Gwyllm.com

Here is a fish of a different colour… experimenting with form and content a bit. Shape Shifting, Transformations, Spell Work… This edition covers some interesting territories from the century before last, and the early part of the 20th century. The birth of the modern Pagan Emergence can be readily traced to the works of Margaret Murray, and Charles Leland. Their works certainly informed my education, and this is a bit of a stroll down those lanes with a couple of diversions thrown in.
I hope you enjoy, and find something new to beguile you….
Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

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On the Menu:

Pagan Quotes

Blast From The Past! Kristi Stassinopoulou “The Secrets Of The Rocks

I Sall Goe Until A Hare – Maddy Prior

Margaret Murray- The Witch-Cult in Western Europe

Nice Song… and a lovely Island in the Aegean: Astypalea

Charles Leland: From Aradia, Gospel Of The Witches: The Children of Diana, or How the Fairies Were Born

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Pagan Quotes:
The Christian fear of the pagan outlook has damaged the whole consciousness of man.

–David Herbert Lawrence

There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.

-Lord Byron

Christianity has made of death a terror which was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan.

-Ouida

It makes no difference who or what you are, old or young, black or white, pagan, Jew, or Christian, I want to love you all and be loved by you all, and I mean to have your love.

-Victoria Woodhull

Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn…

-William Wordsworth

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Blast From The Past! Kristi Stassinopoulou “The Secrets Of The Rocks”

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I Sall Goe Until A Hare – Maddy Prior
I sall goe until a hare

Wi sorrow and sick mickle care

I sall goe in the devil’s name

An while I come home again
Ruled By The Moon
I am ruled by the moon

I move under her mantle

I am the symbol of her moods

Of rebirths cycle
I am companion to the gods

I can conceive while I am pregnant

I call the dawn and spring in

I am the advent
I bring life from water

In a cup that must be broken

I whisper to the bursting egg

I’m Aestre’s token
Scent Of Dog
Scent of dog, scent of man

Closer closer smell them coming

Hot breath, hot death

Closer closer hard the running
Tongues pant, hearts thump

Closer closer through the fields

Teeth snap, bones crack

Closer closer at my heels
Nearer yet and nearer

I can feel the poacher’s knife

He is running for his dinner

I am running for my life
Winter Wakeneth
Wynter wakeneth al my care

nou this leues waxeth bare;

ofte y sike ant mourne sare

when hit cometh in my thoht

of this worldes joie hou hit geth al to noht.
The Hare Said
Man sprays no weeds

The scythe cuts the corn bleeds

Leverets trapped in a harvest blade

‘Tis the time of man, the hare said
Here’s the tractor here’s the plough

And where shall we go now

We’ll lie in forms as still as the dead

In the open fields, the hare said.
No cover but the camouflage

From the winter’s wild and bitter rage

All our defense is in our legs

We run like the wind, the hare said.

I Shall Run And Run
I’ve been cursed, I’ve been despised

As a witch with darkest powers

– I sall goe until a hare –

I’ve been hunted, trapped and punished

In these my darkest hours

– Wi sorrow and such mickle care –
I’ve been thrown into the fire

But I do not fear it

– I sall goe until a hare –

It purifies and resurrects

And I can bear it

– Wi sorrow and such mickle care –
I sall goe until a hare

wi sorrow and such mickle care
I have outrun dogs and foxes

And I’ve dodged the tractor wheels

– I sall goe until a hare –

I’ve survived your persecution

And your ever changing field

– Wi sorrow and such mickle care –
I will run and run forever

Where the wild fields are mine

– I sall goe until a hare –

I’m a symbol of endurance

Running through the mists of time

– Wi sorrow and such mickle care –

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Margaret Murray- The Witch-Cult in Western Europe

4. Transformations into Animals

The belief that human beings can change themselves, or be changed, into animals carries with it the corollary that wounds received by a person when in the semblance of an animal will remain on the body after the return to human shape. This belief seems to be connected with the worship of animal-gods or sacred animals, the worshipper being changed into an animal by being invested with the skin of the creature, by the utterance of magical words, by the making of magical gestures, the wearing of a magical object, or the performance of magical ceremonies. The witches of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appear to have carried on the tradition of the pre-Christian cults; and the stories of their transformations, when viewed in the light of the ancient examples, are capable of the same explanation. Much confusion, however, has been caused by the religious and so-called scientific
[1. Pitcairn notes: ‘Issobell, as usual, appears to have been stopped short here by her interrogators, when she touched on such matters’. i.e., the fairies.
2. Pitcairn, iii, pp. 606, 614.
3. Taylor, p. 81.]
explanations of the contemporary commentators, as well as by the unfortunate belief of modern writers in the capacity of women for hysteria. At both periods pseudo-science has prevented the unbiassed examination of the material.
There are no records extant of the animals held sacred by the early inhabitants of Great Britain, but it is remarkable that the range of the witches’ transformations was very limited; cats and hares were the usual animals, occasionally but rarely dogs, mice, crows, rooks, and bees. In France, where the solemn sacrifice of a goat at the Sabbath points to that animal being sacred, it is not surprising to find both men and women witches appearing as goats and sheep. Unless there were some definite meaning underlying the change of shape, there would be no reason to prevent the witches from transforming themselves into animals of any species. It would seem then that the witches, like the adorers of animal gods in earlier times, attempted to become one with their god or sacred animal by taking on his form; the change being induced by the same means and being as real to the witch as to Sigmund the Volsung[1] or the worshipper of Lycaean Zeus.[2]
In the earlier cults the worshipper, on becoming an animal, changed his outward shape to the eye of faith alone, though his actions and probably his voice proclaimed the transformation. The nearest approach to an outward change was by covering the body with the skin of the animal, or by wearing a part of the skin or a mask. The witches themselves admitted that they were masked and veiled, and the evidence of other witnesses goes to prove the same. Boguet suggests that the disguise was used to hide their identity, which was possibly the case at times, but it seems more probable, judging by the evidence, that the masking and veiling were for ritual purposes.
[1. Volsung Saga, Bks. I, II; Wm. Morris, Collected Works, xii, pp. 32, 77.
2. Pausanias, viii, 2, 3, 6, ed. Frazer. Cp. also the animal names applied to priests and priestesses, e. g. the King-bees of Ephesus; the Bee-priestesses of Demeter, of Delphi, of Proserpine, and of the Great Mother; the Doves of Dodona; the Bears in the sacred dance of Artemis; the Bulls at the feast of Poseidon at Ephesus; the Wolves at the Lupercalia, &c.]
In Lorraine in 1589 a male witness stated that ‘indem wird er eine Höle, welche sie nennen die Morelianische Klippe, gewahr, darinnen sechs Weiber mit Larven umb ein Tisch, voll guldernen und silbernen Geschieren herumb tanzten.’–Bernhardt’s Nicolaea said that she had seen in an open field ‘mitten am hellen Tage, einen Tantz von Männern und Weibern, und weil dieselben auff eine besondere Weise und hinterücks tantzten, kam es ihr frembd für, stunde derhalben still, und sahe mit allein Fleiss zu da ward sic gewahr, das etliche in dem Reyhen waren so Geiss und Kuhfuss hatten’.[1] At North Berwick in 1590 seven score witches ‘danced endlong the Kirk yard. John Fian, missellit [muffled, masked] led the ring.’[2] The witches whom Boguet examined in 1598 confessed to using masks: ‘Les Sorciers dansent doz cõtre doz, pour ne pas estre recogneus; pour la mesme raison its se masquent encor’ auiourd’huy pour la plus part–Ils se masquent pour le iour d’huy, selon que Clauda Paget l’a confessé, & auec elle plusieurs autres–Estienne Poicheux rapportoit que partie des femmes, qu’elle auoit veuës au Sabbat, estaient voilées. Et pour cela aussi les Lombards par leurs loix les appellent Mascas.’[3] In 1609 de Lancre points out that in the Basses-Pyrénées there were two grades of witches: ‘Il y en a de deux sortes. Aucu{n}s sont voilez pour doñer opinion aux pauures que ce sont des Princes & grãds seigneurs. Les autres sont decouuerts & tout ouuerteme{n}t dãcent, & ceux cy ne sont si prés du maistre, si fauoris ne si employez.’[4] In 1613 Barbe, the wife of jean-Remy Colin de Moyemont, said that ‘elle a veu dancer les assistans en nombre de sept à huict personnes, partie desquelles elle ne cognoissoit ad cause des masques hideux qu’elles auoient de noire.’[5]
Josine Deblicq in Hainault (1616) was asked, ‘Que savez vous de la troisième danse? R. Elle eut lieu an Rond-Chêneau, sur le chemin de Nivelles, près d’unc fontaine. Il y avait bien 21 ou 22 femmes, toutes masquées, chacune avec son amoureux accoutré d’un déguisement bleu, jaune ou noir.’[6] In 1652 a French witch ‘dist qu’elles dansoient les dots l’une à
[1. Remigius, pt. i, pp. 65, 67.
2. Pitcairn, i, pt. ii, pp. 245 6.
3. Boguet, pp. 120, 132-3.
4. De Lancre, Tableau, p, 129.
5. Fournier, p. 16.
6. Monoyer, p. 30.]
l’autre et qu’au milieux it y auoit vne feme masquée tenant vne chandelle’.[1]
It will be seen from the above that the witches were often disguised at the dance, a fact strongly suggesting that the masking was entirely ritual. As the witch trials in Great Britain seldom mention, much less describe, the dance, it follows that the greater number of the cases of masks are found in France, though a few occur in Scotland, still fewer in England.
The transformation by means of an animal’s skin or head is mentioned in the Liber Poenitentialis of Theodore in 668 (see p. 21). It continued among the witches, and in 1598 in the Lyons district ‘il y a encor des Demons, qui assistent à ces danses en forme de boucs, on de moutons. Antoine Tornier dit, que lors qu’elle dansoit, vn mouton noir la tenoit par la main auec ses pieds bien haireux, c’est à dire rudes & reuesches’.[2]
In many cases it is very certain that the transformation was ritual and not actual; that is to say the witches did not attempt to change their actual forms but called themselves cats, hares, or other animals. In the Aberdeen trials of 1596-7 the accused are stated to have ‘come to the Fish Cross of this burgh, under the conduct of Sathan, ye all danced about the Fish Cross and about the Meal market a long space’. Here there is no suggestion of any change of form, yet in the accusation against Bessie Thom, who was tried for the same offence, the dittay states that there, accompanied with thy devilish companions and faction, transformed in other likeness, some in hares, some in cats, and some in other similitudes, ye all danced about the Fish Cross’.[3] In 1617 in Guernsey Marie Becquet said that ‘every time that she went to the Sabbath, the Devil came to her, and it seemed as though he transformed her into a female dog’.[4] Again at Alloa in 1658, Margret Duchall, describing the murder of Cowdan’s bairns, said ‘after they war turned all in the
liknes of cattis, they went in ouer jean Lindsayis zaird Dyk and went to Coudans hous, whair scho declared, that the Dewitt being with
[1. Van Elven, v, p. 215.
2. Boguet, p. 132.
3. Spalding Club Misc., i, pp. 97, 114-15, 165; Bessie Thom, p. 167. Spelling modernized.
4. Goldsmid, p. 110.]
tham went up the stair first with margret tailzeor Besse Paton and elspit blak’. On the other hand, Jonet Blak and Kathren Renny, who were also present and described the same scene, said nothing about the cat-form, though they particularize the clothes of the other witches. Jonet Blak said, ‘the diwell, margret tailzeor with ane long rok, and kathren renny with the short rok and the bony las with the blak pok all went up the stair togidder’; while Kathren Renny said that ‘ther was ane bony las with ane blak pok, who went befor ower jean Lindsayis zaird dyk and Margret tailzeor with hir’.[1] The evidence of Marie Lamont (1662) suggests the same idea of a ritual, though not an actual, change; ‘shee confessed, that shee, Kettie Scot, and Margrat Holm, cam to Allan Orr’s house in the likenesse of kats, and followed his wif into the chalmer’; and on another occasion ‘the devil turned them in likeness of kats, by shaking his hands above their heads’.[2] In Northumberland (1673) the same fact appears to underlie the evidence. Ann Armstrong declared that at a witch meeting Ann Baites ‘hath been severall times in the shape of a catt and a hare, and in the shape of a greyhound and a bee, letting the divell see how many shapes she could turn herself into.–They [the witches] stood all upon a bare spott of ground, and bid this informer sing whilst they danced in severall shapes, first of a haire, then in their owne, and then in a catt, sometimes in a mouse, and in severall other shapes.–She see all the said persons beforemencioned danceing, some in the likenesse of haires, some in the likenesse of catts, others in the likenesse of bees, and some in their owne likenesse.’[3]
The method of making the ritual change by means of magical words is recorded in the Auldearne trials, where Isobel Gowdie, whose evidence was purely voluntary, gives the actual words both for the change into an animal and for the reversion into human form. To become a hare:
‘I sall goe intill ane haire,

With sorrow, and sych, and meikle caire,

And I sall goe in the Divellis nam,

Ay whill I coin hom againe.’
[1. Scottish Antiquity, ix, pp. 50-2.
2. Sharpe, pp. 132, 134.
3. Surtees Soc., xl, pp. 191, 193, 194.]
To become a cat or a crow the same verse was used with an alteration of the second line so as to force a rhyme; instead of ‘meikle caire’, the words were ‘a blak shot’ for a cat, and ‘a blak thraw’ for a crow or craw. To revert again to the human form the words were:
Hare, hare, God send thee care.

I am in an hare’s likeness just now,

But I shall be in a woman’s likeness even now’,
with the same variation of ‘a black shot’ or ‘a black thraw’ for a cat or a crow. The Auldearne witches were also able to turn one another into animals:
‘If we, in the shape of an cat, an crow, an hare, or any other likeness, &c., go to any of our neighbours houses, being Witches, we will say, I (or we) conjure thee Go with us (or me). And presently they become as we are, either cats, hares, crows, &c., and go with us whither we would. When one of us or more are in the shape of cats, and meet with any others our neighbours, we will say, Devil speed thee, Go thou with me. And immediately they will turn in the shape of a cat, and go with us.’[1]
The very simplicity of the method shows that the transformation was ritual; the witch announced to her fellow that she herself was an animal, a fact which the second witch would not have known otherwise; the second witch at once became a similar animal and went with the first to perform the ritual acts which were to follow. The witches were in their own estimation and in the belief of all their comrades, to whom they communicated the fact, actually animals, though to the uninitiated eye their natural forms remained unchanged. This is probably the explanation of Marie d’Aspilcouette’s evidence, which de Lancre records in 1609:
‘Elle a veu aussi les sorcieres insignes se changer en plusieurs sortes de bestes, pour faire peur à ceux qu’elles rencontroient: Mais celles qui se transformoyent ainsi, disoyent qu’elles n’estoyent veritablement transformees, mais seulement qu’elles sembloyent l’estre & neantmoins pendant qu’elles sont ainsi en apparences bestes, elles ne parlent du tout point’.[2]
[1. Pitcairn, iii, pp. 607, 608, 611. Spelling modernized.
2. De Lancre, Tableau, p. 128.]
The best example of transformation by means of a magical object placed on the person is from Northumberland (1673), where Ann Armstrong stated that ‘Anne Forster come with a bridle, and bridled her and ridd upon her crosse-leggd, till they come to [the] rest of her companions. And when she light of her back, pulld the bridle of this informer’s head, now in the likenesse of a horse; but, when the bridle was taken of, she stood up in her owne shape. . . . This informant was ridden upon by an inchanted bridle by Michael Aynsly and Margaret his wife, Which inchanted bridle, when they tooke it of from her head, she stood upp in her owne proper person. . . . Jane Baites of Corbridge come in the forme of a gray catt with a bridle hanging on her foote, and bridled her, and rid upon her in the name of the devill.’[1] This is again a clear account of the witch herself and her companions believing in the change of form caused by the magical object in exactly the same way that the shamans believe in their own transformation by similar means.
The Devil had naturally the same power as the witches, but in a greater degree. The evidence of Marie Lamont quoted above shows that he transformed them into animals by a gesture only. It seems possible that this was also the case with Isobel Shyrie at Forfar (1661), who was called ‘Horse’ and ‘the Devil’s horse’. The name seems to have given rise to the idea that ‘she was shod like a mare or a horse’; she was in fact the officer or messenger who brought her companions to the meetings. She was never seen in the form of a horse, her transformation being probably effected by the Devil, in order that she might ‘carry’ the witches to and from the meetings; Agnes Spark said that Isobel ‘carried her away to Littlemiln, [and] carried her back again to her own house’.’
There is also another method of transformation, which is the simplest. The witches themselves, like their contemporaries, often believed that the actual animals, which they saw, were human beings in animal form. Jeannette de Belloc, aged twenty-four, in the Basses-Pyrénées (1609), described the
[1. Surtees Soc., x1, pp. 192, 194, 197
2. Kinloch, p. 129. Spelling modernized.]
Sabbath as ‘vne foire celebre de toutes sortes de choses, en laquelle aucuns se promene{n}t en leur propre forme, & d’autres sont transformez ne scayt pourquoy, en animaux. Elle n’a iamais veu aucune d’elles se trãsformer en beste en sa presence, mais seulement certaines bestes courir par le sabbat.’[1] Helen Guthrie of Forfar (1661) states the case with even greater simplicity: ‘The last summer except one, shee did sie John Tailzeour somtymes in the shape of a todde, and somtymes in the shape of a swyn, and that the said Johne Tailzeour in these shapes went wp and doune among William Millne, miller at Hetherstakes, his cornes for the destructioune of the same, because the said William hade taken the mylne ouer his head; and that the diuell cam to her and pointed out Johne Tailzeour in the forsaid shapes unto her, and told her that that wes Johne Tailzeour.’[1]
[1. De Lancre, Tableau, pp. 129, 130.
2. Kinloch, p. 123.]

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Nice Song… and a lovely Island in the Aegean: Astypalea

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From Aradia, Gospel Of The Witches…

Charles Godfrey Leland

The Children of Diana, or How the Fairies Were Born
All things were made by Diana, the great spirits of the stars, men in their time and place, the giants which were of old, and the dwarfs who dwell in the rocks, and once a month worship her with cakes.
There was once a young man who was poor, with out parents, yet was he good.
One night he sat in a lonely place, yet it was very beautiful, and there he saw a thousand little fairies, shining white, dancing in the light of the full moon. “Gladly would I be like you, O fairies!” said the youth, “free from care, needing no food. But what are ye?”
“We are moon-rays, the children of Diana,” replied one:–
“We are children of the Moon;

We are born of shining light;

When the Moon shoots forth a ray,

Then it takes a fairy’s form.
“And thou art one of us because thou wert born when the Moon, our mother Diana, was full; yes, our brother, kin to us, belonging to our band.
“And if thou art hungry and poor… and wilt have
money in thy pocket, then think upon the Moon, on Diana, unto who thou wert born; then repeat these words:–
“‘Luna mia, bella Luna!

Più di una altra stella;

Tu sei sempre bella!

Portatemi la buona fortuna!’
“‘Moon, Moon, beautiful Moon!

Fairer far than any star;

Moon, O Moon, if it may be,

Bring good fortune unto me!’
“And then, if thou has money in thy pocket, thou wilt have it doubled.
“For the children who are born in a full moon are sons or daughters of the Moon, especially when they are born of a Sunday when there is a high tide.
“‘Alta marea, luna piena, sai,

Grande uomo sicuro tu sarei.’
“‘Full moon, high sea,

Great man shalt thou be!’
Then the young man, who had only a paolo 1 in his purse, touched it, saying:–
“Luna mia, bella Luna,

Mia sempre bella Luna!”
“Moon, Moon, beautiful Moon,

Ever be my lovely Moon!”
And so the young man, wishing to make money, bought and sold and made money, which he doubled every month.
But it came to pass that after a time, during one month he could sell nothing, so made nothing. So by night he said to the Moon–
“Luna mia, Luna bella!

Che io amo più di altra stella!

Dimmi perche e fatato

Che io gnente (niente) ho guadagnato?”
“Moon, O Moon, whom I by far

Love beyond another star,

Tell me why it was ordained

That I this month have nothing gained?”
Then there appeared to him a little shining elf, who said:–
“Tu non devi aspettare

Altro che l’aiutare,

Quando fai ben lavorare.”
“Money will not come to thee,

Nor any help or aid can’st see,

Unless you work industriously.”
Then added:–
Io non daro mai denaro

Ma l’aiuto, mio caro!”
“Money I ne’er give, ’tis clear,

Only help to thee, my dear!”
Then the youth understood that the Moon, like God and Fortune, does the most for those who do the most for themselves.
“Come l’appetito viene mangiando,

E viene il guadagno lavorando e risparmiando.”
“As appetite comes by eating and craving,

Profit results from labour and saving.”
To be born in a full moon means to have an enlightened mind, and a high tide signifies an exalted intellect and full of thought. It is not enough to have a fine boat of Fortune.
“Bisogna anche lavorare

Per farla bene andare.”
“You must also bravely row,

If you wish the bark to go.”
“Ben faremmo e ben diremmo,

Mal va la barca senza remo.”
“Do your best, or talk, but more

To row the boat you’ll need an oar.”
And, as it is said–
“La fortuna a chi dà

A chi toglie cosi sta,

Qualche volta agli oziosi

Ma il più ai laboriosi.”
“Fortune gives and Fortune takes,

And to man a fortune makes,

Sometimes to those who labour shirk,

But oftener to those who work.”

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Prohibition: Its Roots and Bitter Fruit

by Peter Webster

a lecture presented at ENCOD’s Drug Peace Conference

a counter-event to the annual meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs

Vienna, 7-9 March 2008

Prohibition as Religion

I suspect that almost everyone here today already knows that the prohibition of recreational and religious drugs is a disastrous policy, and that it has always been so. We all know that prohibitions of things people want are self-defeating by their very nature, and we all know that prohibition is productive mainly of across-the-board corruption, immense criminal syndicates, disease, death, destruction and destitution, the poisoning of peoples and their lands and other such gross violations of human rights.
Although so much is obvious to us, representatives of many countries will next week, at their meeting at the U.N. here in Vienna, all continue to insist that it is the drugs that are the problem, and their continuing prohibition the only logical remedy. That idea, of course, has a long history. For some, it is a lie necessitated by their political duties or vested interests, those for whom prohibition is not a disaster but a source of personal advancement and comfortable salaries. To be frank, I can see little moral distinction between such persons and the so-called drug barons and drug-pushers whose livelihood is also the direct result of prohibition. For some others, the lie of prohibition is perpetuated for lack of courage, or perception of an alternative. For others still, the true believers, it is sheer delusion.
Since you all know these things already, what can I say to you this afternoon that might enlarge our collective understanding? I’d like to weave together a few diverse theories and observations, some of my own manufacture, that should help us understand the attitudes of these honourable gentlemen who will attend the U.N. meeting, and understand as well the attitudes and psychology of that great mass of the mostly-deluded both present and past who, simply by default or through a lack of courage and clear thinking, support the honourable gentlemen’s absurd quest for, in their own words, a “drug-free world.”
Only through an intimate and rigorous understanding of such a phenomenon as prohibition can we hope to effectively lessen its negative consequences. I will avoid, however, raising any hopes that we can soon overturn prohibition no matter what we do, for among other serious problems, it seems that the time left for achieving such a result is far too limited by a multitude of impending social, economic, and ecological crises now well underway. But let us at least try to understand why prohibition is so impervious to change, for no matter what the issue, the value of such fundamental knowledge can never be predicted and it has a strange way of providing opportunities for action that never could have been anticipated.
I just mentioned that prohibition today is directed not only at some recreational drugs, but also against religious drugs, some of them the designated sacraments of various religious followings. As you know, ayahuasca and peyote are two such religious drugs which are not subject to total prohibition everywhere, yet in general, the use of psychoactive drugs for religious purposes is either subject to total prohibition or at a minimum, very strict controls. This too has a long history worth exploring.
Taking a hint from this situation, it is then a short step toward concluding that prohibition itself is in many respects like a religious phenomenon, an important clue being that it is little affected by anything from the realms of science or logic, and depends primarily upon convictions:
On the one hand, the economic and political convictions of those who profit from prohibition, and on the other extreme, the convictions of the true believers, those for whom science and intellectual pursuit is for the most part just elitist snobbery, to be looked down upon by the common people who don’t need university learning to know right from wrong. Convictions, as the philosopher Frederick Nietzsche wrote, “are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”
If I may borrow a few excellent phrases from a recent paper by my good friend Peter Cohen, who deserves a great deal of credit for promoting this idea widely, prohibition

“has a certain status that shields it from rational and functional evaluation. [It] has acquired a sacred significance that places it beyond the pale of what we call scientific discourse; [its status] removes it from the realm of ordinary debate about policy, or about scientific or economic issues. [It’s religious nature] censures any argument demonstrating the irrelevancy of the policy…in much the same way that the culture of the infallibility of the Bible ­ that is, of the Church ­ pronounced Galileo a heretic. [Prohibition is thus] not susceptible to observations or data proving the ban to be incompatible with human rights, dangerous, destructive, impossible to enforce, inhumane, expensive, crime-inducing, and dysfunctional…”
Well, that about sums it up, and provides us with an important evaluation of why our task of drug policy reform is so difficult. But there is something even deeper about prohibition’s connection with religion that we should be aware of, and it has to do with our collective western post-Renaissance perceptions about religion itself. Not only is prohibition like a religious phenomenon, not only does prohibition satisfy a religious function for many of its supporters, not only has prohibition become a religious phenomenon in the broad sense of the term, but an examination of the roots of prohibition, extending back over 500 years, shows that it is a religious undertaking. Prohibition is a direct descendant of the dogmatism that the Renaissance Catholic Church had evolved over the centuries, and then used as a tool to legitimate its political goals during the Age of Exploration.
The use of psychoactive plants for religious purposes is perhaps one of the most ancient of human universals, extending back into prehistory to our very origins. And so, as the great explorers of the Renaissance discovered new territories, the peoples they encountered were, more often than not, found to use a wide range of psychoactive drugs in their shamanic, religious, medical and social traditions.
According to recent findings by a few intrepid researchers including my good friend Carl Ruck of Boston University, the Catholic Church was, however, no stranger to the use of psychoactive plants for attaining religious ecstasy. A long tradition of such use by the Church elite now appears to be the case, but the practices were reserved for only the highest echelons within the church, and completely prohibited for the general masses of Christians. The inner sanctum of the Catholic Church realised, of course, that if Christians were able to attain religious ecstasy and insight on their own with the aid of psychoactive plants, then the authority of the Church would be severely undermined, and their political quest for world domination damaged if not destroyed.
A main purpose of the Holy Inquisition was therefore to stamp out uses of psychoactive plants wherever they were to be found. And that included branding as heretics those European outsiders such as the medieval practitioners of the ancient traditions of witchcraft and alchemy, the pursuits of whom we now know were concerned with the use of psychoactive plants such as mandrake, belladonna, and other native European drug-plants. The doctrine of the Church therefore became one of public repudiation of drug use as a form of Gnostic heresy, while at the same time secretly preserving the knowledge of that use for the Church elite.
In the following quotation from a book by David A. J. Richards, we see how this repudiation has translated itself into modern times, how it has become a general, inbuilt, default perspective about the Christian religion that dominates the outlook of theologians and Church members alike. Now please bear with me, this quote is important but a bit tricky to understand when spoken rather than read. For the benefit of those wishing to read the quote, as well as my entire talk today, I have made it available at my website. More on that later. Here is the quotation:
“Shamanic possession and ecstasy, at the heart of much earlier religion, becomes, from [the perspective of the Church’s repudiation], one form of demonic or satanic witchcraft, a charge that Catholic missionaries made against the shamanic practices they encountered in the New World. The leading contemporary defender of this Judaeo-Christian repudiation, R. C. Zaehner, has argued that the technology of the self implicit in the orthodox western religions requires an unbridgeable gap between the human and the divine, expressed in the submission of the self to ethical imperatives by which persons express their common humanity and a religious humility. Accordingly, western, in contrast to non-western mystical experience, expresses the distance between the human and the divine. Drugs, including alcohol, are ruled out as stimuli to religious experience because they bridge this distance, indulging the narcissistic perception that the user himself is divine and thus free of the constraints of ethical submission.” (End of quote)
Ethical submission to authority, there we have it. Whereas Eastern religion and philosophy has little problem with perceiving mankind and all creation as a manifestation of the Divine, quite capable of judging right from wrong, the Catholic Church, and today its political descendants, want us to be submissive, to laud their authority, and to never get the idea that we may in fact know as much about things as they do. I’ve read this quotation many times, and its great importance only slowly became obvious to me. It explains many things about contemporary attitudes to both religion and drugs, and why so many otherwise intelligent people will automatically support notions such as “drugs are wrong” and refuse even to consider their convictions through rational processes based on evidence and logic. Nietzsche’s condemnation of convictions being more dangerous enemies of truth than lies becomes even more to the point.
The Political Tool

Among those who will be attending the U.N. meeting next week, there will surely be ardent believers, the modern-day analogues of the second-tier of Catholic Church officials who honestly promoted the Inquisition’s anti-drug crusade, officials who were not privy to the inner sanctum of the Church and its secrets. But we can be sure that the highest level delegates to the U.N. meeting, especially from those countries with the loudest prohibitionist voices, know what the Church insiders knew: the entire prohibitionist undertaking is a ruse, false propaganda designed to promote and maintain ulterior motives and purposes. As it was for the Catholic Church of the Renaissance, this is a matter of world control by the chosen few, nothing more.
For such as these, prohibition is a just a blatant lie, as opposed to a fantastic delusion. Those in the inner sanctum of political power today use prohibition as a political tool for ends having nothing to do with the stated necessity to control drug use and assist society. But again, I think a mere mention of this is all that is necessary today, for we all know already how prohibition has been a prime tool of the CIA, a tool of the U.S. State Department and Executive Branch for invading countries, manipulating the world economic system, and making ‘offers they can’t refuse’ to various people on the world scene who have forgotten their place and attempted to resist the desires of the rulers of the world; we all know how prohibition and the Drug War has been a tool of successive U.S. regimes to build a gigantic prison system and a nation-wide network of courts and judges perfectly willing to ignore the most fundamental of Constitutional rights; how it has made of many police forces the close equivalent of a gang of storm troopers. The neoconservative movement, born in the early 1970s as a reaction against the ideals of the 1960s, when government realised just how powerful the people could be when they wanted to, has now reached the zenith of power, and what they intend to use their justice and prison system for is now becoming quite obvious. Enough said about that. We should conclude, of course, that any attempt to directly interfere with these processes has little chance of success, and may even involve personal danger, and on this count the lie of prohibition will remain untouchable.
Psychedelics in Eden

So let me take the religious theme back even further. I mentioned that the use of psychoactive plants goes as far back as we can show, probably to our very origins as a species. When did that occur? Quite recently, as modern genetic investigations have shown. In a lecture I gave in Basel, Switzerland, for the 100th birthday celebration for Dr Albert Hofmann, I presented a theory I had been working on for several years. Using evidence from many sources and fields, I outlined a scenario for the sudden awakening of the human race, exactly 74,000 years ago in the Ethiopian highlands of East Africa.
Our immediate ancestors, I shall call them the proto-humans, were physically identical with modern humans but lacking in our most human characteristics, and they had already been living in the area for 100,000 years or more. A technology of tools similar to that of the chimpanzee, and no indication of ritual or shamanism or other symbolic behaviour, was their collective condition. The obvious question is why, given that they were in every physical sense identical with modern humans, they did not evolve beyond the proto-human state over this great length of time?
One day 74,000 years ago however, Mount Toba on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia let loose with a spectacular volcanic eruption, spewing into the air an amount of material almost 3000 times that of the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helen’s in Washington state, USA. The eruption deposited meters of ash in locations as far away as the British Isles, and caused several years of a volcanic winter; it caused the onset of the severest part of the last ice age, and this radically lowered sea levels and continental precipitation.
Many species, including proto-man, were threatened with extinction, and it was thus that a small surviving band of our ancestors retreated to the highlands of Ethiopia in an attempt to escape the devastating conditions of their homelands further to the east. It was in these mountains that our ancestors, famished and at the end of their hope for survival, came to use a psychoactive plant, probably a mushroom. Shamanism, symbolic behaviour and religious awareness were born, and the course of evolution on earth was altered dramatically.
Now I have intentionally presented this brief summary of my theory in a most provocative way, designed to cause general disbelief that one could possibly find evidence to support such a fantastic idea. Yet no less an authority on human evolution than Chris Stringer, head of the Human Origins Group of the London Natural History Museum, admits in his book African Exodus, that there must have been some kind of unusual event, some catalyst, some kind of “trigger” which set in motion the very rapid rise of human culture from a mere handful of individuals, and a mere few moments ago on an evolutionary scale.
Studies of human genetics had already shown that the entire human race had descended from a small number of individuals who had lived in East Africa some time between 50 and 120 thousand years ago. The trick was to explain how and why.

Chris Stringer writes in his book:
“It was one of the critical events in mankind’s convoluted route to evolutionary success. The nature of the trigger of this great social upheaval is still hotly debated, but remains a mystery at the heart of our ‘progress’ as a species. Was it a biological, mental or social event that sent our species rushing pell-mell towards world domination? Was it the advent of symbolic language, the appearance of the nuclear family as the basic element of human social structure, or a fundamental change in the workings of the brain? Whatever the nature of the change, it has a lot to answer for. It transformed us from minor bit players in a zoological soap opera into evolutionary superstars, with all the attendant dangers of vanity, hubris and indifference to the fate of others that such an analogy carries with it.”

Needless to say, perhaps, in this age of drug paranoia, neither Chris Stringer nor any other professional scientist, with just one or two important exceptions, has written back to me when I suggested to them what the trigger may have been!
If any of you are interested to explore some of the evidence I have collected in support of the theory, a video of my presentation is available at my website, The Psychedelic Library. For our purposes today it suffices to say that the additional evidence I compiled from various sources shows that in all probability the psychoactive catalyst to our evolution was not just an incidental thing, perhaps helping us along on a process already well underway, but that the drug-produced awakening was absolutely necessary, that without it we would still be proto-humans. For newcomers to such an idea, it is certain to sound just too fantastic to be true, but I assure you that if you study the evidence I have collected with an open mind and stew on this idea for awhile, you will begin to see not only that it follows from the evidence, but that it has potential to explain a great many other things, including an aspect of our subject today, why prohibition is so resistant to attack and change.
If the spark to the entire collective psychology of the human race was a drug experience, whether or not you consider such ideas as a Jungian collective consciousness to have any scientific validity, we can be reasonably sure that such an event has somehow been preserved in the chreodes of human thought and the subconscious of all individuals, and that the ancient event exerts an effect on behaviour and inherent attitudes similar in nature to other inherited instincts.
An example of the effect of ancient attitudes persisting to the present day was provided by the famed banker-turned-ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson, who led the expeditions to Mexico in the 1950s to discover the continued use of magic mushrooms by Amerindian descendants of ancient meso-American peoples. Wasson showed in another important discovery that modern European attitudes to mushrooms in general, which differ greatly across Europe, could be traced to ancient European traditions of religious use of drugs. The traditions themselves had of course long been abandoned and forgotten, but inherent, almost instinctive attitudes about mushrooms had persisted into modern times. This has resulted in, for example, the British, Portuguese and Castilian Spanish seeing mushrooms as generally poisonous and something to be detested and never touched, while the Catalans, the Basques, Russians, and most eastern Europeans seek out and eat all the wonderful wild mushrooms they can find. Totally different inherent attitudes have persisted down through centuries, yet the mechanism for cultural transmission of such attitudes is for the most part a mystery. As Wasson showed, however, the effect is real, and based on ancient, long-forgotten traditions and beliefs.
During the sixty or so millennia following the human awakening in East Africa, mankind was to undertake his first Age of Exploration, in fact much more ambitious if more gradual than that of the Renaissance, and tribes of the human species migrated from their African homeland to populate essentially the entire globe. According to the evidence we have of aboriginal peoples, everywhere that early man went he found and used the psychoactive plants native to the new regions, in perpetuation and imitation of that same process which ignited human awareness in the first place. Shamanic religious, medical and social practice was in fact everywhere maintained by the use of drug plants.
Whether early mankind’s explorations were in part motivated by the search for psychoactives cannot be known of course, but since the quest for using psychoactive plants is evidently a human universal, that fact is surely strong evidence that the practices existed at the source, in East Africa right after the Toba eruption, and were not practices that sprang up at random in the various locations where man settled over the following millennia. Thus the universal use of psychoactive drugs is part and parcel of the entire human experience on earth, at least for our first 70 thousand years until the prohibitionists came upon the scene. Our long association with drug plants can be expected to have shaped the course of human consciousness and psychology significantly. Attitudes about drugs are therefore automatic and instinctive, and as Wasson showed, they can be negative or positive, but most importantly they require of an individual quite strenuous logical thought and analysis to understand and overcome where necessary. This is more than just a religious matter, it is inherent in being human.
I think you can see therefore how such an inheritance allows the propagandist to arouse automatic, instinctive attitudes in people so that they will support prohibitionist agendas without any question or analysis. On this matter of drug use, the uninitiated person is perhaps more susceptible to manipulation than on any other subject. In its latest reincarnation, the process of prohibition has been going on for over 500 years and as such has a momentum that will be extremely difficult to alter, even if we were to have fair and equal access to the media through which the prohibitionist agenda is broadcast. A few years ago I was considerably more optimistic about the possibility of slowly reversing this prohibitionist tide but I regret to inform you today that the more I examine the roots of prohibition, the more my optimism fades.
Malignant aggression – the xenophobic instinct

As long as we have examined prehistory in our quest today, why not go back even further to examine evolution itself, to see if it holds any clues to our present predicament with prohibition?
An eternal question for mankind has long been to know the source and reason for what might be called malignant aggression, that human characteristic that has been manifested collectively in the pointless slaughter of war and conquest, genocide and slavery, and individually in participation in horrendous acts of murder, pillage, rape, torture and so forth. Indeed, such violence seems to be the main determinant of the course of history.

It is a question that has occupied many a philosopher, psychologist and scientist, for it would appear that something special has gone wrong with evolution such that it would produce a species capable of wantonly killing its own kind, and apparently quite willing to eradicate itself and all life on the planet as well. Collectively, mankind seems especially insane, and it would seem that nothing in the study of evolution could demonstrate how such a situation could have occurred. In the past, such deliberation has probably led to much pernicious religious dogma such as the doctrine of original sin and the necessity of redemption, confessional practices and the belief in the irresistibility of sin and the superhuman power of evil, and the literal belief in the devil as an actor on the world stage.
It turns out, however, if a theory I’ve been working on is correct, that the seeds of human malignant violence grew from a necessary and beneficial characteristic in our immediate ancestors, the great apes, and it is only when this tendency became subject to the human abilities of language and symbolic behaviour that it then became unmanageable, uncontrollable for many, and the catalyst behind mankind’s collective insanity.
The psychiatrist and author Erich Fromm, in his 1973 treatise, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, took up what is still an excellent analysis of the problem. His first task was to debunk a theory that had been proposed in the 1960s by the Nobel-prize winning ethologist Konrad Lorenz. His book, On Aggression, had become a best-seller, and its main thesis was that mankind’s collective behaviour as manifested in violence and destructiveness of every sort is due to a genetically programmed, powerful and innate disposition for aggression that forever lies in wait for the opportunity to express itself. In other words, mankind’s problem with violence was based on an instinct for violence that we were essentially powerless to counteract.
In his critique, Fromm relentlessly makes the case for the dismissal of the “instinctivist” theories on aggression. To begin his analysis, Fromm first stresses the important distinction between benign, biologically adaptive aggression, such as is aroused for the defence of life or territory, or for obtaining food, compared with what he calls malignant aggression, whose definition should be obvious. According to Fromm, it is a distinction which Lorenz and the instinctivists failed completely to make, seriously undermining their theories on that count alone.
Fromm then shows in a broad survey of animal and human behaviour that the evidence is solidly against blaming inherited instincts for violence and malignant aggression as the main determinant of the course of history. Fromm also makes the following important observation of why a theory such as Lorenz’ gained so much popular attention. To sum up his views on that point:
The turmoil and increasingly violent nature of the period when the theory captured the public mind, during which we witnessed the assassinations of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the Cuban missile crisis and the increasing threat of nuclear holocaust, through to the darkest days of the Vietnam genocide: such events produced in people a widely perceived feeling of powerlessness to change things, certainly contributing to the popularity of Lorenz’s neoinstinctivism. It was a case of public susceptibility rather than any scientific rigour of the theory — it was rejected by most psychologists and neuroscientists, according to Fromm. Its great appeal to the public also stemmed from the fact that it was a “magic bullet” kind of theory, pretending to explain away a complex phenomenon with an easy-to-understand, all-encompassing and irremediable cause. It was the always-popular kind of explanation that more or less relieved the reader from feeling any responsibility for the situation — how could one hope to go against a psychologically inbuilt inevitability?
Although Fromm certainly succeeds in discrediting Lorenz’ “instinct for violence” theory, I believe, nevertheless, that it is indeed an instinct at the root of the problem. It is an instinct that has come into existence through long evolutionary pathways, one that has been critical and necessary for the evolution of the most advanced hominid species. Its effects may therefore be surmised to be important, universal among members of our species as well as other advanced hominid and ape species, yet with the negative blowback for humans that it is indeed at the root of our problem with irrational violence and malignant aggression. It is not, however, an instinct for violence, nor aggression whether defensive or malignant, but an instinct which can be satisfied through a variety of behaviours, and whose net effect was a key factor in allowing the evolution of complex societies, large brains, and, surprisingly, true altruistic behaviour.
My theory would take far more time to justify with evidence than I have available today, so once again I must ask your indulgence when I insist that my brief outline to follow has been well researched and thought out, and would be far more convincing were you to see the complete body of evidence I have collected. I hope soon to finish a paper on the subject, but for now let me just describe the basic features of the idea so that I can connect it with the problem of prohibition. In fact, I already published an introduction to these ideas in the International Journal of Drug Policy in 1999. The paper was titled, “Drug Prohibition: A Perverted Instinct?” From that title you will already get a hint of the connection between my theory and the problem we are concerned with here today.
The concept of instinct needs some rehabilitation, however. Whether due to some still-lingering absurdities from the long reign of Behaviourist psychology, or the general tendency of scientists today to disbelieve in an entity unless having on hand several specimens in formaldehyde, it seems that mainstream science today is loathe even to use the word, substituting “innate behaviour” or some other euphemism when they need to explain certain behaviours. However, in promoting a rehabilitation of the term and concept of instinct I am not proposing we go back to accepting the ideas that proliferated early in the 20th century, with the long lists of sometimes very dubious things that were supposed to be instincts. For me, it seems that the concept of instinct was in its beginnings scientifically useful, and still is, but that it became corrupted by too wide and too wild an interpretation, especially by the public, leading to its discredit. This is no reason to throw out the baby with the bath-water, however. Many terms have general use meanings completely at odds with their scientific use. And not all scientists have joined in the condemnation, far from it. Here is what a top authority on cognitive neuroscience has to say: Jaak Panksepp has stated in his book Affective Neuroscience that, quote,
“It is becoming increasingly clear that humans have as many instinctual operating systems in their brains as other mammals. However, in mature humans such instinctual processes may be difficult to observe because they are no longer expressed directly in adult behavior but instead are filtered and modified by higher cognitive activity. Thus, in adult humans, many instincts manifest themselves only as subtle psychological tendencies, such as subjective feeling states, which provide internal guidance to behavior.” End of quote
I think we can accept the validity of such a view in spite of widespread professional objections, even if we do not know exactly how an instinct is implemented in the brain, or perhaps in some as-yet unproved manifestation such as a species collective memory, or whether we yet understand how an instinct is transmitted from generation to generation. For neuroscientists, everything is in the hard wiring. For evolutionary biologists, everything is in the genes. I’d recommend that they should go looking for the gene or the hard-wiring th
at makes them believe such reductionist nonsense!
Given the importance of instinct for behaviour throughout the entire animal kingdom, and the obvious way that instinct itself has been subject to evolutionary principles, it would be curious indeed if suddenly a species arose, ourselves, whose behaviour was simply beyond the influence of instinct. With that observation, I’ll leave my brief justification of instinct as a real and effective determinant of behaviour not only for animals but for humans as well, and go on to the meat of my theory.
So what is this instinct I propose that results in malignant violence and aggression? Agreeing with Fromm, the instinct itself has nothing to do with violence per se, but is one that arose and developed as advanced mammals – especially the monkeys and apes – began living in larger and larger, and more complex social groups. It is now believed that the advancing complexity of social groups and the demands that this entailed on individuals, was the primary evolutionary engine for the rapid increase in brain size we see in monkeys and apes through to the hominids and our own species. This increase in brain size, so rapid as to be declared by evolutionary biology as unprecedented, was obviously the most important development leading to the appearance of our species.
In order to live in complex, stable, exclusionary and coherent social groups, members of a group would necessarily have to know who was in the group, and who was not. To make a long story short concerning my findings, knowing who is in the “in-group” involves many complex aspects of individual and group interactions and thus could not be subject to a simple instinctive drive to enable it. Managing all the complexities of interactions in large social groups was and is the domain of our powerful and large brains, not something that could possibly be controlled by a simple instinct. However, knowing whether a given individual is in the “out-group” is a straightforward matter: it could easily be mediated by instinctive behaviour that led individuals and the group to define as the necessary characteristic any simple, easily-transmitted perception or quickly-invoked attitude about unfamiliar individuals. Once that determination has been made, it persists like a knee-jerk reflex.
And so, evolutionary pressures ensured that as ape societies became more complex, an instinct for xenophobia would develop, that is, an instinct mediating a simple, group-wide ability to instantly know an outsider, exclude him and thus preserve group coherence and stability. I call this, quite simply, the xenophobic instinct. It further turns out that recent research has shown that such group coherence, necessary so that group selection might occur, was the key evolutionary development that allowed the appearance of true altruistic behaviour. I’ll have to leave that tantalizing idea with just a brief mention, and continue with my central theme, but you can follow this and other ideas from the list of references supplied with the printed version of my lecture.
As for evidence of xenophobia and its instinctive nature in humans I wish to cite just two or three authorities on the matter.
In a paper by Alain Schmitt and Karl Grammer we read, “Indeed, xenophobia and ethnocentrism are universals and a primate legacy.” The noted ethologist Eibl-Eibesfeldt writes, “Xenophobia is a universal quality…an important component of the human behavioural repertoire. Infantile xenophobia was…observed in all cultures we studied. [Even children] born both blind and deaf display fear of strangers.”

Xenophobia in children and infants, observed in every culture, a primate legacy. And if exhibited by infants, no chance of cultural transmission by learning. Now if that is not an instinct, I should like to know why.
Let me briefly say some further things about instincts before I tie the matter to our present concerns.
— Instincts are in some ways like prejudices. It can be very difficult if not impossible to identify them as causative agents in one’s own behaviour. It’s not surprising that we, especially the scientists among us, believe that our rationality reigns supreme, free from inherited, unconscious determinants. That is, quite simply, the way it feels to be conscious.
Instinct and prejudice are also similar in that their sources lie in historical and psychological happenings mostly inaccessible to current awareness: from early childhood experiences and learning in the case of prejudice, and from hard-wiring or even collective species’ memory in the case of instincts. We see, of course, the major difference between instinct and prejudice: whilst the latter is something learned, instinct is inherent and inherited.
Consider then the never-ending phenomenon of racism, a very obvious example of a tragically common behaviour enabled and aggravated by the xenophobic instinct. We believe that racism has its roots in prejudice, and true, some aspects of racism are learned in childhood – they are culturally transmitted. But the cultural transmission of racist attitudes would not be nearly so effective, and a permanent feature of human societies, if it were not enabled by the pre-existing xenophobic instinct in the first place. It is the instinct which makes it so easy to impart life-long racist attitudes to young children, although the particulars of who is to be subject to that racism is culturally determined.
It can be exceedingly tricky to demonstrate in a given individual whether he does indeed harbour racist convictions. But in his society as a whole, for example in the south of the U.S., the prevalence of black/white only facilities, lynchings, organisations such as the KKK, or recently, even widespread voter suppression and so forth, demonstrates that racist prejudice must be widespread and have an indelible effect on the collective behaviour of that society. This observation then lends a proof of the universal prevalence of the xenophobic instinct.
— Instinct in humans, as is made clear in the Panksepp quotation I read to you, does not cause an on-or-off, all-or-nothing effect. The actual net effect of a given instinct might well be “subtle” and even vanishingly small, “filtered and modified by higher cognitive activity”, for an individual. But an instinct exerting a slight but significant tendency collectively in a large social group, should result in a powerful force. We humans, on issues and preferences that are “6 of one, a half-dozen of the other,” tend to split reliably very close to 50/50 in our decisions (for instance consider how close honest elections tend to be, always very close to 50/50. Thanks to Diebold touchscreens, even the dishonest ones don’t go far from an even split!). Therefore, such an incremental or even differential effect of an instinct, when applied to entire populations, may well translate into an important motivator for behaviour exhibited collectively. And this effect should be magnified due to another human propensity: when a style or perception gets rolling in one direction (whether due to the subtle influence of an instinct or otherwise), a great many seem to pile onto the bandwagon just for the ride.
— One further point, and this might at once provide an operational definition as well as a diagnostic characteristic for instinct: Satisfying an instinct makes the individual feel good, rewarded, successful, like he has accomplished something, but without any rational or logical perception of why or how that has happened.
With those observations to clarify the nature of my proposed xenophobic instinct, and instincts in general, let me take the final step which you should all now suspect. What allows authorities and governments to get peaceful citizens to fight wars, commit genocide, torture, and crimes against humanity yet believe they are justified in doing so, even though they may suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and even complete emotional breakdown for having participated in acts they know full well to be atrocities? What allows even democratic regimes to incite radical nationalism — the flag-waving, troop-supporting blind adherence to an undertaking that can easily be seen to be a war of aggression? What enables prohibitionist governments to fight the so-called Drug War, whether honestly or for ulterior motives, and have the great majority of citizens support the effort?
It is, above all, the appeal to the citizenry’s great weakness, that when an enemy has been defined, when an evil other, an out-group identified, when a group, a class, a race, a country or even a substance has been labelled as a threat, even for the most preposterous and mendacious reasons, it is the xenophobic instinct in every person which can be easily and reliably activated so that a great number of those persons can then be led off on the most absurd and destructive of crusades, to commit crimes and atrocities of every sort.

America’s designated foes — and I single out America here not because it is alone in perpetrating these evils but because, just maybe, if there is one nation today that has the power to reverse this march toward destruction and global mayhem, it is the USA — America’s designated foes have been communists, gooks in Vietnam, rag-heads in Iraq, terrorists who hate our freedoms, Islamofascists, immigrants, and of course dope-smoking hippies, degenerate drug addicts and drug dealers who profit on the misery of others, and quite astonishingly most people go along with it. Try to get a great number of people to do something or believe something that is not enabled by the arousal of an instinct and you get apathy, indecision, endless bickering, and little action. But when an instinct can be aroused and used, perhaps 80% of the population will follow along, no questions asked.

Hard to believe that 80% figure?
Psychiatrists Erich Fromm and Michael Maccoby conducted personality surveys in the early 1970s that indicated that a significant minority of about 10 percent of persons in all societies were theoretically capable of becoming Hitlers or Himmlers, given the necessary historical and social circumstances. Fromm classed the Hitler type as necrophilous, or death-loving, while Himmler was of a sado-masochistic personality type, more interested to exert absolute control over people than kill them.
Another, similarly-sized minority, were observed to have dominant personality characteristics that classed them as biophiles, those life-loving persons like Albert Schweitzer and Albert Einstein, incapable of being persuaded into supporting great collective crimes. The 70-80% of citizens in the middle, between the two extremes, apparently just blow with the wind, and follow whomever is shouting the loudest. It is of course the Hitlers, Himmlers, and other fascists of this world who know well the method to arouse the people by manufacturing a threat to the homeland, by defining an enemy, the evil outsiders who threaten our liberty, hate our freedoms, and they do shout very loudly about it. To some less-aware fascist types it just comes naturally, but it is obvious that the most crafty among them consciously know how to apply the method, how to make the people feel insecure and threatened by some class or group of outsiders, even it they don’t suspect it is thanks to the xenophobic instinct that the method works so well.
The biophiles, for better or worse, tend never to shout, nor even take a role in government. We find that the biophilic personality typically experiences an all-encompassing unity of life, the kind of experience that mystics seek after, and which some have experienced through the judicious use of psychedelics. The experience of unity, of oneness of all life, may, in fact, be the only effective antidote to the xenophobic instinct, for such an experience simply does not allow fascist rabble-rousers to define a class of outsiders, or separate people into a us-them dichotomy. If all of us are one, who is the outsider?
Well, in telling you all this, I hope I have not lowered your own optimism to the level of mine! However, for any task it is of great importance to know what to expect of one’s attempts to bring about change. Realistic expectations are a great advantage for difficult tasks. The ideas I have expressed today were directed toward that end – to know the less-than-obvious history, psychology and reality of prohibition and its bitter fruits. I can only hope that such an understanding will assist you in whatever your tasks may be.

References
Peter Cohen (2008), “The culture of the ban on cannabis: Is it political laziness and lack of interest that keep this farcical blunder afloat?” Paper delivered to the conference on “Cannabis-growing in the Low Countries,” University of Ghent, 3 and 4 December 2007. Amsterdam: CEDRO. English translation by Beverley Jackson.

http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/cohen.cannabisverbod.en.html
Carl A. P. Ruck & Blaise Daniel Staples: “Heretical Visionary Sacraments Amongst the Ecclesiastical Elite”:

http://www.psychedelic-library.org/video/HVS.rm
David A. J. Richards: Sex, Drugs, Death, and the Law: An Essay on Human Rights and Overcriminalization. Chapter 4 — “Drug Use and the Rights of the Person”

http://www.psychedelic-library.org/dajr4.htm
Chris Stringer and Robin McKie: African Exodus. London: Jonathan Cape 1996
Peter Webster: “Psychedelics in Eden”.

http://www.psychedelic-library.org/video/Psychedelics%20in%20Eden.rm
Jaak Panksepp: Affective Neuroscience – The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. Oxford University Press Series in Affective Science 1998. P. 122
See, for example, several papers supporting this view in Machiavellian Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans. Richard Byrne and Andrew Whiten, editors. Oxford University Press 1988.
See Unto Others – The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson. Harvard University Press 1998.
Alain Schmitt and Karl Grammer: “Social intelligence and success: Don’t be too clever in order to be smart” In Machiavellian Intelligence, above.
Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt: Human Ethology. New York: Aldine de Gruyter 1989, P. 174

Well, it has been longer than I ever wanted to go without posting, so this is a bit over the top. Sooooo much for you to check out.
Have mercy, I can’t stop finding stuff.
Have a good weekend, and thoroughly enjoy yourselves!
Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

George Santayana Quotes

Ustad Amjad Ali Khan playing 12 and half beats

Sufi Tales –

Iblis

A Chishti Tale

The Dream

Poetry: RUMI…. Dreams of Eternity….

Ustad Amjad Ali Khan – Malkauns (80′s)

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George Santayana Quotes

“It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.”
“Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.”
“For a man who has done his natural duty, death is as natural as sleep.”
“Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.”
“All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.”
“A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.”

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Ustad Amjad Ali Khan playing 12 and half beats

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SUFI TALES

Iblis
People say that when Iblis was cursed, he was so excited and overcome by the intensity of his joy that he filled the whole world by himself. Some asked him: ‘How can you act this way seeing that you have been driven from the Divine Presence?’
He replied: ‘By this robe of honour the Beloved has singled me out; neither an angel who has been brought near, wears it, nor a prophet who has been sent forth’.

—

A Chishti Tale
A parrot, called Tuti, was asked by Khojasta, its mistress: “I like to hear a Sufi tale. Why don’t you tell me one?” Tuti answered, “Oh mistress, no evil will come to one who avoids these four things: first, anger; second, temper; third, indolence; fourth, haste. Although love and patience are not compatible, still one should not act in haste. If an unfortunate incident should arise, you should be able to extricate yourself just as the woman who saved herself from the leopard.”
Khojasta inquired: “How did that happen?”
Tuti replied: “It is reported that there lived a man in a city who had a wife who was extremely bad-tempered, quarrelsome, sharp-tongued, gossipy and peevish.
O Nakhshabi, if a woman always act like a shrew

Even a div will not endure a tongue so insolent.

There is no one on earth who will not run from a demon;

Even a devil shuns a female who is virulent.
The woman ranted as though she had thirty-two tongues like the harp. Her husband continually heard profanity pouring forth from her windpipe. One day as if he was tuning a rubab, he twisted her ears and pummelled her several times like a bass drum.
This woman from the gutter, who in wickedness was like a two-faced drum, left the house in a rage with her two children and went to the jungle. She reached a desolate wasteland, which was so terrifying that even a frog because of fear would not dare to make a noise and even a bird because of fright would not flap its wings.
Suddenly a leopard looking like a lion and with the power of an elephant appeared before her and wanted to carry off her children.
The woman thought to herself, “Whoever disobeys her husband and leaves her house without permission will experience what I am undergoing.” She greatly regretted her action and was so repentant in her heart that she made a vow saying to herself, “If I am ever rescued from this danger, I will never again leave my husband and will always serve and obey him”. Yea, the ignorant will act in the same way as the wise but only after feeling the whip of indignation and being subjected to humiliation.
O Nakhshabi, ignorance creates a heavy shackle.

I do not know what would cause you to become ecstatic.

The fact that the unwitting will follow the wise man’s path

Only after shame and disgrace is axiomatic.
When the woman realized that she was overtaken by disaster, she thought to herself, “I must devise a scheme and must think of some stratagem. If I am successful, I will achieve my purpose; if not my conscience will be clear that I have done everything I could.”

The woman shouted in a loud voice, “Oh leopard, come closer and listen to me.”
The leopard was astonished and said, “How dare you address me in this fashion?”
“There is a lion in this vicinity,” she said, “which by one assault can destroy the whole world. Every day three human beings supply the food for his kitchen. The people in my community have agreed to provide these to him. Today it is my turn with my children for our names have been drawn by lot.
“I am a woman who is descended from a tribe of dervishes. None of my ancestors has ever refused anyone his daily bread. Although you are here to make an attempt against my life, I do not wish you to go away unsatisfied. Come and eat one of my children and half of my body. In this way you will not be deprived of your share and at the same time the lion will get his portion.”
When the leopard heard these words, he was amazed and said, “Oh madam, I have never heard of anyone generous enough to offer herself as a means of subsistence to her enemy!”
The woman said, “Oh leopard, acts like these are not unusual for the devout and are not uncommon amongst the observers of religious precepts. ‘Umar bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (he was noted for his high religious and ethical standards, so much so that ‘Umar II was his nickname; he ruled as an ‘Umayyad caliph between 717-720; Siraj) who was the enthroned sultan of the caliphate was given poison by a slave, the news of which was widely reported. ‘Umar summoned the slave and asked him, ‘Did you commit the act of administering poison to me?’ He replied, ‘Yes the vizier, may his gall bladder rupture, forced me to do this for he coveted abundant riches. ‘Umar gave him money for travel and said, ‘This poison has been effective, and I will not survive its fatal dose. The rumour of this deed has spread. While I am still alive and before they arrest you for the attempt on my life, take this money and leave the city’.”
O Nakhshabi, be like the companions of Muhammad

In distinguishing between true friend and deceitful foe.

Others will have generosity only for their friends

Buth those with the prophet to their enemies grace did show.

“Oh leopard, since I am going to die today and my body is going to be eaten, it does not matter whether it is by a lion or by a leopard. To me you are more deserving because I have met and talked with you, but not with the lion. If you eat one of the children and half of my body and leave the other half for the lion, take care not to remain in these parts for the lion will not touch what has been eaten by another. Since we have been promised to him, he will ask for us. When he finds us in such a condition, he will pursue you and no matter where he overtakes you, he will not only slaughter you but will also exterminate your wife and children.”
When the leopard heard these words, he left the woman in such haste that for several miles he did not even glance back. Suddenly a fox appeared and saw the leopard in a state of great agitation and trepidation.
He said: “Oh leopard, what has happened?”
The leopard related to him everything that the woman had told him. The fox opened his mouth and said, “What people say is true: All brave men are foolish. Oh leopard you are not very proud of your courage. God has bestowed reason and the Creator has given intelligence. From head to foot man is full of deceit, hypocrisy and trickery. We who are famous for our cunning and shrewdness and are celebrated for our craftiness and chicanery have our hides made into capes by men and sometimes our pelts into garments.”
“How can a woman recognise bravery, and how can a female intimidate a leopard? Oh leopard, what does she mean with a promise to provide food for the lion and ‘eat half of us and leave the other half for the lion?’ Do not be deceived by her words. Go back immediately and free your heart from fear of her and do not miss eating such a delicious meal. Take me along with you so that through your charity I may replenish my kitchen and by your good fortune I may have some kebab.”
The leopard replied: “Oh fox, it is possible that the woman was telling the truth and the lion will come. Then you will dash into a hole and I will be left to be caught by his claws.”
“If you do not have faith in my ingenuity and do not trust my judgment”, the fox said, “tie me firmly to your leg and take me there with you. If the lion appears, throw me at his feet and run away from him.” The leopard agreed.
When the woman saw the fox bound to the leopard’s leg, she surmised that this was a manoeuvre of the fox. She cried out, “Oh hello, hello! You are welcome. Nowadays it is considered that one’s daily bread and food allotment should be brought and placed before him, and for a human being it should be delivered to his home.”
“Oh leopard, I am a woman who is a sorceress and a female who is a hyena. In this wilderness my food consists of the meat of crocodiles and my stew of the kebab of leopards. When I told you the story of the lion and of the promise made to him, I did so thinking that you would become angry and would come nearer to me, then with my own hands I would prepare kebab from your meat for my children and make soup from your bones. You left me and I regretted what I have said. Now you have returned and brought the fox as your donation, but what purpose will this lump of flesh serve and how can this meat satisfy my needs? If you intended to make a gift, you should have brought a lion or an elephant.”
When the fox heard these words, he said: “Oh leopard, this is not a human being. It is a curse from heaven. This is not a woman but a witch of the wilderness. If you can, escape as quickly as possible and safe your life by running away from her at once.”
The leopard fled and the fox, which was tied to his leg, was hit and wounded by flying stones and clods of dirt, while at the same time he was laughing and smiling in ridicule.
The leopard said, “Oh fox, why are you laughing?”
He replied: “I am laughing at your stupidity. Is this the time for you to carry a heavy load with you. If that sorceress overtakes you and swallows you like a morsel, what will become of you?”
The leopard untied the fox from his leg and the fox immediately dashed into a hole. Then the leopard ran so fast that he looked neither to the right nor left and never once looked backward. By this trick the woman saved herself from the leopard.

O, Nakhshabi, it is wise to take careful precautions

To escape from fatal entanglements by some device.

Should a man find himself in a perilous position

For lack of craftiness he must not his life sacrifice.

—

The Dream
A visitor came to a Chishti pir. This visitor wanted to demonstrate his own knowledge of the Qur’an and intended to overpower the Chishti pir in a debate. When he entered, the Chishti pir took the initiative however and mentioned Yusuf and the dreams he has had according to the Qur’an. He then suddenly turned to his visitor and asked him if he could tell him about a dream, so that the visitor may give his interpretation thereof. After receiving permission the Sufi told that he has had a dream and both of them were in it. The Chishti pir then went on by describing the following dream event: “I saw your hand immersed in a jar of honey, while my hand was immersed in the latrine”.
The visitor hastened to interpret: “It is quite obvious! You are immersed in wrong pursuits whereas I am leading a righteous life”.
“But’, the Sufi said, “there is more to the dream”. The visitor asked him to continue. The Chishti pir then went on by telling this: “You were licking my hand and I was licking yours”.
________
RUMI…. Dreams of Eternity….

Gone to the Unseen
At last you have departed and gone to the Unseen.

What marvelous route did you take from this world?
Beating your wings and feathers,

you broke free from this cage.

Rising up to the sky

you attained the world of the soul.

You were a prized falcon trapped by an Old Woman.

Then you heard the drummer’s call

and flew beyond space and time.
As a lovesick nightingale, you flew among the owls.

Then came the scent of the rosegarden

and you flew off to meet the Rose.
The wine of this fleeting world

caused your head to ache.

Finally you joined the tavern of Eternity.

Like an arrow, you sped from the bow

and went straight for the bull’s eye of bliss.
This phantom world gave you false signs

But you turned from the illusion

and journeyed to the land of truth.
You are now the Sun –

what need have you for a crown?

You have vanished from this world –

what need have you to tie your robe?
I’ve heard that you can barely see your soul.

But why look at all? –

yours is now the Soul of Souls!
O heart, what a wonderful bird you are.

Seeking divine heights,

Flapping your wings,

you smashed the pointed spears of your enemy.
The flowers flee from Autumn, but not you –

You are the fearless rose

that grows amidst the freezing wind.
Pouring down like the rain of heaven

you fell upon the rooftop of this world.

Then you ran in every direction

and escaped through the drain spout . . .
Now the words are over

and the pain they bring is gone.

Now you have gone to rest

in the arms of the Beloved.

( “Rumi – In the Arms of the Beloved”, Jonathan Star

New York 1997)

—

He Comes
He comes, a moon whose like the sky ne’er saw, awake or dreaming.

Crowned with eternal flame no flood can lay.

Lo, from the flagon of thy love, O Lord, my soul is swimming,

And ruined all my body’s house of clay!
When first the Giver of the grape my lonely heart befriended,

Wine fired my bosom and my veins filled up;

But when his image all min eye possessed, a voice descended:

‘Well done, O sovereign Wine and peerless Cup!’
Love’s mighty arm from roof to base each dark abode is hewing,

Where chinks reluctant catch a golden ray.

My heart, when Love’s sea of a sudden burst into its viewing,

Leaped headlong in, with ‘Find me now who may!’
As, the sun moving, clouds behind him run,

All hearts attend thee, O Tabriz’s Sun!
R. A. Nicholson

‘Persian Poems’, an Anthology of verse translations

edited by A.J.Arberry, Everyman’s Library, 1972

—
DESCENT
I made a far journey

Earth’s fair cities to view,

but like to love’s city

City none I knew
At the first I knew not

That city’s worth,

And turned in my folly

A wanderer on earth.
From so sweet a country

I must needs pass,

And like to cattle

Grazed on every grass.
As Moses’ people

I would liefer eat

Garlic, than manna

And celestial meat.
What voice in this world

to my ear has come

Save the voice of love

Was a tapped drum.
Yet for that drum-tap

From the world of All

Into this perishing

Land I did fall.
That world a lone spirit

Inhabiting.

Like a snake I crept

Without foot or wing.
The wine that was laughter

And grace to sip

Like a rose I tasted

Without throat or lip.
‘Spirit, go a journey,’

Love’s voice said:

‘Lo, a home of travail

I have made.’
Much, much I cried:

‘I will not go’;

Yea, and rent my raiment

And made great woe.
Even as now I shrink

To be gone from here,

Even so thence

To part I did fear.
‘Spirit, go thy way,’

Love called again,

‘And I shall be ever nigh thee

As they neck’s vein.’
Much did love enchant me

And made much guile;

Love’s guile and enchantment

Capture me the while.
In ignorance and folly

When my wings I spread,

From palace unto prison

I was swiftly sped.
Now I would tell

How thither thou mayst come;

But ah, my pen is broke

And I am dumb.
A..J. Arberry

‘Persian Poems’, an Anthology of verse translations

edited by A.J.Arberry, Everyman’s Library, 1972

—
Our feast, our wedding

Will be auspicious to the world.

God fit the feast and wedding

To our length like a proper garment.
Venus and the moon

Will be matched to each other,

The parrot with sugar.

The most beautifully-faced Beloved

Makes a different kind of wedding every night.
With the favor of our Sultan’s prosperity,

Hearts become spacious

And men pair up with each other.

Troubles and anxieties are all gone.
Here tonight, You go again

To the wedding and feasting.

O beauty who adorned our city,

You will be groom to the beauties.
How nicely You walk in our neighborhood,

Coming to us so beautifully.

O our river, O One

Who is searching for us,

How nicely You flow in our stream.
How nicely You flow with our desires,

Unfastening the binding of our feet.

You make us walk so nicely, holding our hand,

O Joseph of our world.
Cruelty suits You well.

It’s a mistake for us to expect Your loyalty.

Step as You wish on our bloody Soul.
O Soul of my Soul, pull our Souls

To our Beloved’s temple.

Take this piece of bone.

Give it as a gift to our Huma.
O wise ones, give thanks

To our Sultan’s kindness, who adds Souls to Soul,

Keep dancing, O considerate ones.

Keep whirling and dancing.
At the wedding night of rose and Nasrin

I hang the drum on my neck.

Tonight, the tambourine and small drum

Will become our clothes.
Be silent! Venus becomes the Cupbearer tonight

And offers glasses to our sweetheart,

Whose skin is fair and rosy,

Who takes a glass and drinks.
For the sake of God, because of our praying,

Now Sufis become exuberant

At the assembly of God’s Absence.

They put the belt of zeal on their waists

And start Sama’.
One group of people froth like the sea,

Prostrating like waves.

The other group battles like swords,

Drinking the blood of our glasses.
Be silent! Tonight, the Sultan

Went to the kitchen.

He is cooking with joy.

But a most unusual thing,

Tonight, the Beloved is cooking our Halva.
– Ghazal (ode) 31 Divan-i Kebir, Meter 1

Translated by Nevit Oguz Ergin

Current Walla Walla, WA, U.S.A
Huma: legendary bird which eats bone. The person on whom she casts her shadow becomes a Sultan. Also called stately bird.

Nasrin: A variety of rose.

Sama’: Ritual of the Whirling Dervishes.

Halva: Sweetmeats.
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Ustad Amjad Ali Khan – Malkauns (80′s)

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I deeply admire this painting: The Temptation of Saint Anthony. Painted by Max Ernst. It has always moved me since I first saw it so many years ago… It reminds me to this day of an over the top LSA experience…. 80)
Ah…. 2 in a row! I assembled this yesterday, as I felt there was a bit more to say… Well, it looks like I have a place in the muralist exhibit coming up in May! I am pretty jazzed, now I just have to get my studio ready to handle a large piece(s). I have been aching to use airbrush and regular brush for awhile, as all my work has been on the computer for the last couple of years.
My friend Tomas sent this book to me a couple of years back: Earth Prayers From around the World: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations for Honoring the Earth
It really is an amazing book. I read from it a couple of times a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. It travels with me. It is a great focusing device, and I use it to bring me back on to the path that I need to follow.
Tomas is a great guy; he has pretty much spent his life in the service and care of others. We met on line maybe 8 years ago, and have had a pretty constant conversation since. He lives back in Rhode Island, so we have only gotten to visit once. I am hoping this year sees him coming out again, or us finally getting to visit back east.
We get to talk on the phone, and at this point are playing phone tag. He works more than he should (don’t we all?) and it isn’t always easy to connect.
Tomas, I am about to buzz ya before I head out!

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On The Menu:

William of the Tree

Rilke: The Ninth Elegy
Have a good one!
Gwyllm

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William of the Tree
In the time long ago there was a king in Erin. He was married to a beautiful queen, and they had but one only daughter. The queen was struck with sickness, and she knew that she would not be long alive. She put the king under gassa (mystical injunctions) that he should not marry again until the grass should be a foot high over her tomb. The daughter was cunning, and she used to go out every night with a scissors, and she used to cut the grass down to the ground.
The king had a great desire to have another wife, and he did not know why the grass was not growing over the grave of the queen. He said to himself: “There is somebody deceiving me.”
That night he went to the churchyard, and he saw the daughter cutting the grass that was on the grave. There came great anger on him then, and he said: “I will marry the first woman I see, let she be old or young.” When he went out on the road he saw an old hag. He brought her home and married her, as he would not break his word.
After marrying her, the daughter of the king was under bitter misery at (the hands of) the hag, and the hag put her under an oath not to tell anything at all to the king, and not to tell to any person anything she should see being done, except only to three who were never baptised.
The next morning on the morrow, the king went out a hunting, and when he was gone, the hag killed a fine hound the king had. When the king came home he asked the old hag “who killed my hound?”
“Your daughter killed it,” says the old woman.
“Why did you kill my hound?” said the king.
“I did not kill your hound,” says the daughter, “and I cannot tell you who killed him.”
“I will make you tell me,” says the king.
He took the daughter with him to a great wood, and he hanged her on a tree, and then he cut off the two hands and the two feet off her, and left her in a state of death. When he was going out of the wood there went a thorn into his foot, and the daughter said: “That you may never get better until I have hands and feet to cure you.”
The king went home, and there grew a tree out of his foot, and it was necessary for him to open the window, to let the top of the tree out.
There was a gentleman going by near the wood, and he heard the king’s daughter a-screeching. He went to the tree, and when he saw the state she was in, he took pity on her, brought her home, and when she got better, married her.
At the end of three quarters (of a year), the king’s daughter had three sons at one birth, and when they were born, Granya Oi came and put hands and feet on the king’s daughter, and told her, “Don’t let your children be baptised until they are able to walk. There is a tree growing out of your father’s foot; it was cut often, but it grows again, and it is with you lies his healing. You are under an oath not to tell the things you saw your stepmother doing to anyone but to three who were never baptised, and God has sent you those three. When they will be a year old bring them to your father’s house, and tell your story before your three sons, and rub your hand on the stump of the tree, and your father will be as well as he was the first day.”
There was great wonderment on the gentleman when he saw hands and feet on the king’s daughter. She told him then every word that Granya Oi said to her.
When the children were a year old, the mother took them with her, and went to the king’s house.
There were doctors from every place in Erin attending on the king, but they were not able to do him any good.
When the daughter came in, the king did not recognise her. She sat down, and the three sons round her, and she told her story to them from top to bottom, and the king was listening to her telling it. Then she left her hand on the sole of the king’s foot and the tree fell off it.
The day on the morrow he hanged the old hag, and he gave his estate to his daughter and to the gentleman.

______

Rilke: The Ninth Elegy

Why, if it could begin as laurel, and be spent so,

this space of Being, a little darker than all

the surrounding green, with little waves at the edge

of every leaf (like a breeze’s smile) – : why then

have to be human – and shunning destiny

long for destiny?….

Oh, not because happiness exists,

that over-hasty profit from imminent loss,

not out of curiosity, or to practice the heart,

which could exist in the laurel……

But because being here is much, and because all

that’s here seems to need us, the ephemeral, that

strangely concerns us. We: the most ephemeral. Once,

for each thing, only once. Once, and no more. And we too,

once. Never again. But this

once, to have been, though only once,

to have been an earthly thing – seems irrevocable.
And so we keep pushing on, and trying to achieve it,

trying to contain it in our simple hands,

in the overflowing gaze and the speechless heart.

Trying to become it. Whom to give it to? We would

hold on to it for ever….Ah, what, alas, do we

take into that other dimension? Not the gazing which we

slowly learned here, and nothing that happened. Nothing.

Suffering then. Above all, then, the difficulty,

the long experience of love, then – what is

wholly unsayable. But later,

among the stars, what use is it: it is better unsayable.

Since the traveller does not bring a handful of earth

from mountain-slope to valley, unsayable to others, but only

a word that was won, pure, a yellow and blue

gentian. Are we here, perhaps, for saying: house,

bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit-tree, window –

at most: column, tower……but for saying, realise,

oh, for a saying such as the things themselves would never

have profoundly said. Is not the secret intent

of this discreet Earth to draw lovers on,

so that each and every thing is delight within their feeling?

Threshold: what is it for two

lovers to be wearing their own threshold of the ancient door

a little, they too, after the many before them,

and before those to come……., simple.
Here is the age of the sayable: here is its home.

Speak, and be witness. More than ever

the things of experience are falling away, since

what ousts and replaces them is an act with no image.

An act, under a crust that will split, as soon as

the business within outgrows it, and limit itself differently.

Between the hammers, our heart

lives on, as the tongue

between the teeth, that

in spite of them, keeps praising.

Praise the world to the Angel, not the unsayable: you

can’t impress him with glories of feeling: in the universe,

where he feels more deeply, you are a novice. So show

him a simple thing, fashioned in age after age,

that lives close to hand and in sight.

Tell him things. He’ll be more amazed: as you were,

beside the rope-maker in Rome, or the potter beside the Nile.

Show him how happy things can be, how guiltless and ours,

how even the cry of grief decides on pure form,

serves as a thing, or dies into a thing: transient,

they look to us for deliverance, we, the most transient of all.

Will us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts,

into – oh, endlessly, into us! Whoever, in the end, we are.
Earth, is it not this that you want: to rise

invisibly in us? – Is that not your dream,

to be invisible, one day? – Earth! Invisible!

What is your urgent command if not transformation?

Earth, beloved, I will. O, believe me, you need

no more Spring-times to win me: only one,

ah, one, is already more than my blood can stand.

Namelessly, I have been truly yours, from the first.

You were always right, and your most sacred inspiration

is that familiar Death.

See I live. On what? Neither childhood nor future

grows less……Excess of being

wells up in my heart.

First off… I would like to say that the days have been beautiful here in Portland. The skies have cleared, sunlight filters down through the spring haze, and the birds are returning in droves. Mary was out in the garden yesterday, as I was out working… I came back, and the promises of spring are all there. The rabbit is back in his outdoors hutch, the squirrels are chasing each other, and life, is renewed.
I was able to attend a meeting of the Portland Mural Defense for the first time in quite awhile. It seems Joanne Oleksiak, Joe Cotter and Mark Meltzer have been working very hard to get the local ordinances changed. Great stuff is coming down the pike, and I feel pretty confident that The Mirador Mural will finally see the light of day! A big thanks to the organizers! There is also a muralist art show in the works… stay tuned.
Radio Free Earthrites is up and running, and it is feeling kinda lonely! Check out the different feeds at!http://78.105.9.201:8000/

Here is to life, to the beauty, and to poetry.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

—-
On The Menu:

Saint Mungo Turns 60!

The Links

Small on the outside, infinite on the inside

God behind the Gods

The Poems of Ashraf KhĀn, Khattak…

_______________
Saint Mungo Turns 60! (Mike Crowley)

Yep… he made it. Mike, it is a blessing to have you in our lives. I thank the stars that Clark recommended you to Earthrites.org. You are a saint amongst saints, and a wordsmith supreme.
Bless yer cotton socks!

The Links:

Torture Play-List

‘Earth worship’ on the rise among evangelical youth

Congress may apologize to American Indians

Monsanto, other companies, win Agent Orange case

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Small on the outside, infinite on the inside

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God behind the Gods

The gods and the demons had been having a war. Somehow the gods won, at least for the time being. But they did not realize that the power of Brahman, the Supreme Being, had made their victory possible. The gods took the credit themselves. When Brahman saw them congratulating each other, he decided to act, and to teach them a good lesson.
So he appeared before them in a form something like a ghost. The gods said to each other in great wonder, “What is this awesome spirit?”
Then they asked Agni, the god of fire, if he would try to find out who it was, and he agreed. He ran toward the spirit and that spirit said, “Stop! Who are you?”
“I am Agni, the god of fire,” he proudly replied.
“I see. And what power do you have?” asked Brahman.
“Why, I can burn anything on the earth,” said Agni.
So Brahman, in that spirit form, put a straw on the ground in front of him, saying, “is that so? Burn this, then!” Agni went toward it, his fiery breath crackling and arms ablaze, but in no way could he burn that straw, for some strange reason, no matter how hard he tried. Going back to the other gods, he told them shamefully that he had not been able to find out who that being was. Now they had to ask someone else to try.
This time they chose Vayu, the god of the wind. “You please try to find out who this spirit is,” they said. Vayu agreed and ran boldly toward the spirit, who told him, “Stop! Tell me who you are.”
“I am Vayu, god of air and wind,” he answered.
“Oh! What power do you have?” asked Brahman.
“Why, I make hurricanes and cyclones. I can lift up anything on this earth,” said Vayu.
“Is that so?” said the spirit, placing a straw in front of him. “Then lift up this!” Vayu rushed at it with a terrific noise but no matter how he huffed and puffed, the straw remained on the ground. He too returned to the gods, ashamed, and let them know that the spirit baffled him.
Finally the gods chose Indra, their highest and best, and asked him to do the job. Indra agreed to it. But when he approached that spirit, it suddenly disappeared! In its place was seen the shining form of the goddess Uma, a lovely woman adorned with gems, who is called the revealer of Truth. “Who is that spirit,” Indra asked her, “whom we have been seeing here?”
“That is Brahman, the Supreme Spirit,” she answered. “It is all due to the power of Brahman that you have had victory over the demons, and have become great. Don’t you know that?”
Then Indra understood.
This story explains why Agni, Vayu and Indra rank higher than the other gods. They came “nearest” to Brahman. And, of these, Indra deserves first place, for it was to him that the Truth was first revealed. That Truth is Brahman, the desire of every heart. Meditate on him, the sages say, for those who know him are rare and very precious to the world.

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THE POEMS OF ASHRAF KHĀN, KHATTAK…

I.
The promise of the kiss, the beloved ever putteth off for to-morrow;

Then how can my heart place confidence in a pledge like this?
Whoso is vain enough to depend upon the affairs of the future,

The wise and sagacious will laugh that foolish man to scorn.
My friend is not acquainted with the deceitfulness of the world;

Yet still she deceiveth, having, in her heart, naught of truthfulness.
Do not presume to this degree, upon the loveliness of the face:

Behold the autumn! doth it ever, to the rose, any bloom impart?
Thou, who through arrogance, attest thus falsely towards me;

Time will pay back unto thee the requital of these deeds of thine.
In the land of association, the appliances of pleasure will be many;

But the troops of bereavement, full speedily, lay it waste.
Never cast thou thine eyes upon the rose, O nightingale!

For separation will make those fresh wounds of thine still worse.
But is the nightingale wont, through advice, the rose to forswear?

No! ’tis the blast of autumn only that separateth them by force!
Full many have departed in sorrow, with the hope of to-morrow;

Then who will place any reliance on life’s fidelity to-day?
Thou, who in the hope of existence therefrom, restest in tranquillity

Doth the empyrean ever any opportunity for continuance allow?
To-day, I perceive the crisis of a contingency on the world impending;

But the future may make apparent unto it some other event.
The Severed had never beheld Bijāpūr, even in his dreams; †

But, at last, that presenteth itself, which his destiny decreed!
II.
When, in the shape of a shield, the hair on the forehead is plaited ‡

The roses wreathed therein, impart the intrinsic virtues of the sun.
The live-coal-like ruby in her nose jewel § is fire itself;

And the red bulāḳ, §§ like unto a spark of fire, is placed by its side.
The chamkala’ī on her forehead is hence red with her lover’s blood,

That every jewel therein, for piercing, is like a lancet disposed.
Her eyebrows are a bent bow; her eyelashes, arrows adjusted:

The ornaments of beauty are sometimes a sword; at others, a dagger made.
The devotee of a hundred years is, with one of her glances undone,

When she decketh out her beauteous person, and goeth forth.
When she disposeth her flowing tresses in curls about her face,

To the Ethiop army she accordeth permission, devastation to make.
Her dark eyes she maketh still more black, by the antimony;

And every eyelash she will make moist in her lover’s blood.
Soft and tender tales she telleth, but they are all dissimulation:

She casteth her enchantments round the heart, by pretexts and pleas.
For her lover, Tartarus and Elysium are ready provided;

Since the sweet Paradise of conjunction, separation turneth to Hell.
The shadow of love is, undoubtedly, the philosopher’s stone;

Since upon whomever it may be rubbed, his body is turned to gold.
The punishment is death, in the creed of passion’s votaries,

For him, who entereth love’s path, and feareth its struggles and strife.
Never let him, at any time, gaze upon the face of the beloved,

Who may be partial unto life, and for his head may fear.
Like unto the inroads the heart-ravishers make my heart upon—

When do the Khaibarīs such upon the Mughals’ heads ever make?
The Separated will not, thro’ injustice, turn his back to the beloved;

Though she should make his body red with blood all over!
III.
With the scar of sorrow, he will his own heart afflict,

If, on the world’s affairs, any one should reliance place.
Do not grow vain of its favour; for all is deception:

Do not imagine, that, in reality, it benevolence showeth.
When it did not act faithfully with those that have gone,

Whoever seeketh constancy from it to-day, erreth greatly.
The foundation of all its acts is on injustice based:

From the age hope not for good faith; for it knoweth it not.
Do not pride thyself on the friendship of that friend,

Who, in the same breath, in a thousand other places smileth.
I place not an hour’s reliance on the permanence of life:

He is a fool who nourisheth great hopes of immutability.
All those splendid edifices, that thou, in the world, beholdest,

Cruel destiny, at last, will them to a naked desert turn.
The Separated, in the Dakhan, would not have a moment stayed;

But when doth fate ever fulfil our wishes and requests!
IV.
What shall I say unto any one regarding the anguish of separation?

Since it hath not even left within me the power to complain!
Since every injury she heapeth upon me is right and lawful;

At least, let the proud one stand once with face towards me.
The gold bracelets upon her wrists make an amazing display:

Fit Let them never become broken from the disasters of fate!
For my case, O physician! thou ever showest commiseration—

Thou sayest, “by antidotes, thou wilt be from thy afflictions relieved.”
The diseases of the body thou knowest, without doubt;

But when is the agony of the heart laid bare unto thee?
Khattak that I am, with exile I am never content;

But affection for my friend hath from my kin severed me.
The grief of The Separated shall be changed into gladness,

If any one, from the tavern, shall bring wine unto me.
V.
Like as absence from the beloved hath made day dark to me,

Let there never be, unto any one, such a dark and lurid day!
Do not be overjoyed, O marplot! on account of my disjunction;

For at last, dark and overcast like this, shall be thy day!
Though constancy may grant to no one the opportunity of association,

The night of separation, at last, shall become the unclouded day!
The spring-time of youth was, than the flowers more pleasant;

But, alas! it was not so very lasting, the constancy of that day!
Draw near, O friend, and honour me with a sight of thee!

For the Almighty hath not in the world created an unchanging day!
Thou that ever puttest off, for to-morrow, the promise of meeting,

Consider what phase may be assumed by to-morrow’s day!
The day of delight and pleasure hath passed, as the wind, away—

For how long shall malice on me be vented by trouble’s day!
TTruly, it will be, at last, like the wind that hath passed away,

This, that I now behold—separation’s long, dreary day!
The grief and joy of fortune’s changes shall not last for aye:

Verily, O Separated! it shall reach its end, this oppression’s day!
VI.
Account as wind or as dust, the world’s pains and pleasures:

The free man is not disquieted, by either its troubles or its cares.
Their coming, and their going, are more speedy than the dawn;

For I have, myself, experienced the heat and the cold of time.
Show thou no hankering for the fare on the board of fortune;

For there is not a morsel thereon, free from bitterness and woe.
In a moment it produceth forms and figures of manifold fashions—

As a mere throw of the dice account the revolutions of fate.
Whoso may plume himself on a lucky turn of good fortune,

It dealeth him a painful wound, at the moment of exulting thereon.
If, with the eye of understanding, its sorrows and joys be viewed,

The permanence of their duration is, than that of the flower no more.
Turn thy back, O Separated! unto evil; thy face towards good,

That, on the Great Day of Assembly, thou mayest not, with fear, be pale.
VII.
In love for thee, O never let my heart grow cold

Like thine, that in perpetrating injustice, never groweth cold!
When will any one a true and sincere lover style me,

If my heart, in grief for thee, unto constancy turn cold?
No! my heart shall never wax cold unto faithfulness;

Nor, in this world, will thy nature, unto tyranny grow cold.
Nal, with all his wrongs, did not his back on Daman turn; †

Then how can any one’s heart now, unto thee turn cold?
What clamour did the unscathed raise on him always;

Yet the love of Majnūn for his Laylā grew not cold.
Advisers would, unto him, good counsel ever give?

But no admonitions made Wāmik, unto Æaẓrā cold!
Neither did the world show constancy unto the departed;

Nor have the souls of the covetous, unto the world grown cold.
My burnt-up heart hath become as fresh at a sight of thee,

As the seed of sweet basil maketh the heat-stricken cold.
The hope of my meeting hath cooled the fever of absence;

And the perspiration of recovery always maketh the feverish cold.
Even at thy death, The Separated will not thy love renounce;

And forsworn is he, if, in life, his heart unto thee turn cold!
VIII.
O thou, who pridest thyself on the plenitude of the world’s wealth!

How is it that the condition of thy forefathers restraineth thee not?
Their obvious existence, than that of the flowers hath been less;

Place then no reliance upon the mere phantasies of the world.
What is it to thee, though the face of the earth be broad?

But three yards, in its bosom, is all thy portion thereof.
Since, beneath the earth’s surface, thy abode is appointed,

Fruitlessly, upon it, thou buildest thy mansions and thy courts.
Gaiety and enjoyment are intended for the callous and unconscious;

But sorrow and concern are, wholly, the portion of the enlightened.
The votaries of the world are all tyrants and oppressors;

From any one of them, of faithfulness, I have never yet heard.
They evince not a particle of shame, even in humanity’s name:

They worry and rend each other, like unto ravenous beasts.
Outwardly, they may practise the appearance of friendship;

But the heart of every man is filled with opposition and strife.
Those deceptions that the world’s sons now-a-day practise,

Even the fox would not be guilty of such wiles and deceits.
Weep not, though thou shouldst experience adversity’s frowns!

For the evils and afflictions of this transient world shall not endure.
With the true and sincere, O Separated! love and affection are good;

But with the deceitful, friendship advantageth not the least.
IX.
Since I am ever hopeful of meeting thee, either to day or to-morrow,

Uselessly, in this insane idea, passeth my sweet life away.
With cries and supplications, I seek it to-day, but find it not;

For the soldiery of separation destroy the period of my joy.
The tree of prosperity yielded not to me the fruit of my desires:

In wails and lamentations, unjustly, my body I wearied make.
In the beginning, when the tree of affection was created,

Its innate properties brought forth absence’s bitter fruit.
I was wont, unconsciously, to eat of the fruit of separation,

When, in the garden, I planted affection’s tender sprout.
In disjunction, O friends! I perceive no fault whatever:

The heart, this misfortune permitteth, when acquainted therewith.
With the sword of separation, He cleaveth asunder, at last,

The heart of him, whom He, of a lovely face, enamoured maketh.
The game of absence, He at that time made so absorbing,

When, in the world, He thus the mart of affection thronged.
The Separated mentioned not, unto a soul, the secret of love;

But, in the alley of his beloved, the world humiliated him.
X.
When He, of His omnipotence, first the pen produced,

The destiny of every one, He then with its tongue wrote down.
To-day, at every respiration, that allotment arriveth—

To the share of some, He joy assigned; to the lot of others, grief.
By strife and contention now, he cannot great become,

Who, from all eternity, was entered in an inferior degree.
Thro’ the hatred of the envious, never can become crooked—

The lot of him, which, in the beginning, He made straight.
When doth death seize the skirt of any one, out of season?

Yet they will not tarry a moment, whose time is fulfilled.
The will of destiny ejected him from the abode of bliss;

And then it charged unfortunate Adam with the sin.
At the wounds of fortune, O Separated! do not sigh;

For God hath, for the stricken, prepared a wondrous salve!
XI.
Whoever dwelleth in this abode of calamity and affliction,

For every one, there is trouble, each according to his case.
I seek after a place of safety, but I am unable to find one;

The world, to this degree, is so full of misery and woe:
Though fortune may, a thousand joys, on thee bestow,

With one affliction, it trampleth them all in the dust.
Neither is its most propitious time worthy of rejoicing;

Nor is its most portentous hour for lamentation befitting.
Be not cast down at its sorrows, for they do not continue;

And with its pleasures also, do not thou grow overjoyed.
If fortune grant unto thee an interview with a pretty one,

With the sting of separation, it speedily pierceth thy heart.
Prosperity never entereth within the precincts of one’s abode,

Until misery and adversity its companions it maketh.
Good fortune, by its own words, saith, “I am not lasting,”

If thou shouldst but reverse the letters of that word.
The pigeon of vitality, it bringeth quickly down from its flight,

When the falcon of destiny spreadeth its pillions to the wind.
It draweth, without pretext, the dragon from the cave:

From the river it extracteth the fish, weak and paralyzed.
There is no cause for arrogance in life’s immutability;

For it passeth by like the wind, both month and year.
Like a fool, O Separated! do not thou its slave become;

For the world’s joys and sorrows are a phantom and a dream!
XII.
Whoever have fattened on the fleeting wealth of the world,

The worms of the earth, at last, have become glutted with them!
The world’s great ones too, whose history the books relate,

One after the other have fallen, slaughtered by the knife of death!
Their wealth, lands, and mansions, they have transmitted to others:

Body by body, they have fallen asleep in the house of the tomb!
Of the empty adulations of the world, they were amazingly vain;

But they were overcome with regret, when the time of departure came.
Seeing that the world showed no constancy to the departed,

How are those who remain, so ardent, to-day, in its pursuit?
The world is a faithless bride, that destroyeth her husband;

Hence the wise, for this reason, are to her friendship so cold.
The flowers, that every season bloomed in the garden so sweetly,

Have likewise, in the autumn, thus been scattered to the winds.
O thou, of vain pleasures so proud! for thy departure prepare!

Thy cotemporaries have grown weary in looking out for thee!
Behold these graves! say, what wilt thou with gardens do?

Look upon thy dear friends! observe what they have become!
Bend thy looks upon them—comely youths, and youthful brides!

Separate from each other, in their graves they have withered away!
By virtuous actions, O Separated! Heaven is attainable;

Then never follow in the way of those who have gone astray.
XIII.
For the soul’s journey, the white steed became saddled in the heart,

When upon my chin grew white the hair of youthful days.
When the spring-time of youth unto the body bade adieu,

The black hair waxed silvery in the autumn of old age.
Since the miseries of absence have not reduced them to ashes;

What! have these bones of my body, all, into iron turned?
Either my good fortune, fallen asleep, giveth me no aid,

Or the rulers of the present age have stony-hearted grown.
Whereas the heads thereof make no impression on their bodies,

On their armour must have broken the arrows of my sighs.
Sorrow, to this degree, causeth the blood from mine eyes to flow,

That the garments of my body have become tinged therefrom.
Behold the state of my eyeballs, by separation caused!

They have assumed the appearance of red roses within the parterre!
Though in the heart it may not have fallen, woe’s seed sprouteth,

When, by the plough of disjunction, its ground-plot may be turned.
Would, O Separated! that absence were, in the world, unknown;

For from its inroads have become desolate the people thereof!
XIV.
Of the pangs of separation I became deserving that day,

When, weeping and sobbing, from my love I was severed.
At that time, for my life, in tears of blood I mourned,

When, turning my back upon Attak, I weeping began.
How shall I now pine after the rocks and shrubs of my country?

For, having made my parting salutation, I bade them farewell.
Embedded in my heart, from Roh an arrow I brought away—

I failed to bid adieu to my bower, or its sacrifice to become. †
With much toil, in the world I had a garden laid out;

And, as yet, I had not smelt a flower, when from it I was torn.
The blue heavens laughed from delight until they grew red,

When facing Hoddaey’s mountain ‡ I turned from it away.
There is no magician in the Dakhan that can charm me;

For I am a prisoner become, in a dragon’s cavern profound.
The assignment of union was hung on the horns of the deer,

When I crossed to the other bank of Narbada’s swift stream. †
The riches of association were a hoard that I gloated over;

But in absence’s wars, I have to a mere thread and fibre changed.
How shall I, to-day, complain of bereavement unto any one?

I, myself, made a purchase of sorrow, when I a lover became.
The vast dust of separation hath hidden happiness from me—

I am utterly weary grown at the noise of summoning it back.
I, Khattak, call unto my beloved, but she is not forthcoming:

Mortified and despairing thereat, I have become wedded unto woe!
XV.
Come, my love! let us, in one home, our abode take up;

And from our minds dismiss all long and lingering hope!
Hand in hand we will saunter about; for such is fortunate:

It is not advisable that to-day’s inclinations we for to-morrow defer.
From all eternity, revolving fortune is cruel and unjust:

It is a fallacy if we, to-day, nourish a hope of its constancy.
We were many friends, like unto a flock, gathered together,

When the wolf of separation, by violence, tore us from each other away.
Our dear, dear friends have from the world departed:

How long then shall we exist in this sublunary sphere?
How can any one the hope of joy and happiness entertain?

For He brought us into this abode, grief and misery to endure!
Living, O friend! The Separated would not have left thee;

But ’tis the king’s tyranny that hath, by force, parted us!
XVI.
The wise, for this reason, unto the world’s affairs will be cold;

That all its griefs are like the blast, and like the dust its joys.
Do not, O Darwesh! false account my sorrow and my sighs;

For, at that time, the eyes will weep, when the heart may aching be.
The head of courage will not bow for the sake of throne and crown;

When the man, of spirit free, may know what the world’s gifts are.
That man, who may traffic in perfidiousness, and in iniquity,

Will be pale and ghastly, when he entereth the assembly of the just.
In the estimation of the wise, even worse than the ox they are,

Who may be constantly overwhelmed in gluttony’s cares.
The revolving heavens are a mill, and man the grain therein:

He is no sooner in the world, than he will into meal be ground.
It is out of the question altogether, that in Pus’hto any other bard,

Shall, like The Separated, so unrivalled, in the art poetic be.
XVII.
Completely false and lying are they all, from first to last,

Who are gathered around the table of the transient world!
The universe is like unto the shop of the sweetmeat-seller:

Account its resorters nothing else but the flies that they are!
The degree of affection, that the flies in that quarter bestow,

Is according to the quality of the sweets therein contained.
Place no reliance soever upon the mere display of their sincerity:

Falsely, they deception practise: they are their own weal’s friends!
In the day of prosperity, of constancy, they ever make boast;

But when a slight disaster occurreth, they all take to flight.
The heart’s eyes, for its own objects, show sycophancy to the tongue;

Then do not pride thyself on their oaths; for all are knaves.
Should they become aware of a good friend’s affliction,

Their tongues cry, “Dear! dear!” but they exult in their hearts.
Hope not, in this world, to find a friend, sincere and true;

For the sons of the present day are hypocrites and rogues.
There is neither love, nor affection, nor friendship in them:

By some craft they acquire; for they are all the loaf’s slaves.
The world’s interests and profits are their object, and these they pursue:

They are neither stedfast on faith’s path, nor infidels are they.
Like as they plot against the very heart’s blood of one another,

In hatching each other’s ruin are wolves ever thus occupied?
As yet, the day of doom hath not been viewed by human eye;

But its operations * I, to-day, perceive; since all are for themselves.
Never yet have I found, in any one, either fidelity or truth;

Whether it be in brethren or kinsmen, in relations or friends!
Since I, The Separated, became acquainted with its secrets,

I find the world hath countless women, and but few, few men!

What Survives?

This Edition is for Poets in County Cork, for the Wobblies of Portland, for the Children of the TAZ…. wherever they are participating in the great awakening, that is best translated as the stirrings of the heart, based and founded on a greater love….
One action, One Heart….

On The Menu:
Gerrard Winstanley Quotes
A Running Linkage Of The Times
Gaudi: Bethe Bethe Kese Kese
The Elves
What Survives? Rainer Maria Rilke
Piya Re – Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Be your most human. reach out to someone, change the world by your actions.
Blessings,
Gwyllm
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Gerrard Winstanley Quotes:

“When the people stare at the sky and dream of blessedness, or when they quiver with fear for hell after death, their eyes get blinded so they can’t see their own right of primogeniture

“Break in pieces quickly the Band of particular Propriety [property], disown this oppressing Murder, Opression and Thievery of Buying and Selling of Land, owning of landlords and paying of Rents and give thy Free Consent to make the Earth a Common Treasury without grumbling … that all may enjoy the benefit of their Creation.”

“I am assured that if it be rightly searched into, the inward bondages of the minde, as covetousness, pride, hypocrisie, envy, sorrow, fears, desperation, and madness are all occasioned by the outward bondage that one sort of people lay upon another.”
“In the beginning of time God made the earth … Not one word was spoken at the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another, but selfish imaginations did set up one man to teach and rule over another … Landowners either got their land by murder or theft … And thereby man was brought into bondage, and became a greater slave than the beasts of the field were to him. ”
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A Running Linkage Of The Times…

From Walker: When Change Is Not Enough: The Seven Steps To Revolution
Anarchy in Colonial America: The Prince Edward Island Experience
TAZ!
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From Peter (one of my favourite albums, btw Peter!)

Gaudi: Bethe Bethe Kese Kese

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The Elves

by the Grimm Brothers

First Tale
A shoemaker, by no fault of his own, had become so poor that at last he had nothing left but leather for one pair of shoes. So in the evening, he cut out the shoes which he wished to begin to make the next morning, and as he had a good conscience, he lay down quietly in his bed, commended himself to God, and fell asleep.

In the morning, after he had said his prayers, and was just going to sit down to work, the two shoes stood quite finished on his table. He was astounded, and knew not what to think. He took the shoes in his hands to observe them closer, and they were so neatly made, with not one bad stitch in them, that it was just as if they were intended as a masterpiece. Before long, a buyer came in, and as the shoes pleased him so well, he paid more for them than was customary, and, with the money, the shoemaker was able to purchase leather for two pairs of shoes. He cut them out at night, and next morning was about to set to work with fresh courage, but he had no need to do so for, when he got up, they were already made, and buyers also were not wanting, who gave him money enough to buy leather for four pairs of shoes. Again the following morning he found the pairs made, and so it went on constantly, what he cut out in the evening was finished by the morning, so that he soon had his honest independence again, and at last became a wealthy man.

Now it befell that one evening not long before Christmas, when the man had been cutting out, he said to his wife, before going to bed, “What think you if we were to stay up to-night to see who it is that lends us this helping hand?”

The woman liked the idea, and lighted a candle, and then they hid themselves in a corner of the room, behind some clothes which were hanging up there, and watched. When it was midnight, two pretty little naked men came, sat down by the shoemaker’s table, took all the work which was cut out before them and began to stitch, and sew, and hammer so skilfully and so quickly with their little fingers that the shoemaker could not avert his eyes for astonishment. They did not stop until all was done, and stood finished on the table, and they ran quickly away.

Next morning the woman said, “The little men have made us rich, and we really must show that we are grateful for it. They run about so, and have nothing on, and must be cold. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I will make them little shirts, and coats, and vests, and trousers, and knit both of them a pair of stockings, and you make them two little pairs of shoes.”

The man said, “I shall be very glad to do it.” And one night, when everything was ready, they laid their presents all together on the table instead of the cut-out work, and then concealed themselves to see how the little men would behave.
At midnight they came bounding in, and wanted to get to work at once, but as they did not find any leather cut out, but only the pretty little articles of clothing, they were at first astonished, and then they showed intense delight. They dressed themselves with the greatest rapidity, put on the beautiful clothes, and sang,
“Now we are boys so fine to see, Why should we longer cobblers be?”

Then they danced and skipped and leapt over chairs and benches. At last they danced out of doors. From that time forth they came no more, but as long as the shoemaker lived all went well with him, and all his efforts prospered.

Second Tale
There was once a poor servant-girl who was industrious and cleanly and swept the house every day, and emptied her sweepings on the great heap in front of the door.

One morning when she was just going back to her work, she found a letter on this heap, and as she could not read, she put her broom in the corner, and took the letter to her employers, and behold it was an invitation from the elves, who asked the girl to hold a child for them at its christening. The girl did not know what to do, but, at length, after much persuasion, and as they told her that it was not right to refuse an invitation of this kind, she consented.

Then three elves came and conducted her to a hollow mountain, where the little folks lived. Everything there was small, but more elegant and beautiful than can be described. The baby’s mother lay in a bed of black ebony ornamented with pearls, the covers were embroidered with gold, the cradle was of ivory, the bath-tub of gold. The girl stood as godmother, and then wanted to go home again, but the little elves urgently entreated her to stay three days with them. So she stayed, and passed the time in pleasure and gaiety, and the little folks did all they could to make her happy.

At last she set out on her way home. But first they filled her pockets quite full of money, and then they led her out of the mountain again. When she got home, she wanted to to begin her work, and took the broom, which was still standing in the corner, in her hand and began to sweep. Then some strangers came out of the house, who asked her who she was, and what business she had there. And she had not, as she thought, been three days with the little men in the mountains, but seven years, and in the meantime her former masters had died.

Third Tale
A certain mother had her child taken out of its cradle by the elves, and a changeling with a large head and staring eyes, which would do nothing but eat and drink, lay in its place.

In her trouble she went to her neighbor, and asked her advice. The neighbour said that she was to carry the changeling into the kitchen, set it down on the hearth, light a fire, and boil some water in two egg-shells, which would make the changeling laugh, and if he laughed, all would be over with him.

The woman did everything that her neighbor bade her. When she put the egg-shells with water on the fire, Goggle-eyes said, “I am as old now as the Wester Forest, but never yet have I seen anyone boil anything in an egg-shell.”

And he began to laugh at it. Whilst he was laughing, suddenly came a host of little elves, who brought the right child, set it down on the hearth, and took the changeling away with them.
_______________

What Survives? Rainer Maria Rilke

Lady at a Mirror

As in sleeping-drink spices
softly she loosens in the liquid-clear
mirror her fatigued demeanor;
and she puts her smile deep inside.
And she waits while the liquid
rises from it; then she pours her hair
into the mirror, and, lifting one
wondrous shoulder from the evening gown,
she drinks quietly from her image. She drinks
what a lover would drink feeling dazed,
searching it, full of mistrust; and she only
beckons to her maid when at the bottom
of her mirror she finds candles, wardrobes,
and the cloudy dregs of a late hour.

—
What Survives

Who says that all must vanish?
Who knows, perhaps the flight
of the bird you wound remains,
and perhaps flowers survive
caresses in us, in their ground.
It isn’t the gesture that lasts,
but it dresses you again in gold
armor -from breast to knees-
and the battle was so pure
an Angel wears it after you.

—
The Swan

This laboring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the akward walking of the swan.
And dying-to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day-
is like anxious letting himself fall
into waters, which receive him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draw back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.

—
Song of the Sea

(Capri, Piccola Marina)

Timeless sea breezes,
sea-wind of the night:
you come for no one;
if someone should wake,
he must be prepared
how to survive you.
Timeless sea breezes,
that for aeons have
blown ancient rocks,
you are purest space
coming from afar…
Oh, how a fruit-bearing
fig tree feels your coming
high up in the moonlight.
_______

Piya Re – Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Saturday morning, seasonal change rapidly coming down the road here in P-Town. This of course means waking with a massive pressure headache. You would think that I had a migraine to go with it by the way it is going….
OTOH… Radio Free EarthRites has a new address:
Tattoo this on yer forhead! Radio Free EarthRites: http://78.105.9.201:8000/
Big Thanks to Doug in the UK for putting another pence in the meter… and for being ever so patient and generous. He is re-uploading the music onto our 100Gig hard-drive, and his recent addition of 9 gigs of spoken word files is very appreciated as well!.
Stay tuned to EarthRites Radio… some nice changes coming on…. Now that I have Skype we may be able to do some interviews that will be exclusive to EarthRites, and we will be implementing Week-End shows as well.

—
I am looking to opening up Earthrites.org as a larger site with more input via blogs etc., and a new format… looking for Volunteers to help make this happen…
I am going back to a daily feed for Turfing, though reduced in size… (Thanks for the suggestion Laura!)… More poetry, less articles. Articles and such on the weekend.

—-

Well, it is almost here. It will more than likely will be out in a variety formats…
PDF Web Edition: Free, though not as large as other formats.. at 72 dpi on Earthrites.org
PDF Down Load Version: Small Fee, Complete Edition downloadable at 300 DPI for printing.
Soft Back Version: Complete Edition in traditional magazine format
Hard Back Version: Complete Edition with Slip Cover, highly collectable…
Stay Tuned!

____
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
On The Menu:

Linkage…

Liban the Sea Woman

Fintain’s Yew Tree

A Visit With William Butler Yeats…

Sheila Chandra: Lament of McCrimmon/Song of the Banshee

____________________

The Links

Migraine, Hallucinations, The Whole Nine Yards…(Thanks To Morgan For This!

In Canada: The Smell Of Marijuana…

FREAKANGELS: Episode One

Domestic Access to Spy Imagery Expands

____________________
Liban the Sea Woman
The time Angus Og sent away Eochaid and Ribh from the plain of Bregia that was his playing ground, he gave them the loan of a very big horse to carry all they had northward. And Eochaid went on with the horse till he came to the Grey Thornbush in Ulster; and a well broke out where he stopped, and he made his dwelling-house beside it, and he made a cover for the well and put a woman to mind it. But one time she did not shut down the cover, and the water rose up and covered the Grey Thornbush, and Eochaid was drowned with his children; and the water spread out into a great lake that has the name of Loch Neach to this day. But Liban that was one of Eochaid’s daughters was not drowned, but she was in her sunny-house under the lake and her little dog with her for a full year, and God protected her from the waters. And one day she said “O Lord, it would be well to be in the shape of a salmon, to be going through the sea the way they do.” Then the one half of her took the shape of a salmon and the other half kept the shape of a woman; and she went swimming the sea, and her little dog following her in the shape of an otter and never leaving her or parting from her at all. And one time Caoilte was out at a hunting near Beinn Boirche with the King of Ulster, and they came to the shore of the sea. And when they looked out over it they saw a young girl on the waves, and she swimming with the side-stroke and the foot-stroke. And when she came opposite them she sat up on a wave, as anyone would sit upon a stone or a hillock and she lifted her head and she said “Is not that Caoilte Son of Ronan?” “It is myself surely” said he. “It is many a day” she said “we saw you upon that rock, and the best man of Ireland or of Scotland with you, that was Finn son of Cumhal. “Who are you so girl?” said Caoilte. “I am Liban daughter of Eochaid, and I am in the water these hundred years, and I never showed my face to anyone since the going away of the King of the Fianna to this day. And it is what led me to lift my head to-day” she said “was to see yourself Caoilte.” Just then the deer that were running before the hounds made for the sea and swam out into it. “Your spear to me Caoilte!” said Liban. Then he put the spear into her hand and she killed the deer with it, and sent them back to him where he was with the King of Ulster; and then she threw him back the spear and with that she went away. And that is the way she was until the time Beoan son of Innle was sent by Comgall to Rome, to have talk with Gregory and to bring back rules and orders. And when he and his people were going over the sea they heard what was like the singing of angels under the currach. “What is that song?” said Beoan. “It is I myself am making it” said Liban. “Who are you?” said Beoan. “I am Liban daughter of Eochaid son Mairid, and I am going through the sea these three hundred years.’ Then she told him all her story, and how it was under the round hulls of ships she had her dwelling-place, and the waves were the roofing of her house, and the strands its walls. “And it is what I am come for now” she said “to tell you that I will come to meet you on this day twelve-month at Inver Ollorba; and do not fail to meet me there for the sake of all the saints of Dalaradia.” And at the year’s end the nets were spread along the coast where she said she would come, and it was in the net of Fergus from Miluic she was taken. And the clerks gave her her choice either to be baptized and go then and there to heaven, or to stay living through another three hundred years and at the end of that time to go to heaven; and the choice she made was to die. Then Comgall baptized her and the name he gave her was Muirgheis, the Birth of the Sea. So she died, and the messengers that came and that carried her to her burying place, were horned deer that were sent by the angels of God.

_____________
Fintain’s Yew Tree
And when Fintain came to Ireland is not known; but anyway it was for him and for Tuan that Diarmuid King of Teamhuir sent one time when there was a dispute about land and about the old custom. And when Fintain came he had eighteen troops with him, nine before him and nine after him, that were all of them his children’s children. And when the king’s people asked how far did his memory go back “I will tell you that” he said. “I passed one day through the west of Munster, and I brought home with me a red berry of a yew tree and I planted it in my garden and it grew there till it was the height of a man. I took it out of the garden then and I planted it in the green lawn before my house, and it grew in that lawn till a hundred fighting men could come together under its branches, and find shelter there from wind and rain and cold and heat. And I myself and my yew tree were wearing out our time together, till at last all the leaves withered and fell from it. And then to get some profit from it I cut it down and I made from it seven vats, seven kieves, seven barrels, seven churns, seven pitchers, seven measures, seven methers, with hoops for all. I went on then with my yew vessels till the hoops fell from them with age and rottenness. After that I made them over again, but all I could get was a kieve out of the vat, a barrel out of the kieve, a mug out of the barrel, a pitcher out of the mug, a measure out of the pitcher, and a mether out of the measure. And I leave it to the great God” he said “that I do not know where is their dust now, after the crumbling of them away from me through age.”

_____________
A Visit With William Butler Yeats…

A Poet to his Beloved
I bring you with reverent hands

The books of my numberless dreams;

White woman that passion has worn

As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,

And with heart more old than the horn

That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:

White woman with numberless dreams

I bring you my passionate rhyme.

—
The Everlasting Voices
O sweet everlasting Voices be still;

Go to the guards of the heavenly fold

And bid them wander obeying your will

Flame under flame, till Time be no more;

Have you not heard that our hearts are old,

That you call in birds, in wind on the hill,

In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore?

O sweet everlasting Voices be still.

—

Into the Twilight
Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,

Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;

Laugh heart again in the gray twilight,

Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is always young,

Dew ever shining and twilight gray;

Though hope fall from you and love decay,

Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:

For there the mystical brotherhood

Of sun and moon and hollow and wood

And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,

And time and the world are ever in flight;

And love is less kind than the gray twilight,

And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

—
The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

___________
Sheila Chandra: Lament of McCrimmon/Song of the Banshee

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On The Music Box: Kila – Gamblers’ Ball

Monday swings around… A weekend filled with finishing up work, visiting friends, running Rowan & Ivy out to Gresham for final film editing on “The Gamble”… this is the running title for their film that they are entering into the next festival. Somehow, they got 3 hours down to 12 minutes, including credits etc. We all went out for dinner last night after Mary and I picked them up… the two of them were glowing with having finished in time to make it for one of the entries as the cut off was today.
Ran into Andrew and Will at Hollywood Freddie’s… both were kinda illish, and Will had a jones for a corn-dog, to no avail. Nice seeing them!
Mike Hoffman sent me some new poems, which I will be featuring on Turfing in a couple of days.
Talked to Doug in London, he said the radio will be up on Wednesday… I am thinking of changing out lots of the music, sticking some more vocals and ethnic folk music on… thoughts?
Magazine is still going on. I made very little headway this weekend. Slogging…. slogging…
Hope this finds you well…
Blessings,
Gwyllm

_______
On The Menu:

Red Eye Express: Aqua

A Flash From The Past: Terence McKenna

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes…

Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Mia – You Are My Love

Art: Arthur Rackham!

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Red Eye Express: Aqua

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A Flash From The Past: Terence McKenna

The DMT Experience

(from Food of the Gods, pp. 257-260)
What can be said of DMT as an experience and in relation to our own spiritual emptiness? Does it offer us answers? Do the short-acting tryptamines offer an analogy to the ecstasy of the partnership society before Eden became a memory? And if they do, then what can we say about it?
What has impressed me repeatedly during my many glimpses into the world of the hallucinogenic indoles, and what seems generally to have escaped comment, is the transformation of narrative and language. The experience that engulfs one’s entire being as one slips beneath the surface of the DMT ecstasy feels like the penetration of a membrane. The mind and the self literally unfold before one’s eyes. There is a sense that one is made new, yet unchanged, as if one were made of gold and had just been recast in the furnace of one’s birth. Breathing is normal, heartbeat steady, the mind clear and observing. But what of the world? What of incoming sensory data?
Under the influence of DMT, the world becomes an Arabian labyrinth, a palace, a more than possible Martian jewel, vast with motifs that flood the gaping mind with complex and wordless awe. Color and the sense of a reality-unlocking secret nearby pervade the experience. There is a sense of other times, and of one’s own infancy, and of wonder, wonder and more wonder. It is an audience with the alien nuncio. In the midst of this experience, apparently at the end of human history, guarding gates that seem surely to open on the howling maelstrom of the unspeakable emptiness between the stars, is the Aeon.
The Aeon, as Heraclitus presciently observed, is a child at play with colored balls. Many diminutive beings are present there — the tykes, the self-transforming machine elves of hyperspace. Are they the children destined to be father to the man? One has the impression of entering into an ecology of souls that lies beyond the portals of what we naively call death. I do not know. Are they the synesthetic embodiment of ourselves as the Other, or of the Other as ourselves? Are they the elves lost to us since the fading of the magic light of childhood? Here is a tremendum barely to be told, an epiphany beyond our wildest dreams. Here is the realm of that which is stranger than we can suppose. Here is the mystery, alive, unscathed, still as new for us as when our ancestors lived it fifteen thousand summers ago. The tryptamine entities offer the gift of new language, they sing in pearly voices that rain down as colored petals and flow through the air like hot metal to become toys and such gifts as gods would give their children. The sense of emotional connection is terrifying and intense. The Mysteries revealed are real and if ever fully told will leave no stone upon another in the small world we have gone so ill in.
This is not the mercurial world of the UFO, to be invoked from lonely hilltops; this is not the siren song of lost Atlantis wailing through the trailer courts of crack-crazed America. DMT is not one of our irrational illusions. What we experience in the presence of DMT is real news. It is a nearby dimension — frightening, transformative, and beyond our powers to imagine, and yet to be explored in the usual way. We must send fearless experts, whatever that may come to mean, to explore and to report on what they find.

_____________

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes…
A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.
A poet ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.
Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.
Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.
All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame.
And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were.
As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale – my dreams become the substances of my life.

______________

Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Psyche
The butterfly the ancient Grecians made

The soul’s fair emblem, and its only name–

But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade

Of mortal life !–For in this earthly frame

Ours is the reptile’s lot, much toil, much blame,

Manifold motions making little speed,

And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed.
—

The Pains of Sleep
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,

It hath not been my use to pray

With moving lips or bended knees ;

But silently, by slow degrees,

My spirit I to Love compose,

In humble trust mine eye-lids close,

With reverential resignation,

No wish conceived, no thought exprest,

Only a sense of supplication ;

A sense o’er all my soul imprest

That I am weak, yet not unblest,

Since in me, round me, every where

Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.
But yester-night I prayed aloud

In anguish and in agony,

Up-starting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me :

A lurid light, a trampling throng,

Sense of intolerable wrong,

And whom I scorned, those only strong !

Thirst of revenge, the powerless will

Still baffled, and yet burning still !

Desire with loathing strangely mixed

On wild or hateful objects fixed.

Fantastic passions ! maddening brawl !

And shame and terror over all !

Deeds to be hid which were not hid,

Which all confused I could not know

Whether I suffered, or I did :

For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,

My own or others still the same

Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.
So two nights passed : the night’s dismay

Saddened and stunned the coming day.

Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me

Distemper’s worst calamity.

The third night, when my own loud scream

Had waked me from the fiendish dream,

O’ercome with sufferings strange and wild,

I wept as I had been a child ;

And having thus by tears subdued

My anguish to a milder mood,

Such punishments, I said, were due

To natures deepliest stained with sin,–

For aye entempesting anew

The unfathomable hell within,

The horror of their deeds to view,

To know and loathe, yet wish and do !

Such griefs with such men well agree,

But wherefore, wherefore fall on me ?

To be beloved is all I need,

And whom I love, I love indeed.
—

Kubla Khan

Or, A Vision In A Dream… A Fragment
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round :

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !

A savage place ! as holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover !

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced :

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail :

And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :

And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war !

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves ;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw :

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !

His flashing eyes, his floating hair !

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

_________
Mia – You Are My Love (I am sure this inhabits dance floors somewhere…)

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The Eightfold Path

consists of:

(1) right understanding,

(2) right thought,

(3) right speech,

(4) right action,

(5) right livelihood,

(6) right effort,

(7) right mindfulness, and

(8) right concentration.

The divisions of the Path are: knowledge (and faith), conduct (with morality), and meditation.

Radio Free EarthRites… Will be down for a few more days as British Telecom can’t seem to do anything in a timely manner. (this is not news if you have lived in the UK) After all, they are doing you a favour by turning on the switch…
Our friend Doug has been graciously hosting the radio for the last year or so… he had to move from his locale (a brilliant view of British Rail…. every 5 minutes another train) up the hill towards St. John’s Wood.
EarthRites has been blessed with his assistance in all things teckie….

—

Rowan has a marathon editing session this week end with Ivy to finish the film up for the up-coming film festival at his school. He would like to win the prize, as it would allow him to pay for supplies for the next four films. He has a grueling filming schedule coming up for the next couple of months, but is quite eager to get on with it!

—
Musical Note… Side LinerI have heard this group on compilations (and they have been on Radio Free EarthRitees… but I found some videos recently…. see below
On The Menu:

Side Liner – Haunted Thoughts

Zen Tales…

Extracts from The Dhammapada

Side Liner – Morning Dewdrops
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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Side Liner – Haunted Thoughts

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Zen Tales…
Two traveling monks reached a river where they met a young woman. Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her across. One of the monks hesitated, but the other quickly picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on

the other bank. She thanked him and departed. As the monks continued on their way, the one was brooding and preoccupied.
Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. “Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!”
“Brother,” the second monk replied, “I set her down on the other side, while you are still

carrying her.”

______
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain.

One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal. Ryokan returned and caught him. “You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.” The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away. Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon.

“Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.”

______
The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there.

In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly.

Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, “Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?”

_____________

(Extracts from The Dhammapada – version by Thomas Byrom)
Choices

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts we make the world.

Speak or act with an impure mind

And trouble will follow you

As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts we make the world.

Speak or act with a pure mind

And happiness will follow you

As your shadow, unshakable.

“Look how he abused me and hurt me,

How he threw me down and robbed me.”

Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.

“Look how he abused me and hurt me,

How he threw me down and robbed me.”

Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.

In this world

Hate never yet dispelled hate.

Only love dispels hate.

This is the law,

Ancient and inexhaustible.

You too shall pass away.

Knowing this, how can you quarrel?

How easily the wind overturns a frail tree.

Seek happiness in the senses,

Indulge in food and sleep,

And you too will be uprooted.

The wind cannot overturn a mountain.

Temptation cannot touch the man

Who is awake, strong and humble,

Who masters himself and minds the dharma.

If a man’s thoughts are muddy,

If he is reckless and full of deceit,

How can he wear the yellow robe?

Whoever is master of his own nature,

Bright, clear and true,

He may indeed wear the yellow robe.

Mistaking the false for the true,

And the true for the false,

You overlook the heart

And fill yourself with desire.

See the false as false,

The true as true.

Look into your heart.

Follow your nature.

An unreflecting mind is a poor roof.

Passion, like the rain, floods the house.

But if the roof is strong, there is shelter.

Whoever follows impure thoughts

Suffers in this world and the next.

In both worlds he suffers

And how greatly

When he sees the wrong he has done.

But whoever follows the dharma

Is joyful here and joyful there.

In both worlds he rejoices

And how greatly

When he sees the good he has done.

For great is the harvest in this world,

And greater still in the next.

However many holy words you read,

However many you speak,

What good will they do you

If you do not act upon them?

Are you a shepherd

Who counts another man’s sheep,

Never sharing the way?

Read as few words as you like,

And speak fewer.

But act upon the dharma.

Give up the old ways –

Passion, enmity, folly.

Know the truth and find peace.

Share the way.

—
The Wise Man
The wise man tells you

Where you have fallen

And where you yet may fall –

Invaluable secrets!

Follow him, follow the way.

Let him chasten and teach you

and keep you from mischief.

The world may hate him.

But good men love him.

Do not look for bad company

Or live with men who do not care.

Find friends who love the truth.

Drink deeply.

Live in serenity and joy.

The wise man delights in the truth

And follows the law of the awakened.

The farmer channels water to his land.

The fletcher whittles his arrows.

And the carpenter turns his wood.

So the wise man directs his mind.

The wind cannot shake a mountain.

Neither praise nor blame moves the wise man.

He is clarity.

Hearing the truth,

He is like a lake,

Pure and tranquil and deep.

Want nothing.

Where there is desire,

Say nothing.

Happiness or sorrow –

Whatever befalls you,

Walk on

Untouched, unattached.

Do not ask for family or power or wealth,

Either for yourself or for another.

Can a wise man wish to rise unjustly?

Few cross over the river.

Most are stranded on this side.

On the riverbank they run up and down.

But the wise man, following the way,

Crosses over, beyond the reach of death.

He leaves the dark way

For the way of light.

He leaves his home, seeking

Happiness on the hard road.

Free from desire,

Free from possessions,

Free from the dark places of the heart.

Free from attachment and appetite,

Following the seven lights of awakening,

And rejoicing greatly in his freedom,

In this world the wise man

Becomes himself a light,

Pure, shining, free.

—

The Master
At the end of the way

The master finds freedom

From desire and sorrow –

Freedom without bounds.

Those who awaken

Never rest in one place.

Like swans, they rise

And leave the lake.

On the air they rise

And fly an invisible course,

Gathering nothing, storing nothing.

Their food is knowledge.

They live upon emptiness.

They have seen how to break free.

Who can follow them?

Only the master,

Such is his purity.

Like a bird,

He rises on the limitless air

And flies an invisible course.

He wishes for nothing.

His food is knowledge.

He lives upon emptiness.

He has broken free.

He is the charioteer.

He has tamed his horses,

Pride and the senses.

Even the gods admire him.

Yielding like the earth,

Joyous and clear like the lake,

Still as the stone at the door,

He is free from life and death.

His thoughts are still.

His words are still.

His work is stillness.

He sees his freedom and is free.

The master surrenders his beliefs.

He sees beyond the end and the beginning.

He cuts all ties.

He gives up all desires.

He resists all temptations.

And he rises.

And wherever he lives,

In the city or the country,

In the valley or in the hills,

There is great joy.

Even in the empty forest

He finds joy

Because he wants nothing.

—
Violence
All beings tremble before violence.

All fear death.

All love life.

See yourself in other.

Then whom can you hurt?

What harm can you do?

He who seeks happiness

By hurting those who seek happiness

Will never find happiness.

For your brother is like you.

He wants to be happy.

Never harm him

And when you leave this life

You too will find happiness.

Never speak harsh words

For they will rebound upon you.

Angry words hurt

And the hurt rebounds.

Like a broken gong

Be still, and silent.

Know the stillness of freedom

Where there is no more striving.

Like herdsmen driving their cows into the fields,

Old age and death will drive you before them.

But the fool in his mischief forgets

And he lights the fire

Wherein one day he must burn.

He who harms the harmless

Or hurts the innocent,

Ten times shall he fall –

Into torment or infirmity,

Injury or disease or madness,

Persecution or fearful accusation,

Loss of family, loss of fortune.

Fire from heaven shall strike his house

And when his body has been struck down,

He shall rise in hell.

He who goes naked,

With matted hair, mud bespattered,

Who fasts and sleeps on the ground

And smears his body with ashes

And sits in endless meditation –

So long as he is not free from doubts,

He will not find freedom.

But he who lives purely and self-assured,

In quietness and virtue,

Who is without harm or hurt or blame,

Even if he wears fine clothes,

So long as he also has faith,

He is a true seeker.

A noble horse rarely

Feels the touch of the whip.

Who is there in this world as blameless?

Then like a noble horse

Smart under the whip.

Burn and be swift.

Believe, meditate, see.

Be harmless, be blameless.

Awake to the dharma.

And from all sorrows free yourself.

The farmer channels water to his land.

The fletcher whittles his arrows.

The carpenter turns his wood.

And the wise man masters himself.

____________
Side Liner – Morning Dewdrops

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It is called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

-George Carlin
So…. here we are at Powell’s in Portland Oregon… in our part of town the great South East (The Peoples Autonomous Republic Of Hawthorne!)

And here is The Invisible College 3rd edition on the shelves in the Small Press Section! WahoooO! Finishing up the 4th issue this week, hopefully we’ll have it out soon…
This one will be packed with art, literature, reviews, poetry, more than the last issue… It went through a major redesign during December, and this held back the publication date among other hurdles… So…… check back and find out about our new publication date…

—-
Forward

Weather has been most foul in the Northwest, massive snows, ice and other wonders of the winters world… They did not all disappear on Imbolc, which was a bit of a bother… We were out today and heard a crow talking (no, really!) It was saying ‘Hello?…. Hello?… Hello? Truly amazing for the pair of us…
On The Menu:

The Links

River Man

Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few

Nick Drake Lyrics/Poems

Bright Blessings, and happy February!
Gwyllm

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The Links:
Brigid’s birds and biddy boys

Pug!

A New Anarchy Blog I discovered…..

The Rich Stand Accused

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River Man

Betty came by on her way

Said she had a word to say

About things today

And fallen leaves.
Said she hadn’t heard the news

Hadn’t had the time to choose

A way to lose

But she believes.
Going to see the river man

Going to tell him all I can

About the plan

For lilac time.
If he tells me all he knows

About the way his river flows

And all night shows

In summertime.
Betty said she prayed today

For the sky to blow away

Or maybe stay

She wasn’t sure.
For when she thought of summer rain

Calling for her mind again

She lost the pain

And stayed for more.
Going to see the river man

Going to tell him all I can

About the ban

On feeling free.
If he tells me all he knows

About the way his river flows

I don’t suppose

It’s meant for me.
Oh, how they come and go

Oh, how they come and go

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Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few (Documentary) 1

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Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few (Documentary) 2nd part

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Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few (Documentary) 3rd part

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Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few (Documentary) 4th part

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Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few (Documentary) 5th part

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Nick Drake Lyrics/Poems

Parasite
Lifting the mask from from a local clown

Feeling down like him

Seeing the light in a station bar

And travelling far in sin

Sailing downstairs to the northern line

Watching the shine of the shoes

And hearing the trial of the people there

Who’s to care if they lose.

And take a look you may see me on the ground

For I am the parasite of this town.
Dancing a jig in a church with chimes

A sign of the times today

And hearing no bell from a steeple tall

People all in dismay

Falling so far on a silver spoon

Making the moon for fun

And changing a rope for a size too small

People all get hung.

Take a look and see me coming through

For I am the parasite who travels two by two.
When lifting the mask from a local clown

And feeling down like him

And I’m seeing the light in a station bar

And travelling far in sin

And I’m sailing downstair to the northern line

Watching the shine of the shoes

And hearing the trials of the people there

Who’s to care if they lose.

And take a look you may see me on the ground

For I am the parasite of this town.

And take a look you may see me in the dirt

For i am the parasite who hangs from your skirt.

—

Time of no reply
Summer was gone and the heat died down

And Autumn reached for her golden crown

I looked behind as I heard a sigh

But this was the time of no reply.
The sun went down and the crowd went home

I was left by the roadside all alone

I turned to speak as they went by

But this was the time of no reply.
The time of no reply is calling me to stay

There is no hello and no goodbye

To leave there is no way.
The trees on the hill had nothing to say

They would keep their dreams till another day

So they stood and thought and wondered why

For this was the time of no reply.
Time goes by from year to year

And no one asks why I am standing here

But I have my answer as I look to the sky

This is the time of no reply.
The time of no reply is calling me to stay

There`s no hello and no goodbye

To leave there is no way.

—-

The thoughts of Mary Jane
Who can know

The thoughts of Mary jane

Why she flies

Or goes out in the rain

Where she’s been

And who she’s seen

In her journey to the stars.
Who can know

The reasons for her smile

What are her dreams

When they’ve journeyed for a mile

The way she sings

And her brightly coloured rings

Make her the princess of the sky.
Who can know

What happens in her mind

Did she come from a strange world

And leave her mind behind

Her long lost sighs

And her brightly coloured eyes

Tell her story to the wind.
Who can know

The thoughts of Mary Jane

Why she flies

Or goes out in the rain

Where she’s been

And who she’s seen

In her journey to the stars.