria, among the mountains of Armenia, dwelt the Medes, a nation of uncertain affinities, but apparently well advanced towards civilization even in the earlier period of Babylon’s history. They were not, at least primitively, influenced much by the sea-born myths of their southern neighbours, but held a religious creed combined of sun-worship and reverence for serpents–a conjunction which has had many examples elsewhere.
There was born among them, according to good authorities, about a thousand years before Jesus, a man of g
ood family, now called Zoroaster; but others believe he arose in Bactria, and probably at a much older time. He became the founder of a sect holding far higher ideas than those of any of the religious leaders about them. His sect was called Fire-Worshippers, because it kept fires burning perpetually on its altars as a symbol of the pure life believed to be received constantly from the supreme source of life and prosperity, Ormuzd, the All-Wise. It was thus a reform movement rather than a new religion, and inherited a stock of Medic practices and Vedic legends. Its founders and early communicants were evidently in close contact with the people of northern India many centuries before the era of Buddha or Christ, and were trying to elevate religious ideas which were based on faith in the endless conflict between powers classed as helpful to man or injurious to his interests, so that the same gods might be good at one time and bad at another. “Zoroaster established a criterion other than usefulness to determine whether a power was good or bad, by making an ethical distinction between the spirits.” Thus the old nature-gods were still recognized but re-classified on a new spiritual and ethical basis; yet they shrank into subordinate rank beside the Wise Spirit Ormuzd, who was in no sense a nature-god but “spirit only and withal the spirit of truth, purity, and justice.” These refined ideas gradually sank, however, into the meaner old religion that underlay them; and in opposition to Ormuzd, the personification of All Good, arose a host combined of all the old malicious spirits and influences (demons), led by a supreme personification of Evil called by Zoroaster Lie-Demon, who afterward “becomes the Hostile or Harmful Spirit, Angra Mainyu, Ahriman” of Persian writings. “Among the beings opposed to Ormuzd a conspicuous place is taken by the dragon, Azhi Dahaka, whose home is in Bapel (Babylon) a ‘druj,’ half-human, half-beast, with three heads. . . . This dragon creates drouth and disease.” Here we have recovered the trail of the figure we have been studying, and find him travelling eastward with the mark of Babylon still upon him.
The most ancient writings that have come down to us are the Vedas-poems, fables, and allegories recorded in ancient Sanscrit perhaps a dozen centuries before the beginning of the Christian era. They picture weather phenomena as a series of battles fought by a god, Indra, armed with lightnings and thunder, against Azhi, the evil genius of the universe, who has carried off certain benevolent goddesses described allegorically as ‘milch-cows,’ and who keeps them captive in the folds of the clouds. This fiend was described as a serpent, not because that reptile in life was subtle and crafty, but because he seeks to envelop the goddess of light, the source of the blessed rain, with coils of clouds as with a snake’s folds. In the Gathas and Yasnas, or earliest sacred writings of Persia, preceding the Avesta, the ‘Bible’ of the Zoroastrians, it is asserted that Trita smote Azhi before Indra killed the “monster that kept back the waters.” It is a theory of many primitive peoples that an eclipse of the sun or moon means that a celestial monster is swallowing the luminary: the Sumatrans say it is a big snake. Even at this day in China “ignorant folk at the beginning of an eclipse throw themselves on their knees and beat gongs and drums to frighten away the hungry devil.” The moon and rainfall are very closely connected in many mythologies.
The forms and characters in which the sky-war appears are almost innumerable as one reads the mythologic narratives of India and Persia; even the summary sketched in his Zoological Mythology (Chapter V), by Angelo de Gubernatis, is bewildering in its changes of persons and scenes and methods, involving an exuberance of imagery in which may be discerned the roots of many an attribute characterizing the dragon-stories of long-subsequent times, such as their guarding of treasure, or kidnapping of women, or the grotesque horror of their appearance. And it was all a matter of weather and of the preciousness of rain in a thirsty land!
Superstition went so far as to imagine that human beings of malignant temper might adopt the character and functions of these celestial mischief-makers. It is related in the book Si-Yu-Ki, written by Hiuen Tsang, the famous Chinese traveller of the 7th century A.D. (Beal’s translation), that in the old days, a certain shepherd provided the king with milk and cream. “Having on one occasion failed to do so, and having received a reprimand, he proceeded . . . with the prayer that he might become a destructive dragon.” His prayer was answered affirmatively, and he betook himself to a cavern whence he intended to ravish the country. Then Tathagata, moved by pity, came from a long distance, persuaded the dragon to behave well, and himself took up his abode in the cavern.
Having interpolated this incident, it may be pardonable to give another, extracted from the Buddhist Records, illustrating how Buddhist influences tended to modify the fierceness in Brahmanic teachings when they had penetrated the minds of Hindoos dwelling in the valley of the Indus, where, probably, the doctrines of the gentle saint began first to get a foothold in India. The lower valley of that river was visited in 400 A.D., by the Chinese traveller Fa-Huan, who reported that he found at one place a vast colony of male and female disciples:
A white-eared dragon is the patron of this body of priests. He causes fertilizing and seasonable showers of rain to fall within this country, and preserves it from plagues and calamities, and so causes the priesthood to dwell in security. The priests in gratitude for these favours have erected a dragon-chapel, and within it placed a resting-place for his accommodation [and] provide the dragon with food. . . . At the end of each season of rain the dragon suddenly assumes the form of a little serpent both of whose ears are edged with white. The body of priests, recognizing him, place in the midst of his lair a copper vessel full of cream; and then . . . walk past him in procession as if to pay him greeting. He then suddenly disappears. He makes his appearance once every year.
Let us now return to our proper path from this Indian excursion. The Persian Azhi, or Ashi Dahaka, is described in Yasti IX as a “fiendish snake, three-jawed and triple-headed, six-eyed, of thousand powers and of mighty strength, a lie-demon of the Daevas, evil for our settlements, and wicked, whom the evil spirit Angra Mainyu made.” Darmesteter asserts that the original seat of the Azhi myth was on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. He says that Azhi was the ‘snake’ of the storm-cloud, and is the counterpart of the Vedic Ahi or Vritra. “He appears still in that character in Yasti XIX seq., where he is described struggling against Atar (Fire) in the sea Vourukasha. His contest with Yima Khshaeta bore at first the same mythological character, the ‘shining Yima’ being originally, like the Vedic Yima, a solar hero: when Yima was turned into an earthly king Azhi underwent the same fate.” He became then the symbol of the enemies of Iran, first the hated Chaldeans and later the Arabs who persecuted the Zoroastrians. A well-known poem of Firdausi relates the legend of how Ahriman in disguise kisses the shoulders of Zohak, a knight who is Azhi in human form, from which kiss sprang venomous serpents. These are replaced as fast as destroyed, and must be fed on the brains of men. In the end Zohak is seized and chained to a rock, where he perishes beneath the rays of the sun. “Fire is everywhere the deadly foe of these ‘fiendish’ serpents, which are water-spirits; they are ever powerless against the sun, as was Azhi, lacking wit, against Ormuzd.”
Such were the notions and faiths regarding dragons as expressed in the earliest written records we possess of philosophy and imager
y among Aryan folk; and they floated down the stream of time, remembered and trusted as generation after generation of these simple-minded, poetic people succeeded one another and gradually wandered away from their northern homes to become conquerors and colonists in Iran and India. Let us note certain stories in modern Persian history and literature exhibiting this survival of the ancient ideas.
In his narrative of his travels in Persia, published in London in 1821, Sir William Ouseley relates that in his time there stood near Shiraz the remains of a once mighty castle called Fahender after its builder, a son of the legendary king Ormuz (or Hormuz). This prince rebelled against his brother on the throne and took possession of Fars, with help from the Sassanian family, long before the founding of Shiraz in the 7th century A.D. The castle was repeatedly ruined and repaired as the centuries progressed, and local wiseacres maintain that in it are buried royal arms, treasures, and jewels hidden by the ancient kings, and these are guarded by a talisman. “Tradition adds another guardian to the precious deposit–a dragon or winged serpent; this sits forever brooding over the treasures which it cannot enjoy; greedy of gold, like those famous griffins that contended with the ancient Arimaspians.”
This term ‘Arimaspian’ seems to have been a name among the more settled people of Persia for the more or less nomadic tribes of the plains and mountains west of them, who in subsequent times, nearer the beginning of our era, are seen following one another in great waves of conquering migration from the steadily drying pastures of what we now call Kurdistan westward to the steppes of southern Russia. The earliest of these known as a definite nation were the Cimmerians, who perhaps reached their special country north of the sea of Azov by migration across the mountains of Armenia and the Caucasus. These were followed and replaced by the Scythians, and they in turn were driven out or absorbed by the Sarmatians. The area they occupied successively north of the Black Sea has been explored by Russian archaeologists, who find that during several centuries previous to the Christian era a substantial though crude civilization existed there, and the worship, or at least a respect for, the snake-dragon prevailed among these peoples. The writings of Prof. M. Rostovtzeff make these investigations accessible to English readers. The dragon-relics discovered make it evident that the notions relating to this matter preserved among the barbarians and peasantry of north-central Europe, which we shall encounter later, were largely derived from these proto-Russians, especially the Sarmatians; and also that they influenced the ideas of the dragon that we shall find in China, with which these early people of the western plains were in constant communication by way of Turkestan, Thibet and Mongolia.
Thus Osvald Siren, author of Chinese Art, in speaking of very early Chinese sculptures, and especially of dragon-figures, remarks:
It seems evident that these dragons are of Sarmatian origin. Their enormous heads and claws are sometimes translated into pure ornaments; their tails into rhythmic curves like the ornamental dragons on the runic stones in Gotland. These two great classes of ornamental dragons, the Chinese and the Scandinavian, are no doubt descendants from the same original stock, which may have had its first period of artistic procreation in western Asia. The artistic ideals of the northern Wei dynasty remained preponderant in Chinese sculpture up to the sixth century (A.D.).
In his famous epic the Shah Nameh, translated by Atkinson, Firdausi describes the wondrous adventures of the Persian hero Rustem, who like Hercules had to perform seven labours. At the third stage of this task he was alone in a wilderness with his magical horse Rakush, and lay down to sleep at night, after turning the horse loose to graze. Presently a great dragon came out of the forest. “It was eighty yards in length, and so fierce that neither elephant nor demon nor lion ever ventured to pass by its lair.” As it came forth it saw and attacked the horse, whose resistance awakened Rustem; but when Rustem looked around nothing was visible–the dragon had vanished and the horse got a scolding. Rustem went to sleep again. A second time the vision frightened Rakush, then vanished. The third time it appeared the faithful horse “almost tore up the earth with its heels to rouse his sleeping master.” Rustem again sprang angrily to his feet, but at that moment sufficient light was providentially given to enable him to see the prodigious cause of the horse’s alarm.
Then swift he drew his sword and closed in strife

With that huge monster.–Dreadful was the shock

And perilous to Rustem, but when Rakush

Perceived the contest doubtful, furiously

With his keen teeth he bit and tore among

The dragon’s scaly hide; whilst, quick as thought,

The champion severed off the grisly head,

And deluged all the plain with horrid blood.
Another hero of popular legend woven into his history by Firdausi was Isfendiar (son of King Gushtask, himself a dragon-killer), who also had to perform seven labours, the second of which was to fight an enormous and venomous dragon such as this:
Fire sparkles round him; his stupendous bulk

Looks like a mountain. When incensed his roar

Makes the surrounding country shake with fear,

White poison foam drips from his hideous jaws,

Which, yawning wide, display a dismal gulf,

The grave of many a hapless being, lost

Wandering amidst that trackless wilderness.
Isfendiar’s companion, Kurugsar, so magnified the power and ferocity of the beast, which he knew of old, that Isfendiar thought it well to be cautious, and therefore had constructed a closed car on wheels, on the outside of which he fastened a large number of pointed instruments. To the amazement of his admirers he then shut himself within this armoured chariot, and proceeded towards the dragon’s haunt. Listen to Firdausi:
. . . Darkness now is spread around,

No pathway can be traced;

The fiery horses plunge and bound

Amid the dismal waste.

And now the dragon stretches far

His cavern-throat, and soon

Licks the horses and the car,

And tries to gulp them down.

But sword and javelin sharp and keen,

Wound deep each sinewy jaw;

Midway remains the huge machine

And chokes the monster’s maw.

And from his place of ambush leaps,

And brandishing his blade,

The weapon in the brain he steeps,

And splits the monster’s head.

But the foul venom issuing thence,

Is so o’erpowering found,

Isfendiar, deprived of sense,

Falls staggering to the ground.

As for the dragon–

In agony he breathes, a dire

Convulsion fires his blood,

And, struggling ready to expire,

Ejects a poison flood.

And thus disgorges wain and steeds.

And swords and javelins bright;

Then, as the dreadful dragon bleeds,

Up starts the warrior knight.

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Amorphous Androgynous – Light Beyond Sound part1

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Afghan Poets: The Poems Of Æabd-Ur-RaḤmĀn…

I.

Behold! such an Omnipotent Being is my God,

That He is the possessor of all power, authority, and will.
Should one enumerate all the most mighty, pure, and eminent,

My God is mightier, purer, and more eminent than all.
No want, nor requirement of His, is dependant upon any one;

Neither is my God under obligation, nor beholden to any.
Out of nothingness He produced the form of entity;

In such wise is my God the Creator, and the Nourisher of all.
He is the artist and the artificer of all and every created thing:

My God is, likewise, the hearer of every word and accent.
That which hath neither type nor parallel anywhere,

Its essence and its nature, its material and its principle, my God is.
All the structures, whether of this world or of that to come,

My God is the architect, and the builder of them all.
He is the decipherer and the construer of the unwritten pages—

The unfolder and the elucidator of all mysteries my God is.
Apparent or manifest; hidden or obscure; intermediate or intercalary;

My God is cognizant of, and familiar with, all matters and things.
He hath neither partner nor associate—His dominion is from Himself alone

A sovereign, without colleague or coadjutor, my God is.
Not that His unity and individuality proceed from impuissance;

For, in His one and unique nature, He is infinite, unlimited.
They have neither need nor necessity of the friendship of others,

Unto whom my God is beneficently and graciously inclined.
Wherefore then the occasion that I should seek Him elsewhere,

Since, in mine own dwelling, my God is ever at my side?
O Raḥmān! He is neither liable to change, nor to mutation—

My God is unchangeable and immutable, for ever and ever!
II.

My weeping for the beloved hath passed beyond all computation;

Yet the dear one is in no way affected at the sight of my tears.
Though every one of my words should be pearls of great price,

Still she doth not account them at all worthy of her ears.
Were she overcome by sleep, I would arouse her by my cries;

But though fully awake, my loved one is asleep unto me.
Like unto a writing, I speak, though with mouth covered;

But my silence surpasseth my wails and my lamentations?
When is there security for the crop of love in scorching ground!

It requireth a salamander to exist in this desert of mine.
This is not my love that separation hath parted from me:

’Tis my soul, which hath become separated from this body of mine.
I, Raḥmān, desire naught else than the beloved of my heart,

Should my prayer be accepted at the threshold of the Almighty.
III.

There is no return for thee, a second time, unto this world!

To-day is thy opportunity, whether thou followest evil or good!
Every thing for which the opportunity is gone, is the phœnix of our desires;

But the immortal bird hath never been caught in any one’s net.
The stream, that hath left the sluice, floweth not back again!

The hour, which hath passed away, returneth to us no more!
For time is, alas! like unto the dead in the sepulchre’s niche;

And no one hath brought, by weeping, the dead to life again.
If thou hast any object to attain, be quick, for time is short:

Flatter not thyself on the permanency of this brief existence!
Each target, of which, in thy heart, thou considerest thyself sure,

Through pride and vanity, thou wilt surely miss thine aim of.
Over-sanguine hope hath rendered many desponding:

Be not off thy guard as to the deceit and fraud of time!
When thy mouth becometh shattered by the stroke of death,

In what manner wilt thou then offer praises with it?
The bereaved woman, who giveth utterance to her bewailings,

Lamenteth over thee, if thou understandest what she says.
Thou art not a child, that one should teach thee by force:

Thou art wise and intelligent, and arrived at maturity’s years.
Exercise, then, thine own understanding as to good and evil,

Whether thy well-being lieth in this, or in that.
Conceal thy face beneath thy mantle, and open thine eyes:

Fly not far away on the winds of vanity and ambition!
Soar not unto the heavens with thy head in the air,

For thou art, originally, from the dust of the earth created.
At the last day, inquiry will not be made of thee,

As to whether thou art the son or grandson of such an one.
To the bride, who may not be handsome in her own person,

What signify her mother’s or her grandmother’s good looks?
Practise goodness in thine own person, and fear evil!

Presume not on the virtues of thy father or thy mother!
These precepts, O my friend! I urge upon myself:

Be not then grieved that I have made use of thy name.
I use thine and those of others, but speak to myself alone:

With any one else, I have neither motive nor concern.
Whatever I utter, I address the whole unto myself:

All these failings and defects are only mine own.
Had I a place for these sorrows within my own breast,

Why should I give utterance unto these declamations?
Since the racking pains of mortality are before thee,

Why dost thou not die, O Raḥmān! before they come?
IV.

No one hath proved any of the world’s faithfulness or sincerity;

And none, but the faithless and perfidious, have any affection for it.
They who may lay any claim unto it, as belonging to them,

Speak wholly under delusion; for the world is no one’s own.
Fortune is like unto a potter—it fashioneth and breaketh:

Many, like unto me and thee, it hath created and destroyed.
Every stone and clod of the world, that may be looked upon,

Are all sculls; some those of kings, and some of beggars.
It behoveth not that one should place a snare in the world’s path;

For the capture of the griffin and the phœnix cannot be effected.
Who can place any dependence upon this fleeting breath?

It is impossible to confine the wind with the strongest chain!
Whether the sun or the moon, the upshot is extinction:

Doth the flower always bloom? Nothing can exist for ever!
Walk not, O Raḥmān! contrary to the ways of the enlightened;

Since the love of the world is not approved of by any wise man.
V.

If one seek a charmer in the world, this is the one:

This is the dear one, who is the ornament of the universe.
There will hot be such another lover in it as myself;

Nor will ever such a beloved one be created like thee.
I had shown patience under thy harshness and cruelty;

But, in the place of lamentation, joy and gladness cannot be.
I will never consent to be separated from thee,

So long as my soul is not separated from this body of mine.
Like unto the congregation behind, with the priest before,

In such wise have I imitated and followed thee.
I am not the only one—the whole world loveth thee!

Whether it be the beggar, or the sovereign of the age.
Would that thou wouldst grant me a deed of protection,

Since thou puttest me off with the promise of to-morrow!
’Tis not that of mine own accord I am smitten with thee:

’Twas a voice from thy direction that reached me.
Indeed, from all eternity, I am devoted unto thee—.

It is not that to-day only, I have a beginning made.
When with the sword of thy love it shall be severed,

Then will the neck of Raḥmān have its duty performed.
VI.

The godly are the light and the refulgence of the world:

The pious are the guides and the directors of mankind.
If any one seek the way unto God and his Prophet,

The devout are the guides to point out the path.
The alchemist, that searcheth about for the philosopher’s stone,

Will find it the bosom companion of the sanctified.
In the society of the enlightened, he will turn to red gold,

Though a person may be as a stone or a clod of the desert.
The ignorant are, as it were, like unto the dead:

Verily, the wise are like unto the saints themselves.
The enlightened are, comparatively, like unto the Messiah;

Since, from their breath, the dead return to life again.
He who may not possess some portion of wisdom

Is not a man: he is, as it were, but an empty model.

I, Raḥmān, am the servant of every enlightened being,

Whether he be of the highest, the middle, or the lowest degree.
VII.

Come, do not be the source of trouble unto any one;

For this short life of thine will soon be lost, O faithless one!
No one is to be a tarrier behind, in this world:

All are to be departers, either to-day or to-morrow.
Those dear friends, who to-day bloom before thee,

Will, in two or three short days, fade and decay.
If the sight of any be pleasing to thee, cherish them:

After they wither and die, when will they again revive?
The leaves of autumn, that fall from the branch,

By no contrivance can the sage attach them again.
When the rain-drops fall from the sky upon the earth,

They cannot again ascend unto the heavens whence they came.
Imagine not, that those tears which the eye sheddeth,

Shall e’er again return to the eyes they flowed from.
This is a different sun that riseth every morn:

The sun, that setteth once, riseth not again.
Though paradise is not gained by devotion, without grace;

Still, every man his neck from the debt must release. ~
Shouldst thou incur a hundred toils for the flesh’s sake,

Not one shall be of any avail to-morrow unto thee.
Shouldst thou gorge thy stomach with the world itself,

Thou wilt not be remembered, either in blessings or in prayers.
Shouldst thou give but a grain of corn unto the hungered,

Verily, it will be hereafter thy provision in eternity.
Shouldst thou bestow but a drop of water on the thirsty,

It will become an ocean between thee and the fire of hell.
Shouldst thou once bow thy head in the road of the Almighty,

Thou shalt, at the last day, be more exalted than any.
This world, then, is the mart, if one be inclined to traffic;

But in that world there is neither barter nor gain.
If friends comprehend aught, to-day is their time,

That one friend may show self-devotion to another.
If there is any real existence here, of a truth ’tis this,

That in some one’s society it should in happiness pass.
May God protect us from such a state of existence,

Where thou mayst speak ill of others, and others of thee.
Poison even, is pleasant, if it be in peace and in concord;

But not sugar, combined with sedition and with strife.
The belly, filled with rubbish, is well, if free from sorrow;

But not so, though gorged with confection of the dregs of woe.
The back, bent from toil, is indeed estimable;

But not from a purse of ill-gotten money round the waist. ~
A blind man, who seeth nothing, is truly excellent;

Better than that he should set eyes on another man’s wife.
A dumb person is far better without palate or tongue,

Than that his tongue should become the utterer of evil words.
A deaf man, who cannot hear, is preferable by far,

Than that his ears should be open to scandalous tales.
Demon or devil, that may come upon one, is agreeable;

But let not the Almighty a bad man before thee bring!
Than to bear the society of a fool, it is more preferable

That a fiery dragon should become one’s bosom friend.
If there be a real difficulty, it is the healing of hearts;

But the profit and loss of the world are trifling affairs.
Its advantages, or its detriments, are trivial matters—

God forbid that any one become infamous for despicable things!
Forbid that any such desire of thine be accomplished,

Whereby the heart of thy brother or relation be grieved!
Should one eat delicious food, and another be eyeing it,

Such is not victuals, it is mere poison, so to speak.
It behoveth at times to respect other’s wishes, at times thine own;

But thine own good pleasure is not to be regarded always.
The wise concern not themselves in such matters,

In which there’s constant grief, and not an hour’s pleasure.
It is incumbent on judges to administer justice;

But not to give their ears unto venal things.
Thoughts and ideas of all sorts enter into man’s mind;

But it is not meet to account them all right and just.
The devout should have a constant eye towards their faith;

For some thoughts are virtues, whilst others are sins.
God forbid that iniquity proceed from any one’s hands!

What affinity is there between sin and innocence—evil and good?
It is not that all men are equally on a parity together;

For some are eminent, some indifferent, some vile and base.
The dignity of every one lieth within its own degree:

It idiot meet that the groom should the noble’s rank acquire.
I, Raḥmān, neither thank, nor complain of any one;

For I have no other friend or enemy but myself.

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Æabd-Ur-RaḤmĀn Biography

Mullā Æabd-ur-Raḥmān is one of the most popular, and probably the best known, of all the Afghān poets. His effusions are of a religious or moral character, and chiefly on the subject of divine love, being, like the poetical compositions of all Muḥammadan poets, tinged with the mysticisms of Ṣūfi-ism, already described in the Introductory Remarks; but there is a fiery energy in his style, and a natural simplicity, which will be vainly sought for amongst the more flowery and bombastic poetry of the Persians.
Raḥmān belonged to the Ghorīah Khel clan or sub-division, of the Mohmand tribe of the Afghāns, and dwelt in the village of Hazār-Khānī, in the tapah or district of the Mohmands, one of the five divisions of the province of Pes’hāwar. He was a man of considerable learning, but lived the life of a Darwesh, absorbed in religious contemplation, and separated from the world, with which, and with its people, he held no greater intercourse than necessity and the means of subsistence demanded. He is said to have been passionately fond of hearing religious songs, accompanied by some musical instrument, which the Chastī sect of Muḥammadans ~ appears to have a great partiality for. After a time, when the gift of poesy was bestowed upon him, he became a strict recluse, and was generally found by his friends in tears. Indeed, he is said to have been in the habit of weeping so much, as in course of time to have produced wounds on both his cheeks. His strict retirement, however, gave opportunity to a number of envious Mullās to belie him; and they began to circulate reports to the effect, that Raḥmān had turned atheist or heretic, since he never left his dwelling, and had even given up worshipping at the mosque along with the congregation—a matter strictly enjoined on all orthodox Muḥammadans. At length, by the advice and assistance of some of the priesthood, more liberal and less bigoted than his enemies, he contrived to escape from their hands, by agreeing, for the future, to attend the place of public worship, and to pray and perform his other religious duties, along with the members of the congregation. He thus, whether agreeable to himself or not, was obliged in some measure to mix with the world; and this, doubtless, gave rise to the ode at page 29, to which the reader is referred.
Raḥmān appears to have been in the habit of giving the copies of his poems, as he composed. them, from time to time, to his particular friends, which they, unknown to each other, took care to collect and preserve, for the express purpose of making a collection of them after the author’s death. This they accordingly carried out, and it was not until Raḥmān’s decease that these facts became known. It then appeared also, that some of these pseudo friends had, to increase the bulk of their own collection of the poet’s odes, mixed up a quantity of their own trashy compositions with Raḥmān’s, and had added, or rather forged, his name to them in the last couplets. In this manner two of these collections of odes were made, and were styled Raḥmān’s first and second. Fortunately for his reputation, these forgeries were discovered in time, by some of the dearest of the poet’s friends, who recognised or remembered the particular poems of his composition; and they accordingly rejected the chaff, retaining the wheat only, in the shape of his Dīwān, or alphabetical collection of odes, as it has come down to the present day. Still, considerable differences exist in many copies, some odes having a line more or a line less, whilst some again contain odes that are entirely wanting in others. This caused me considerable trouble when preparing several of them for insertion in my “Selections in the Afghān Language;” but it was attended with a proportionate degree of advantage, having altogether compared some sixty different copies of the poet’s works, of various dates, some of which were written shortly after Raḥmān’s death, when his friends had succeeded in collecting the poems in a single volume.
By some accounts, the poet would appear to have been a co-temporary of the warrior-poet, Khushḥāl Khān; ~ and it has been stated, that on two or three occasions they held poetical disputations together. This, however, cannot be true; for it seems that although Raḥmān was living towards the latter part of that brave chieftain’s life, yet he was a mere youth, and was, more correctly speaking, a cotemporary of Afẓal Khān’s, the grandson and successor of Khushḥāl, and the author of that rare, excellent, and extensive Afghān history, entitled, “Tārīkh-i-Muraṣṣaæ,” and other valuable works. A proof of the incorrectness of this statement is, that the tragical end of Gul Khān and Jamal Khān, which Raḥmān and the poet Ḥamīd also have devoted a long poem to, † took place in the year of the Hijrah 1123 (a.d. 1711), twenty-five years after the death of Khushḥāl. Another, and still stronger proof against the statement of poetical disputations having taken place between them, is the fact of Raḥmān’s retired life, and his humble position, as compared with that of Khushḥāl, the chief of a powerful tribe, and as good a poet as himself.
Some descendants of Raḥmān, on his daughter’s side, dwell at present in the little hamlet of Deh-i-Bahādur (the Hamlet of the Brave), in the Mohmand district; but the descendants on the side of his only son have long been extinct.
The poet’s tomb may still be seen in the graveyard of his native village.

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Amorphous Androgynous – The Peppermint Tree

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Go sweep out the chamber of your heart.

Make it ready to be the dwelling place of the Beloved.

When you depart out, He will enter it.

In you, void of yourself, will He display His beauties.

-Mahmud Shabistari

So it has been a few days of feeling inspired around Turfing… This often happens when I discover new poetry, see a good film, hear some great music… or all of the above. I like the feeling of the event horizon opening up. There are such untapped worlds constantly around us…
A nice weekend, with good people.. (La Familia)… Rowan’s friend Jordan B. came by, they were working on some D&D game for later in the week. Rowan is turning 18 this coming weekend, on the 8th… Our friends Julie and Mike are getting married on his birthday, at 8:00 at night… 80) Really, they are such an excellent couple. I expect a gathering of the clan for this one. We are putting Rowan’s birthday celebration off for a bit so we can drink this one in. Julie has known Rowan since he was 2 years old. The time has flown by so quickly! Mike came into her life a couple of years back, and it is glorious match in my POV. So.. there family’s are coming into town, and it looks like one of those wonderful weekends coming up!
Hope this finds you well, and surrounded by Love,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Minipop

The Cobbler Astrologer – A Persian Tale

The Sacred Poetry Of Sa’d Ud Din Mahmud Shabistari

Do penguins fly?

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MiniPop

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The Cobbler Astrologer

– A Persian Tale
In the great city of Isfahan lived Ahmed the cobbler, an honest and industrious man, whose wish was to pass through life quietly; and he might have done so, had he not married a handsome wife, who, although she had condescended to accept of him as a husband, was far from being contented with his humble sphere of life.
Sittâra, such was the name of Ahmed’s wife, was ever forming foolish schemes of riches and grandeur; and though Ahmed never encouraged them, he was too fond a husband to quarrel with what gave her pleasure. An incredulous smile or a shake of the head was his only answer to her often-told day-dreams; and she continued to persuade herself that she was certainly destined to great fortune.
It happened one evening, while in this temper of mind, that she went to the Hemmâm, where she saw a lady retiring dressed in a magnificent robe, covered with jewels, and surrounded by slaves. This was the very condition Sittâra had always longed for, and she eagerly inquired the name of the happy person who had so many attendants and such fine jewels. She learned it was the wife of the chief astrologer to the king. With this information she returned home. Her husband met her at the door, but was received with a frown, nor could all his caresses obtain a smile or a word; for several hours she continued silent, and in apparent misery. At length she said—
“Cease your caresses, unless you are ready to give me a proof that you do really and sincerely love me.”
“What proof of love,” exclaimed poor Ahmed, “can you desire which I will not give?”
“Give over cobbling; it is a vile, low trade, and never yields more than ten or twelve dinars a day. Turn astrologer! your fortune will be made, and I shall have all I wish, and be happy.”
“Astrologer!” cried Ahmed,—”astrologer! Have you forgotten who I am—a cobbler, without any learning—that you want me to engage in a profession which requires so much skill and knowledge?”
“I neither think nor care about your qualifications,” said the enraged wife; “all I know is, that if you do not turn astrologer immediately I will be divorced from you to-morrow.”
The cobbler remonstrated, but in vain. The figure of the astrologer’s wife, with her jewels and her slaves, had taken complete possession of Sittâra’s imagination. All night it haunted her; she dreamt of nothing else, and on awaking declared she would leave the house if her husband did not comply with her wishes. What could poor Ahmed do? He was no astrologer, but he was dotingly fond of his wife, and he could not bear the idea of losing her. He promised to obey, and, having sold his little stock, bought an astrolabe, an astronomical almanac, and a table of the twelve signs of the zodiac. Furnished with these he went to the market-place, crying, “I am an astrologer! I know the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the twelve signs of the zodiac; I can calculate nativities; I can foretell everything that is to happen!”
No man was better known than Ahmed the cobbler. A crowd soon gathered round him. “What! friend Ahmed,” said one, “have you worked till your head is turned?” “Are you tired of looking down at your last,” cried another, “that you are now looking up at the planets?” These and a thousand other jokes assailed the ears of the poor cobbler, who, notwithstanding, continued to exclaim that he was an astrologer, having resolved on doing what he could to please his beautiful wife.
It so happened that the king’s jeweller was passing by. He was in great distress, having lost the richest ruby belonging to the crown. Every search had been made to recover this inestimable jewel, but to no purpose; and as the jeweller knew he could no longer conceal its loss from the king, he looked forward to death as inevitable. In this hopeless state, while wandering about the town, he reached the crowd around Ahmed and asked what was the matter. “Don’t you know Ahmed the cobbler?” said one of the bystanders, laughing; “he has been inspired, and is become an astrologer.”
A drowning man will catch at a broken reed: the jeweller no sooner heard the sound of the word astrologer, than he went up to Ahmed, told him what had happened, and said, “If you understand your art, you must be able to discover the king’s ruby. Do so, and I will give you two hundred pieces of gold. But if you do not succeed within six hours, I will use all my influence at court to have you put to death as an impostor.”
Poor Ahmed was thunderstruck. He stood long without being able to move or speak, reflecting on his misfortunes, and grieving, above all, that his wife, whom he so loved, had, by her envy and selfishness, brought him to such a fearful alternative. Full of these sad thoughts, he exclaimed aloud, “O woman, woman! thou art more baneful to the happiness of man than the poisonous dragon of the desert!”
The lost ruby had been secreted by the jeweller’s wife, who, disquieted by those alarms which ever attend guilt, sent one of her female slaves to watch her husband. This slave, on seeing her master speak to the astrologer, drew near; and when she heard Ahmed, after some moments of apparent abstraction, compare a woman to a poisonous dragon, she was satisfied that he must know every- thing. She ran to her mistress, and, breathless with fear, cried, “You are discovered, my dear mistress, you are discovered by a vile astrologer. Before six hours are past the whole story will be known, and you will become infamous, if you are even so fortunate as to escape with life, unless you can find some way of prevailing on him to be merciful.” She then related what she had seen and heard; and Ahmed’s exclamation carried as complete conviction to the mind of the terrified mistress as it had done to that of her slave.
The jeweller’s wife, hastily throwing on her veil, went in search of the dreaded astrologer. When she found him, she threw herself at his feet, crying, “Spare my honour and my life, and I will confess everything!”
“What can you have to confess to me?” exclaimed Ahmed in amazement. “Oh, nothing! nothing with which you are not already acquainted. You know too well that I stole the ruby from the king’s crown. I did so to punish my husband, who uses me most cruelly; and I thought by this means to obtain riches for myself, and to have him put to death. But you, most wonderful man, from whom nothing is hidden, have discovered and defeated my wicked plan. I beg only for mercy, and will do whatever you command me.”
An angel from heaven could not have brought more consolation to Ahmed than did the jeweller’s wife. He assumed all the dignified solemnity that became his new character, and said, “Woman! I know all thou hast done, and it is fortunate for thee that thou hast come to confess thy sin and beg for mercy before it was too late. Return to thy house, put the ruby under the pillow of the couch on which thy husband sleeps; let it be laid on the side furthest from the door; and be satisfied thy guilt shall never be even suspected.”
The jeweller’s wife returned home, and did as she was desired. In an hour Ahmed followed her, and told the jeweller he had made his calculations, and found by the aspect of the sun and moon, and by the configuration of the stars, that the ruby was at that moment lying under the pillow of his couch, on the side furthest from the door. The jeweller thought Ahmed must be crazy; but as a ray of hope is like a ray from heaven to the wretched, he ran to his couch, and there, to his joy and wonder, found the ruby in the very place described. He came back to Ahmed, embraced him, called him his 1 dearest friend and the preserver
of his life, and gave him the two hundred pieces of gold, declaring that he was the first astrologer of the age.
These praises conveyed no joy to the poor cobbler, who returned home more thankful to God for his preservation than elated by his good fortune. The moment he entered the door his wife ran up to him and exclaimed, “Well, my dear astrologer! what success?”
“There!” said Ahmed, very gravely,—”there are two hundred pieces of gold. I hope you will be satisfied now, and not ask me again to hazard my life, as I have done this morning.” He then related all that had passed. But the recital made a very different impression on the lady from what these occurrences had made on Ahmed. Sittâra saw nothing but the gold, which would enable her to vie with the chief astrologer’s wife at the Hemmâm. “Courage!” she said, “courage! my dearest husband. This is only your first labour in your new and noble profession. Go on and prosper, and we shall become rich and happy.”
In vain Ahmed remonstrated and represented the danger; she burst into tears, and accused him of not loving her, ending with her usual threat of insisting upon a divorce.
Ahmed’s heart melted, and he agreed to make another trial. Accordingly, next morning he sallied forth with his astrolabe, his twelve signs of the zodiac, and his almanac, exclaiming, as before, “I am an astrologer! I know the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the twelve signs of the zodiac; I can calculate nativities; I can foretell everything that is to happen!” A crowd again gathered round him, but it was now with wonder, and not ridicule; for the story of the ruby had gone abroad, and the voice of fame had converted the poor cobbler Ahmed into the ablest and most learned astrologer that was ever seen at Isfahan.
While everybody was gazing at him, a lady passed by veiled. She was the wife of one of the richest merchants in the city, and had just been at the Hemmâm, where she had lost a valuable necklace and earrings. She was now returning home in great alarm lest her husband should suspect her of having given her jewels to a lover. Seeing the crowd around Ahmed, she asked the reason of their assembling, and was informed of the whole story of the famous astrologer: how he had been a cobbler, was inspired with supernatural knowledge, and could, with the help of his astrolabe, his twelve signs of the zodiac, and his almanac, discover all that ever did or ever would happen in the world. The story of the jeweller and the king’s ruby was then told her, accompanied by a thousand wonderful circumstances which had never occurred. The lady, quite satisfied of his skill, went up to Ahmed and mentioned her loss, saying: “A man of your knowledge and penetration will easily discover my jewels; find them, and I will give you fifty pieces of gold.”
The poor cobbler was quite confounded, and looked down, thinking only how to escape without a public exposure of his ignorance. The lady, in pressing through the crowd, had torn the lower part of her veil. Ahmed’s downcast eyes noticed this; and wishing to inform her of it in a delicate manner, before it was observed by others, he whispered to her, “Lady, look down at the rent.” The lady’s head was full of her loss, and she was at that moment endeavouring to recollect how it could have occurred. Ahmed’s speech brought it at once to her mind, and she exclaimed in delighted surprise: “Stay here a few moments, thou great astrologer. I will return immediately with the reward thou so well deservest.” Saying this, she left him, and soon returned, carrying in one hand the necklace and earrings, and in the other a purse with the fifty pieces of gold. “There is gold for thee,” she said, “thou wonderful man, to whom all the secrets of Nature are revealed! I had quite forgotten where I laid the jewels, and without thee should never have found them. But when thou desiredst me to look at the rent below, I instantly recollected the rent near the bottom of the wall in the bathroom, where, before undressing, I had hid them. I can now go home in peace and comfort; and it is all owing to thee, thou wisest of men!”
After these words she walked away, and Ahmed returned to his home, thankful to Providence for his preservation, and fully resolved never again to tempt it. His handsome wife, however, could not yet rival the chief astrologer’s lady in her appearance at the Hemmâm, so she renewed her entreaties and threats, to make her fond husband continue his career as an astrologer.
About this time it happened that the king’s treasury was robbed of forty chests of gold and jewels, forming the greater part of the wealth of the kingdom. The high treasurer and other officers of state used all diligence to find the thieves, but in vain. The king sent for his astrologer, and declared that if the robbers were not detected by a stated time, he, as well as the principal ministers, should be put to death. Only one day of the short period given them remained. All their search had proved fruitless, and the chief astrologer, who had made his calculations and exhausted his art to no purpose, had quite resigned himself to his fate, when one of his friends advised him to send for the wonderful cobbler, who had become so famous for his extraordinary discoveries. Two slaves were immediately despatched for Ahmed, whom they commanded to go with them to their master. “You see the effects of your ambition,” said the poor cobbler to his wife; “I am going to my death. The king’s astrologer has heard of my presumption, and is determined to have me executed as an impostor.”
On entering the palace of the chief astrologer, he was surprised to see that dignified person come forward to receive him, and lead him to the seat of honour, and not less so to hear himself thus addressed: “The ways of Heaven, most learned and excellent Ahmed, are unsearchable. The high are often cast down, and the low are lifted up. The whole world depends upon fate and fortune. It is my turn now to be depressed by fate; it is thine to be exalted by fortune.”
His speech was here interrupted by a messenger from the king, who, having heard of the cobbler’s fame, desired his attendance. Poor Ahmed now concluded that it was all over with him, and followed the king’s messenger, praying to God that he would deliver him from this peril. When he came into the king’s presence, he bent his body to the ground, and wished his majesty long life and prosperity. “Tell me, Ahmed,” said the king, “who has stolen my treasure?”
“It was not one man,” answered Ahmed, after some consideration; “there were forty thieves concerned in the robbery.”
“Very well,” said the king; “but who were they? and what have they done with my gold and jewels?”
“These questions,” said Ahmed, “I cannot now answer; but I hope to satisfy your Majesty, if you will grant me forty days to make my calculations.”
“I grant you forty days,” said the king; “but when they are past, if my treasure is not found, your life shall pay the forfeit.”
Ahmed returned to his house well pleased; for he resolved to take advantage of the time allowed him to fly from a city where his fame was likely to be his ruin.
“Well, Ahmed,” said his wife, as he entered, “what news at Court?”
“No news at all,” said he, “except that I am to be put to death at the end of forty days, unless I find forty chests of gold and jewels which have been stolen from the royal treasury.”
“But you will discover the thieves.”
“How? By what means am I to find them?”
“By the same art which discovered the ruby and the lady’s necklace.”
“The same art!” replied Ahmed. “Foolish woman!
thou knowest that I have no art, and that I have only pretended to it for the sake of pleasing thee. But I have had sufficient skill to gain forty days, during which time we may easily escape to some other city; and with the money I now possess, and the aid of my former occupation, we may still obtain an honest livelihood.”
“An honest livelihood!” repeated his lady, with scorn. “Will thy cobbling, thou mean, spiritless wretch, ever enable me to go to the Hemmâm like the wife of the chief astrologer I Hear me, Ahmed! Think only of discovering the king’s treasure. Thou hast just as good a chance of doing so as thou hadst of finding the ruby, and the necklace and earrings.
At all events, I am determined thou shalt not escape; and shouldst thou attempt to run away, I will inform the king’s officers, and have thee taken up and put to death, even before the forty days are expired. Thou knowest me too well, Ahmed, to doubt my keeping my word. So take courage, and endeavour to make thy fortune, and to place me in that rank of life to which my beauty entitles me.”
The poor cobbler was dismayed at this speech; but knowing there was no hope of changing his wife’s resolution, he resigned himself to his fate. “Well,” said he, “your will shall be obeyed. All I desire is to pass the few remaining days of my life as comfortably as I can. You know I am no scholar, and have little skill in reckoning; so there are forty dates: give me one of them every night after I have said my prayers, that I may put them in a jar, and, by counting them may always see how many of the few days I have to live are gone.”
The lady, pleased at carrying her point, took the dates, and promised to be punctual in doing what her husband desired.
Meanwhile the thieves who had stolen the king’s treasure, having been kept from leaving the city by fear of detection and pursuit, had received accurate information of every measure taken to discover them. One of them was among the crowd before the palace on the day the king sent for Ahmed; and hearing that the cobbler had immediately declared their exact number, he ran in a fright to his comrades, and exclaimed, “We are all found out! Ahmed, the new astrologer, has told the king that there are forty of us.”
“There needed no astrologer to tell that,” said the captain of the gang. “This Ahmed, with all his simple good-nature, is a shrewd fellow. Forty chests having been stolen, he naturally guessed that there must be forty thieves, and he has made a good hit, that is all; still it is prudent to watch him, for he certainly has made some strange discoveries. One of us must go to-night, after dark, to the terrace of this cobbler’s house, and listen to his conversation with his handsome wife; for he is said to be very fond of her, and will, no doubt, tell her what success he has had in his endeavours to detect us.”
Everybody approved of this scheme; and soon after nightfall one of the thieves repaired to the terrace. He arrived there just as the cobbler had finished his evening prayers, and his wife was giving him the first date. “Ah!” said Ahmed, as he took it, “there is one of the forty.”
The thief, hearing these words, hastened in consternation to the gang, and told them that the moment he took his post he had been perceived by the supernatural knowledge of Ahmed, who immediately told his wife that one of them was there. The spy’s tale was not believed by his hardened companions; something was imputed to his fears; he might have been mistaken;—in short, it was determined to send two men the next night at the same hour. They reached the house just as Ahmed, having finished his prayers, had received the second date, and heard him exclaim, “My dear wife, to-night there are two of them!”
The astonished thieves fled, and told their still incredulous comrades what they had heard. Three men were consequently sent the third night, four the fourth, and so on. Being afraid of venturing during the day, they always came as evening closed in, and just as Ahmed was receiving his date, hence they all in turn heard him say that which convinced them he was aware of their presence. On the last night they all went, and Ahmed exclaimed aloud, “The number is complete! To-night the whole forty are here!”
All doubts were now removed. It was impossible that Ahmed should have discovered them by any natural means. How could he ascertain their exact number? and night after night, without ever once being mistaken? He must have learnt it by his skill in astrology. Even the captain now yielded, in spite of his incredulity, and declared his opinion that it was hopeless to elude a man thus gifted; he therefore advised that they should make a friend of the cobbler, by confessing everything to him, and bribing him to secrecy by a share of the booty.
His advice was approved of, and an hour before dawn they knocked at Ahmed’s door. The poor man jumped out of bed, and supposing the soldiers were come to lead him to execution, cried out, “Have patience! I know what you are come for. It is a very unjust and wicked deed.”
“Most wonderful man!” said the captain, as the door was opened, “we are fully convinced that thou knowest why we are come, nor do we mean to justify the action of which thou speakest. Here are two thousand pieces of gold, which we will give thee, provided thou wilt swear to say nothing more about the matter.”
“Say nothing about it!” said Ahmed. “Do you think it possible I can suffer such gross wrong and injustice without complaining, and making it known to all the world?”
“Have mercy upon us!” exclaimed the thieves, falling on their knees; “only spare our lives, and we will restore the royal treasure.”
The cobbler started, rubbed his eyes to see if he were asleep or awake; and being satisfied that he was awake, and that the men before him were really the thieves, he assumed a solemn tone, and said: “Guilty men! ye are persuaded that ye cannot escape from my penetration, which reaches unto the sun and moon, and knows the position and aspect of

every star in the heavens. Your timely repentance has saved you. But ye must immediately restore all that ye have stolen. Go straightway, and carry the forty chests exactly as ye found them, and bury them a foot deep under the southern wall of the old ruined Hemmâm, beyond the king’s palace. If ye do this punctually, your lives are spared; but if ye fail in the slightest degree, destruction will fall upon you and your families.”
The thieves promised obedience to his commands and departed. Ahmed then fell on his knees, and returned thanks to God for this signal mark of his favour. About two hours after the royal guards came, and desired Ahmed to follow them. He said he would attend them as soon as he had taken leave of his wife, to whom he determined not to impart what had occurred until he saw the result. He bade her farewell very affectionately; she supported herself with great fortitude on this trying occasion, exhorting her husband to be of good cheer, and said a few words about the goodness of Providence. But the fact was, Sittâra fancied that if God took the worthy cobbler to himself, her beauty might attract some rich lover, who would enable her to go to the Hemmâm with as much splendour as the astrologer’s lady, whose image, adorned with jewels and fine clothes, and surrounded by slaves, still haunted her imagination.
The decrees of Heaven are just: a reward suited to their merits awaited Ahmed and his wife. The good man stood with a cheerful countenance before the king, who was impatient for his arrival, and immediately said, “Ahmed, thy looks are promising; hast thou discovered my treasure?”
“Does your Majesty require the thieves or the treasure? The stars will only grant one or the other,” said Ahmed, looking at his table of astrological calculations. “Your Majesty must make your choice. I can deliver up either, but not both.”
“I should be sorry not to punish the thieves,” answered the king; “but if it must be so, I choose the treasure.”
“And you give the thieves a full and free pardon?”
“I do, provided I find my treasure untouched.”
“Then,” said Ahmed, “if your majesty will follow me, the treasure shall be restored to you.”

The king and all his nobles followed the cobbler to the ruins of the old Hemmâm. There, casting his eyes towards heaven, Ahmed muttered some sounds, which were supposed by the spectators to be magical conjurations, but which were in reality the prayers and thanksgivings of a sincere and pious heart to God for his wonderful deliverance. When his prayer was finished, he pointed to the southern wall, and requested that his majesty would order his attendants to dig there. The work was hardly begun, when the whole forty chests were found in the same state as when stolen, with the treasurer’s seal upon them still unbroken.
The king’s joy knew no bounds; he embraced Ahmed, and immediately appointed him his chief astrologer, assigned to him an apartment in the palace, and declared that he should marry his only daughter, as it was his duty to promote the man whom God had so singularly favoured, and had made instrumental in restoring the treasures of his kingdom. The young princess, who was more beautiful than the moon, was not dissatisfied with her father’s choice; for her mind was stored with religion and virtue, and she had learnt to value beyond all earthly qualities that piety and learning which she believed Ahmed to possess. The royal will was carried into execution as soon as formed. The wheel of fortune had taken a complete turn. The morning had found Ahmed in a wretched hovel, rising from a sorry bed, in the expectation of losing his life; in the evening he was the lord of a rich palace, and married to the only daughter of a powerful king. But this change did not alter his character. As he had been meek and humble in adversity, he was modest and gentle in prosperity. Conscious of his own ignorance, he continued to ascribe his good fortune solely to the favour of Providence. He became daily more attached to the beautiful and virtuous princess whom he had married; and he could not help contrasting her character with that of his former wife, whom he had ceased to love, and of whose unreasonable and unfeeling vanity he was now fully sensible.

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The Sacred Poetry Of Sa’d Ud Din Mahmud Shabistari

The Spilled Cup
The Universe: His wine cellar;

The atom’s heart: His measuring cup.

Intellect is drunk, earth drunk, sky drunk

heaven perplexed with Him, restlessly seeking,

Love in its heart, hoping at least

for a single whiff of the fragrance

of that wine, that clear wine the angels drank

from that immaterial pot, a sip of the dregs,

the rest poured out upon the dust:

one sip, and the Elements whirl in drunken dance

falling now into water, now in blazing fire.

And from the smell of that spilled cup

man rises from the dust and soars to heaven.

—-

The Beloved Guest (from The Secret Rose Garden)
Cast away your existence entirely,

for it is nothing but weeds and refuse.

Go, clear out your heart’s chamber;

arrange it as the abiding-place of the Beloved.

When you go forth, He will come in,

and to you, with self discarded,

He will unveil His beauty.

—-

The Tavern Haunters
Being a tavern haunter means

Being sprung free of yourself.
The tavern is where lovers tryst,

Where the bird of the soul comes to rest

In a sanctuary beyond space and time.

The tavern haunter wanders lonely in a desert

And sees the whole world as a mirage.

The desert is limitless and endless –

No one has seen its beginning or its end,

And even if you wandered in it a hundred years

You would not find yourself, or anyone else.

Those who live there have no feet or heads,

Are neither “believers” nor “unbelievers.”

Drunk on the wine of selflessness,

They have given up good and evil alike.

Drunk, without lips or mouth, on Truth

They have thrown away all thoughts of name and fame,

All talk of wonders, visions, spiritual states,

Dreams, secret rooms, lights, miracles.
The aroma of the Divine Wine

Has made them abandon everything;

The taste for Annihilation

Has sent them all sprawling like drunkards.

For one sip of the wine of ecstasy,

They ahve thrown away pilgrim staff, water jar, and rosary.

They fall, and then they rise again,

Sometimes bright in union,

Sometimes lost in the pain of separation;

Now pouring tears of blood,

Now raised to a world of bliss,

Stretching out their necks like racers;

Now, with blackened faces, staring at a wall,

Or faces reddened with Unity, chained to a gibbet;

Now whirling in mystic dance,

Lost in the arms of the Beloved,

Losing head and foot like the revolving heavens.

Every passage that the Singer sings them

Transmits the rapture of the invisible world,

For mystic singing is not only words and sounds;

Each note unveils a priceless mystery.
They have thrown away their senses

And run from all color and perfume,

And washed in purified wine

All the different dyes: black, green, or blue.

To them, devotion and piety are only hypocrisy;

They are weary of being either masters or disciples;

They have swept the dust of dunghills from their souls,

Without telling even a tiny part of what they see,

And grasped in bliss at the swirling robes of drunkards.

They have drunk one cup of the pure wine

And have become — at last, at long last — real Sufis.

—-

The Wine of Rapture (from The Secret Rose Garden)
The wine, lit by a ray from his face,

reveals the bubbles of form,

such as the material world and the soul-world,

which appear as veils to the saints.

Universal Reason seeing this is astounded,

Universal Soul is reduced to servitude.
Drink wine! for the bowl is the face of the Friend.

Drink wine! for the cup is his eye, drunken and flown with wine.

Drink wine! and be free from cold-heartedness,

for a drunkard is better than the self-satisfied.
The world is his tavern,

his wine-cup the heart of each atom;

reason is drunken, angels drunken, soul drunken,

air drunken, earth drunken, heaven drunken.
The sky, dizzy with the wine-fumes’ aroma,

is staggering to and fro;

the angels, sipping pure wine from goblets,

pour down the dregs to the world.

From the scent of these dregs man rises to heaven.

Inebriated from the draft, the elements

fall into water and fire.

Catching the reflection, the frail body becomes soul,

And the frozen soul by its heat

thaws and becomes living.

The creature world becomes giddy,

forever straying from house and home.
One from the dregs’ odor becomes a philosopher.

One viewing the wine’s color becomes a relater.

One from half a draft becomes religious.

One from a bowlful becomes a lover.

Another swallows at one draught

goblet, tavern, cupbearer, and drunkards;

he swallows all, but still his mouth stays open.

—-

One Light
What are “I” and “You”?

Just lattices

In the niches of a lamp

Through which the One Light radiates.
“I” and “You” are the veil

Between heaven and earth;

Lift this veil and you will see

How all sects and religions are one.
Lift this veil and you will ask –

When “I” and “You” do not exist

What is mosque?

What is synagogue?

What is fire temple?

———–

Shabistari’s Secret Rose Garden (the Gulistan-i Raz, which can also be translated as The Rose Garden of Mystery) is considered to be one of the greatest works of Persian Sufism.
Mahmud Shabistari lived in Persia (Iran) during the time of the Mongol invasions of the region. It was a time of massacres and religious sectarianism. Yet it is also during this time that the Golden Age of Persian Sufism emerged.
In the Secret Rose Garden, Shabistari expresses a viewpoint of Sufi realization similar to the perspective of the great Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi, but expressed through the rich Persian poetic tradition.
The value of Shabistari’s work was recognized almost immediately. Many commentaries on the work by other Sufi mystics soon began to appear. The Secret Rose Garden quickly was regarded as one of the central works of Sufism.

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Do penguins fly?

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“If you lose all differentiation between yourselves and others,

fit to serve others you will be.

And when in serving others you will win success,

then shall you meet with me;

And finding me, you shall attain to Buddhahood.”

– Milarepa

A Beautiful day, before the scorchers coming…. low lying clouds over Portland, cool breezes. A strange summer. The weather goes up and down. The plants and the bees are all confused.
There are some notable contributions today, from Scott Taylor ‘Hiroshima Peace Bell Commemoration’ and from Victoria ‘Radiohead – The Rip’… Victoria’s contribution ended up with this wildly divergent stream. Somehow, I went from Radiohead, to Milarepa. I don’t remember how it quite happened, but happened it did.
If you get a chance, give Radio Free Earthrites a listen! Nice stuff on there today.
Well, I hope this finds you well. I know that this is one of those massive entries, but it was all cherry-picked with love!
Enjoy!
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Hiroshima Peace Bell Commemoration

Portishead: The Rip

Rebirth of the Bodhisatta

Two Novel Short Films: ‘Doll Face’ & ‘Fluxis’

The Poems of Milarepa

Milarepa Biography

Milarepa – The Movie!

Radiohead – The Rip (Portishead cover) (Thanks Victoria!)

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From Scott Taylor in Australia…

Hiroshima Peace Bell Commemoration

Hello Friends of Peace,
Sixty three years ago on August 5th, 1945 at 5:15 in the afternoon, (New Mexico time), a B17 bomber flew over Hiroshima, Japan, carrying a payload that had originated in Los Alamos. It was August 6th in Hiroshima at 8:15 in the morning. The whole city had spent anxious hours in bomb shelters the night before – an air raid. It had been a false alarm. The relieved people had returned home to sleep out the night. They had awakened to a beautiful clear day. At 8:15 many were on the way to work. Children were in schools. My friend Takashi Tannemori was playing hide-and-go-seek with his classmates when the single B17 bomber released its payload. A parachute opened. Blithely it floated down. People on the street noted the plane and the parachute, but were not overly concerned. Suddenly the “Pikadon” flashed. A excruciating blinding light was followed by an enormous explosion beyond anyone’s experience or imagination. The horrors of human suffering that ensued were unspeakable and are enduring.
Every year, in Hiroshima Japan at 8:15 in the morning of August 6th, people of Hiroshima have been ringing a Peace Bell, sending out their fervent prayer for the end of war – all war. They knew that life on Earth would be annihilated in any war with weapons such as these. This particularly human dilemma can be only solved by the creation of a world where humans use words instead of weapons; where kindness and compassion for all beings are prevailing human values. Only by evolving human consciousness will war become obsolete.
In Santa Fe, on the 60th year since the bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, we unified Santa Fe with the Hiroshima with a satellite link up. We rang bells for peace simultaneous with the Peace Bell in Hiroshima. Churches all over Northern New Mexico also rang their bells. That evening the radio news programs stopped with a minute of silence. We have continued this practice of ringing bells and sending prayers on August 5th at 5:15 PM, ever since.
On Tuesday, August 5th, at 5:00 PM you are invited to come to the Tree of Peace at the Capitol Round House (Santa Fe – New Mexico) – to the Annual Hiroshima Day Peace Bell Commemoration. You are invited to participate with a ceremony – ringing a Shinto shrine bell at 5:15 – creating a prayer bridge with the Japanese people. You are invited to bring a heart stone to join the other heart stones around our Tree of Peace that was planted as part of the Hiroshima Peace Bell commemoration a few years ago. You are invited to also bring prayers, songs, poems, your words to share, and mostly your intention to find your own way to be an ever greater vehicle for the realization of world peace.
And you are invited to empower the prayer bridge from wherever you are – to encourage your places of worship to ring their bells – to gather with friends and include young people to remember this horrific moment in human history – and to make your commitments to engage in peace processes of all kinds on all levels of culture for the future of our precious blue planet.
The wisdom and the prayers of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers and Corbin Harney, the spiritual leader of the Western Shoshone people (on whose land is the Nevada Test Site), have inspired in me a deepening commitment to the practice of and belief in the power of prayer. Corbin passed away last year.
May Peace Prevail,

Shannyn
If any of you ceremonialists would like to participate in the creation of this year’s ceremony, please do contact me (info below).
Please Disseminate Widely All Over the World
For a different view of the history of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima than what you learned about in school: Los Alamos Peace Project

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Mankind must put an end to war,

or war will put an end to mankind…

John F. Kennedy

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PAX

Promote the Abrogation of Xenophobia

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Los Alamos Peace Project

www.LosAlamosPeaceProject.us

PO Box 9509

Santa Fe, NM 87504

Telefax (505) 989-4482

peace@losalamospeaceproject.us

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Portishead: The Rip

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Rebirth of the Bodhisatta

Once upon a time in the city of Mathila, there was a king who had two sons. The older one was named Badfruit, and his younger brother was called Poorfruit.
While they were still fairly young, the king made his older son the crown prince. He was second in command and next in line to the throne. Prince Poorfruit became commander of the army.
Eventually the old king died and Prince Badfruit became the new king. Then his brother became crown prince.
Before long, a certain servant took a disliking to Crown Prince Poorfruit. He went to King Badfruit and told a lie – that his brother was planning to kill him. At first the king did not believe him. But after the servant kept repeating the lie, the king became frightened. So he had Prince Poorfruit put in chains and locked up in the palace dungeon.
The prince thought, “I am a righteous man was does not deserve these chains. I never wanted to kill my brother. I wasn’t even angry at him. So now I call on the power of Truth. If what I say is true, may these chains fall off and the dungeon doors be opened!” Miraculously the chains broke in pieces, the door opened, and the prince fled to an outlying village. The people there recognised him. Since they respected him `they helped him, and the king was unable to capture him.
Even though he lived in hiding, the crown prince became the master of the entire remote region. In time he raised a large army. He thought, “Although I was not an enemy to my brother at first, I must be an enemy to him now.” So he took his army and surrounded the city of Mithila.
He sent a message to king Badfruit – “I was not your enemy, but you have made me so. Therefore I have come to wage war against you. I give you a choice – either give me your crown and kingdom, or come out and fight.” Hearing of this, most of the city people went out and joined the prince.
King Badfruit decided to wage war. He would do anything to keep his power. Before going out with his army, he went to say goodbye to his number one queen. She was expecting a baby very soon. He said to her “My love, no one knows who will win this war. Therefore, if I die you must protect the child inside you.” Then he bravely went off to war and was quickly killed by the soldiers of his enemy brother.
The news of the king’s death spread through the city. The queen disguised herself as a poor dirty homeless person. She put on old rags for clothes and smeared dirt on herself. She put some of the king’s gold and her own most precious jewellery into a basket. She covered these with dirty rice that no one would want to steal. Then she left the city by the northern gate. Since she had always lived inside the city, the queen had no idea where to go from there. She had heard of a city called Campa. She sat down at the side of the road and began asking if anyone was going to Campa.
It just so happened that the one who was about to be born was no ordinary baby. This was not his first life or his first birth. Millions of years before, he had been a follower of a long-forgotten teaching “Buddha” – a fully “Enlightened One”. He had wished with all his heart to become a Buddha just like his beloved master.
He was reborn in many lives – sometimes as poor animals, sometimes as long-living gods and sometimes as human beings. He always tried to learn from his mistakes and develop the “Ten Perfections”. This was so he could purify his mind and remove the three root causes of unwholesomeness – the poisons of craving, anger and the delusion of a separate self. By using the perfections, he would some day be able to replace the poisons with the three purities – non-attachment, loving-kindness and wisdom.
This “Great Being” had been a humble follower of the forgotten Buddha. He goal was to gain the same enlightenment of a Buddha – the experience of complete Truth. So people call him “Bodhisatta”, which mans “Enlightenment Being”. No one really knows about the millions of lives lived by this great hero. But many stories have been told – including this one about a pregnant queen who was about to give birth to him. After many more rebirths, he became the Buddha who is remembered and loved in all the world today.
At the time of our story, the Enlightenment Being had already achieved the Ten Perfections. So the glory of his coming birth caused a trembling in all the heaven worlds, including the Heaven of 33 ruled by King Sakka. When he felt the trembling, being a god he knows it was caused by the unborn babe inside the disguised Queen of Mithila. And he knew this must be a being of great merit, so he decided to go and help out.
King Sakka made a covered carriage with a bed in it, and appeared at the roadside in front of the pregnant queen. He looked just like an ordinary old man. He called out, “Does anyone need a ride to Campa?” The homeless queen answered, “I wish to go there, kind sir.” “Come with me then,: the old man said.
Since the birth was not far off, the pregnant queen was quite large. She said, “I cannot climb up into your carriage. Simply carry my basket and I will walk behind.” The old man, the king of the gods, replied, “Never mind! Never Mind! I am the cleverest driver around. So don’t worry. Just step into my cart!”
Lo and behold, as she lifted her foot, King Sakka magically caused the ground under her to rise up! So she easily stepped down into the carriage. Immediately she knew this must be a god, and fell fast asleep.
Sakka drove the cart until he came to a river. Then he awakened the lady and said, “Wake up, daughter, and bathe in this river. Dress yourself in this fine clothing I have brought you. Then eat a packet of rice.” She obeyed him, and then lay downs and slept some more.
In the evening she awoke and saw tall houses and walls. She asked, “What is this city, father?” He said, “This is Campa.” King Sakka replied, “I took a short cut. Now that we are at the southern gate of the city, you may safely enter in. I must go on to my own far-off village.” So they parted and Sakka disappeared in the distance, returning to his heaven world.
The queen entered the city and sat down at an inn. There happened to be a wise man living in Campa. He recited spells and gave advice to help people who were sick or unfortunate. While on his way to bathe in the river with 500 followers, he was the beautiful queen from a distance. The great goodness of the unborn one within gave her a soft warm glow, which only the wise man noticed. At once he felt a kind and gentle liking for her, just as if where were his own youngest sister. So he left his followers outside and went into the inn.
He asked her, “Sister, what village are you from?” She replied, “I am the number one queen of King Badfruit of Mithila.”
He asked, “Then why did you come here?” “My husband was killed by the army of his brother, Prince Poorfruit,” she said. “I was afraid , so I ran away to protect the unborn one within me.” The wise man asked, “Do you have any relatives in this city?” She said, “No sir.” Then he said, “Dont worry at all. I was born in a rich family and I myself am rich. I will care for you just as I would for my own young sister. Now you must call me brother and grab hold of my feet and cry out.”
When she did this, the followers came inside. The wise man explained to them that she was his long lost youngest sister. He told his closest followers to take her to his home in a covered cart. He told them to tell his wife that this was his sister, who was to be cared for.
They did exactly as he had said.
The wife welcomed her, gave her a hot bath, and made her rest in bed.
After bathing in the river the wise man returned home. At dinnertime he asked his sister to join them. After dinner he invited her to stay in his home.
In only a few days the queen gave birth to a wonderful little baby boy. She named him fruitful. She told the wise man this was the name of the boy’s grandfather, who had one been King of Mithila.

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Two Novel Short Films:

A study on Desire…
Doll Face

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Fluxis

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Milarepa Quotes:
“The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation.”
“Hasten slowly and ye shall soon arrive.”
“Though you youngsters of the new qeneration dwell in towns infested with deceitful fate, the link of truth still remains.”
‘Veiled by ignorance,

The minds of man and Buddha

Appear to be different;

Yet in the realm of Mind Essence

They are both of one taste.

Sometimes they will meet each other

In the great Dharmadhatu.’

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The Poems of Milarepa
According to a blessing Milarepa uttered towards the end of his life, anyone who but hears the name Milarepa even once attracts an instant blessing and will not take rebirth in a lower state of existence during seven consecutive lifetimes. This was prophesied by Saints and Buddhas of the past even before his lifetime.

The Song on Reaching the Mountain Peak
Hearken, my sons! If you want

To climb the mountain peak

You should hold the Self-mind’s light,

Tie it with a great “Knot,”

And catch it with a firm “Hook.”

If you practice thus

You can climb the mountain peak

To enjoy the view.
Come, you gifted men and women,

Drink the brew of Experience!

Come “inside” to enjoy the scene –

See it and enjoy it to the full!

The Incapable remain outside;

Those who cannot drink pure

Beer may quaff small beer.

He who cannot strive for Bodhi,

Should strive for superior birth.

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I Have Forgotten
May I be far removed from contending creeds and dogmas.

Ever since my Lord’s grace entered my mind,

My mind has never strayed to seek such distractions.

Accustomed long to contemplating love and compassion,

I have forgotten all difference between myself and others.
Accustomed long to meditating on my Guru as enhaloed over my head,

I have forgotten all those who rule by power and prestige.

Accustomed long to meditating on my guardian deities as inseparable from myself,

I have forgotten the lowly fleshly form.

Accustomed long to meditating on the secret whispered truths,

I have forgotten all that is said in written or printed books.

Accustomed, as I have been, to the study of the eternal Truth,

I’ve lost all knowledge of ignorance.
Accustomed, as I’ve been, to contemplating both nirvana and samsara as inherent in myself,

I have forgotten to think of hope and fear.

Accustomed, as I’ve been, to meditating on this life and the next as one,

I have forgotten the dread of birth and death.

Accustomed long to studying, by myself, my own experiences,

I have forgotten the need to seek the opinions of friends and brethren.

Accustomed long to applying each new experience to my own spiritual growth,

I have forgotten all creeds and dogmas.
Accustomed long to meditating on the Unborn, the Indestructible, the Unchanging,

I have forgotten all definitions of this or that particular goal.

Accustomed long to meditating on all visible phenomena as the Dharmakaya,

I have forgotten all meditations on what is produced by the mind.

Accustomed long to keeping my mind in the uncreated state of freedom,

I have forgotten all conventions and artificialities.
Accustomed long to humbleness, of body and mind,

I have forgotten the pride and haughty manner of the mighty.

Accustomed long to regarding my fleshly body as my hermitage,

I have forgotten the ease and comfort of retreats and monasteries.

Accustomed long to knowing the meaning of the Wordless,

I have forgotten the way to trace the roots of verbs, and the

sources of words and phrases.

You, 0 learned one, may trace out these things in your books…

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Upon this earth
Upon this earth, the land of the Victorious Ones,

Once lived a Saint, known as the second Buddha;

His fame was heard in all the Ten Directions.

To Him, the Jewel a’top the eternal Banner of Dharma

I pay homage and give offerings.

Is He not the holy Master, the great Midripa?
Upon the Lotus-seat of Midripa

My Father Guru places his reliance;

He drinks heavenly nectar

With the supreme view of Mahamudra;

He has realized the innate Truth in utter freedom.

He is the supreme one, Jetsun Marpa.

Undefiled by faults or vices,

He is the Transformation Body of Buddha.
He says: “Before Enlightenment,

All things in the outer world

Are deceptive and confusing;

Clinging to outer forms,

One is ever thus entangled.

After Enlightenment, one sees all things and objects

As but magic shadow-plays,

And all objective things

Become his helpful friends.

In the uncreated Dharmakaya all are pure;

Nothing has ever manifested

In the Realm of Ultimate Truth.”
He says: “Before Enlightenment,

The ever-running Mind-consciousness within

Is shut in a confusing blindness

Which is the source of passions, actions, and desires.

After Enlightenment, it becomes the

Self-illuminating Wisdom –

All merits and virtues spring from it.

In Ultimate Truth there is not even Wisdom;

Here one enters the Realm where Dharma is exhausted.”
The coproreal form

Is built of the Four Elements;

Before one attains Enlightenment,

All illness and all suffering come from it.

After Enlightenment, it becomes the two-in-one Body

Of Buddha clear as the cloudless firmament!

Thus rooted out are the base Samsaric clingings.

In Absolute Truth there is no body.
The malignant male and femal demons

Who create myriad troubles and obstructions,

Seem real before one has Enlightenment;

But when one realizes their nature truly,

They become Protectors of the Dharma,

And by their help and freely-given assistance

One attains to numerous accomplishments.
In Ultimate Truth there are no Buddhas and no demons;

One enters here the Realm where Dharma is exhausted.

Among all Vehicles, this ultimate teaching

Is found only in the Tantras.

It says in the Highest Division of the Tantra:

“When the various elements gather in the Nadis,

One sees the demon-forms appear.

If one knows not that they are but mind-created

Visions, and deems them to be real,

One is indeed most foolish and most stupid.”
In time past, wrapped up in clinging blindness,

I lingered in the den of confusion,

Deeming benevolent deities and malignant

Demons to be real and subsistent.

Now, through the Holy One’s grace and blessing

I realize that both Samsara and Nirvana

Are neither existent nor non-existent;

And I see all forms as Mahamudra.
Realizing the groundless nature of ignorance,

My former awareness, clouded and unstable

Like reflections of the moon in rippling water,

Becomes transparent, clear as shining crystal.

Its sun-like brilliance is free from obscuring clouds,

Its light transcends all forms of blindness,

Ignorance and confusion thus vanish without trace.

This is the truth I have experienced within.
Again, the foolish concept “demons” itself

Is groundless, void, and yet illuminating!

Oh, this indeed is marvelous and wonderful!

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Response to a Logician
I bow at the feet of my teacher Marpa.

And sing this song in response to you.

Listen, pay heed to what I say,

forget your critique for a while.
The best seeing is the way of “nonseeing” –

the radiance of the mind itself.

The best prize is what cannot be looked for –

the priceless treasure of the mind itself.
The most nourishing food is “noneating” –

the transcendent food of samadhi.

The most thirst-quenching drink is “nondrinking” –

the nectar of heartfelt compassion.
Oh, this self-realizing awareness

is beyond words and description!

The mind is not the world of children,

nor is it that of logicians.
Attaining the truth of “nonattainment,”

you receive the highest initiation.

Perceiving the void of high and low,

you reach the sublime stage.
Approaching the truth of “nonmovement,”

you follow the supreme path.

Knowing the end of birth and death,

the ultimate purpose is fulfilled.
Seeing the emptiness of reason,

supreme logic is perfected.

When you know that great and small are groundless,

you have entered the highest gateway.
Comprehending beyond good and evil

opens the way to perfect skill.

Experiencing the dissolution of duality,

you embrace the highest view.
Observing the truth of “nonobservation”

opens the way to meditating.

Comprehending beyond “ought” and “oughtn’t”

opens the way to perfect action.
When you realize the truth of “noneffort,”

you are approaching the highest fruition.

Ignorant are those who lack this truth:

arrogant teachers inflated by learning,

scholars bewitched by mere words,

and yogis seduced by prejudice.

For though they yearn for freedom,

they find only enslavement.

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Not out yet on DVD… but I am excited to see this!

Milarepa – The Movie!

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Milarepa Biography
Milarepa (often referred to as Jetsun Milarepa, meaning Milarepa the Revered One) is the central figure of early Tibetan Buddhism. He was a Buddhist saint, a yogi, a sorceror, a trickster, a wanderer, and a poet. He is both folk hero and cultural preceptor, the embodiment of the ideal in Tibetan Buddhism.
The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, an extensive collection of stories and poetry from the life of Milarepa, is a central text of popular Tibetan Buddhism, comparable to the Bhagavad Gita in Hinduism and the New Testament within Christianity. His life stories and poetry are read devoutly even today to inspire determination in meditation and spiritual pracitce.
Milarepa’s father died when he was still a boy, and the land that should have passed to him was seized by relatives who treated the young Milarepa and his mother and sister as slaves. After several years of this cruelty and hard labor, Milarepa’s mother convinced the teenaged boy to study magic with a local sorceror in order to take revenge on their relatives. Milarepa was so successful in this purpose that, it is said, a great hailstorm occured, destorying the house during a wedding ceremony, killing several members of the family. In the aftermath of this incident, Milarepa felt such guilt for his actions that he vowed to cleanse himself of the evil karma he had accumulated.
In his search for a pure spiritual teacher, Milarepa eventually met his guru, the Buddhist yogi and translator, Marpa, who was himself a disciple of the famous Indian Buddhist master Naropa. Marpa, seeing Milarepa’s great potential mixed with dark karma, put Milarepa through many years of severe trials and tests before he would formally accept Milarepa as a student.
Milarepa then spent several years meditating in seclusion in remote mountain caves, struggling, at times, against the demonic forces of the mind, until he achieved the ultimate enlightenment.
Rejecting the formalism of religious position and the endless squabbles of theological discourse, he adopted the life of a mendicant, travelling from village to village, speaking directly with the people he met, singing spontaneous songs of enlightenment and wisdom.
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Thanks to Victoria for this!

Radiohead – The Rip (Portishead cover)

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summer evening –

through the open window

an old song

Alan Spence – Seasons of the Heart

Books I am currently reading, or on the table awaiting their turn:

The Drunken Universe

Purity of Blood

The Gary Snyder Reader

A Druids Herbal of Sacred Tree Medicine

and last but not least:

Inner Paths To Outer Space
A couple of these are for review for The Invisible College, and a few others are for pure pleasure (Gary Snyder & Purity of Blood)
I want more TIME! 8o)
Lots of good stuff on this entry… mainly focused on Scotland, and some of its deep traditions. Having lived with a Scot for the last 30 years has given me a deep respect for dear Scotland. A sizable chunk of my family’s background originated there, and everytime I visit, it is a wonderful renewal. Soonish I hope.

Off to help a friend move some computer gear, and then to work for a few hours.
Enjoy the weekend!
Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Links

Devendra Banhart – Carmensita

FAIRIES – From ‘Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland’

Scottish Mystics: The Poetry of Alan Spence

Devendra Banhart – Little Yellow Spider

Art: John Duncan

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The Links:

Click On ‘Channel Hop’ much thanks to Peter for this!

Freaks… yeah, Freaks, the movie from the 30′s

Restoring Ethiopia’s great obelisk

Ancient Stone Carvings Rediscovered…

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Devendra Banhart – Carmensita

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FAIRIES – From ‘Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland’

The belief in fairies was all but universal. Some imagined them to be fallen angels, whose sin was not so great as theirs who were cast into the bottomless pit. They were believed to dwell inside green sunny hillocks and knolls, beside a river, a stream, or a lake, or by the sea-braes, in gorgeous palaces furnished with everything that was bright and beautiful. They had wells, too, called “fairy wells.” All that paid a visit to such wells left something in them–a pin, a button. Such wells seem to have been different from those having a curative power.
The fairies were under the rule of a queen. Commonly they appeared to man as men and women of small stature, dressed in green.
The name of fairy was not pleasing to them, and men spoke of them as “the fair folk,” or “the gueede neebours.” They were not ill-disposed towards men. Still they were inclined to be frolicsome towards them and to tease them, and there was need to guard against their frolic and trick. One sovereign guard against their power, in every form, was a stone arrow–”a fairy dairt” or “elf-shot”–which must be kept under lock and key.
If a dwelling-house had unluckily been built on a spot inhabited by the fairies, its inmates were liable to much annoyance from them. In such a house, their favourite time of coming forth was in the gloamin, when the inmates were quietly seated round the blazing hearth, before the lamp was lighted for the evening’s work. In that still hour, sometimes, if the spinning-wheel was not in use at the fireside, and the driving-band had not been taken off the wheel the sound of it going fast and furious was heard, and at other times, if one had peered round without the least noise, the eye caught the merry creatures frolicking on the floor, or over the furniture, peeping into this dish and into that, into this nook and into that. If the inmates had to leave the house and shut the door in the quiet gloaming for a time, “the fair folk” came forth in all their glee, and gave themselves to all kinds of noise-making. If the door was opened quickly and quietly they were seen scampering off in all directions–to the rafters, to the garret, up the “lum,” and out by the door–whizz, whizz, quick as lightning. But their frolics were not confined to that particular hour. Some of them were always out, and no woman would have risen from her spinning-wheel and gone outside, if there was no one left in the house, without first taking the driving-band off the wheel, and no prudent woman would have left the band on the wheel over night. If the band had not been taken off, a fairy set to work and spun with might and main the whole night. Meal-mills had also to be thrown out of gear at night, else the fairies would have set them on, and kept them going during night.
“The fair folk” were most covetous of new-born children and their mothers. Till the mothers were “sained” and churched, and the children were baptised, the most strict watch and ward had to be kept over them to keep them from being stolen. Every seven years they had to pay “the teind to hell,” and to save them from paying this tribute with one of themselves they were ever on the alert to get hold of human infants.
“There came a wind oot o’ the north,

A sharp wind and a snell;

And a dead sleep came over me,

And frae my horse I fell;

The Queen of Fairies she was there,

And took me to hersel.
And never would I tire, Janet,

In fairyland to dwell,

But aye, at every seven years

They pay the teind to hell;

And though the Queen macks much o’ me

I fear ’twill be mysel.”
Sometimes they succeeded in carrying off an unbaptised infant, and for it they left one of their own. The one left by them soon began to “dwine,” and to fret and cry night and day. At times the child has been saved from them as they were carrying it through the dog-hole. 1
A fisherwoman had a fine thriving baby. One day what looked like a beggar woman entered the house. She went to the cradle in which the baby was lying, and handled it under pretence of admiring it. From that day the child did nothing but fret and cry and waste away. This had gone on for some months, when one day a beggar man entered asking alms. As he was getting his alms his eye lighted upon the infant in the cradle. After looking on it for some time he said, “That’s nae a bairn; that’s an image; the bairn’s been stoun.” He immediately set to work to bring back the child. He heaped up a large fire on the hearth, and ordered a black hen to be brought to him. When the fire was blazing at its full strength, he took the hen and held her over the fire as near it as possible, so as not to kill her. The bird struggled for a little, then escaped from the man’s grasp, and flew out by the “lum.” The child was restored, and throve every day afterwards.
Another. A strong healthy boy in the parish of Tyrie began to “dwine.” The real baby had been stolen. A wise woman gave the means of bringing him back. His clothes were to be taken to a south-running well, washed, laid out to dry beside the well, and most carefully watched. This was done for some time, but no one came to take them away. The next thing to be done was to take the child himself and lay him between two furrows in a cornfield. This was carried out, and the child throve daily afterwards. All this was annoying to the “fair folk,” and rather than submit to such annoyance they restored the child, and took back their own one.
One day a fisherwoman with her baby was left a-bed alone, when in came a little man dressed in green. He proceeded at once to lay bold of the baby. The woman knew at once who the little man was and what he intended to do. She uttered the prayer, “God be atween you an me.” Out rushed the fairy in a moment, and the woman and her baby were left without further molestation.
Milk, particularly human milk, was very grateful to them. Therefore was it they were so anxious to carry off unsained and unchurched mothers. According to tradition, they did at times get hold of them. Here is one tradition. A mother was spirited away. In a short time, notwithstanding all the kindness and attention lavished on her by the “fair folk,” her strength was almost exhausted. She pleaded to be allowed to return to earth, and pledged herself to give the best mare under milk that her husband had. Her request was granted, and the mare was led to the fairy hillock and left. The animal disappeared, and after a time returned, but so lean and weak that she was hardly able to sustain her own weight. Here is another. A man in the parish of New Deer was returning home at night. On reaching an old quarry much overgrown with broom he heard a great noise coining from among the broom. He listened, and his ear caught the words “Mak’ it red cheekit an red lippit like the smith o’ Bonnykelly’s wife.” He knew at once what was going on, and what was to be done, and he ran with all his speed to the smith’s house and “sained” the mother and her baby–an act which the nurse had neglected to do. No sooner was the saining finished than a heavy thud, as if something had fallen, was heard outside the house opposite to the spot where stood the bed on which the mother and her baby lay. On examination a piece of bog-fir was found lying at the bottom of the wall. It was the “image” the fairies were to substitute for the smith’s wife.
Sometimes they contrived to induce, by their fair and winning ways, unwary men and women to go with them. When such entered their abodes, every kindness was showered upon them, and the most savoury food and the most delicious wines were set before them in tempting array. If from what they saw they had become aware among whom they were, and had the courage to refuse what was spread before them, they soon found themselves back among men. If they yielded, and tasted either the food or the drink, their doom was sealed for at least seven years. All idea of the flight of time was lost by them under the beauty of fairyland and the joy of life in it. When the fairy-thralls did at last return to earth, they found their places filled by others, and the memory of them well-nigh dead. It was only after many explanations the remembrance of them returned to friends and acquaintances, and they themselves came to know how long they had dwelt in fairyland. Such as did return never again took kindly to the works and ways of their fellow-men. They loved the sunny braes, the glens and woods, that lay far from the abodes of men, the quiet spots of daisied sward by the burnie side, the lonely nook of greenery by the margin of the loch, and the green slopes and hollows by the seashore. With dreamy longing eyes, gazing out for something they could not reach, they pined away the rest of their days, beings apart.
If a man or a woman did any one of them a kindness, the labour was not in vain. Gratitude for kindness done by man was one great trait of their character. Some article, whose use healed disease, was given, or virtue to cure disease or lessen pain was imparted, or success over after attended the doer of the kind deed.
They were very often in the habit of borrowing from man. What they borrowed was given back most punctually. Meal was an article they often borrowed, and they always asked a fixed measure, a “hathisch-cogfull.” If offered more, they would not take it. This borrowing was made usually in the gloamin, and by the females. In a parish on the east coast of Buchan, one wild night in winter, in the twilight, a little woman, dressed in green, went into a farm kitchen and begged for a “hathisch o’ meal” from the gueedwife. The gueedwife told the beggar that she was somewhat afraid to give away so much, as the stock of meal was almost exhausted, and grain had only just been taken to the mill, and it would be some time before a new stock of meal could be laid in. Besides, the weather was stormy, and everything betokened a long snowstorm. It was said to last thirteen weeks. However the meal was given. Not many days

after the little woman returned in the twilight, and gave back the meal. At the same time she asked how much meal was in the girnal. On getting an answer that there was not much, she gave strict orders to gather into one corner what remained of it, add to it what she returned for the loan, and always keep it well packed together. She at the same time told that the snowstorm would last thirteen weeks. The storm came down, the roads were blocked, and no meal was got from the mill; yet the meal in the corner of the girnal never grew less, notwithstanding the household had all through the thirteen weeks the usual supply.
But if one put a slight upon them, or in any way incurred their displeasure, they were not slow in taking revenge. A cow or a horse, if the offender had one, was soon “shot-a-dead,” or things began to take a wrong turn with the unfortunate, or, if a work was on hand, it did not go on with speed. It was misfortune on all sides.
Even animals could call forth their anger; and, when they did so, they had to pay the penalty. One evening, “atween the sin an the sky,” a man was ploughing with his “twal-ousen plew,” when a woman came to him, and offered him bread and cheese and ale. The man took the gift. Whilst he was enjoying his repast the good woman proceeded to give each of the oxen a piece of cakes. One by one the oxen took what was given, except the “wyner.” After partaking of the woman’s kindness, and she had left, the ploughman began his work again. All went on as usual till the plough reached the end of the furrow, when the “wyner,” that had refused to take the piece of cakes from the hands of the stranger, fell down, and broke his neck, as he was turning into the next furrow. The stranger was a fairy.
The “fair folk” were most skilled in music, and when mortals were stolen and taken to their abodes, or beguiled into them, one, of the great enchantments and allurements to stay with them was their music. But that music was not confined to their own dwellings. Often and again has it been heard by human ears in the quiet of the gloamin, or at the still hour of midnight, in the clear moonlight, now on this green hillock, now below this bridge, and now in this calm nook.
The fairies took to fishing in little boats of their own. When fishing, they wore their usual green, with little red caps for headdress. They prosecuted their labour in the fine summer mornings and evenings, and many a time have the fishermen seen them busy as they were going to sea, and returning from it.
If the sun shone during the time a shower of rain was falling, it was believed and said that the fairies were baking their bread. When bread was baked in a family the cakes must not be counted. Fairies always ate cakes that had been counted; they did not last the ordinary time.
The whirlwind that raises the dust on roads is called “a furl o’ fairies’ ween.”

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Scottish Mystics: The Poetry of Alan Spence

Glasgow Zen

On the oneness of self and universe
IT’S AW WAN TAE ME
~

On the ultimate identity of

matter and spirit, form and void
WHIT’S THE MATTER?

NUTHIN!
~

On the suchness of things
AYE, THIS IS IT

THIS IS THE THING

~
On identity in difference
SIX AN HAUF A DOZEN
~

On the implicit dualism

of value-judgements
IT’S AWFUL

GOOD

—-
Glasgow Zen – Song
the littlest bird

sang all for me

its song was love

it set me free
sang at my birth

and at my death

it sang its song

with my last breath
the littlest bird

sang in my soul

its song was joy

it made me whole
it made me whole

it set me free

it sang its song

its song was me

—-
Japanese Boxes
(Daibutsu, Great Buddha, Kamakura)
I site inside

the compassionate Buddha

who sits inside

this world of things

which sits inside

the universe

which sits inside

the great void

which sits inside

my heart.

—-
Seasons of the Heart
First warmth of spring

I feel as if

I have been asleep
first warmth of spring

under cracking ice

the jawbone of a dog
crocuses

where last week

the snow lay thick
the spring breeze –

the paper flowers also

tremble
into the sea I launch

a piece of driftwood –

with great ceremony!
spring rain

a yellow oil-drum

bobbing down the river

—
Seasons of the Heart 2

dog rolling dart on the grass

beside the first daffodils

of the year
this spring evening

blue estuary light

vast empty sky
trying to talk

we can only laugh and point –

sun glinting on the loch
that old/new

smell of fresh

cut grass
morning meditation

clouds lift clear

from the mountain top
sunlight through stained glass

fragrances of oranges

the sound of a bell
the flowering pant nods

acknowledging

my gaze

—-
Seasons of the Heart 3

two swallows

dip and soar

making a summer
the yellow gorse

making the sky

more blue
the whole sky and more

reflected in each raindrop

hanging from that branch
statue of Christ, the sun

behind his head –

butterfly opens its wings
puffed-up cloud

the swan’s feathers ruffled

white sails on the lake

—-
Seasons of the Heart 4
camomile flowers –

a whole garden

in the bottom of my cup
the zen garden –

a crack on the wall

in exactly the right place
the zen garden –

I too

am included
the master’s footprints

along the old

dirt road

—-
Seasons of the Heart 5

astonished

to find myself

here
the snowman

calmly awaiting

the thaw
the incense stick burns down –

a heap of ash

the fragrance

—-

Alan Spence, author of poetry, novels, short stories and plays, was born in Glasgow. The city’s sights and sounds permeate much of his work, including his first collection of short stories, Its Colours They Are Fine (1977). In dealing with Scottish urban life, he brings to bear a compassionate detachment. Whatever their everyday preoccupations, his characters experience sudden flashes of wonder at the mystery of existence. This theme runs through The Magic Flute (1990), Stone Garden (1995) and Way to Go (1998). As a poet, Alan Spence has made zestful use of haiku in Plop! (1970), Glasgow Zen (1981), and Seasons of the Heart (2000). He uses the haiku form to explore the essential paradox of life, discovering timelessness in cycles of changes, immanence in the finite, simplicity in the intricate. He has received many awards for his writing. Alan Spence is based in Edinburgh where he and his wife run the Sri Chinmoy Meditation Centre. Contemplative meditation is at the heart of his life and the perspective derived from this practice informs all of his work.
___________________
Devendra Banhart – Little Yellow Spider

____________________

(Ayahuasca Dream – Roberto Venosa)

A bit of the wonders for this Friday… the 1st of August. A taste of beauty, a vision of longing, and those secret joys. Happy to share some of my favourite subjects with you.
I hope you enjoy the flow, as much as I did putting these together.

—

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

_________
On The Menu:

Eric Satie Quotes

Eric Satie Gymnopédie1

Making Magic – Peter Gorman

Entheogen Meadow (Eric Satie – Gnossiennes)

Peruvian Poet: Cesar Vallejo

Cesar Vallejo – A Birography

Eric Satie – Gnossienne No.4

Art: Roberto Venosa

____________
Eric Satie Quotes:

“The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.”
“Before I compose a piece, I walk around it several times, accompanied by myself.”
“When I was young, I was told: ‘You’ll see, when you’re fifty. I am fifty and I haven’t seen a thing.”
“I liked the bit about quarter to eleven. (on Debussy’s “Dawn to Noon on the Sea”)”
“Why attack God? He may be as miserable as we are”

__________________

Eric Satie Gymnopédie1

__________________

Making Magic

By Peter Gorman

(from OMNI July 1993)

The night air in the backwater lowlands of the Peruvian Amazon was thick with the incessant buzzing of insects. Overhead bats flew, their shapes silhoutted by a half moon rising behind the forest across the Rio Lobo. Though the rainy season had begun, the river was still near the low point of the year, and great gnarled tree trunks, swept from the banks during the last flood season, stood out against the water like monstrous sculptures in the pale light. From beyond the jungle clearing of the tiny Matses Indian puebla of San Juan came the howling of a distant band of monkeys and the melancholy cry of the pheasant-like paujil.
In the camp, a handful of Matses children played our flashlights into the village trees, while their fathers combed the branches and nearby brush, hunting for a dow-kietl, the frog that secretes sapo, a vital element in the Matses pharmacopoeia. (Although the word sapo means “toad” in Spanish, the extract comes from a frog) The Matses limited command of Spanish doesn’t draw a distinction between the two.) The men imitated the frog’s mating call, a low, guttural bark, as they moved, and the women nearby giggled at the sound. I was suprised that the dow-kiet!s didn’t respond.
The Matses are a small, seminomadic, hunting-gathering tribe who live in the remote jungle along the Rio Yavari, on the border of Peru and Brazil. Unlike other tribes in the region, they possess only rudimentary weaving and ceramics skills, they have no formal religion, no ceremony or dance, and they produce nothing for trade. What they do is hunt – with bows and arrows, spears, clubs, and occasionally shotguns when they can get shells. Theirs is the harsh world of the lowland forests and swamps, a world where malaria, yellow fever, and venomous snakes keep mortality rates high. To survive, the matses have become masters of the natural history of the flora and fauna of the region.
They know the habits and cycles of the animals that share their land, they’ve studied the plant life that surrounds them, and they’ve learned to see the jungle as their ally. For the Matses the earth is a benevolent ti-ta, or mother, who provides for all their needs. Neighboring tribes say the Matses can move like the wind and talk with the animals. They say the Matses know the jungle’s secrets. Sapo is one of them.
I had come to Peru to collect dow-kiet! Specimens for researchers at the American Museum of Natural History, for whom I’ve collected Matses artifacts – mostly throwaway things like used leaf baskets and broken arrows – and the Fidia Research Institute for the Neurosciences in Rome. My reports on the uses of sapo had sparked interest and curiosity among scientists who were eager to see a specimen of the frog that produces the unusual material, in part because of the extraodinary experience it produced in me and in part because of my description of it’s myriad of uses. I was eager to see the dow-kiet! As well, because although I’d seen sapo used and had myself, I had never actually seen the frog that produces it.
That Western science look an interest in sapo is encouraging: Until recently, most researchers have dismissed the natural medicines of indigenous groups like the Matses. Fortunately, that attitute is changing, but with the loss of an average of one tribe a year in Amazonia alone – to acculturation, disease, or loss of their forest homes – the plant and animal medicines of these peoples are disappearing faster than they can be studied.
The Matses are one of the tribes currently at risk. During the eight years I’ve been visiting their camps, both missionary and military contact have been steadily increasing, and they’re quickly acculturating to a new lifestyle. Camps that planted no more than two or three crops to supplement their diet of game and wild foods just a few years ago now plant a dozen or more. And where most Matses had only a handful of manufactured things when I first met them – some clothing, a few metal pots, a machete, and perhaps and old shotgun – in some caps the men now work for loggers, and the sound of chain saws fills the air. At San Juan, the most accessible camp on the Lobo, most of the Matses not only have new Western clothing, they have begun to refer to Matses who live deep in the jungle as animales.
This is a very different group from the first Matses I ran into in 1984. It was my second trip to Peruvian Amazonia – I’d fallen in love with the jungle on my first trip – and I was studying food gathering and plant identification with my guide, Moises, a former military man who specialized in jungle survival. We had been working on a small river called the Auchyako for about a week when we ran into local hunters who said they had seen signs that a family of Matses had moved into the area. Moises, excited by the news, said we should make an attempt to meet them.
I was easily sold on the idea: so, hoping they would make contact, we hiked three days into the jungle and made a camp. Two days later, a young Matses hunter carrying a bow and arrows, his mouth tattooed and his face adorned with what looked like cat whiskers, came into our camp and borrowed our gun.
When he returned later in the day, he was carrying two large wounded monkeys in palm-leaf baskets he carried from his forehead with templines. Clinging to his hair was a baby monkey the offspring of one of the adults. The hunter returned our gun, left one of the monkeys, and then disappeared into to forest. We followed him back to his camp and watched from a distance as he gave the remaining adult to a women who began to roast it over an open fire, oblivious to its cries. The baby monkey he brought to a young woman who was nursing a child of her own. Without hesitation, she took the monkey and allowed it to nurse at her free breast.
Those dual images represented a combination of cruelty and compassion I’d never imagined and taught me more about the reaslity of the jungle than anything I had previosuly experienced. More than that, those images compelled me to return to the Matses again and again.
I first met Pablo in 1986 on my third trip to the Amazon. Moises and I had flown over the dense Peruvian jungle from Iquitos to the Rio Lobo, borrowed a small boat, and made our way to his camp. Pablo was Moises closest friend among the Matses, an adept hunter who fiercely resisted acculturation. The villiage, several days upriver and much more remote than San Juan, was home to Pablo, his four wives, their 22 children, and his brother Alberto, who had two wives and six children. Each wife had her own hut, so there were several in the puebla. When we arrived, we were invited to climb the steep and muddy riverbank to the Puebla. There, Pablo’s main wife, Ma Shu, served us a meal of cold roast sloth and yucca.
After dinner, Pablo produced an old brown beer bottle and a hollow reed tube. From the bottle he poured a find green powder into his hand and worked it into one end of the tube. Alberto put the other end of the tube to his nose and Pablo blew the powder into his nostrils. They repeated the process several times. Moises explained that the powder was nu-nu and that Matses hunters used it to have visions
of where to hunt. He said that after the visions they would go to the place they had seen and wait for the animals in the vision to appear. I told Moises he was dreaming, but he insisted that was what happened and pressed Pablo to give me some. A few minutes later, the tube was put to my nose. When The nu-nu hit, it seemed to explode inside my face. It burnt my nose and I began to choke up a wretched green phlegm. But the pain quickly subsided and I closed my eyes. Out of the blackness I began to have visions of animals–tapir, monkey, wild boar–that I saw more clearly than my limited experience with them sh
ould have allowed. Then suddenly the boars stampeded in front of me. As I watched them thunder past my field of vision, several began to fall. Moments later, the visions faded, and a pleasant spit of drunkenness washed over me.
Moises asked what I saw and whether I recognized the place where the vision happened. I told him it looked like the place where we’d eaten lunch earlier in the day. He asked what time it was in the vision, and I told him that the sun was shining but mist still hung from the trees. He put the time between 7 and 8 a.m. Despite my suspicion that I’d’ invented the entire vision, Moises told the Matses what I’d seen.
At dawn the next morning, several of us piled into our boat and headed toward the spot I’d described. As we neared it, I was astounded to hear the thunderous roar of dozens of boars charging across the river in front of us. We jumped out of the boat and chased them. Several ran into a hollow log and Pablo and Alberto blocked the ends with thick branches while me others made nooses out of vines. Holes were cut Into the top of the log with a machete, the nooses slipped through them, and the boars strangled. We returned with seven boars. enough meat for the entire village for four days.
Improbable as it seemed, the scene was close enough to what I’d described that there was no denying the veracity of the vision I later asked how nu-nu worked, and Pablo explained–in a mix of hand signals, Matses, and pigeon Spanish–that nu-nu put you in touch with the animals. He said the animals’ spirits also see the visions and know what awaits them. The morning after the hunt, I was with Pablo, sitting on the bark floor of Ma Shu’s hut, pointing to things and asking what the Matses words for them were. I made notes, writing down the phonetic spelling of things like bow, arrow, spear, and hammock. Pablo was utterly bored with the exercise until I pointed to a small leaf bag that hung over a cooking fire ‘Sapo.” he said, his eyes brightening.
From The bag he pulled a piece of split bamboo, roughly the size and shape of a doctor’s tongue depressor. It was covered with what looked like a thick coat of aging varnish. “Sapo.” He repeated, scraping a little of the material from the stick and mixing it with saliva. When he was finished, it had the consistency and color of green mustard. Then he pulled a smoldering twig from the fire, grabbed my left wrist, and burned the inside of my forearm. I pulled away, but he held my wrist tightly. The burn mark was about the size of a match head. I looked at Moises. “Una nueva medicinn,” he said, shaking his head, “I’ve never seen It.”
Remembering the extraordinary experience I’d had with nu-nu, I let Pablo burn my arm a second time He scraped away the burned skin, then dabbed a little of the sapo onto the exposed areas Instantly my body began to heat up. In seconds I was burning from the Inside and regretted allowing him to give me a medicine I know nothing about. I began to sweat. My blood began to race. My heart pounded. I became acutely aware of every vein and artery in my body and could feel them opening to allow for the fantastic pulse of my blood. My stomach cramped and I vomited violently. I lost control of my bodily functions and began to urinate and defecate. I fell to the ground. Then, unexpectedly, I found myself growling and moving about on all fours. I felt as though animals were passing through me, trying to express themselves through my body. It was a fantastic feeling but it passed quickly, and I could think of nothing but the rushing of my blood, a sensation so intense that I thought my heart would burst. The rushing got faster and faster. I was in agony. I gasped for breath. Slowly, the pounding became steady and rhythmic, and when it finally subsided altogether. I was overcome with exhaustion, I slept where I was. When I awoke a few hours later, I heard voices. But as I came to my senses.. I realized I was alone. I looked around and saw that I had been washed off and put into My hammock. I stood and walked to the edge of the hut’s unwalled platform floor and realized that the conversation I was over hearing was between two of Pablo’s wives who were standing nearly 20 yards away. I didn’t understand their dialect, of course, but I was surprised to even hear them from that distance. I walked to the other side of the platform and looked out into the jungle; its noises, too, were clearer than usual.
And it wasn’t just my hearing that had been improved. My vision, my sense of smell, everything about me felt larger than life, and my body felt immensely strong: That evening I explained what was feeling with hand gestures as much as language. Pablo smiled. “Bi-ram-bo sapo.” he said, “fuerte.” It was good sapo. Strong.
During the next few days, my feeling of strength didn’t diminish; I could go whole days without being hungry or thirsty and move through the jungle for hours without tiring Every sense I possessed was heightened and in tune with the environment, as though the sapo put the rhythm of the jungle into my blood.
I asked Pablo about sapo’s uses and discovered there were several. Among hunters; it was used both to sharpen the senses and as a way to increase stamina during long hunts when carrying food and water was difficult. In large doses, it could make a Matses hunter “invisible” to poor-sighted but acute smelling jungle animals by temporarily eliminating their human odor. As a medicine, sapo also had multiple uses, serving as a tonic to cleanse and strengthen the body and as a toxin purge for those with the grippe.
The women explained that they sometimes used sapo as well. In sparing doses applied to the inside of the wrist it could establish whether a woman was pregnant or not. And during the later stages of pregnancy, it was used to establish the sex and health of a fetus. Interpreting the information relied on an investigation of the urine a woman discharged following the application of the medicine: Cloudiness or other discoloration of the urine and the presence or absence of specks of blood were all evidently indicators of the fetus’s condition. In cases where an unhealthy fetus was discovered, a large dose of sapo applied to the vaginal area was used as an abortive. There was no way for me to verify what they said, though there was no reason to doubt them.
When I asked Pablo how the Matses learned about sapo, he said the dow-kiet! told them. Whether he meant the frog told them through their study of its behavior and habits or whether he believed he was in communication with it on some level, I don’t know.
When I returned to New York, I was surprised to find that my description of nu-nu was old hat to the anthropologists I spoke with at the American Museum of Natural History–several tribes evidently employed similar snuffs for shamanic purposes. What did surprise them, however, was my account of sapo. None of them had ever heard of it, and while several South American tribes have hunting myths about frogs, there were no records of the Matses or any other tribe utilizing a frog’s secretions in the way I described. But while my report was considered interesting, it was also inadequate, as I had no photographs of the frog and no samples of the medicine. The following year I returned to Pablo’s village and discovered that sapo was also used as a shamanic tool. It was spring and the lowlands were flooded. Game had retreated deep into the forest to seasonal lagoons, so hunting was difficult, and even nu-nu failed to produce hunting visions. When I arrived, the Matses hadn’t eaten meat for several days.
Pablo explained that when the river was so high, it was trapping season and that he was about to set a tem-po-te!, tapir trap. He had been giving himself five sapo burns each morning and night for three days in preparation for the task and would continue until the trap was successfu
l. Pablo explained, as well as I could understand it, that sapo, used In such large doses, allowed a hunter to project his animas – his spirit – to his trap while he slept. The animas would take the form of a tapir and lure real tapir to it.
The day after we arrived, Moises and I went into the jungle with Pablo and Alberto. We walked for almost two hours before Pablo found a suitable site and began to construct the trap, a simple spring device set between two trees. Pablo called to the tapir while he worked, telling it what a special path he was making. He called to the other animals as well, warning them to stay away, to leave this place for his friend. When he finished the trap, he chewed handfuls of leaves and spit them out across the trip vine, both to cover his human scent and as a signpost so that his animas could find it at night.
As we were returning to the puebla, Alberto explained that traps were only set when there was no other way to get meat, because once a trap was set, no other animals could be hunted. When I asked why, he explained that animals talk to each other and that killing them provokes their spirits, ruining the trap. Seeing that I didn’t understand, Pablo added that when he sent out his animas masquerading as a tapir, the provoked spirits would warn the prey that what they saw was not a real tapir but a Matses animas in disguise. Exceptions to the taboo were large river turtles and sloth-the turtle because it doesn’t bother to talk to other animals and the sloth because it speaks so slowly that by the time it says what’s on its mind, the river has fallen and trapping time is over.
During the next two days. Pablo never returned to the trap, although he continued using massive doses of sapo. But on the morning of the third day, he awakened us before dawn and said he had a nu-nu vision that the trap was about to be sprung. He was insistent that we hurry.
The Matses moved through the forest effortlessly, almost at a jog, and the women chided me for having to struggle to keep up. But as we neared the trap area, everyone stopped and grew absolutely quiet. Pablo’s eyes blazed. “Petro,” he whispered to me excitedly, “tian-te, tem-po-te” A tapir was about to be trapped.
We waited about ten minutes, then heard a sharp snap, followed by an agonizing animal scream. Suddenly, everyone began running toward the trap. The wounded and disoriented tapir crashed through the brush, bellowing in pain, then fell into a stream bed. The women caught up with it, killed it, and began to cut it up. While they did, Pablo brought me to the sprung trap and gave me the bloody spike.
Back in camp we feasted. Afterwards I asked Pablo for a sample of sapo, but he’d been using so much to prepare far the hunt that he had none to give me. So once again I returned to the states with no hard evidence of the existence. of the dow-kiet!
It took two more trips to Peru before finally managed to secure a small amount of sapo, and when I finally did, I gave half of the stick to Charles Myers. the curator of the museum’s Herpetology Department, who passed it on to John Daly at the National Institutes of Health. Having finally produced the material I’d frequently talked about, my reports began to circulate and prompted a letter from Vittorio Erspamer, a pharmacologist who worked with the Fidia Research Institute for the Neurosciences. He wondered whether sapo might not come from one of a number of frogs he’d randomly collected in Amazonia several years earlier. Research done by the chemicals found in their skin had shown that several produced peptides-protiens-that were similar to peptides produced by humans. If it could be shown, he wrote, that one of those frogs was already in use by humans, it would be an important scientific breakthrough. I wrote back and offered to provide him with a specimen if I ever managed to collect one.
A year after Erspamer’s letter reached me, I traveled back to the Lobo with Moises. We hiked across the jungle to Pablo’s, discovered his burned camp, and moved down the river where happily we found him at San Juan. “Malo casadores,” Moises snarled, after we’d been watching the men of San Juan trying to find a dow-kiet! for nearly an hour. “Bad hunters. Everything is changed with them. They’re finished.” He was still grumbling about the state of the Matses when I heard Pablo calling me. “Petro Dow-kiet! Petro?” He was standing on a hill at the back of the puebla with Pa Mi Shua and two of his children. “Bi-ram-bo, Pablo!” I laughed: “Bi-ram-ho dow-kiet!.” Yes, I would like a dow-kiet!
Pablo laughed and began to bark out the frog’s mating call. The other men in the camp stopped their hunting and watched him. Between the guttural barking noises he was making we could hear him berating the frogs for making the hunt so difficult. Pa Mi Shua and his children, walking along side him on the path toward the center of camp, roared his antics.
Suddenly Pablo stood and stiffened. From the grass on the side of the path came the sound Pablo was making. He barked again, and again his call was returned. Then a second frog joined the first, and a third, and suddenly the whole camp seemed to resound with the barking of dow-keit!s. Pablo bent down and picked one up. “Mas dow-kiet!, Petro?” More, Peter? I laughed and said yes. He bent down and picked up another. “Mas? Bastan-te sapo, Petro?” More? Did I want a lot of sapo?
I told him two were enough. and he came into the camp, a frog in each hand. He gave one of them to me. It was beautiful. A little smaller than my palm, it had an extraordinary electric green back, a lightly spotted white underside, and deep black eyes. It grasped my fingers tightly, and in secends could feel my blood begin to heat up as the sapo it was secreting began to seep into the small cuts that covered my hands. I quickly put it down. Pablo giggled with delight, then broke a small branch from a tree and placed both dow-kiet!s on it, hilariously imitating my reaction.
One of the Matses men collected four sticks and stood them in the ground, making a small square. Another pulled apart some palm leaves, stripped out the fibers and rolled them into strings against his leg. He handed four of them to Pablo. who tied one to each of one frog’s legs, then tied the free ends to the four posts, suspending the animal like some strange green trampoline. Once the frog was secure, Pa Mi Shua knelt and gently began to manipulate the frog’s elongated center toe between her fingers, stimulating it to secrete sapo. It was an unexpectedly sexual image, and the men joked about it. Pa Mi Shua blushed and told them to be quiet.
The man who had placed the sticks in the ground disappeared into his hut for a moment, then returned with a piece of split bamboo. He began to scrape the suspended frog’s sides and legs, collecting sapo. When the stick was covered, he dried out the secretions over our tiny kerosene lamp and then gave the stick to me.
That night, both frogs were tied by one leg to a low tree branch to keep them from escaping, and in the morning, the sapo from the second frog was collected. Neither was hurt by the process, and if I hadn’t been taking the two specimens back to the States, they would have been set free.
One of the frogs died shortly after I returned home, and I gave its skeleton along with part of the sapo sample and some photographs to the Natural History museum. The healthy dow-kiet! along with a second sapo sample and similar photos was sent to Erspamer in Rome. Six months later, I received his report. He was very excited.
He identified the dow-kiet! as a phyllomedusa bicolor, a rare arboreal tree frog. The sapo, he said, is a sort of fantastic chemical cocktail with potential medical applications. “No other amphibian skin can compete with it,” he wrote. “Up to seven percent of sapo’s weight is in potentl
y active peptides, easily absorbed through burned, inflamed areas of the skin.” He explained that among the several dozen peptides found in sapo, seven were bioactive- which meant that each has an affinity and selectivity for binding with receptor sites in humans. (A receptor is like a lock that when opened with the right key–the bioactive peptides-triggers chemical reactions in the body.) The peptide families represented in the dow-kiet! include bradykinins, tachykinins, caerulein, sauvagine, tryptophyllins, dermorphins. and bombesins.
Based on the concentrations and functions of the peptides found in and extracted from the sapo sample I sent, Erspamer was able to account for all of the physical symptoms I described as sapo intoxication. On the peripheral effects. Erspamer repoited, “Caerulein and the equiactive phyllocaerulein display a potent action on the gastrointestinal smooth muscle and gastric and pancreatic secretions. . . . Side effects observed (in volunteer patients with post operative intestinal atony) were nausea, vomiting, facial flush, mild tachycardia (heart palpitations), changes in blood pressure, sweating, abdominal discomfort, and urge for defecation.”
Phyllomedusin, a new peptide of the tachykinin family, strongly affects the salivary glands, tear ducts, intestines, and bowels: and contributed to the violent purging I experienced. Sauvagine causes a long-lasting fall in blood pressure, accompanied by severe tachycardia and stimulation of the adrenal cortex, which contributed to the satiety, heightened sensory perception, and increased stamina I described. Phyllokinin, a new peptide of the bradykinin family, is a potent blood-vessel dilator and accounted for the intense rushing in my blood during the initial phase of sapo intoxication.
“It may be reasonably concluded, Erspamer wrote. “that the intense peripheral cardiovascular and gastrointestinal symptoms observed in the early phase of sapo intoxication may be entirely ascribed to the known bioactive peptides occurring in large amounts in the frog material.”
As to sapo’s central effects, he wrote, “increase in physical strength, enhanced resistance to hunger and thirst, and more generally, increase in the capacity to face stress situations may be explained by the presence of caerulein and sauvagine in the drug. Caerulein in humans produces “an analgesic effect . . . possibly related to release of beta-endorphins .. . in patients suffering from renal colic, rest pain due to peripheral vascular insufficiency (limited circulation), and even cancer pain.” Additionally, “It caused in human volunteers a significant reduction in hunger and food intake.
The sauvagine extracted from sapo was given subcutaneously to rats and caused “release of corticotropin (a hormone that triggers the release of substances from the adrenal gland) from the pituitary with consequent activation of the pituitary-adrenal axis.” This axis is the chemical communication link between the pituitary and the adrenal glands, which controls our flight-or-fight mechanism. The effects on the pituitary-adrenal axis caused by the minimal doses given the laboratory rodents lasted several hours. Erspamer noted that the volume of sauvagine found in the large quantities of sapo I described the Matses using would potentially have a much longer lasting effect on humans and would explain why my feelings of strength and heightened sensory perception after sapo use lasted for several days.
But on the question of the “magical” effects I described in tapir trapping, Erspamer says that “no hallucinations, visions, or magic effects are produced by the known peptide components of sapo.” He added that “the question remains unsolved” whether those effects specifically, the feeling that animals were passing through me and Pablo’s description of animas projection were due to “the sniffing of other drugs having hallucinogenic effects, particularly nu-nu.
With regard to sapo’s uses relating to pregnancy, Erspamer did not address any of the issues but abortion: “Abortion ascribed to sapo may be due either to direct effect of the peptide cocktail on the uterine smooth muscle or, more likely, to the intense pelvic vase dilation and the general violent physical reaction to the drug.
From the medical-potential point of view, Erspamer said several aspects of sapo are of interest. He suggested that two of its peptide, phyllomedusin and phyllokinin have such a pronounced affect on the dilation of blood vessels that they “may increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier. thus facilitating access to the brain not only of themselves, but also of the other active peptides.” Finding a key to unlocking the secret of passing that barrier is vital to the discovery of how to get medicines to the brain and could one day contribute to the development of treatments for AIDS, Alzheimer’s, and other disorders that threaten the brain.
There is also medicanal potential in dermorphin and deltrorphin, two other peptides found in sapo. Both are potent opioid peptides, almost identical to the beta-endorphins the human body produces to counter pain, and similar to the opiates found in morphine. Because they mirror beta-endorphins, however, sapo’s opioid peptides could potentially function in a more precise manner than opiates. Additionally, while dermorphin and deltorphin are considerably stronger than morphine (18 and 39 times, respectively), because of their similarities to the naturally produced beta-endorphin, the development of tolerance would be considerably lower and withdrawal less severe than to opiates.
Both phyllocaerulein and sauvagine possess medical potential as digestive aids to assist those receiving treatment for cancer. Other areas of potential medical interest in the peptides found in sapo include their possible use as anti-inflammatories, as blood-pressure regulators, and as stimulators of the pituitary gland.
The only report thus far on sapo from John Daly’s team at the National Institutes of Health (written with seven co-authors, including Katharine Mitten, who recently discovered the use of the phyllomedusa bicolor among several tribes closely related to the Matses) was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (November 14, 1992) and concentrates exclusively on a newly discovered peptide found in sapo One of the chemical fractions Daly’s team isolated is a 33-amino-acid-long peptide he calls adenoregulin. which may provide a key to manipulating cellular receptors for adenosine, a fundamental component in all human cell fuel. “Peptides that either enhance or inhibit binding of adenosine analogs to brain adenosine receptors proved to be present in extracts of the dried skin secretion,” Daly wrote. According to an interpretive report on the Daly paper written by lvan Amato and published in Science (November 20. 1992), “Preliminary animal studies by researchers at Warner-Lambert have hinted that those receptors, which are distributed throughout the brains of mammals, could offer a target for treating depression, stroke, seizures, and cognitive loss in ailments such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Of course, medical potential only in frequently results directly in new medicines: Science may not be able to isolate or duplicate the peptides found in sapo or side effects may be discovered that would decrease their value as medicines. But even if sapo’s components do not eventually serve as prototypes for new drugs, sapo will become an important pharmacological tool in the study of receptors and the chemical reactions they trigger. Certainly the study of the unique activity of sapo’s bioactive peptides will advance our knowledge of the human body. Additionally, as possibly the first zoologically derived medicine used by tribals ever investigated for Western medical potential. Sapo will help open the door to a whole new field of investigat
ion.
Unfortunately, while science catches up to the natural medicines of tribal peoples, time is running out. That Pablo was the only man at San Juan still able to draw a response from the dow-kiet! is an indication that most Matses no longer rely on it. And we have no way of knowing how many other medicines the Matses–and others–once used but have abandoned, which might also have been valuable to us.
We do knew that nearly 80 percent of the world’s population relies on natural medicines for its primary health care. Investigations into a small portion of them have already provided us hundreds of drugs, from aspirin and atropine to digitalis and quinine. Fully 70 percent of the antitumor drugs used in the treatment of cancers are derived from traditional medicines as well. Yet our investigations have hardly begun. Obviously, there is much to learn from peoples like the Matses before acculturation strips them of their knowledge. It remains to be seen whether the discoveries that have begun to be made in connection with sapo spark the interest of investigators while there is still time to learn it.

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(Prana Exhalation – Roberto Venosa)

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Entheogen Meadow (Eric Satie – Gnossiennes)

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Peruvian Poet: Cesar Vallejo

Black Stone on Top of a White Stone
I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,

On a day I already remember.

I shall die in Paris– it does not bother me–

Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.
It shall be a Thursday, because today, Thursday

As I put down these lines, I have set my shoulders

To the evil. Never like today have I turned,

And headed my whole journey to the ways where I am alone.
César Vallejo is dead. They struck him,

All of them, though he did nothing to them,

They hit him hard with a stick and hard also

With the end of a rope. Witnesses are: the Thursdays,

The shoulder bones, the loneliness, the rain, and the roads…

–
Paris, October 1936
From all of this I am the only one who leaves.

From this bench I go away, from my pants,

from my great situation, from my actions,

from my number split side to side,

from all of this I am the only one who leaves.
From the Champs Elysées or as the strange

alley of the Moon makes a turn,

my death goes away, my cradle leaves,

and, surrounded by people, alone, cut loose,

my human resemblance turns around

and dispatches its shadows one by one.
And I move away from everything, since everything

remains to create my alibi:

my shoe, its eyelet, as well as its mud

and even the bend in the elbow

of my own buttoned shirt.

–
To My Brother Miguel In Memoriam
Brother, today I sit on the brick bench of the house,

where you make a bottomless emptiness.

I remember we used to play at this hour, and mama

caressed us: “But, sons…”
Now I go hide

as before, from all evening

lectures, and I trust you not to give me away.

Through the parlor, the vestibule, the corridors.

Later, you hide, and I do not give you away.

I remember we made ourselves cry,

brother, from so much laughing.
Miguel, you went into hiding

one night in August, toward dawn,

but, instead of chuckling, you were sad.

And the twin heart of those dead evenings

grew annoyed at not finding you. And now

a shadow falls on my soul.
Listen, brother, don’t be late

coming out. All right? Mama might worry.
0~0~0~0

Cesar Vallejo – A Birography
Cesar Vallejo (March 16, 1892 – April 15, 1938) published only three books of poetry but is nonetheless considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century. Always a step ahead of the literary currents, each of his books was distinct from the others and in its own sense revolutionary.
Life

Cйsar Vallejo was born the youngest of eleven children in Santiago de Chuco, a remote village in the Andes of Peru. He studied literature in the Universidad de la Libertad in Trujillo, Peru. The poet dropped out of the university several times, working at a sugar plantations where he saw firsthand the exploitation of agrarian workers, a sight that would influence his politics and aesthetics. Vallejo received a masters degree in spanish literature in 1915.
Later, Vallejo moved to Lima, where he lived a Bohemian lifestyle, meeting important members of the intellectual left, and working as a tutor and then a professor. The poet suffered a number of calamities in the years leading up to the publication of Los Heraldos Negros: He lost his teaching post after having refusing to marry a woman with whom he had an affair, his lover died of a failed abortion which he had forced her to undergo, his mother died in 1920, and he was imprisoned for 105 days after returning home to Santiago de Chuco and igniting a scandal there.
After publishing Trilce in 1923, the poet, having lost another professorship in Lima, emigrated to Europe, where he lived until his death in Paris in 1938. He is interred in the Cimetiиre du Montparnasse.
Works

Los heraldos negros (1918)

Los heraldos negros is a book with traces of Spanish Modernism in the structure of its poems. In it, the poet confronts existential anguish, personal guilt, and pain, writing famously, “Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuerte…, yo no sй” (“There are blows in life, so hard… I don’t know”) and “Yo nacн un dнa / que Dios estuvo enfermo” (“I was born on a day / when God was sick”). The book of poetry sold relatively few copies, but was critically well received.
Trilce (1922)

Trilce, published in 1922, anticipated much of the avant-garde movement that would develop in the 1920s and 30s. Vallejo’s book takes language to a radical extreme, inventing words, stretching syntax, using automatic writing and other techniques now known as “surrealist” (though he did this before the Surrealist movement began). The book put Latin America at the center of the Avant-garde. Like James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and Vicente Huidobro’s Altazor, Trilce borders on inaccessibility.
Poemas humanos (1939)

Poemas humanos, published by the poet’s wife after his death, is a leftist work of political, social poetry.
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Eric Satie – Gnossienne No.4

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(Astral Circus – Roberto Venosa)

Lord Lugh, Wise Warrior

My Protector and Defender

You guide my hands and

enlighten my thoughts

Oh Noble King

You have opened my eyes and my mind

You are the Light that guides my way

I am in Your service

Blessed Be

-Caitlin Matthews

—
It is the season… a little early for sure, but one can feel his hand across the northern lands… Lugh has a special place in my heart. The turning of the season to harvest, the end of summer.
The weather is wonderful and our garden is beginning to show its bounty. Golden Days! I am moved by these days. We have some wonders coming I think. There are so many blessings that we can’t count. Over the last couple of weeks, we have been working on a street frequented by pedestrians and bikes. So many little ones, out for their first summer, sleepy in their carriages, or alert on the back of bikes with their Mum’s n Dad’s. So much beauty and joy in these summer days.
Here is to you in the coming harvest season, may the good God’s blessing be upon you!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Links

Loreena McKennitt – The Bonny Swans

The Coming Of Lugh

Poetry/The Irish Mystics: Patrick Kavanagh

A Short Biography: Patrick Kavanagh

Loreena McKennitt – Raglan Road

Song of Lughnasadh

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The Links:

White House Tries to Define Contraception As Abortion

Bigfoot: New evidence

How not to change the world…

Eel drink for Japan’s hot summer

Silent spring

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Loreena McKennitt – The Bonny Swans

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The Coming of Lugh

-Lady Gregory….

Now as to Nuada of the Silver Hand, he was holding a great feast at Teamhair one time, after he was back in the kingship. And there were two door-keepers at Teamhair, Gamal, son of Figal, and Camel, son of Riagall. And a young man came to the door where one of them was, and bade him bring him in to the king. “Who are you yourself?” said the door-keeper. I am Lugh, son of Cian of the Tuatha de Danaan, and of Ethlinn, daughter of Balor, King of the Fomor,” he said; “and I am foster-son of Taillte, daughter of the King of the Great Plain, and of Echaid the Rough, son of Duach.” “What are you skilled in?” said the door-keeper; “for no one without an art comes into Teamhair.” “Question me,” said Lugh; “I am a carpenter.” “We do not want you; we have a carpenter ourselves, Luchtar, son of Luachaid.” “Then I am a smith” “We have a smith ourselves, Colum Cuaillemech of the Three New Ways.” “Then I am a champion.” “That is no use to us; we have a champion before, Ogma, brother to the king.” “Question me again,” he said; “I am a harper.” “That is no use to us; we have a harper ourselves, Abhean, son of Bicelmos, that the Men of the Three Gods brought from the bills.” “I am a poet,” he said then, “and a teller of tales.” “That is no use to us; we have a teller of tales ourselves, Erc, son of Ethaman.” “And I am a magician.” “That is no use to us; we have plenty of magicians and people of power.” “I am a physician,” he said. “That is no use; we have Diancecht for our physician.” “Let me be a cup-bearer,” he said. “We do not want you; we have nine cup-bearers ourselves.” “I am a good worker in brass”. “We have a worker in brass ourselves, that is Credne Cerd.”
Then Lugh said: “Go and ask the king if he has anyone man that can do all these things, and if he has, I will not ask to come into Teamhair.” The door-keeper went into the king’s house then and told him all that. “There is a young man at the door,” he said, “and his name should be the Ildánach, the Master of all Arts, for all the things the people of your house can do, he himself is able to do every one of them.” “Try him with the chess-boards,” said Nuada. So the chess-boards were brought out, and every game that was played, Lugh won it. And when Nuada was told that, he said: “Let him in, for the like of him never came into Teamhair before.”
Then the door-keeper let him pass, and he came into the king’s house and sat down in the seat of knowledge. And there was a great flag-stone there that could hardly be moved by four times twenty yoke of oxen, and Ogma took it up and hurled it out through the house so that it lay on the outside of Teamhair, as a challenge to Lugh. But Lugh hurled it back again that it lay in the middle of the king’s house. He played the harp for them then, and he had them laughing and crying, till he put them asleep at the end with a sleepy tune. And when Nuada saw all these things Lugh could do, he began to think that by his help the country might get free of the taxes and the tyranny put on it by the Fomor. And it is what he did, he came down from his throne, and he put Lugh on it in his place, for the length of thirteen days, the way they might all listen to the advice he would give.
This now is the story of the birth of Lugh. The time the Fomor used to be coming to Ireland, Balor of the Strong Blows, or, as some called him, of the Evil Eye, was living on the Island of the Tower of Glass. There was danger for ships that went near that island, for the Fomor would come out and take them. And some say the sons of Nemed in the old time, before the Firbolgs were in Ireland, passed near it in their ships, and what they saw was a tower of glass in the middle of the sea, and on the tower something that had the appearance of men, and they went against it with Druid spells to attack it. And the Fomor worked against them with Druid spells of their own; and the Sons of Nemed attacked the tower, and it vanished, and they thought it was destroyed. But a great wave rose over them then, and all their ships went down and all that were in them.

And the tower was there as it was before, and Balor living in it. And it is the reason he was called “of the Evil Eye,” there was a power of death in one of his eyes, so that no person could look at it and live. It is the way it got that power, he was passing one time by a house where his father’s Druids were making spells of death, and the window being open he looked in, and the smoke of the poisonous spells was rising up, and it went into his eye. And from that time he had to keep it closed unless he wanted to be the death of some enemy, and then the men that were with him would lift the eyelid with a ring of ivory.
Now a Druid foretold one time that it was by his own grandson he would get his death. And he had at that time but one child, a daughter whose name was Ethlinn; and when he heard what the Druid said, he shut her up in the tower on the island. And he put twelve women with her to take charge of her and to guard her, and he bade them never to let her see a man or hear the name of a man.
So Ethlinn was brought up in the tower, and she grew to be very beautiful; and sometimes she would see men passing in the currachs, and sometimes she would see a man in her dreams. But when she would speak of that to the women, they would give her no answer.
So there was no fear on Balor, and be went on with war and robbery as he was used, seizing every ship that passed by, and sometimes going over to Ireland to do destruction there.
Now it chanced at that time there were three brothers of the Tuatha de Danaan living together in a place that was called Druim na Teine, the Ridge of the Fire, Goibniu and Samthainn and Cian. Cian was a lord of land, and Goibniu was the smith that had such a great name. Now Clan had a wonderful cow, the Glas Gaibhnenn, and her milk never failed. And every one that heard of her coveted her, and many had tried to steal her away, so that she had to be watched night and day.
And one time Cian was wanting some swords made, and he went to Goibniu’s forge, and he brought the Glas Gaibhnenn with him, holding her by a halter. When he came to the forge his two brothers were there together, for Samthainn had brought some steel to have weapons made for himself; and Cian bade Samthainn to hold the halter while he went into the forge to speak with Goibniu.
Now Balor bad set his mind for a long time on the Glas Gaibhnenn, but he had never been able to get near her up to this time. And he was watching not far off, and when he saw Samthainn holding the cow, he put on the appearance of a little boy, having red hair, and came up to him and told him he heard his two brothers that were in the forge saying to one another that they would use all his steel for their own swords, and make his of iron. “By my word,” said Samthainn, “they will not deceive me so easily. Let you hold the cow, little lad,” he said, “and I will go in to them.” With that he rushed into the forge, and great anger on him. And no sooner did Balor get the halter in his hand than he set out, dragging the Glas along with him, to the strand, and across the sea to his own island.
When Cian saw his brother coming in he rushed out, and there he saw Balor and the Glas out in the sea. And he had nothing to do then but to reproach his brother, and to wander about as if his wits had left him, not knowing what way to get his cow back from Balor. At last he went to a Druid to ask an advice from him; and it is what the Druid told him, that so long as Balor lived, the cow would never be brought back, for no one would go within reach of his Evil Eye.
Cian went then to a woman-Druid, Birog of the Mountain, for her help. And she dressed him in a woman’s clothes, and brought him across the sea in a blast of wind, to the tower where Ethlinn was. Then she called to the women in the tower, and asked them for shelter for a high queen she was after saving from some hardship, and the women in the tower did not like to refuse a woman of the Tuatha de Danaan, and they let her and her comrade in. Then Birog by her enchantments put them all into a deep sleep, and Cian went to speak with Ethlinn. And when she saw him she said that was the face she had seen in her dreams. So she gave him her love; but after a while he was brought away again on a blast of wind.
And when her time came, Ethlinn gave birth to a son. And when Balor knew that, he bade his people put the child in a cloth and fasten it with a pin, and throw him into a current of the sea. And as they were carrying the child across an arm of the sea, the pin dropped out, and the child slipped from the cloth into the water, and they thought he was drowned. But he was brought away by Birog of the Mountain, and she brought him to his father Cian; and he gave him to be fostered by Taillte, daughter of the King of the Great Plain. It is thus Lugh was born and reared.
And some say Balor came and struck the head off Cian on a white stone, that has the blood marks on it to this day; but it is likely it was some other man he struck the head off, for it was by the sons of Tuireann that Cian came to his death.

And after Lugh had come to Teamhair, and made his mind up to join with his father’s people against the Fomor, he put his mind to the work; and he went to a quiet place in Grellach Dollaid, with Nuada and the Dagda, and with Ogma; and Goibniu and Diancecht were called to them there. A full year they stopped there, making their plans together in secret, the way the Fomor would not know they were going to rise against them till such time as all would be ready, and till they would know what their strength was. And it is from that council the place got the name afterwards of “The Whisper of the Men of Dea”.
And they broke up the council, and agreed to meet again that day three years, and everyone of them went his own way, and Lugh went back to his own friends, the sons of Manannan.

And it was a good while after that, Nuada was holding a great assembly of the people on the Hill of Uisnech, on the west side of Teamhair. And they were not long there before they saw an armed troop coming towards them from the east, over the plain; and there was a young man in front of the troop, in command over the rest, and the brightness of his face was like the setting sun, so that they were not able to look at him because of its brightness.
And when he came nearer they knew it was Lugh Lamh-Fada, of the Long Hand, that had come back to them, and along with him were the Riders of the Sidhe from the Land of Promise, and his own foster-brothers, the sons of Manannan, Sgoith Gleigeil, the White Flower, and Goitne Gorm-Shuileach, the Blue-eyed Spear, and Sine Sindearg, of the Red Ring, and Donall Donn-Ruadh, of the Red-brown Hair. And it is the way Lugh was, he had Manannan’s horse, the Aonbharr, of the One Mane, under him, that was as swift as the naked cold wind of spring, and the sea was the same as dry land to her, and the rider was never killed off her back. And he had Manannan’s breast-plate on him, that kept whoever was wearing it from wounds, and a helmet on his head with two beautiful precious stones set in the front of it and one at the back, and when he took it off, his forehead was like the sun on a dry summer day. And he had Manannan’s sword, the Freagarthach, the Answerer, at his side, and no one that was wounded by it would ever get away alive; and when that sword was bared in a battle, no man that saw it coming against him had any more strength than a woman in child-birth.
And the troop came to where the King of Ireland was with the Tuatha de Danaan, and they welcomed one another.
And they were not long there till they saw a surly, slovenly troop coining towards them, nine times nine of the messengers of the Fomor, that were coming to ask rent and taxes from the men of Ireland; and the names of the four that were the hardest and the most cruel were Eine and Eathfaigh and Coron and Compar; and there was such great dread of these four on the Tuatha de Danaan, that not one of them would so much as punish his own son or his foster-son without leave from them.
They came up then to where the King of Ireland was with the Riders of the Sidhe, and the king and all the Tuatha de Danaan stood up before them. And Lugh of the Long Hand said: “Why do you rise up before that surly, slovenly troop, when you did not rise up before us?”
“It is needful for us to do it,” said the king; “for if there was but a child of us sitting before them, they would not think that too small a cause for killing him.” “By my word,” said Lugh, “there is a great desire coming on me to kill themselves.” “That is a thing would bring harm on us,” said the king, “for we would meet our own death and destruction through it.” “It is too long a time you have been under this oppression,” said Lugh. And with that he started up and made an attack on the Fomor, killing and wounding them, till he had made an end of eight nines of them, but he let the last nine go under the protection of Nuada the king. “And I would kill you along with the others,” he said, “but I would sooner see you go with messages to your own country than my own people, for fear they might get any ill-treatment.”
So the nine went back then till they came to Lochlann, where the men of the Fomor were, and they told them the story from beginning to end, and how a young well-featured lad had come into Ireland and had killed all the tax-gatherers but themselves, “and it is the reason he let us off,” they said, “that we might tell you the story ourselves.”
“Do you know who is the young man?” said Balor of the Evil Eye then.
“I know well,” said Ceithlenn, his wife; “he is the son of your daughter and mine. And it was foretold.” she said, “that from the time he would come into Ireland, we would never have power there again for ever.”
Then the chief men of the Fomor went into a council, Eab, son of Neid, and Seanchab, grandson of Neid, and Sital Salmhor, and Liath, son of Lobais, and the nine poets of the Fomor that had learning and the gift of foreknowledge, and Lobais the Druid, and Balor himself, and his twelve white-mouthed sons, and Ceithlenn of the Crooked Teeth, his queen.
And it was just at that time Bres and his father Elathan were come to ask help of the Fomor, and Bres said: “I myself will go tor Ireland, and seven great battalions of the Riders of the Fomor along with me, and I will give battle to this Ildánach, this master of all arts, and I will strike his bead off and bring it here to you, to the green of Berbhe.” “It would be a fitting thing for you to do,” said they all. “Let my ships be made ready for me,” said Bres, “and let food and provisions be put in them.”
So they made no delay, but went and got the ships ready, and they put plenty of food and drink in them, and the two swift Luaths were sent out to gather the army to Bres. And when they were all gathered, they made ready their armour and their weapons, and they set out for Ireland.
And Balor the king followed them to the harbour, and he said: “Give battle to that Ildánach, and strike off his head; and tie that island that is called Ireland to the back of your ships, and let the destroying water take its place, and put it on the north side of Lochlann, and not one of the Men of Dea will follow it there to the end of life and time.”
Then they pushed out their ships and put up their painted sails, and went out from the harbour on the untilled country, on the ridges of the wide-lying sea, and they never turned from their course till they came to the harbour of Eas Dara. And from that they sent out an army through West Connacht and destroyed it altogether, through and through. And the King of Connacht at that time was Bodb Dearg, son of the Dagda.

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The Irish Mystics: Patrick Kavanagh

On Raglan Road
On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew

That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;

I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,

And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.
On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge

Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion’s pledge,

The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay –

O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.
I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that’s known

To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone

And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.

With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May
On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now

Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow

That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay –

When the angel woos the clay he’d lose his wings at the dawn of day.

—
Shancoduff
Shancoduff My black hills have never seen the sun rising,

Eternally they look North towards Armagh.

Lot’s wife would not be salt if she had been

Incurious as my black hills that are happy

When dawn whitens Glassdrummond chapel.
My hills hoard the bright shillings of March

While the sun searches in every pocket.

They are my Alps and I have climbed the Matterhorn

With a sheaf of hay for three perishing calves

In the field under the Big Forth of Rocksavage.
The sleety winds fondle the the rushy beards of Shancoduff

While the cattle – drovers sheltering in the Featherna Bush

Look up and say: “Who owns them hungry hills

That the water – hen and snip must have forsaken?

A poet? Then by heavens he must be poor.”

I hear and is my heart not badly shaken?

—
On An Apple-Ripe September Morning

On an apple-ripe September morning

Through the mist-chill fields I went

With a pitch-fork on my shoulder

Less for use than for devilment.
The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,

In Cassidy’s haggard last night,

And we owed them a day at the threshing

Since last year. O it was delight
To be paying bills of laughter

And chaffy gossip in kind

With work thrown in to ballast

The fantasy-soaring mind.
As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered

As I looked into the drain

If ever a summer morning should find me

Shovelling up eels again.
And I thought of the wasps’ nest in the bank

And how I got chased one day

Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,

How I covered my face with hay.
The wet leaves of the cocksfoot

Polished my boots as I

Went round by the glistening bog-holes

Lost in unthinking joy.
I’ll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,

The best job at the mill

With plenty of time to talk of our loves

As we wait for the bags to fill.
Maybe Mary might call round…

And then I came to the haggard gate,

And I knew as I entered that I had come

Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.

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A Short Biography: Patrick Kavanagh
Kavanagh was born on the 21st of October 1904, in the village of Inniskeen, Co. Monaghan. His father was a shoemaker and had a small farm of land. Kavanagh received only primary school education and at the age of thirteen, he became an apprentice shoemaker. He gave it up 15 months later, admitting that he didn’t make one wearable pair of boots. For the next 20 years, Kavanagh would work on the family farm before moving to Dublin in 1939.
Kavanagh’s interest in literature and poetry marked him out as different to other people in his local place. In a society that was insular and agricultural, a man’s worth was measured by the straightness of the furrow he could plough, rather than the lines of poetry he could write. Kavanagh’s first attempts to become a published poet resulted in the publication of some poems in a local newspaper in the early 1930′s, and by the publishing of his autobiographical novel by Tarry Flynn. In 1939, urged by his brother Peter, who was a Dublin based teacher, Kavanagh moved to the city to establish himself as a writer. At that time, the Dublin Literary Society was dominated by an educated Anglo-Irish group with whom Kavanagh had nothing in common, among them were Oliver St. John Gogarty and Douglas Wylie. They saw Kavanagh as a country bumpkin and referred to him as “That Monaghan Boy”.
Kavanagh’s early years in Dublin were unproductive as he struggled for recognition. In 1947, his first major collection “A Soul for Sale”, was published. These poems were the product of his Monaghan youth. In the early 1950′s, Kavanagh and his brother Peter, published a weekly newspaper called “Kavanagh’s Weekly”, it failed because the editorial viewpoint was too narrow. In 1954, Kavanagh became embroiled in an infamous court case. He accused “The Leader” newspaper of slander. The newspaper decided to contest the case and employed the former Taoiseach, John A. Costello, as their defence council. Kavanagh decided to prosecute the case himself and he was destroyed by Costello. The court case dragged on for over a year and Kavanagh’s health began to fail. In 1955, he was diagnosed as having lung cancer and had a lung removed, Kavanagh survived and the event was a major turning point in his life and career. In 1958, he published “Come Dancing with Kitty Stobling”. In 1959, he was appointed to the faculty of English in UCD by John A. Costello. His lectures were popular, but often irrelevant to the course. In the early 1960′s, he visited Britain and USA. In 1965, he married Katherine Malony. He died in 1967 from an attack of bronchitis. Kavanagh’s reputation as a poet is based on the lyrical quality of his work, his mastery of language and form and his ability to transform the ordinary and the benal into something of significance.

-Antoinette Quinn, Patrick Kavanagh: a Biography

Gill and Macmillan, 2001

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Loreena McKennitt – Raglan Road

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Song of Lughnasadh
I am the sovereign splendor of creation

I am the fountain and the courts of bliss

I am the bright surrender of the willpower

I am the watchful guardian and the kiss

I am the many-coloured landscape

I am the transmigration of the geese

I am the burnished glory of the breastplate

I am the harbour where all strivings cease.

-Written by Caitlin Matthews

“You know of the how, but I know of the how-less.”

-Rabia al Basri

Friends,
So much to talk about. Source, time, space. Listen: there is beauty to attend to. You walk in it, you are of it, whatever ‘it’ is. This moment is a blessing. It will never occur again. Take it, hold it, it runs like water through your fingers.
I have a blessing for you, or is this a curse? Live your life fully, don’t hold back. This moment contains everything that has been, and that will be.
If you can: Help those who need help, accept help when you need it. Life is for loving, and Love is the universal binding element. Everything that exist must pass this test.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Ana” Music Video – Vieux Farka Toure

Sufi Blues…

Vieux Farka Toure “Bamako jam” – Part One & Part Two

Poems by Rabia al Basri

Anecdotes from Rabia’s Life…

Mali – African Music Legends – Ali Farka Toure

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Ali Farka Toures son!
“Ana” Music Video – Vieux Farka Toure

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I often (well more than often do the Googlemancy thingie… after listening to Vieux Farka Toure, I got the urge to type in ‘Sufi Blues’… this brought me to this site: Jon Atack, which brought me to this article…
Sufi Blues…

The origin of the Blues is a matter of considerable contention. I like Alan Lomax’s explanation in The Land Where Blues Began, but I believe that the truth is intensely complex. All history is an interweaving of many strands, and the history of the Blues is no different.
The Blues belongs to its own place and time. We have only fragments from that time, because this wonderful music was not considered significant during its formative years. Indeed, Bluesmen were considered racially inferior, and most of the early recordings were made not by music lovers but by museum anthropologists recording a foreign culture. Under the bizarre Jim Crow laws in the Southern US, Whites were prohibited from entering establishments frequented by Blacks.
Charlie Patton was one of the first Blues guitarists. By 1911 he was travelling the South, and playing at Saturday night juke joints. Tommy Johnson may have been the first to tell the story of the Devil tuning his guitar at the crossroads and giving him the spirit of the Blues. He recorded in 1918. The music Patton and Johnson played reaches back to the field hollers of the Black slaves, and the worksongs of the muleskinners.
Muleskinners is an unfortunate term for men who drove mules while the Mississippi Levee was being built. The Levee features in Led Zeppelin’s (or indeed Memphis Minnie’s) When the Levee Breaks. The Levee is the largest work of human engineering so far created, even bigger than the Great Wall of China. It was an attempt to contain the mighty Mississippi river. Lomax explains that the builders of the Levee found that Black muleskinners got more work out of the animals than their Irish precursors. It seems that this was because the Black muleskinners sang to their mules.
But the Blues is a fusion of cultures. It has origins in West Africa, but, as Jimi Hendrix observed, Irish folk music has similarities to the Blues. And the cradle of the Blues is also the home of Bluegrass and Country music. Popular Jazz intermingled Black Afro-American music with Western Classical music and songwriting from the Jewish tradition (such luminaries as Irving Berlin and George Gershwin). Blues and Jazz draw from similar roots. Indeed, the separation between them is to some extent academic. In the 1920s, a Bluesman such as Lonnie Johnson often recorded with Eddie Lang, nominally a Jazz guitarist. Technically there is nothing to choose between them, and Lang usually played the accompaniment.
Africa provided a far more complicated suite of rhythms than Europe. It also gave tonal variation – heard as a sustaining and flattening of notes. European music provided the simple form of the song. It seems odd to suggest that the song – and most especially the love song – is an invention that belongs to a particular culture or time, but it may well be true. The love song can be traced back to the Troubadour movement, at the time of minstrelsy and chivalry. It’s entry into European culture seems to have been the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine in the twelfth century.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was the wife successively of a king of France, and of the English king, Henry II. Henry was arguably the most powerful monarch in the Western world. He was Duke of Anjou, Brittany and Normandy. With his marriage to Eleanor, he controlled most of modern France (although he owed fealty – or loyalty – to the French king for these possessions). He also ruled most of Wales, and the Irish Lords asked him to intervene in their disputes, which for all practical purposes made him King of Ireland. Eleanor and Henry were the parents of Richard I, called Lionheart, and John I, who figure in the Robin Hood myth. Henry II goes into history as one of the most influential lawmakers the world has seen. Eleanor goes into history as a crucial influence on culture.
The simple expedient that led to the chivalric movement, which dominated intellectual culture for hundreds of years in Europe, was the admission into Eleanor’s court of Jews from the Islamic world. It was the general practice in Christendom to exclude members of both of these religions. Indeed, Eleanor’s son Richard was to expel the Jews from his territories, and to wage a savage and despicable campaign against Islam. By tolerating religious differences, Eleanor stands at the inception of the Little Renaissance, the first stirring of the Renaissance, in the 1100s. Arab scholars had treasured the Classics of Greece and Rome – largely ignored or destroyed by the Europeans of the so called Dark Ages. They had also adopted the Indian number zero, and developed mathematics. Arabic numerals have been universally accepted for centuries. But another essential aspect of Islam was the love song.
Many years ago, I saw a TV documentary about a family of Pakistani Qawali singers called the Sabri brothers. These fine people tour Pakistan playing concerts in which they perform songs in five languages – ranging from the Urdu of present day Pakistan to Classical Persian. Peter Gabriel has said that Qawali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is simply the finest singer alive.
Qawali singers have been persecuted by Mosque and State alike, because they warn anyone who will listen to live decently rather than to simply obey the dictates of authority. Many of the songs are love songs, in which some huge, beardy bloke takes on the role of an innocent bride singing to her bridegroom. They are songs of adoration, often very similar to the simple pop songs of the sixties.
But as always with the Sufis, all is not as it appears. Qawalis are indeed part of that elusive and ancient movement that long predates Islam – Mahomet speaks with reverence of the Sufi sages – but is perceived by most to be part of that religion. The Sufis call themselves friends, and say that they travel the Way of Love. In discussing his belief in observation and experiment as the basis for science, the thirteenth century monk Roger Bacon actually credits the Sufis with its invention. Western texts prefer to call Bacon the originator of the scientific method. Similarly, the notion of evolution is credited to Charles Darwin (though he actually used the word descent himself). It had actually long existed in Sufi teaching, which also maintained the Classical Greek notion of atomic theory.
Sufis actually exist in all major religious denominations. They practice the dominant religion of the region in which they find themselves, and into that culture insert the scientific and compassionate ideas of Sufism. They have perhaps flourished in Islam because it is less prone to heretic burning than certain other faiths. As a side note, the word heresy houses its own dreadful concept – the word simply means choice. Something not permitted by bigots and dogmatists, and those who worship a bullying, intolerant god.
Sufis teach in a way that appeals to all intellects. So stories attributed to the Mullah Nasrudin are by now told as jokes in many cultures, but these apparently simple stories contain layers of meaning. They are parables, or analogies. When asked why he is scrabbling in the dust, the Mullah replies that he is looking for his key. Asked where he lost it, he explains that it is at his house, but he is looking here, because there is more light. Idries Shah explains that this is like a seeker who looks far afield for wisdom rather than in his own heart.
Nasrudin is an early take on the Marx brothers, but reveals many meanings (as of course do the Marx brothers – as Groucho said: time wounds all heels). Tibetans too speak of a teaching on the common level – for example the belief in demon exorcism – that has a different me
aning to the intelligent – demons is just a term for hindering thoughts – and a further meaning to the enlightened – thoughts and demons are alike illusion, as the Buddha taught.
So it is with the Sufi song, preserved in its essence in the Qawali music of Pakistan. These love songs, just like the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament, are addressed to the Divinity, and speak of a permanent infatuation, the ecstasy of communion with God. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam provides a series of beautiful examples of this divided meaning. Where he speaks of ‘a glass of wine and thou’, Sufis will say that he is actually referring to the wine of understanding, and his love of God.
These mystical Sufi songs came into Europe at the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and with them a reverential attitude towards women. It is curious to think that the reversal of the metaphor – reverence to God expressed through a love song – should have initiated a movement where women were venerated. As of course they should be (and so should men). Out of the Troubadour movement came also beautiful songs directed to the Virgin Mary, as representative of the feminine. A fine example is the ethereal Lullay, Lullay, which recounts a vision of Mary.
This tradition of love songs was probably passed by White slaves – there were many Irish and Scottish slaves in the Caribbean and North America from the seventeenth century onward – to their Black companions. It is also quite possible that love songs had travelled to West Africa from neighbouring Islamic countries. With the fusion of West African polyrhythms and the love song, came the Blues.
Blues too often acts on at least two levels. Whether this is necessarily the intent of the authors is often unclear. Because they have frequently been persecuted, the Sufis have often buried meanings in their jokes, stories and songs. As with the Sufis, in the Blues secrets have to be concealed. The Vodou – or voodoo – background of many Bluesmen is obvious. Little Johnny the Conquer Root, the black cat bone, the Hoodoo man, and the Mojo are frequently referred to. Sexual references abound – many disguised to avoid punishment – so a man boasts of his jelly roll, and his ability to keep his damper down (called karezzo sex by Tantrists – it means being able to hold back and skirt the edge of orgasm). Only a couple of unexpurgated bawdy songs exist from the beginnings of the Blues (you can find one on Hot Nuts and Lollipops – Lucille Bogan’s distinctly obscene Shave ‘Em Dry).
The vicious campaign practised by the US against Haitian Vodou practitioners exemplifies the genuine need for caution among Bluesmen. At the very time that the Blues was developing, between 1915 and 1934, US troops occupied Haiti, and tried to extirpate the Vodou. Temples were burned down, ancient and venerated spirit-summoning drums smashed, Houngans and Mambos – Vodou’s priests and priestesses – tortured, beaten, imprisoned and murdered in a religious crusade. Vodou continues – as do the Sufis – to tolerate membership of any religion. And of course the Ku Klux Klan held sway in the Southern states through much of the twentieth century, lynching Black men who committed any offence to their redneck views.
And so we come full circle. The Blues represents the deepest urges and aspirations of humankind. And the Devil’s Music actually exalts God.

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Vieux Farka Toure “Bamako jam” – Part One

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Vieux Farka Toure “Bamako jam” – Part Two

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Poems by Rabia al Basri

Love
I have loved Thee with two loves –

a selfish love and a love that is worthy of Thee.

As for the love which is selfish,

Therein I occupy myself with Thee,

to the exclusion of all others.

But in the love which is worthy of Thee,

Thou dost raise the veil that I may see Thee.

Yet is the praise not mine in this or that,

But the praise is to Thee in both that and this.

—
If I Adore You
If I adore You out of fear of Hell, burn me in Hell!

If I adore you out of desire for Paradise,

Lock me out of Paradise.

But if I adore you for Yourself alone,

Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty.

—
Dream Fable
I saw myself in a wide green garden, more beautiful than I could begin to understand. In this garden was a young girl. I said to her, “How wonderful this place is!”
“Would you like to see a place even more wonderful than this?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” I answered. Then taking me by the hand, she led me on until we came to a magnificent palace, like nothing that was ever seen by human eyes. The young girl knocked on the door, and someone opened it. Immediately both of us were flooded with light.
Only Allah knows the inner meaning of the maidens we saw living there. Each one carried in her hand a serving-tray filled with light. The young girl asked the maidens where they were going, and they answered her, “We are looking for someone who was drowned in the sea, and so became a martyr. She never slept at night, not one wink! We are going to rub funeral spices on her body.”
“Then rub some on my friend here,” the young girl said.
“Once upon a time,” said the maidens, “part of this spice and the fragrance of it clung to her body — but then she shied away.”
Quickly the young girl let go of my hand, turned, and said to me:
“Your prayers are your light;

Your devotion is your strength;

Sleep is the enemy of both.

Your life is the only opportunity that life can give you.

If you ignore it, if you waste it,

You will only turn to dust.”
Then the young girl disappeared

—
With My Beloved
With my Beloved I alone have been,

When secrets tenderer than evening airs

Passed, and the Vision blest

Was granted to my prayers,

That crowned me, else obscure, with endless fame;

The while amazed between

His Beauty and His Majesty

I stood in silent ecstasy

Revealing that which o’er my spirit went and came.

Lo, in His face commingled

Is every charm and grace;

The whole of Beauty singled

Into a perfect face

Beholding Him would cry,

‘There is no God but He, and He is the most High.’

—
Reality
In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.

Speech is born out of longing,

True description from the real taste.

The one who tastes, knows;

the one who explains, lies.

How can you describe the true form of Something

In whose presence you are blotted out?

And in whose being you still exist?

And who lives as a sign for your journey?

________

Anecdotes from Rabia’s Life…
– One day, she was seen running through the streets of Basra carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she said:
“I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of God.”
– At one occasion she was asked if she hated Satan. Hazrat Rabia replied: “My love to God has so possessed me that no place remains for loving or hating any save Him.”
– When Hazrat Rabia Basri would not come to attend the sermons of Hazrat Hasan Basri, he would deliver no discourse that day. People in the audience asked him why he did that. He replied: “The syrup that is held by the vessels meant for the elephants cannot be contained in the vessels meant for the ants.”
– Once Hazrat Rabia was on her way to Makka, and when half-way there she saw the Ka’ba coming to meet her. She said, “It is the Lord of the house whom I need, what have I to do with the house? I need to meet with Him Who said, ‘Who approaches Me by a span’s length I will approach him by the length of a cubit.’ The Ka’ba which I see has no power over me; what joy does the beauty of the Ka’ba bring to me?”
At the same time the great Sufi Saint Hazrat Ibrahim bin Adham arrived at the Ka’ba, but he did not see it. He had spent fourteen years making his way to the Ka’ba, because in every place of prayer he performed two rakats.
Hazrat Ibrahim bin Adham said, “Alas! What has happened? It maybe that some injury has overtaken my eyes.” An unseen voice said to him, “No harm has befallen your eyes, but the Ka’ba has gone to meet a woman, who is approaching this place.” Ibrahim Adham responded, “O indeed, who is this?” He ran and saw Rabia arriving, and that the Ka’ba was back in its own place. When Ibrahim saw that, he said, “O Rabia, what is this disturbance and trouble and burden which you have brought into the world?”
She replied, “I have not brought disturbance into the world. It is you who have disturbed the world, because you delayed fourteen years in arriving at the Ka’ba.” He said, “Yes I have spent fourteen years in crossing the desert (because I was engaged) in prayer.” Rabia said, “You traversed it in ritual prayer (Salat) but with personal supplication.” Then, having performed the pilgrimage, she returned to Basra and occupied herself with works of devotion.
– One day Hazrat Hasan Basri saw Hazrat Rabia near a lake. He threw his prayer rug on top of the water and said, “Rabia come! Let us pray two rakats here.” She replied, “Hasan, when you are showing off your spiritual goods in the worldly market, it should be things which your fellow men cannot display.” Then she threw her prayer rug into the air and flew up onto it by saying, “Come up here, Hasan, where people can see us.” Then she said, “Hasan, what you did fishes can do, and what I did flies can do. But the real business is outside these tricks. One must apply oneself to the real business.”
________
and his late lamented father…
Mali – African Music Legends – Ali Farka Toure

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All people are in truth a kin

all in creation share one origin

if fate allots, a member pangs and pains

no rest for others then remains

if unperturbed another’s grief canst scan

thou art not worthy the name of man.

-Sa’adi

Guided By Voices?

So yesterday, I am up a ladder about 25 feet… and not feeling to confident working away on a wall. (I have been steadily losing my appetite for it lately) Mary is to the right of me, and we have a radio playing…
I am about to stretch up, and remove a metal panel off of the wall and I hear a voice say… “Be Careful Up There”. I freeze for a moment, and then ask Mary if she spoke to me. “No” is her reply. I am a bit shaken, as the voice I heard doesn’t sync up with the one in my head that I get when an intuition or warning comes forth…
“I just heard a voice warning me to be careful up there” says I to Mary. She looked at me, arched her eyebrows and said: “The radio commentator just said ‘Be Careful Out There’ because of traffic problems…” and she turned away.
Fool on a ladder!… So, when you are guided by voices be a bit more aware of where they are coming from… 80)

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I have been busy on the magazine, and it is going a bit slow at this time. Not all of articles are in yet, and happily the art work is coming in… We have some great artist, Leo Plaw, and Amanda Sage. There stuff is coming in and I am getting there pages set up.
On my side of thngs… I have been doing lots of new illustrations, and trying to findf new ways of portraying what is bouncing around in the old brain box….
If you have work you’d like to submit, or know of a writer needing an outlet, please let me know!

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Good News from Australia: The Undergrowth Collective’s JourneyBook Project is going to press! Excellent stuff from our community below the equator! Lots of exciting articles, art etc. The Project are kindly including some of my artwork as well. I am deeply honoured!
More coming on the art front, lots of things are in play… Stay Tuned!
Lots going on the radio… give it a listen at Radio Free Earthrites!
We have lots of new music, and spoken word… check it out!

I hope you enjoy this edition of Turfing…
Bright Blessings!
Gwyllm
On The Menu:

The Links

Natacha Atlas-Leysh Natarak

The Tale of Achmed’s Gold

Sufi Poet: Sa’adi

Bio: Sa’adi

A Song Of Peace Shared By Palestinians and Israeli’s..

Art: Ernst Rudolph

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The Links:

Emerging from the Drug War Dark Age: LSD and Other Psychedelic Medicines Make a Comeback

“The Heavens”

Vampires: the Celtic Connection

Law restricts hallucinogen

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Natacha Atlas-Leysh Natarak

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The Tale of Achmed’s Gold…

-from a tale told in ‘With the Riff Kabyles’, by Bernd Terhorst
Good Achmed, a devout and honest man, led a life which was good in every way; all that was wanting to crown his days, was the glory of a pilgrimage to Mecca. With this alone, he could die content–knowing that he had lived to the glory of Allah. All his days, he had saved up his gold piece by piece, hiding it away in a little clay pot which he mentioned to no one for fear of robbery. When he had enough to secure his old age, he closed up his business and prepared to go to Mecca.
He had a friend: Ali. To him alone, he entrusted the secret of the pot of gold. “During my absence,” he said, “you–who are as my brother–are the only man I trust to tend my possessions, my house and garden. Will you do it?”
“Of course I will,” said Ali, “why do you ask?” Then he called a blessing down on Achmed’s head.
“Ah, but there’s more,” said Achmed, “there’s gold. Five hundred coins, there are–my life’s savings. I have no one else to ask. Will you guard them for me? I’ll be gone two years, that is the term of this journey.” Ali agreed, pledging his faith to it, and Achmed was overjoyed; he embraced him, brought him the keys of his house, and put the pot of gold into his hands. Ali hid the gold away in a safe hiding-place in his own house, and saw Achmed off to Mecca, saying, “Go with God!”
Achmed rode to the coast, took ship, and came eventually to Mecca, where he kissed the Kaaba and knew his tale was complete . . . but it was not, as events proved. On the voyage home, contrary winds blew his ship off-course, and his return was delayed long beyond the expected time.
In Morocco, meanwhile, Ali waited patiently. Years passed, and more years; Achmed was despaired of, and finally given up for dead. And Ali fell upon evil times. He lost all his own money, had to sell every slave he owned, and wept with sorrow to see his wife reduced to cleaning the house with her own hands, which had never been soiled by such work before. He was miserable, and she was unbearable. And just when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb (and his wife’s tongue sharpened to its uttermost) she cleaned in the wrong corner, and discovered the pot of gold.
She brought it to Ali. Their creditors were hammering day and night at his door. Ali tore his hair, walked the floor all night, shushing her while her lamentations rose to the sky. At last he gave in, and opened the pot. “We’ll take just a little,” he told her, “just enough to pay our debts. When Allah favors me again, I’ll put it back.”
“Your fool friend is dead anyway,” she whined, “and will never return.”
Well! Allah failed to favor this unfaithful friend–no surprise, that. Soon enough, the money was all gone, every bit, every last shining coin.
The very next month, Achmed returned.
He was Achmed Hajji now, having been blessed by sight of holy Mecca. Friends and neighbors flocked to see him, marveling. But his very first stop was at the house of his dear friend Ali. Ali hastened to bring Achmed the keys to his house, saying that everything was in order and the garden lovingly tended . . . and Achmed blessed him, waited a bit, then finally asked after his little clay pot.
Ali feinted surprise. “Pot?” he said. “What pot?”
“Friend,” said Achmed, “why, you must remember, my little clay pot with the gold in it? My five hundred gold coins?”
“What gold coins?” said Ali. “Why, Achmed, everyone knows you could never save any money.” And he called on all the people about to witness: “Look! Poor Achmed has been driven mad by his privations. He remembers wealth he never owned.”
Achmed went to the cadi, who judged all lawsuits. But the cadi saw no proof forthcoming of Achmed’s claims, and indeed Achmed had never dared to mention his money to anyone . . . that is, anyone except Ali, whom he had trusted. Achmed was turned away, and went sorrowfully back to his empty home and lonely garden. For days he shut himself away, reflecting.
Finally, a frail tune drifting over his gate roused him from his gloom. A single ray of sunlight fell on the street outside, on an old gypsy playing a broken flute, while a monkey danced for coins. Achmed turned toward Mecca, prostrated himself and prayed. Then he went to the gate, and spent his last funds buying the monkey.
From that day forth, he was a changed man. He threw his gates open again, went to work and plied his old trade. He never spoke a word of what had been. Toward Ali, he presented an unchanged face. Ali, overwhelmed by relief, told everyone he forgave Achmed his wild talk, and was very kind to Achmed himself.
Months passed.
In the privacy of his house, Achmed set about training the monkey. He spent hours with Ali, patiently enduring Ali’s forgiveness, and all the while he was studying Ali’s features . . . carefully, closely. He had always delighted in wood-carving, and now he discovered in himself a knack for portraiture. He carved Ali’s likeness in wood.
When his bust of Ali was finished, Achmed set it atop a column–just Ali’s height–and dressed it in a man’s clothes–clothing that was just like Ali’s. This, he put in an empty room. Then he put the monkey in with it. Every day, he would go into this room, shut the door, and spend some time lashing the monkey with a whip. The monkey would fly round the room, trying desperately to escape. It could not climb the smooth walls, and so it would climb the image standing in the middle of the room. When it arrived at the image’s wooden head, it would scratch it wildly. Eventually it was so well trained, that all Achmed had to do was to step into the room, and the monkey would fling itself up the image and begin to scratch.
Achmed brought other figures into the room. They were all dressed differently, and every one had a different head and face, cunningly carved. He trained the monkey patiently, until the only image it climbed was the original–the likeness of Ali.
Then Achmed began to spread rumors.
He began to talk about his money again. Five hundred gold pieces, stolen . . . oh, not by Ali, oh no–Ali was Achmed’s friend, after all. Stolen by person or persons unknown. And Achmed began to tell people about the magic monkey he had acquired from a saint’s tomb. It was a black monkey, endowed with marvelous powers, and would know in a crowd just who was honest, who was a thief. With his monkey, he said, he would be able to discover the true thief.
“Look, he’s still crazy,” said Ali, laughing behind Achmed’s back. “Imagine, magic monkeys!” And the more Achmed talked about his monkey, the louder Ali mocked him. “Monkeys are foolish beasts,” he told Achmed, “and your monkey is not going to be any wiser than its cousins.”
“Oh,” said Achmed, “is that so? If that’s what you think, come round to my house and try it for yourself. Or are you frightened?” When Ali refused, their friends all laughed too; they said Ali was nervous. Naturally Ali said he was not, and Achmed dared him to come see the monkey. Ali had to agree.
Achmed went round and spoke to the cadi, asking him to come round too, and to bring a few friends. The cadi laughed at first, but finally agreed.
On the appointed day, everyone gathered at Achmed’s house. Ali was dismayed at the size of the crowd, but Achmed took them all into the very same room where he had trained the monkey. All the images had been taken away, of course; Achmed had burned them. “Now, friends,” he said, “I’ll show you my magic pet. If he who stole the gold is among us, the monkey will know him at once, climb up and scratch his fac
e. If the monkey does not recognize the thief, I swear I’ll never mention the subject again.”
Ali was smiling.
“Achmed,” commanded the cadi, “bring the animal.” And Achmed brought the monkey into the room it knew so well. The monkey saw a room full of unmoving men, just as before–and there was one face it recognized–and it knew what it was meant to do. With a scream, it launched itself at Ali, swarmed up his coat and clung with all its claws, scratching and biting. Ali tried to fight it off, he twisted and turned, but it only gripped him the tighter. The cadi marveled at the intelligence of the animal; he went up to Ali, who was now deathly pale and trembling in every limb, and said threateningly: “You thief! Allah has discovered your crime!” upon which Ali fell instantly to his knees and confessed.
Only God knows what is on earth and in heaven; only God knows the secrets we all keep. For he knows the mind of every man, he knows the future and the past. He is the answer to every riddle, and he is the judge every man will have to face in the end.

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Sufi Poet: Saadi

If one His praise of me would learn
If one His praise of me would learn,

What of the traceless can the tongueless tell?

Lovers are killed by those they love so well;

No voices from the slain return.

—
How could I ever thank my Friend?
How could I ever thank my Friend?

No thanks could ever begin to be worthy.

Every hair of my body is a gift from Him;

How could I thank Him for each hair?

Praise that lavish Lord forever

Who from nothing conjures all living beings!

Who could ever describe His goodness?

His infinite glory lays all praise waste.

Look, He has graced you a robe of splendor

From childhood’s first cries to old age!

He made you pure in His own image; stay pure.

It is horrible to die blackened by sin.

Never let dust settle on your mirror’s shining;

Let it once grow dull and it will never polish.

When you work in the world to earn your living

Do not, for one moment, rely on your own strength.

Self-worshiper, don’t you understand anything yet?

It is God alone that gives your arms their power.

If, by your striving, you achieve something good,

Don’t claim the credit all for yourself;

It is fate that decides who wins and who loses

And all success streams only from the grace of God.

In this world you never stand by your own strength;

It is the Invisible that sustains you every moment.

—
Have no Doubts
Have no doubts because of trouble nor be thou discomfited;

For the water of life’s fountain springeth from a gloomy bed.
Ah! ye brothers of misfortune! be not ye with grief oppressed,

Many are the secret mercies which with the All-bounteous rest.

—
The World my brother
The world, my brother! will abide with none,

By the world’s Maker let thy heart be won.

Rely not, nor repose on this world’s gain,

For many a son like thee she has reared and slain.

What matters, when the spirit seeks to fly,

If on a throne or on bare earth we die?

—
Wealth consists of talents not money; and greatness is in intellect not in years.

He knows the worth of happiness who has known distress.

Show compassion to your weak subject, that no powerful enemy may trouble you.

—

Whoever acts treacherously should dread the day of reckoning.
He whose account is clear can render it without fear.

Sweep, if needs be your friend’s floor; but do not even knock at your enemy’s door.

The brother who is self inflated, is neither brother nor related.

—
A beautiful character is better than a thousand silk robes.
No pains, no gains.

A young woman would rather be shot at than put up with an old man.

All may be trained alike, but their capacity will vary.

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Biography: The Persian Poet Sa’adi 1184 – 1283
Sa‘di (in Persian: سعدی‎, full name in English: Muslih-ud-Din Mushrif-ibn-Abdullah) (1184 – 1283/1291?) is one of the major Persian poets of the medieval period. He is recognized not only for the quality of his writing, but also for the depth of his social thought.

Biography of Saadi
A native of Shiraz, Persia, Saadi left his native town at a young age for Baghdad to study Arabic literature and Islamic sciences at Nizamiah University (1195-1226).
He is known as a Sufi thinker, and was a student of the respected Sufi Sheikh Shahabuddin Suhrawardi. Saadi liked to travel, and lived much of his life as a wandering dervish. After Iraq he traveled the region for nearly thirty years. He went to Shamat (Syria), Palestine, Hijaz (Arabia), Yemen,Egypt and Rum (Turkey), which was in Byzantine control at the time. At one time he is said to have been captured by the Crusaders.
Saadi died in his hometown of Shiraz. There is some discrepancy about the date of his death, but he may have died a centenarian. His tomb was greatly elaborated in 1952 and has since became a tourist attraction.

His works
Saadi’s writings are held to be among the greatest Sufi classics. He wrote “The Orchard” (Bostan) in 1257,”The Rose Garden” (Gulistan) in 1258. There is also a Divan, or collection of his poetry. He wrote short stories and poems about his adventurous life in both his major works.
Saadi has been translated by a number of major Western poets, most of whom were not deterred by the “transparently homoerotic” [1] tone of much of his work. According to Wayne Dynes, “English translators even in the tamer episodes of the Gulistan turn boys into girls and change anecdotes about pederasty into tales of heterosexual Iove.” (Asian Homosexuality p.66)
Chief among these works is Goethe’s West-Oestlicher Divan. Andre du Ryer was the first European to present Saadi to the West, by means of a partial French translation of Golistan in 1634. Adam Olearius followed soon with a complete translation of the Bustan and the Golistan into German in 1654. Ralph Waldo Emerson was also an avid fan of Sa’di’s writings, contributing to some translated editions himself.
One of his more famous quotes is, “Whatever is produced in haste goes easily to waste.” Another famous poem focuses on the kinship of all humans. The same poem is used to grace the entrance to the Hall of Nations of the UN building in New York with this call for breaking all barriers…
“Of one Essence is the human race,

thus has Creation put the Base;

One Limb impacted is sufficient,

For all Others to feel the Mace.”

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A Song Of Peace Shared By Palestinians and Israeli’s..

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People say, “Don’t you think you ought to be able to do it by yourself?” And I love this question because the answer is: You can’t do it by yourself. That’s the entire message of the last 10,000 years of human history. The self is insufficient. The ego will not suffice…you must humble yourself to the point where you admit that you can’t do it unless you have help from someone whose idea of home is a cow flop.—Terence McKenna

Dear Friends,
I attended a talk at the local Hermetic Society last night, given by friend Lyterphotos. It was excellent fun, and informative (of the Entheogenic Sort). A nice welcoming crowd, and I have to say I really enjoyed myself!
Not much to add on the personal note at this point, except I am off to do some work, and to enjoy the cooler temperatures!
More on the way!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Charlie Chaplin speech from “The Great Dictator” remix

The Links

The Fairy Race

Poet: Lorca…

Maura O’Connell – The Blessing (Live)

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Charlie Chaplin speech from “The Great Dictator” remix

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The Links:
Seattle police seize marijuana patient files

Missing 2 and 4….

This Sand…

Photo Essay: From The Beginnings Of The Spanish Civil War

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The Fairy Race – by Lady Francesca Speranza Wilde

THE Sidhe, or spirit race, called also the Feadh-Ree, or fairies, are supposed to have been once angels in heaven, who were cast out by Divine command as a punishment for their inordinate pride.
Some fell to earth, and dwelt there, long before man was created, as the first gods of the earth. Others fell into the sea, and they built themselves beautiful fairy palaces of crystal and pearl underneath the waves; but on moonlight nights they often come up on the land, riding their white horses, and they hold revels with their fairy kindred of the earth, who live in the clefts of the hills, and they dance together on the greensward under the ancient trees, and drink nectar from the cups of the flowers, which is the fairy wine.
Other fairies, however, are demoniacal, and given to evil and malicious deeds; for when cast out of heaven they fell into hell, and there the devil holds them under his rule, and sends them forth as he wills upon missions of evil to tempt the souls of men downward by the false glitter of sin and pleasure. These spirits dwell under the earth and impart their knowledge only to certain evil persons chosen of the devil, who gives them power to make incantations, and brew love potions, and to work wicked spells, and they can assume different forms by their knowledge and use of certain magical herbs.
The witch women who have been taught by them, and have thus become tools of the Evil One, are the terror of the neighbourhood; for they have all the power of the fairies and all the malice of the devil, who reveals to them secrets of times and days, and secrets of herbs, and secrets of evil spells; and by the power of magic they can effect all their purposes, whether for good or ill.
The fairies of the earth are small and beautiful. They passionately love music and dancing, and live luxuriously in their palaces under the hills and in the deep mountain caves; and they can obtain all things lovely for their fairy homes, merely by the strength of their magic power. They can also assume all forms, and will never know death until the last day comes, when their doom is to vanish away–to be annihilated for ever. But they are very jealous of the human race who are so tall and strong, and to whom has been promised immortality. And they are often tempted by the beauty of a mortal woman and greatly desire to have her as a wife.
The children of such marriages have a strange mystic nature, and generally become famous in music and song. But they are passionate, revengeful, and not easy to live with. Every one knows them to be of the Sidhe or spirit race, by their beautiful eyes and their bold, reckless temperament.
The fairy king and princes dress in green, with red caps bound on the head with a golden fillet. The fairy queen and the great court lathes are robed in glittering silver gauze, spangled with diamonds, and their long golden hair sweeps the ground as they dance on the greensward.
Their favourite camp and resting-place is under a hawthorn tree, and a peasant would die sooner than cut down one of the ancient hawthorns sacred to the fairies, and which generally stands in the centre of a fairy ring. But the people never offer worship to these fairy beings, for they look on the Sidhe as a race quite inferior to man. At the same the they have an immense dread and fear of the mystic fairy power, and never interfere with them nor offend them knowingly.
The Sidhe often strive to carry off the handsome children, who are then reared in the beautiful fairy palaces under the earth, and wedded to fairy mates when they grow up.
The people dread the idea of a fairy changeling being left in the cradle in place of their own lovely child; and if a wizened little thing is found there, it is sometimes taken out at night and laid in an open grave till morning, when they hope to find their own child restored, although more often nothing is found save the cold corpse of the poor outcast.
Sometimes it is said the fairies carry off the mortal child for a sacrifice, as they have to offer one every seven years to the devil in return for the power he gives them. And beautiful young girls are carried off, also, either for sacrifice or to be wedded to the fairy king.
The fairies are pure and cleanly in their habits, and they like above all things a pail of water to be set for them at night, in case they may wish to bathe.
They also delight in good wines, and are careful to repay the donor in blessings, for they are truly upright and honest. The great lords of Ireland, in ancient times, used to leave a keg of the finest Spanish wine frequently at night out on the window-sill for the fairies, and in the morning it was all gone.
Fire is a great preventative against fairy magic, for fire is the most sacred of all created things, and man alone has power over it. No animal has ever yet attained the knowledge of how to draw out the spirit of fire from the stone or the wood, where it has found a dwelling-place. If a ring of fire is made round cattle or a child’s cradle, or if fire is placed under the churn, the fairies have no power to harm. And the spirit of the fire is certain to destroy all fairy magic, if it exist.

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Poet: Lorca…

The Faithless Wife

So I took her to the river

believing she was a maiden,

but she already had a husband.

It was on St. James night

and almost as if I was obliged to.

The lanterns went out

and the crickets lighted up.

In the farthest street corners

I touched her sleeping breasts

and they opened to me suddenly

like spikes of hyacinth.

The starch of her petticoat

sounded in my ears

like a piece of silk

rent by ten knives.

Without silver light on their foliage

the trees had grown larger

and a horizon of dogs

barked very far from the river.
Past the blackberries,

the reeds and the hawthorne

underneath her cluster of hair

I made a hollow in the earth

I took off my tie,

she too off her dress.

I, my belt with the revolver,

She, her four bodices.

Nor nard nor mother-o’-pearl

have skin so fine,

nor does glass with silver

shine with such brilliance.

Her thighs slipped away from me

like startled fish,

half full of fire,

half full of cold.

That night I ran

on the best of roads

mounted on a nacre mare

without bridle stirrups.
As a man, I won’t repeat

the things she said to me.

The light of understanding

has made me more discreet.

Smeared with sand and kisses

I took her away from the river.

The swords of the lilies

battled with the air.
I behaved like what I am,

like a proper gypsy.

I gave her a large sewing basket,

of straw-colored satin,

but I did not fall in love

for although she had a husband

she told me she was a maiden

when I took her to the river.

—
Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías

1. Cogida and death
At five in the afternoon.

It was exactly five in the afternoon.

A boy brought the white sheet

at five in the afternoon.

A frail of lime ready prepared

at five in the afternoon.

The rest was death, and death alone.
The wind carried away the cottonwool

at five in the afternoon.

And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel

at five in the afternoon.

Now the dove and the leopard wrestle

at five in the afternoon.

And a thigh with a desolated horn

at five in the afternoon.

The bass-string struck up

at five in the afternoon.

Arsenic bells and smoke

at five in the afternoon.

Groups of silence in the corners

at five in the afternoon.

And the bull alone with a high heart!

At five in the afternoon.

When the sweat of snow was coming

at five in the afternoon,

when the bull ring was covered with iodine

at five in the afternoon.

Death laid eggs in the wound

at five in the afternoon.

At five in the afternoon.

At five o’clock in the afternoon.
A coffin on wheels is his bed

at five in the afternoon.

Bones and flutes resound in his ears

at five in the afternoon.

Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead

at five in the afternoon.

The room was iridiscent with agony

at five in the afternoon.

In the distance the gangrene now comes

at five in the afternoon.

Horn of the lily through green groins

at five in the afternoon.

The wounds were burning like suns

at five in the afternoon.

At five in the afternoon.

Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!

It was five by all the clocks!

It was five in the shade of the afternoon!
2. The Spilled Blood
I will not see it!
Tell the moon to come,

for I do not want to see the blood

of Ignacio on the sand.
I will not see it!
The moon wide open.

Horse of still clouds,

and the grey bull ring of dreams

with willows in the barreras.
I will not see it!
Let my memory kindle!

Warm the jasmines

of such minute whiteness!
I will not see it!
The cow of the ancient world

passed har sad tongue

over a snout of blood

spilled on the sand,

and the bulls of Guisando,

partly death and partly stone,

bellowed like two centuries

sated with threading the earth.

No.

I will not see it!
Ignacio goes up the tiers

with all his death on his shoulders.

He sought for the dawn

but the dawn was no more.

He seeks for his confident profile

and the dream bewilders him

He sought for his beautiful body

and encountered his opened blood

Do not ask me to see it!

I do not want to hear it spurt

each time with less strength:

that spurt that illuminates

the tiers of seats, and spills

over the cordury and the leather

of a thirsty multiude.

Who shouts that I should come near!

Do not ask me to see it!
His eyes did not close

when he saw the horns near,

but the terrible mothers

lifted their heads.

And across the ranches,

an air of secret voices rose,

shouting to celestial bulls,

herdsmen of pale mist.

There was no prince in Sevilla

who could compare to him,

nor sword like his sword

nor heart so true.

Like a river of lions

was his marvellous strength,

and like a marble toroso

his firm drawn moderation.

The air of Andalusian Rome

gilded his head

where his smile was a spikenard

of wit and intelligence.

What a great torero in the ring!

What a good peasant in the sierra!

How gentle with the sheaves!

How hard with the spurs!

How tender with the dew!

How dazzling the fiesta!

How tremendous with the final

banderillas of darkness!
But now he sleeps without end.

Now the moss and the grass

open with sure fingers

the flower of his skull.

And now his blood comes out singing;

singing along marshes and meadows,

sliden on frozen horns,

faltering soulles in the mist

stoumbling over a thousand hoofs

like a long, dark, sad tongue,

to form a pool of agony

close to the starry Guadalquivir.

Oh, white wall of Spain!

Oh, black bull of sorrow!

Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!

Oh, nightingale of his veins!

No.

I will not see it!

No chalice can contain it,

no swallows can drink it,

no frost of light can cool it,

nor song nor deluge og white lilies,

no glass can cover mit with silver.

No.

I will not see it!
3. The Laid Out Body
Stone is a forehead where dreames grieve

without curving waters and frozen cypresses.

Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time

with trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets.
I have seen grey showers move towards the waves

raising their tender riddle arms,

to avoid being caught by lying stone

which loosens their limbs without soaking their blood.
For stone gathers seed and clouds,

skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra:

but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire,

only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls.
Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone.

All is finished. What is happening! Contemplate his face:

death has covered him with pale sulphur

and has place on him the head of dark minotaur.
All is finished. The rain penetrates his mouth.

The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest,

and Love, soaked through with tears of snow,

warms itself on the peak of the herd.
What is they saying? A stenching silence settles down.

We are here with a body laid out which fades away,

with a pure shape which had nightingales

and we see it being filled with depthless holes.
Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true!

Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner,

nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the serpent.

Here I want nothing else but the round eyes

to see his body without a chance of rest.
Here I want to see those men of hard voice.

Those that break horses and dominate rivers;

those men of sonorous skeleton who sing

with a mouth full of sun and flint.
Here I want to see them. Before the stone.

Before this body with broken reins.

I want to know from them the way out

for this captain stripped down by death.
I want them to show me a lament like a river

wich will have sweet mists and deep shores,

to take the body of Ignacio where it looses itself

without hearing the double planting of the bulls.
Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moon

which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull,

loses itself in the night without song of fishes

and in the white thicket of frozen smoke.
I don’t want to cover his face with handkerchiefs

that he may get used to the death he carries.

Go, Ignacio, feel not the hot bellowing

Sleep, fly, rest: even the sea dies!
4. Absent Soul
The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,

nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.

The child and the afternoon do not know you

because you have dead forever.
The shoulder of the stone does not know you

nor the black silk, where you are shuttered.

Your silent memory does not know you

because you have died forever
The autumn will come with small white snails,

misty grapes and clustered hills,

but no one will look into your eyes

because you have died forever.
Because you have died for ever,

like all the dead of the earth,

like all the dead who are forgotten

in a heap of lifeless dogs.
Nobady knows you. No. But I sing of you.

For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.

Of the signal maturity of your understanding.

Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.

Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.
It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born

an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure.

I sing of his elegance with words that groan,

and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.

—-
City That Does Not Sleep

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is asleep.

The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.

The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,

and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the

street corner

the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the

stars.
Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is asleep.

In a graveyard far off there is a corpse

who has moaned for three years

because of a dry countryside on his knee;

and that boy they buried this morning cried so much

it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.
Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!

We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth

or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead

dahlias.

But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;

flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths

in a thicket of new veins,

and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever

and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.
One day

the horses will live in the saloons

and the enraged ants

will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the

eyes of cows.
Another day

we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead

and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats

we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.

Careful! Be careful! Be careful!

The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,

and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention

of the bridge,

or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,

we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes

are waiting,

where the bear’s teeth are waiting,

where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,

and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.
Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is sleeping.

If someone does close his eyes,

a whip, boys, a whip!

Let there be a landscape of open eyes

and bitter wounds on fire.

No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.

I have said it before.
No one is sleeping.

But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the

night,

open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight

the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.

_____________
Maura O’Connell – The Blessing (Live)