On The Music Box: Zakir Hussain – Music of the Deserts
Even that old horse
is something to see this
snow-covered morning
-Basho
On The Menu:
Giving Thanks
Holly King and Oak King
Poetry For The Winter Solstice…
Assorted Art & Photographs
___________
Giving Thanks…
This is the time of the year that I find quite to be just so wonderful… Fire time, darkness, family and friends. This has been a great year. The tide has turned in many arenas in the world. From Australia, to recent decisions in the US Supreme Court… All three Left Coast State Govt’s are suing the EPA over the blockage of better standards of fuel consumption proposed by California for Auto emissions etc…. and BALI! Yes, there were changes that move the future…
We have had a good year with our Art and The Invisible College Magazine. I want to thank the editors, artist and contributors and the dear readers especially for making The Invisible College Magazine what it has become over the last year. May it grow in wild and wonderful ways! It has been a year of new projects and wonderful results. More is to come I pray in the coming months…
-John, Mike-(St. Mungo), Gwyllm & Mary this past Spring-
This year we have made some wonderful new friends, and renewed other friendships.. It is nice seeing Ron S., and becoming better acquainted with Tim from Ireland & John Archdeacon, Leana & Richard, Kyle & Trish among so many and to finding Ms. Padrice again. There are so many good people in this world, if wishes were fishes I would have all of you swimming in the same shoal as us! I cannot begin to list everyone, but I think of all of you as often as I can. From the Clans down in Australia, across the US and Canada and Mexico, to family and other friends in Europe. Though we may only talk on email, or the ever so infrequent phone call; you all have moved me in my life. A special big hello to all those friends on Earthrites… where ever you may be!
We have the birth of Eildon to Catherine the partner of my nephew Andrew to celebrate, and the birth of other new bright lights coming into the world, from Australia, down to Santa Cruz and beyond… 80)
We have had our departures as well. Our friend Nestor Perala past away this summer suddenly. Our friend in Canada John Beresford died in September. Our dear Doris Gunn died just before Samhain (Halloween), and our acquaintance and inspiration Laura Huxley died a week or so ago.
These are the days and specifically on the Solstice that we acknowledge and honour those that have joined us, and those that have left us. Life, goes on. The great circle dance continues, and the nodes of individuation rise up into the light and then into the darkness from whence all comes from. We are the multiple faces and thoughts expressing the Goddess/God that we all are a part of. We are individuations of the greater life force. We are consciousness expressing…
At the turning of the year, we drink to our time in the light, to our coming time in the dark, and to the whirl of the year and world around us. Life is so full of beauty, celebrate it!
Okay… so the Solstice is here again. I want you to take time to be with your friends and loved ones, and to just enjoy the season and the time together. Love is the supreme revolutionary act. With it, we can move the universe, and surprise surprise, never in the way we actually intended to….
Bright Blessings On This Solstice!
Gwyllm
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Holly King and Oak King
The Holly King and the Oak King are part of Celtic mythology, and they represent two sides to the Greenman, or Horned God.
They battle twice a year, once at Yule and once at Midsummer (Litha) to see who would rule over the next half of the year. At Yule, the Oak King wins and at Litha, the Holly King is victorious. In other words, the Oak King rules over the lighter half of the year, and the Holly King over the darker half. The change from one to the other is a common theme for rituals at Yule, and also at Midsummer.
Another version of the Holly King and Oak King symbolism, is that they do not directly switch places twice a year, but rather both live simultaneously. The Oak King is born at Yule, and his strength grows through the spring, peaks at Beltane and then he weakens and dies at Samhain. The Holly King lives a reverse existence, and is born at Midsummer, waxes more powerful through the summer and fall, to his peak at Samhain.
His influence then lessens until Beltane, when it is his turn to pass away. In this perspective, the two Kings enjoy a more intricate interplay of power and is perhaps a better illustration of their duality. At any given time, they both exist but have varying levels of influence throughout the year.
Either way, each King represents different ideas. The time of the Oak King is for growth, development, healing, and new projects. The Holly King’s time is for rest, reflection, and learning.
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Poetry For The Winter Solstice…
To Juan at the Winter Solstice
There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether are learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.
Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison of all true kings that ever reigned?
Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.
Or is it of the Virgin’s silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right she crooks a finger smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.
Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?
Much snow is falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.
Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.
Robert Graves
—
The Shortest Day
So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!
Susan Cooper
—
I have news for you:
The stag bells, winter snows, summer has gone
Wind high and cold, the sun low, short its course
The sea running high.
Deep red the bracken; its shape is lost;
The wild goose has raised its accustomed cry,
cold has seized the birds’ wings;
season of ice, this is my news
(9th century Irish)
—
The Olde Year Now Away is Fled
(sung to Greensleeves) 13th Century English
The olde year now away is fled,
The new year it is entered
Then let us now our sins downtread
And joyfully all appear
Let’s be merry this holiday
And let us run with sport and play
Han sorrow, let’s cast care away –
God send you a happy new year
Come, give us more liquor when I do call
I’ll drink to each one in this hall
I hope that so loud I must not bawl
But unto me lend me an ear
Good fortune to my master send
And to my dame which is our friend
God bless us all, and so I end
And God send us a happy new year
Translation By Lawrence Rosenwald 
—
The Wren Song
The Wren, the Wren the king of all birds,
St. Stephenses day, he was caught in the furze.
Although he is little, his honor is great,
Rise up, kind sir, and give us a trate.
We followed this Wren ten miles or more
Through hedges and ditches and heaps of snow,
We up with our wattles and gave him a fall
And brought him here to show you all.
For we are the boys that came your way
To bury the Wren on Saint Stephenses Day,
So up with the kettle and down with the pan!
Give us some help for to bury the Wren!
British Traditional…
—
A Leaf From The Tree of Songs
When harpers once in wooden hall
A shining chord would strike
Their songs like arrows pierced the soul
Of great and low alike
Aglow by hearth and candleflame
From burning branch ot ember
The mist of all their music sang
As if to ask in wonder
Is there a moment quite as keen
Or memory as bright
As light and fire and music (sweet)
To warm the winter’s night?
Adam Christianson
—
Sonnet at the Winter Solstice
This solstice is the return of the light
At which the sun stands still then to decide
That each succeeding day be made more bright
Although it takes until the other one
A moment at a time and day by day
The summer solstice greets winter’s work done
And pauses then to turn the other way
The yin and the yang of the year elide
And I am reminded of you somehow
Written in my heart and the sky above
As both winter and summer solstice now
Become two eyes in the face of my love
Another year the sun has smiled its way
Two eyes in the face of my love dawn day
Steven Curtis Lance
—
The Solstice bears down, and the darkness is now at its deepest. The northern lights hang a shimmering curtain far to the north, and the night sky is achingly beautiful further south here in Cascadia… It has been quite cold for Portland, the season may soon deliver its promised snow. 
Running On Empty?
Laura Achera Huxley passed away this Thursday at the age of 96.
Ganga: Laura, I consider you a national resource and treasure.
During my stay in Damascus, that insatiable curiosity which leads me to prefer the acquisition of all lawful knowledge through the channels of my own personal experience, rather than in less satisfactory and less laborious ways, induced me to make a trial of the celebrated Hasheesh — that remarkable drug which supplies the luxurious Syrian with dreams more alluring and more gorgeous than the Chinese extracts from his darling opium pipe. The use of Hasheesh — which is a preparation of the dried leaves of the cannabis indica — has been familiar to the East for many centuries. During, the Crusades, it was frequently used by the Saracen warriors to stimulate them to the work of slaughter, and from the Arabic term of “Hashasheën” or Eaters of Hasheesh, as applied to them, the word “assassin” has been naturally derived. An infusion of the same plant gives to the drink called “bhang” which is in common use throughout India and Malaysia, its peculiar properties. Thus prepared, it is a more fierce and fatal stimulant than the paste of sugar and spices to which the Turk resorts, as the food of his voluptuous evening, reveries. While its immediate effects seem to be more potent than those of opium, its habitual use, though attended with ultimate and permanent injury to the system, rarely results in such utter wreck of mind and body as that to which the votaries of the latter drug inevitably condemn themselves. 
I was seated alone, nearly in the middle of the room, talking with my friends, who were lounging upon a sofa placed in a sort of alcove, at the farther end, when the same fine nervous thrill, of which I have spoken, suddenly shot through me. But this time it was accompanied with a burning sensation at the pit of the stomach; and, instead of growing upon me with the gradual pace of healthy slumber, and resolving me, as before, into air, it came with the intensity of a pang, and shot throbbing along the nerves to the extremities of my body. The sense of limitation — of the confinement of our senses within the bounds of our own flesh and blood — instantly fell away. The walls of my frame were burst outward and tumbled into ruin; and, without thinking what form I wore — losing sight even of all idea of form — I felt that I existed throughout a vast extent of space. The blood, pulsed from my heart, sped through uncounted leagues before it reached my extremities; the air drawn into my lungs expanded into seas of limpid ether, and the arch of my skull was broader than the vault of heaven. Within the concave that held my brain, were the fathomless deeps of blue; clouds floated there, and the winds of heaven rolled them together, and there shone the orb of the sun. It was — though I thought not of that at the time — like a revelation of the mystery of omnipresence. It is diffcult to describe this sensation, or the rapidity with which it mastered me. In the state of mental exaltation in which I was then plunged, all sensations, as they rose, suggested more or less coherent images. They presented themselves to me in a double form: one physical, and therefore to a certain extent tangible; the other spiritual, and revealing itself in a succession of splendid metaphors. The physical feeling, of extended being was accompanied by the image of an exploding meteor, not subsiding into darkness, but continuing to shoot from its centre or nucleus — which corresponded to the burning spot at the pit of my stomach — incessant adumbrations of light that finally lost themselves in the infinity of space. To my mind, even now, this image is still the best illustration of my sensations, as I recall them; but I greatly doubt whether the reader will find it equally clear. 
The fullness of my rapture expanded the sense of time; and though the whole vision was probably not more than five minutes in passing through my mind, years seemed to have elapsed while I shot under the dazzling myriads of rainbow arches. By and by, the rainbows, the barque of pearl and jewels, and the desert of golden sand, vanished; and, still bathed in light and perfume, I found myself in a land of green and flowery lawns, divided by hills of gently undulating outline. But, although the vegetation was the richest of earth, there were neither streams nor fountains to be seen; and the people who came from the hills, with brilliant garments that shone in the sun, besought me to give them the blessing of water. Their hands were full of branches of the coral honeysuckle, in bloom. These I took; and, brea
That picture of animal terror and agony was mine. I was the horse, hanging poised on the verge of the giddy tower, the next moment to be borne sheer down to destruction. Involuntarily, I raised my hand to feel the leanness and sharpness of my face. Oh horror! the flesh had fallen from my bones, and it was a skeleton head that I carried on my shoulders! With one bound I sprang to the parapet, and looked down into the silent courtyard, then filled with the shadows thrown into it by the sinking moon. Shall I cast myself down headlong? was the question I proposed to myself; but though the horror of that skeleton delusion was greater than my fear of death, there was an invisible hand at my breast which pushed me away from the brink. 
So… I discover this band, (AIR) and thinking on it, I don’t even remember the process that it happened. Truthfully, there is such good music out there at this point, I can’t remember when it was this nice, maybe 30 years ago?
The Great Spirit called all his people together from all over the earth. There was to be a change. He would give names to the people, and the Animal World was to rule. The naming was to begin at the break of day, each one having the right to choose his or her name according to who came first to the Spirit Chief’s lodge. The Spirit Chief would also give each one their duty to perform in the changed conditions.
Through her writings, Chicana poet Lorna Dee Cervantes evokes the cultural clash that Americans of Mexican descent frequently face. Born in San Francisco, Cervantes’ “maternal Mexican ancestors intermarried with the Chumash Indians of the Santa Barbara, California, area, and her paternal ancestry is Tarascan Indian from Michoacan, Mexico,” reported Roberta Fernandez in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Cervantes and her mother and brother moved in to her grandmother’s San Jose, California, home around 1959, when her parents divorced. “As a child she discovered the world of books in the houses which her mother cleaned,” noted Fernandez. She became familiar with Shakespeare, Byron, Keats, and Shelley. By the age of fifteen she had compiled her first collection of poetry. In 1974 she traveled to Mexico City with her brother, who played with the Theater of the People of San Jose at the Quinto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos. At the last moment, Cervantes was asked to participate by reading some of her poetry. She chose to read a portion of “Refugee Ship,” a poem “which renders the Chicano dilemma of not belonging to either the American or the Mexican culture,” remarked Fernandez. This reading received much attention—appearing in a Mexican newspaper, as well as other journals and review. The poem was later included in her award winning poetry collection debut, Emplumada.
If you missed ‘The Samsara Engine’ Art Show at Clinton Corner Cafe, you now can check out what I had on the walls, and then some. You can pick up your signed limited editions, and have them mailed out to you promptly. So check ‘em out! I have added many posters I had lurking in the archives, just waiting to burst forth and take up residence on a wall near you! 
