Gwyllm.com

March 8, 2007

The Thursday Feast…

Special Plates

Notice how each particle moves.

Notice how everyone has just arrived here

from a journey.

Notice how each wants a different food.

Notice how the stars vanish as the sun comes up,

and how all streams stream toward the ocean.

Look at the chefs preparing special plates

for everyone, according to what they need.

Look at this cup that can hold the ocean.

Look at those who see the face.

Look through Shams’ eyes

into the Water that is

entirely jewels.”

Rumi

Ah… welcome to the Thursday Feast. The plates are heaping today, with Poetry, Art, Parable and Myth.

So sit you down, take your place and tuck in Gentle Reader. I lay it all out before you now… There is enough here for all, and maybe a treasure concealed within….

On The Feasting Board:

The Links

From Victoria: Fredo Viola

Mulla Nasruddin & The Mirror

Sky Gods and Earth Deities – Ralph Metzner

The Hunter and the Bird

Three Poems of Hazret-i Uftade

Two Poems from Rumi

Art: The Neo Classical Parade….

Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

_______

The Links:

Embraced by many religions, ‘Labyrinth’ allows broad discussion of faith issues

First-Ever Dwelling Mound Found in Germany

LI teacher sues, claiming she was falsely accused of being witch

New priest for old faith

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On suggestion from Victoria… Fredo Viola

_____________

Mulla Nasruddin got so drunk that there was a fight with another drunkard, and he had wounds and scratches all over his face.

He came home in the middle of the night, looked into the mirror and thought, “Now, tomorrow morning is going to be difficult!” How is he going to hide these wounds and these scratches? His wife is bound to know and she will say, “You got drunk again and you have been fighting again!” How to hide it?

A great idea occurred to him. He searched in the medicine chest, found some ointment. He put it on his wounds and scratches, was very happy, pleased with himself that by morning things would not be so bad… and went to sleep.

Early in the morning when he was still in bed, his wife shouted from the bathroom, “Who has put ointment on the mirror?”

_________

Sky Gods and Earth Deities

Ralph Metzner

One very significant and very ancient source of the split between humans and nature in the Western world came with the transition from earth goddess to sky god religions and the concomitant institution of patrirarchy. Very different and conflicting stories began to be told, reflecting a more distanced, fearful and aggressive relationship between humans and nature, and between humans and gods. In this essay, I discuss the conflict-laden mythic legacy resulting from these profound cultural upheavals. 1

About 6000 years ago the first wave of Indo-European Kurgan tribes began to migrate out of their presumed homeland in South-Central Asia. Backed by the power and mobility of horses and wheeled chariots, these people (previously known also as Aryans) invaded and conquered the relatively peaceful agrarian Earth Goddess cultures of Old Europe, as well as Anatolia, Iran and India. Over the course of the next two to three millenia these nomadic pastoralists imposed an entirely new set of ideologies and values that have been at the foundation of the Western worldview ever since. For the matrilineal, matricentric order of the Neolithic village, they substituted a patrilineal and patriarchal system that became the norm in the Bronze Age, Iron Age and all subsequent ages up to the present. A pantheon of sky and warrior gods was superimposed on the earth and nature divinities of the original inhabitants of Old Europe, resulting in what Marija Gimbutas has called “hybrid mythologies.” A similar transition from goddess-centered religions to the cults of male law-giver gods, also reflected in radically transformed mythologies, occurred in the Semitic cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean.

The pervasiveness of the Indo-European language family and the associated parallels in religion, worldview and mythology have been known since the 19th century, when scholars first thought of Sanskrit as the mother tongue of Indo-European languages. Numerous parallels were found to exist between words and names, such as that for the ruling deity, the “Lord of the Shining Sky”: Sanskrit Dyaus and Deva, Baltic Dievas, Old Germanic Tiwaz or Ziu, Greek Zeus and Latin Deus. Although some earlier scholars, such as Bachofen, had described an archaic period of Mutterrecht, there was only fragmentary knowledge about the pre-Indo-European cultures and much was misunderstood. What we now understand as undercurrents of Old European religion, persisting beneath the Indo-European overlay, went unrecognized and were typically characterized as “mysterious”, “obscure”, “very old”, “minor deities”, or even as “an older generation of gods”.

However, persistent residues of the Old European religion and culture do indeed exist and are identifiable in myths, symbols, folklore and ritual practices. Thanks in large measure to the work of Marija Gimbutas, the symbolic language and mythic imagery of these most ancient cultures have been re-discovered and fully described in the second half of the 20th century. As Gimbutas writes, in the concluding section of The Civilization of the Goddess, “The functions and images of Old European and Indo-European deities, beliefs in an afterlife, and the entirely different sets of symbols prove the existence of two contrasting religions and mythologies. Their collision in Europe resulted in the hybridization of two symbolic structures in which the Indo-European prevailed while the Old European survived as an undercurrent.”2 During the hundreds, even thousands of years of cultural interaction there was undoubtedly not only conquest, assimilation and superimposition of an alien religion, but also intermarriage of peoples, a blending and combining of religious and mythic images. Gimbutas concept of hybrid mythologies provides a kind of corrective lens with which many previously obscure and incomprehensible features of European mythology can be understood.

In a similar vein, the poet-mythologist Robert Graves, in his book Greek Myths, first published in 1955, wrote that “In the Hellenic invasions of the early second millenium BC… small armed bands of herdsmen, worshipping the Aryan trinity of gods — Indra, Mitra, and Varuna — attached themselves peacefully enough to the pre-Hellenic settlements in Thessaly and Central Greece…Thus a male military aristocracy became reconciled to female theocracy, not only in Greece, but in Crete, where the Hellenes … exported Cretan civilization to Athens and the Peloponnese.”3 The ancient nature-goddess cults were appropriated and twisted for ideological purposes. Hera, one of the forms of the ancient Great Goddess, whose cult was overrun, almost certainly with much resistance by her worshippers, is ridiculed in Greek myths as the complaining wife of a robust, adulterous father-god. Athena, a form of the ancient life-giving bird-goddess, is transformed into a cool warrior strategist, born fully armed out of her father Zeus head — thus eliminating any traces of her true origin and status, turning her into a “brain-child” of the father-god.

The invading Hellenes take-over of the pre-existing matricentric goddess cults is vividly portrayed in .he well-known stories of the Olympian gods, including Zeus and Apollo, with their seduction (more accurately called rape) of local goddesses, nymphs and nature spirits, as well as human women, priestesses of the Goddess. One example is the substition of the solar god Apollo for the earth goddess Gaia as the protector deity of the cave oracle at Delphi. Another is found in the story of the Cretan princess Europa, after whom the continent is named: Zeus changed himself into a gorgeous bull, whom she trustingly rode, not knowing of his intent, in order to seduce her. According to Graves, this myth reflects the Olympians take-over of the Minoan sacred bull-cult, in which the priestesses rode on the bull in processions, and danced with the bull in the games. A third well-known example is the abduction rape of Persephone, daughter of the Cretan Earth-goddess Demeter, by Hades, ruler of the Underworld, brother of Zeus, with the latters complicity.

Some Greek gods and goddesses, however, were not Olympians. They clearly belong to the older stratum of Earth- and Goddess-centered religion. Pan, the horned, goat-bodied god of wild and domesticated animals, was invoked by lusty country people in orgiastic celebrations. Robert Graves suggests that the satyrs, portrayed as goat-bodied with rampant phallus, were goat-totem tribesmen whose chosen god was Pan. To the Christians, with their life-negating attitudes, he was the chosen embodiment of the horned and hooved devil. Around the time of Christian beginnings a legend arose that sailors on a ship in the Eastern Mediterranean had heard a supernatural voice proclaim “Great Pan is dead”. But in the underground pagan traditions of witchcraft and folklore Pan survived: he became the Lord of Animals, the Wildman covered with hair, who represented our connection with the non-human natural world, particularly animals. His feminine counterpart was the Lady of the Beasts, whom the Greeks knew as Artemis and the Romans as Diana, the protectress of witches. In the Celtic world Pan resembles Cernunnos, the shaman-god with deer-antlers, holding a snake and surrounded by animals.

Another non-Olympian, the androgynous Dionysus, was an ancient vegetation deity, originally from Asia, who spread the wine-cult throughout the Mediterranean area. The Hellenic Greeks coopted his cult, among others, by inventing a fantastic story of Zeus carrying and birthing him from his thigh. He was the god of intoxication and ecstatic transcendence, and to deny his power was to risk madness. His cult followers were primarily women, who found in his annual rites temporary escape from domination by their men. These maenads, and accompanying satyrs, processed and danced through the night woods in his honor, singing and shrieking in wild abandon, provoked perhaps by the ingestion of wine with hallucinogenic mushrooms. In the later classical period, the Dionysus cult was adopted and adapted into the Orphic mysteries of death and rebirth, where Dionysus symbolized the immortal soul, transcending death.4 In the European Middle Ages, Dionysus the vegetation god reincarnates as the leaf-masked Green Man of foklore, whose mysterious visage graces many Gothic churches.5

In Egyptian mythology, the parallel to Dionysus was Osiris, the green-skinned god of vegetation and regeneration, whose repeated deaths, followed by resurrections with the aid of his sister-consort Isis, symbolize the recurring cycles of death and renewal in vegetative life. The conflict between Osiris and his violent and envious brother Seth reflects the ongoing clash and competition between the matricentric farming cultures along the Nile and the marauding bands of herder-warriors who lived in the harsh, arid conditions of the peripheral desert regions. On a more cosmic level, the struggle between Osiris and Seth became a metaphor for the general polarity between generation and destruction, or good and evil. The Greek mythographer Plutarch, wrote that “they (the Egyptians) give the name of Osiris to the whole source and faculty creative of moisture, believing this to be the cause of generation and the substance of life-producing seed; and the name Seth (or Typhon) they give to all that is dry, fiery, and arid, in general antagonistic to moisture.” 6

In India, one can see marked similarities and mythic parallels between Dionysus and Siva. Alain Daniélou has argued that Siva was actually the phallic vegetation god of the pre-Aryan Dravidians of India, who was coopted by the Brahmins and turned into the ascetic god of yogis, as well as the Lord of the Dance (Nataraja), who dances the universe into being.7 Thousands of shrines containing the lingam-yoni (phallus-vulva) stone carving are found all over India, testifying to his androgynous erotic potency and the disguised persistence of the old fertility cults. During the Tantric revival, in the first few centuries of the common era, there was a resurgence of Shakti (Goddess) worship, and sensual-sexual experience in the context of sacramental ritual was acknowledged as a path to spiritual realization. Siva and Shakti in ecstatic embrace became the guiding images of Tantric yogis. They embody the reconciliation and mutuality of male and female energies, and the healing of the dissociative split common in the patriarchal and ascetic traditions.

Among the Semitic peoples of ancient Mesopotamia the thousand-year long transition from a matricentric Goddess-oriented culture to patriarchal culture is reflected in the transformations between Sumerian and Babylonian religious mythology. In Sumerian religion, Inanna is Queen of Heaven and Earth Goddess, whose temples contain the granaries, and whose priestesses express their devotion to the Goddess through sacred sexual rites. Inannas son-lover Dumuzi, the shepherd king, is sacrificed each year to ensure the continued fertility of the land, and reborn each year with the renewal of springtime vegetation. In Babylonian mythology, the solar warrior-god Marduk, is the leader of a rebellion against the power of the older Creatrix Mother, personified in the form of a great female dragon, Tiamat, whom Marduk slays. He first splits her in half like an oyster, the two halves becoming the sky and the sea; then comes the rest of creation — the planets, the seasons, plants, animals and humans. Eventually, in a kind of compromise or accomodation with the older religion, the Babylonians established a male-dominated family or council of gods with their consorts and children, much like the Vedic pantheon in India, the Greek Olympian family and the Nordic-Germanic family of Aesir gods.

In the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, the oldest written literature in the Western world, the two mythic-religious strands are closely interwoven. The epic opens with an ironic paean of praise to the semi-divine hero-king Gilgamesh, builder and ruler of Uruk, who is so arrogant and tyrannical that the people of the city complain to their gods, begging them to intervene. The gods then turn to the older Creatrix Mother Goddess Aruru, asking her to create a counterpart to Gilgamesh, one who can match his strength and contain his overbearing arrogance. The Goddess does so and Enkidu is born, who is a Wildman, covered with hair and living with the animals. Enkidu is seduced by a priestess of the goddess Ishtar, using her erotic arts. He abandons the wild life-style of running and hunting with animals and goes to the city to meet Gilgamesh. The two men first fight and then become best friends, performing numerous heroic deeds and adventures. Enkidu the Wildman is more in touch nature: he inteprets certain dreams of Gilgamesh as warnings against abusing and disrespecting the divinities of nature.

Various aspects of the conflicting and blending layers of religious ideology are suggested in this complex and beautiful tale. There is the domination and tyranny of the warrior-hero, as experienced no doubt by the adherents to the older religion. There is resistance on the part of the original people and their Goddess religion, as they ask for help from the creator deities. The original civilizing role of the feminine is acknowledged, as the wildman is domesticated into urban life by the priestess of the Goddess. In the background of the story is the transition from the hunting-gathering “wild” state, to life in the farming villages and towns of the Neolithic, with their temples, priesthoods and warrior-kings.8

In the religious mythology of the Nordic-Germanic people, there is fascinating evidence for the interaction between the Indo-European Kurgan invaders and the Old European cultures. We find this in the myths of the prolonged warfare and eventual peacemaking between two families of deities, the Aesir and the Vanir. The clashing and hybridizing of religions and worldviews between Indo-Europeans and Old Europeans is clearly discernible here, even although the later Indo-European layer is obviously dominant. In that sense Nordic-Germanic mythology serves as an example of a pattern of cultural transformation that occurred all over Europe, and the Near East, over the course of many centuries.9

The Aesir are primarily sky- and warrior-gods, including Odin, Tiwaz or Tyr, and Thor the Thunderer. On the other hand, the Vanir, including Nerthus, Njörd and the brother-sister pair Freyr and Freyja, are primarily earth- and nature-deities. Archaeological evidence in the form of carved inscriptions and images on stelae or ornaments, indicates that both the Aesir and Vanir deities were worshipped at particular sites. They are portrayed in the myths as two different families or clans of divinities who are often at odds and even at war. Presumably this reflects the conflict, drawn out over many centuries, between the invading Indo-Germanic tribes from the East and the aboriginal populations of Old Europe who resisted the attempted assimilation. It seems probable that after the Indo-Germanic people had settled in Central Europe, the Vanir continued to be the gods of the farmers and fishermen, while the Aesir were worshipped by the military aristocracy, who had appropriated the land and established their domination.

Several earlier scholars had proposed that the myth of the war between Aesir and Vanir reflects the actual historical conflict, in the 2nd millenium BCE, between the indigenous “Megalith culture” of Southern Scandinavia and Western Europe, whose gods were the Vanir, and the invading Indo-Aryan “Battleax culture”, whose gods were the Aesir.10 The views of the French mythologist Georges Dumézil, who identified a tripartite model of divine and human functions in Indo-European cultures, are often cited as countering this view. Dumézil says that the Aesir-Vanir war myth refers to conflict between two different social classes within Indo-European society, the warriors and the farmers. But this is not really inconsistent with the Indo-European invasion theory. On the contrary, it affirms that the Germanic story fits the pattern of Indo-European conquest and subsequent assimilation of the Old European cultures.As Mircea Eliade, the eminent historian of religion, has written,

the invasions of the territories inhabited by the Neolithic agricultural populations, the conquest of the autochthons by militarily superior invaders, followed by a symbiosis between these two different types of societies, or even two different ethnic groups, are facts documented by archaeology; indeed they constitute a characteristic phenomenon of European protohistory, continued, in certain regions, down to the Middle Ages. But the mythological theme of the war between the Aesir and the Vanir precedes the process of Germanization, for it is an integral part of the Indo-European tradition. In all probability, the myth served as the model and the justification for a number of local wars, ended by a reconciliation of the adversaries and their integration into a common society.11

The only term I would question here is “symbiosis”, since this refers to a mutually supportive relationship between two different species. The more appropriate ecological metaphor for the Indo-European takeover would seem to be “parasitism”, in that the interests of the host (the agricultural societies of Old Europe) were subordinated to the interests of the parasite invaders (the Indo-Germanic pastoral warrior societies), at least at first. In time, of course, accomodation must have occurred as well as assimilation, so that a coherent social order developed, with hierarchically organized castes or classes. Hybrid myths were created, with their associated artistic and ritual forms, expressing the strengths and values of both cultures. I like to imagine the situation as analogous to a palimpsest, with the deeper, older strata of religious imagery detectable in fragments, through the dominant, later overlay.

When we look at classical mythology, both of the Mediterranean areas and of Northern Europe, there are three mythic complexes that clearly reflect this clashing of cultures and blending of mythologies. There is a group of myths that justify invasion and domination, the self-justifying stories of the Indo-European or other pastoralist invaders. There is a second group of myths of resistance and retaliation, in which the popular resistance to the Aryan take-over is expressed, what one might also call “the revenge of the goddess”. And thirdly, there is a group of myths of compromise and reconciliation, which express the harmonizing and accomodation that presumably was reached by the people who had found a way to reconcile their differences.

Myths Justifying Invasion and Domination

There is a central myth found in many Indo-European societies, including Indians, Iranians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Germans and Hittites, of a divinely justified cattle-raid. Besides the horse, the most revered animal for the Indo-Europeans was the cow. There is, for example, a Nordic-Germanic creation myth in which the first proto-human giants were licked out of salty ice-blocks by the primal cow Audhumla, whose milk then also nourished them. The cow also features prominently in Vedic mythology, and is revered in India to this day. Among Indo-Europeans and other pastoralists, cattle have always been the measure of a mans wealth. In the cattle-raiding mythic complex, there is a hero figure (such as the Greek Heracles, the Celtic Cuchulainn) who loses his cattle to a monster, generally associated with the local non-Indo-Europeans. The hero then re-captures the cattle, sometimes with the help of a warrior god. According to historian J.P. Malory, the evidence “suggests that this cattle-raiding myth served as a charter which both helped to define the role of the warrior in Indo-European society (the proper activity of the warrior was cattle raiding), and sanctioned Aryan cattle raiding against foreigners.” It seems clear that the Kurgans and other Indo-Europeans typically indulged in cattle stealing as a way of augmenting their herds and wealth, and that this activity became so central to them, that religious myths grew up to justify and rationalize it.12

In the Semitic world, the Biblical story of Cain and Abel can also be read as a reflection and justification of the pastoralist take-over and expulsion of the indigenous farmers. Biblical commentators tend to gloss over Gods unexplained unfairness toward Cain: Yahweh favors the offerings of Abel the sheepherder, and rejects the offerings of Cain the farmer. The high moral drama of fratricide, guilt and divine punishment obscures the underlying message. The farmer is cast in the role of villain, and the “keeper of sheep” is the innocent victim — a neat reversal of the historical facts, since it was the Hebrew herders who invaded and conquered the Canaanite farmers. God curses Cain and punishes him by driving him out of his lands: “a fugitive and a wanderer shall you be on the earth.” (Gen. 4: 11-12) The invading herders expropriate the land, driving off the indigenous farmers and then tell a story that God ordained this fate as punishment for the farmers.

In the Bible, this is actually Yahwehs second curse against humans and the earth. After Adam and Eves transgression, which consisted of eating a forbidden fruit, Yahweh, in a fit of vituperation curses the serpent, the woman, the man and the earth. He curses the serpent “above all cattle and beasts of the field”, by condemning it to crawl on the ground. He curses the woman by “greatly multiplying the pain” of pregnancy and birth, and making her dependent on and subordinate to the man. He punishes Adam for listening to his wife; and he curses the earth: “Cursed is the ground for your sake; in sorrow shall you eat the fruits of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth, and you shall eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of your face shall you eat bread, until you return to the ground; out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust shall you return.”(Gen. 3, 14-19)

Perhaps these maledictions expresses the envious resentment that the desert nomads must have felt toward the lifestyle of comparative ease and pleasure they found in the Fertile Crescent. The text condemns and denigrates farming and a fruit-vegetable diet. But the implied message goes further: natural, biological processes — the serpents closeness to the ground, the human womans labor of childbirth — are categorized as divine punishment. In a larger sense, the curse of Yahweh sets a fateful tone for the direction of Western civilization. From the beginnings of the patriarchal, Judaeo-Christian monotheistic take-over, mans (Adams) relationship to the Earth does seem to have suffered from a curse of scarcity and antagonistism. In the 20th century we still seem to be suffering from the consequences of this antagonistic attitude, in the form of massive pollution and ecological destruction. Are we not still living with the consequences of Yahwehs curse — a traumatic disconnection from the nourishing and regenerative energies of the Earth?

Several scholars, including Merlin Stone, Gerda Lerner, Elinor Gadon, John A. Phillips, Carol Ochs and others, have analyzed in depth how the Biblical myths justify the subordination of women in Judaism.13 Uniquely in the worlds creation mythologies, Yahweh creates the world and all its creatures out of his own head, by proclamation, without even the hint of any female participation. Eve, or Havah, whose name means “Mother of All Living”, clearly a form of the ancient Creator Earth Goddess, is reduced to mortal status. Turning the natural order upside down, the woman is brought out of the body of the man, and is blamed for the expulsion from the garden of abundance. The Levite priests and prophets cited in the Bible savagely attack the cult of the Canaanite Earth Goddess known as Astarte, Ashtoreth or Asherah, and encourage their followers to destroy Her shrines and groves. The ancient initiation ritual of the Goddess, in which eating the fruit of the tree and communing with the serpent provided divinatory insight, is also turned on its head: rewritten it becomes a story that prohibits participation in the old Goddess cult, justifies the inferior status of women, and places severe strictures and guilt on the females autonomy and expression of her sexuality.

Quite similar attacks on the character of the feminine, both human and divine, and on the old Earth Goddess religion, occurred in other Near Eastern cultures during the millenia of the patriarchal take-over. In the Sumero-Babylonian Gilgamesh myth, as already mentioned, the interweaving strands expressing conflicting ideologies can be clearly discerned. The goddess Ishtar is protrayed as fickle, petulant and vengeful. The warrior-hero Gilgamesh rejects the amorous proposition she makes to him and in a bitter tirade, accuses her of betraying, abandoning and even killing those who were her lovers before, including the lamented Tammuz. Ishtar, stung by the rejection, brings down the “Bull of Heaven”, a flooding tempest of destruction. These passages probably represent a the male heros complaint against the authority of the Goddess and her priestesses in the ancient cults, in which a king was first the chosen bridegroom and then replaced or sacrificed. Psychologically, it is analogous to the petulant projections of an adolescent male reacting to the uncertain affections of an autonomous female. The character of the Goddess is ridiculed and denigrated as promiscuous and faithless, thus providing apparent justification for the warrior-kings attacks and subjugation of the matricentric Goddess religion.

In Greek mythology, the story of the Athenian hero Theseus defeating the monstrous Minotaur, which was kept in a maze in Crete, can be read as a justifying myth for the Athenian (Dorian) invasion of Crete. The Greek historian Plutarch describes a raid on Knossos followed by a peace treaty, with the Greek king marrying the Cretan princess. According to the myth, the Minotaur was a bull-headed monster, who demanded periodic sacrifices of Athenian youths and maidens. Theseus entered the maze, slew the Minotaur, and found his way back out by means of a golden thread, given to him by the kings daughter Ariadne, whom he married but did not take back to Athens. Minoan Crete revered the bull as an animal sacred to the Goddess, staged fertility dances in a maze and acrobatic games in which youths and maidens danced and leaped over bulls. So the myth portrays the Minoan religious ceremonies as perverted and monstrous, in the eyes of the Athenians, in order to justify the invasion and take-over.

In Nordic-Germanic mythology, as already mentioned, there is extensive treatment of the conflict between rival factions of deities, the Vanir and Aesir, representing the Old European and Indo-European cultures. The question naturally arises, who was seen as causing or originating this war? The story of the origins of this war is referred to in only a few tantalizingly brief and obscure passages, in an Edda poem called Völuspa, the “Visions of the Seeress”. The verses refer to a sorceress-goddess called Gullveig, one of the Vanir, whose appearance among the Aesir provokes them into trying to kill her — three times, unsuccessfully. The Vanir then fight back, and “this is how war came into the world,” we are told. Gullveigs provocation is unexplained in this ancient song of the Edda. The story of the assault of the Indo-European warrior aristocracy against the Old European matricentric cultures is told with minimal justification.14

Myths of Resistance and Retaliation

We can surmise that there must have been a great deal of resistance to the Kurgan incursions into the cultures of Old Europe, as well as to the patriarchal take-over in the Near Eastern city-states. The cultural transformation took centuries, in some areas millenia, and it would be strange indeed it if there were no evidence in the mythological traditions of resistance and revenge. Indeed, the story of Gullveig and the war between Vanir and Aesir, referred to above, is a prime example. The ability of the Vanir gods to hold their own against the invading Aesir is also attested to by the continued presence (particularly in Sweden) of shrines to the Vanir, with figures and runic inscriptions, well into the era in which the Aesir cult was dominant.

There are two myths of peace-making attempts between the rival clans of deities, one that fails, and one that succeeds. At the first peace treaty, there is an exchange of emissaries between the two groups. The Aesir send the unknown god Hoenir and the giant Mimir to the Vanir as ambassadors. Mimir (whose name is related to Latin memor) is the guardian of the Well of Remembrance at the foot of the Tree of Worlds, the holder of ancestral and evolutionary memory. But the Vanir do not consider these two individuals a worthy exchange. To indicate their displeasure they decapitate Mimir, and send his head back to Odin. This tale has many intriguing aspects. It clearly shows the Vanir earth-religion holding its own against the Aesir sky-religion. The decapitation of Mimir, the memory holder, could be seen as a metaphor for the forgetting of evolutionary wisdom, consequent upon disrespect for the old nature divinities.15

In Greek mythology, the most dramatic and powerful story expressing the theme of the revenge of the Goddess is the story of Gaia the earth goddess and Uranus the sky god. It was Gaia whose voice originally spoke through the oracle at Delphi, before it was expropriated by the Olympian Apollo. Uranus, whose name parallels the Vedic pastoral god Varuna, was first Gaias son, and then her consort, fathering the one-eyed Cyclopes and Titans with her. In the historical reading of this myth we recognize Uranus as the skygod of the invading Aryans, consolidating their take-over by claiming the earth goddess as wife and the nature spirits (Cyclopes and Titans) of the indigenous people as offspring.16

According to the myth, Uranus banished the Cyclopes to Tartarus, the lower depths. Presumably this reflects a demolition of the old nature-cults by the Achaeans. In outrage, Earth Mother Gaia induced the Titans, led by Cronus, to castrate and kill their father with a flint sickle provided by her. Cronus then becomes the world ruler, until he in turn is deposed by his son Zeus. This myth has echoes in several ancient Near Eastern myths, such as that of Cybele and Attis, in which the son-consort of the Goddess is castrated or killed; and in which ritual self-sacrifice or self-castration was practised by the demented priests of that cult.

The Gaia and Uranus myth tells the historical story of the assault on the earth goddess religion by the followers of Indo-European sky god cults, and the subsequent retaliation against the oppressor cult. The emasculation of Uranus can be read as a metaphor for the loss of generative power, which follows upon the denial and suppression of the feminine and the spiritual energies of the natural world. In modern psychological terms, we get the imbalanced, uncreative, authoritarian men (and many women) typical of patriarchal societies. The earth goddess gives birth and health, but also disease and death to the human, natural body. When this power is not respected, the painful consequences are unavoidable. The loss of generative and regenerative power, as seen for example in the spread of degenerative diseases, is the price paid by us all for the patriarchal suppression of the Goddess.

I had a dream which illustrated this theme: I was in Africa with a group of North American AIDS sufferers. We were studying the ancient African goddess religion. I was told that AIDS was a consequence of turning away from and ignoring the power of the Black Goddess, and healing it required reconnecting with Her. The Black Goddess is the goddess of the fertile, black earth and of female, procreative sexuality. Being cut off from the regenerative and procreative power of the Earth had led to the collapse of the protective immune system, in many thousands of men and women. I told this dream to an acquaintance AIDS victim, who felt it expressed a meaningful truth about their condition.

In the mythology of Celtic Ireland, which also chronicles and reflects the often tumultuous transition from matricentric to patriarchal society, the story of the Curse of the Goddess Macha symbolizes the revenge of the Goddess in a most poignant and awesome manner. Macha was a form of the ancient Irish horse and sun goddess, who could outrun any horse. When her human husband boasted of her prowess at the annual horse championship races in Ulster (now known as Northern Ireland), the king angrily demanded that she appear to race against his prized horses. Being pregnant, Macha was reluctant to go and consented only when the king threatened to kill her husband if she did not come. At the race, she appealed to the assembled warriors and king for a delay, since she was about to deliver — “for a mother bore each one of you”. The king refused, she ran the race, won easily and immediately gave birth to twins. At the moment of her victory, she pronounced a curse upon the men of Ulster, that “when a time of oppression falls upon you, each one of you in this province will be overcome with weakness, as the weakness of a woman in child-birth.” This curse became known as the “Pangs of the Men of Ulster”.17

In commenting on this story, Irish theologian Mary Condren has written that the cry of Macha “has resounded in Ireland down through the ages”, up until the late 20th century. A curse, particularly the curse of a deity, was no trivial matter, as we might think of it today. Is it not strange that Northern Ireland is still wracked by seemingly intractable hatred and violence? “The Goddess Macha cursed the patriarchal age that had dawned..Her cry was possibly the last symbolic attempt to appeal to true motherhood as the basis for public social ethics. That her people ignored her meant that the values of relationship and affiliation were effete; violence, death, and the threat of death became the dominant grammar of political relationships.”7

Myths of Compromise and Reconciliation

The myth of Demeter and Persephone, which provided the central story of the Eleusisinian Mysteries, for 2000 years the core religious ceremony of the Greek world, was an acknowledgement of the clash between the Olympian religion of sky and mountain gods and the earlier earth goddess cults. Demeter is the Cretan Grain Goddess (known to the Romans as Ceres, from which we get the word “cereal”), who taught humankind the cultivation of the grain, and was revered for her frutifulness and abundance. Her daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades, brother of Zeus and ruler of the underworld, who had displaced Hecate, the earlier underworld goddess. In the myth Demeter searches the world in profound grief and despair. When she discovers that her daughters abduction had taken place with the complicity of Zeus, grief turns to rage and she unleashes drought and desolation upon the earth, threatening the survival of all life. Demeters rage is against the Aryan sky-gods and their aggressive disrespect for the religion of the Earth. The revenge of the Goddess involves the loss of fertility, barrenness and death.

When the gods realize the enormity of their transgression against the goddess of all earthly life, Zeus works out a compromise: Persephone stays underground for half the year and above ground the other half. Here this myth blends with earlier myths of the seasonal death and renewal of vegetative life. Demeter then agrees to release the blight she has sent upon the land; and teaches again the secrets of agriculture and regeneration. The Eleusinian Mysteries celebrated this whole story of assault, revenge, reconciliation and renewal in a ritual involving poetry, song, dramatic presentation and prayer. Albert Hofmann, Gordon Wasson and Carl Ruck, in their book The Road to Eleusis, have argued that the ceremony could have included ingestion of a hallucinogenic potion derived from the ergot fungus which grows on rye, and contains LSD-like alkaloids. In this case the entire ritual would have been amplified to the ecstatic intensity of mystical experience. Whether amplified by hallucinogens or not, the Eleusinian Mysteries brought thousands of ancient Greeks to a reconciliation with their pre-Hellenic, ancestral religion and with a reverential attitude to the nourishing Mother Goddess.18

In Irish mythology too there are hints of reconciliation rituals between the invading patriarchal Celts and the indigenous matricentric cultures, who worshipped the Goddess of the land and build great stone circles and passage graves in her honor. These myths often refer to the ritual marriage of the warrior-king to the local goddess of the land, who offered sacred kingship in exchange for having the land named after her. Éire, the ancient name for Ireland, was derived in this way from the goddess Ériu; and the town of Armagh was named after the goddess Macha. As in many Near Eastern ancient societies, the annual ritual mating of the king with the goddess of the land or her priestess ensured the fertility of the land for its people. As Mary Condren wrote, “In a famous story of one of the Celtic invasions, Ériu makes it clear that anyone wishing to enter Ireland would have to revere the goddesses if they wished to prosper and be fruitful.” 19

Nordic-Germanic mythology also has a story of reconciliation, in the long drawn-out conflict between Aesir and Vanir gods. When, after their first failed attempt at peacemaking, the rival families of gods finally decide to cease fighting, they meet, according to the myth, in a council circle around a gigantic cauldron. Each deity spits saliva into the cauldron and out of their mingled juices an incredibly wise being, named Kvasir is born. This Kvasir is then killed by two dwarves, who mix his blood with honey and thereby create a drink that inspires both humans and gods with poetic creativity, the mead of inspiration. The name Kvasir relates to a Slavic word for fermented beverage, and the riual of mingling saliva reflects archaic practices of inducing fermentation. We have here, as with Eleusis, a mythic ritual of reconciliation, probably referring to the kind of reconciliation and accomodation that must eventually have taken place between the Kurgan invaders and the Old Europeans.20

Metaphorically, this is a story about the wisdom and creativity that arises out of the reconciliation of previously antagonistic opposites, what Jung called the coincidentia oppositorum. This is the wisdom that comes from loving instead of fighting, from cooperating instead of competing, from partnership instead of domination, and from honoring and celebrating differences instead of fearing them and using them to create scapegoats for our guilt. When we can dissolve the barriers of separation and conflict between nations, races, religions, and the other traditional but artificial divisions of humankind, we would unleash an unparalleled explosion of the arts and creativity in all areas of life — this would appear to be the message of these myths of compromise and reconciliation.

The hybrid mythologies telling of domination, retaliation and reconciliation are found throughout Europe, the Mediterranean, the Near East, Iran and India, wherever a patriarchal ideology with cults of male sky and warrior gods was superimposed on matricentric egalitarian societies that worshipped the Great Goddess, with countless manifestations in all the forms of plant and animal life, including especially the human female. The basic pattern is everywhere the same, whether we are talking about the bands of Kurgan pastoralists who invaded Old Europe, the Celtic warriors who invaded Britain and Ireland, the Hebrew pastoralists who invaded Canaan, the Aryan Hellenes who invaded Crete and Greece, or the Mesopotamian city-states, who may have evolved a patriarchal dominator ideology without foreign invasion. There is much we dont know about pre-history, and we may never know the full story about the origins of the patriarchy.

We do know that with the establishment of the patriarchal dominator pattern, there was a partial loss and submergence of the gynocentric Earth spirituality which was the human heritage from the most ancient times of paleolithic gatherers and hunters. Certain aspects of this archaic worldview were preserved in the animistic and shamanistic traditions of Northern Europe and the polytheistic religions of classical antiquity. With the expansion of Christianity, the suppression of the old pagan nature religions and the oppression of women took a sharp upswing, culminating in the Inquisition, in which, according to some estimates, as many as 6 to 9 million witches were exterminated, the majority of them pagan women. This sustained misogynistic assault on women and paganism must be seen in the context of thousands of years of antagonism toward the ancient Earth Goddess, the “Mother of All the Living”.

It has been about 6000 years since the first waves of Kurgan pastoralists migrated westwards and established their sky-god religion and patriarchal social order in the peaceful farming communities of Old Europe. Perhaps the worldwide environmental and womens movement, and the questioning of Eurocentric ideology that is now going on are signals that the patriarchal dominator system is beginning to be dismantled. The need for rituals of compromise and reconciliation has never been greater and is being increasingly recognized. The wisdom and creativity expressed in the myths of our ancestors can be drawn on to help us find the connection back to a more respectful, harmonious and joyous relationship with the natural world and all its creatures.

I like to imagine that we are in the civilizational transition that William Blake referred to when he wrote in his visionary prophecy The Marriage of Heaven and Hell :

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his appear infinite and holy, whereas now it appears finite and corrupt. This will come to pass by an improvement in sensory enjoyment.

The cherub guarding access to the tree of life is the patriarchal myth that our alienation is Gods punishment (the so-called “Fall”). The cherubs departure means we can return to the sacred Tree of Life, to the regenerative nature-reverencing animism and joyous sensitivity of our pre-patriarchal ancestors.

Notes and References

1. This essay was originally written in conjunction with The Well of Remembrance. Under the title “Clashing Cultures and Hybrid Mythologies”, it is published in From the Realm of the Ancestors – Essays in Honor of Marija Gimbutas, ed. Joan Marler.

2. Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess (HarperCollins, 1991). p. 401.

3. Robert Graves, Greek Myths (Penguin Books, 1955) writes: “A study of Greek mythology should begin with a consideration of what political and religious systems existed in Europe before the arrival of the Aryan invaders from the distant North and East. The whole of Neolithic Europe, to judge from surviving artifacts and myths, had a remarkably homogeneous system of religious ideas, based on workshop of the many-titled Mother-goddess (p. 13).. All early myths about the gods seduction of nymphs refer apparently to marriages between Hellenic chieftains and local Moon-priestesses; bitterly opposed by Hera, which means by conservative religious feeling (p. 18).. The familiar Olympian system was then agreed upon as a compromise between Hellenic and pre-Hellenic views: a divine family of six gods and goddesses, headed by the co-sovereigns Zeus and Hera and forming a Council of Gods in Babylonian style (p.19). See also: Merlin Stone, When God was a Woman (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1976); Charlene Spretnak, Lost Goddesses of Early Greece (Beacon Press, 1978); and Elinor Gadon, The Once and Future Goddess (Harper & Row, 1989).

4. Arthur Evans, The God of Ecstasy – Sex Roles and the Madness of Dionysos (St. Martins Press, 1988)

5. William Anderson The Green Man – Archetype of Our Oneness with the Earth. (HarperCollins, 1990).

6. Meyer, M.W. (editor) The Ancient Mysteries (Harper & Row, 1987).

7. Alain Daniélou, Shiva and Dionysus (London: East-West Publications, 1982).

8. I have made an audio tape of the Gilgamesh story along these lines: The Hero, the Wildman and the Goddess (available from the Institute of Noetic Sciences).

9. For a detailed rexamination and interpretation of the Nordic-Germanic myths, including the conflicts between the Aesir and Vanir deities, in the light of Marija Gimbutass concept of hybrid mythologies, see my The Well of Remembrance – Rediscovering the Earth Wisdom Mythology of Northern Europe (Shambhala, 1994).

10. Snorri Sturluson, the Icelandic author who in the 13th century compiled the Prose Edda (also called Younger Edda), one of our main sources for Germanic myth, himself stated in his introduction, that the Aesir were the (human) leaders of warrior bands who came from Asia. The etymological connection he made between “Aesir” and “Asia” is however regarded as spurious by contemporary scholars. See Rudolf Simek, Lexikon der Germanischen Mythologie, (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1984), pp 460-461. See also The Well of Remembrance, op. cit. pp. 165 – 172.

11. Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas Vol. 2 (University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 159.

12. J.P. Malory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans (Thames & Hudson, 1989), p. 137-138.

13. Merlin Stone, When God Was A Woman (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1976). “The image of Eve as the sexually tempting but God-defying seductress was surely intended as a warning to all Hebrew men to stay away from the sacred women of the temples, for if they succumbed to the temptations of these women, they simultaneously accepted the female deity — Her fruit, Her sexuality and, perhaps most important, the resulting matrilineal identity for any children who might be conceived in this manner. .. The Hebrew creation myth, which blamed the female of the species for initial sexual consciousness in order to suppress the worship of the Queen of Heaven, Her sacred women and matrilineal customs, from that time on assigned women the role of sexual temptress.” (pp 221-222) See also: Gerda Lerner, The Creation of the Patriarchy (Oxford University Press, 1986); Elinor Gadon, The Once and Future Goddess (Harper & Row, 1989); Carol Ochs, Behind the Sex of God (Beacon Press, 1977); and John A. Phillips, Eve – The History of an Idea (Harper & Row, 1984).

14. See Ralph Metzner, The Well of Remembrance, op. cit., pp. 165-172, for further elaboration on this fascinating myth.

15. Well of Remembrance, op. cit., pp. 219-228.

16. It is interesting that according to James Lovelocks “Gaia theory” — that the Earth is one vast unitary living organism — the atmosphere is in fact produced (out-gassed) by the living matter of the Earth. So both ancient myth and 20th century science tells us that the air-sky is produced by, or born from , the living Earth.

17. Mary Condren, The Serpent and the Goddess – Women, Religion and Power in Celtic Ireland. (HarperCollins, 1989)

The Hunter and the Bird

A hunter once caught a small bird. Master, said the bird, you have eaten many animals bigger than I without assuaging your appetite. How can the flesh of my tiny body satisfy you? If you let me go, I will give you three counsels: one while I am still in your hand, the second when I am on your roof, and the third from the top of a tree. When you have heard all three, you will consider yourself the most fortunate of men. The first counsel is this: Do not believe the foolish pronouncements of others.

The bird flew on to the roof, from where it gave the second counsel, Have no regrets for what is past. Concealed in my body is a precious pearl weighing five ounces. It was yours by right, and now it is gone. Hearing this the man began to bewail his misfortune. Why are you so upset? asked the bird. Did I not say, Have no regrets for what is past? Are you deaf, or did you not understand what I told you? I also said, Do not believe the foolish pronouncements of others. I weigh less than two ounces, so how could I possibly conceal a pearl weighing five?

Coming to his senses, the hunter asked for the third counsel. Seeing how much you heeded the first two, why should I waste the third? replied the bird.

Rumi…

___________

Three Poems of Hazret-i Uftade

If you desire the Beloved, my heart,

Do not cease to pour out lamentations.

Observing His existence, reach annihilation!

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Let tears of blood pour from your eyes

May they emerge hot from the furnace

Say not that he is one of you or one of us

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Let love come that you may have a friend

Your distresses are a torrent

Sweeping you along the way to the Friend

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Take yourself up to the heavens

Meet the angels

And fulfill your desires

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Pass beyond the universe, this [unfurled] carpet

Beyond the pedestal and beyond the throne

That the bringers of good tidings may greet you

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Remove your you from you

Leave behind body and soul

That theophanies may appear

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Pass on, without looking aside

Without your heart pouring forth to another

That you may drink the pure waters

Say Oh He and You who is He.

If you desire union with the Beloved

Oh Uftade! Find your soul

That the Beloved may appear before you

Say Oh He and You who is He.

—

Saying Hu

Hu is a dervish’s rapture

Hu is a dervish’s grandeur

Hu is a dervish’s wealth

Uttering Hu is a dervish’s litany

With Hu, one ascends every degree

Saying Hu is a dervish’s guide

The gates of the way to the Friend appear

Then light surrounds the dervish

When he is liberated from seeing other than Him

The eye of the dervish’s heart is opened

Then he will be able to see the beautiful face of the Friend

And the dervish’s secret consciousness will be opened up

Üftade, if you desire the remedy for pain

Serve the dervishes by saying Hu.

—

Oh He and You who is He

If you desire the Beloved, my heart,

Do not cease to pour out lamentations.

Observing His existence, reach annihilation!

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Let tears of blood pour from your eyes

May they emerge hot from the furnace

Say not that he is one of you or one of us

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Let love come that you may have a friend

Your distresses are a torrent

Sweeping you along the way to the Friend

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Take yourself up to the heavens

Meet the angels

And fulfil your desires

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Pass beyond the universe, this [unfurled] carpet

Beyond the pedestal and beyond the throne

That the bringers of good tidings may greet you

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Remove your you from you

Leave behind body and soul

That theophanies may appear

Say Oh He and You who is He.

Pass on, without looking aside

Without your heart pouring forth to another

That you may drink the pure waters

Say Oh He and You who is He.

If you desire union with the Beloved

Oh Üftade! Find your soul

That the Beloved may appear before you

Say Oh He and You who is He.

(1490-1580 A.D.) Mehmed Muhyiddin Üftade was the founder of the Jelveti order of Sufis.

Hazret-i Pir-i Üftade was one of the great masters of Ottoman Sufism at the height of that Empire, and founder of the Celvetiyye order. His primary focus was not on writing (this collection of poems is one of the few pieces of his writing that still survives), and most of what we know of him is courtesy of his favourite disciple, ‘Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi, who kept a near-daily journal of the spiritual education that he received from his master.

Üftade was not, strictly speaking, a mystical poet like Yunus Emre or Niyazi Misri, and these poems reflect, above all, his interior state and the advice he imparted to his disciples. Üftade is not connected to the line of Persian mystical poetry, and his simple poems belong in the category of religious songs that accompany ceremonies of collective invocation.

_____

Two Poems from Rumi

A Community of the Spirit

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street

and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,

and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes

to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,

if you want to be held.

Sit down in the circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel

the shepherd’s love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.

Don’t accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.

Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.

You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”

Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always

widening rings of being.

—

‘Where Everything Is Music’

Don’t worry about saving these songs!

And if one of our instruments breaks,

it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place

where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes

rise into the atmosphere,

and even if the whole world’s harp

should burn up, there will still be

hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.

We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.

The graceful movements come from a pearl

somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge

of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive

from a slow and powerful root

that we can’t see.

Stop the words now.

Open the window in the centre of your chest,

and let the spirits fly in and out.

_____________

March 7, 2007

The Dream Machine…

New Show on the radio… listen while you can, as Internet Radio may soon be a creature of the past. The RIAA is out to strangle the baby in the bathwater so to speak. If their long arm reaches to Europe, we may just be broadcasting from Asia or Africa. These bastards are out to do independent music in by any way possible. Do your bit! Save Internet Radio!

Tree Nymph…

On The Music Box: Rena Jones-Driftwood

The day is bright, and upon us. Supposedly we are to be clouded in today, but it is incredibly sunny (at this point) for this time of year. I will accept it; it has been raining forever. Our yew tree is releasing clouds of pollen, it covers everything, and especially my eyes, sinuses… truck.. everything.

Heading off to a clients, so must be brief. We have a great article today, kind of topical for this time of year. Some nice poetry as well to make your day. (I hope)

Hope your day is a lovely one…

Gwyllm

On The Menu:

The Links

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

Tree Nymphs and Tree-Hung Shamans

Lament For Tammuz

Poetry: Wu Men… Selections

Paintings… Following A Theme

_______

The Links:

Tourist vows to film an Australian tiger

Jesus tomb claim denounced

Its the thinnest material ever and could revolutionise computers and medicine

BNP seeks anti-abortion Catholic votes

The Green Man Festival…

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

by Sir Walter Raleigh

If all the world and love were young,

And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,

These pretty pleasures might me move

To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold

When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,

And Philomel becometh dumb;

The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields

To wayward winter reckoning yields;

A honey tongue, a heart of gall,

Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,

Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies

Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten

In folly ripe, in season rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,

Thy coral clasps and amber studs,

All these in me no means can move

To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed,

Had joys no date nor age no need,

Then these delights my mind might move

To live with thee and be thy love.

________

Tree Nymphs and Tree-Hung Shamans

John Lash

PART ONE: The Myth of Adonis

Chapter 17 of John Lash’s recently completed book, Gaia’s Way is entitled “The End of Patriarchy.” It opens like this: Monotheism begins with a god who hates trees.

Ye shall utterly destroy all the places where in the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree. And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their idols with fire; and ye shall hew down the carved images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. – Deuteronomy 12: 2-3

The Demiurge of the Old Testament is jealous, insisting that no other gods be honored before him. This demand of course implies that there are other gods, competing deities. They are Pagan divinities who pervade nature, manifesting in all manner of creatures, in clouds and rivers and trees, even in rocks. Monotheism will tolerate none of these sensuous immanent powers. It makes the Earth void of divinity, its inhabitants subject to an off-planet landlord.

^^^^^

Throughout the book I refer to the Gnostic assertion that redemptive religion is a mental aberration insinuated into the human mind by non-human entities called Archons. Whether or not one accepts this bizarre explanation, common sense alone warns us that a paternal deity who claims to have created the natural world, yet demands to be worshipped by the destruction of nature, may have some serious psychological problems. This is an aberrant god who inspires a twisted faith. We live a natural world that we must deny and destroy in order to show devotion to the god who created it. This is certainly one of the more perverse propositions ever contrived by the human mind.

Experience Destroyed

We may well wonder, How did such an idea ever come to be formulated in the guise of a religious system? Since it is we humans who create religion, and invent our own gods, the monotheistic hatred of trees must have originated in human nature. It must have devolved from some actual experience. Even dementia, the distortion of reality, depends on having a reality to distort. What reality could have been at the source of the hideous distortion of Deuteronomy 12?

It has often been observed that Christianity took some of its rites and images from Pagan religion. The Christian mass, for instance, was taken directly from Mithraic religion. The Vatican itself is erected over a crypt where the rites of Mithras were celebrated. Christmas was originally a feast-day dedicated to the rebirth of the solar god, Mithra, not to mention a host of other Pagan divinities.

Okay, all this is more or less old hat. The cooptation of Pagan religious motifs and rituals by Christianity is well-known, but there is a deeper aspect to the crime of spiritual piracy. It is one thing to pillage rites and symbols which result from genuine religious experience, and quite another thing to undermine the very capacity for such experience. In The Politics of Experience, L. D. Laing warned about this danger: If our experience is destroyed, our behaviour will be destructive. Can the destructive behavior demanded by the paternal deity in Deuteronomy 12 be the result of experience having been destroyed? If so, what kind of experience?

A while ago a friend asked me, “Why is the infant Jesus depicted sleeping in a manger?” This question caught my attention, because after a good many years of deep immersion in mythology, I had not asked it myself! The “Christ Child” in the manger is one of the striking details of the New Testament. This endearing image is so deeply associated with the life of Jesus that we never think it could belong to any other story or setting. It seems this way, as do so many features of Christianity, because the cooptation has been done in such a way as to exclude any and all alternatives. The propagation of Christianity has been like a brutal advertising campaign of complete brainwashing that aims to make sure that the targeted consumers do not just reject the competition, but are oblivious to the very existence of any competition.

Birth from a Myrrh Tree

Upon reflection, I realized that the cameo image of baby Jesus in the manger was a cooptation of Tammuz (“true son”), the Sumerian shepherd. As a tender of sheep and goats, Tammuz sometimes slept in the manger where the flock came to eat. This humble image contrasts to his privileged role as a lover of the Goddess, Ishtar.

The Greek equivalent to the Assyro-Babylonian Tammuz was Adonis. Legend says that his mother Myrrha was a tree, i.e., a tree nymph or dryad. One version says that Persephone, the daughter of Demeter (the guardian goddess of the Eleusinian Mysteries) became enamoured of Adonis and took him with her as she migrated through the seasons of the year. In other words, the human Adonis became entirely absorbed in the recycling, regenerating processes of nature, like a tree that changes with the seasons. Adonis’ Sumerian counterpart, Dumuzi (identical with Tammuz, of course), was traditionally born from a tree (Ceramic bowl by Urbino, 16th Century, N. Italy). Even casual observers of nature have noted how the trunks of many trees have open joints that graphically resemble the distended birth orifice. Adonis is extracted from the trunk while his mother, caught in the throes of labor, looks down as if upon a miracle.

All over the ancient Near East the birth of Adonis from a myrrh tree after a ten-month gestation was celebrated on December 25. This is the pre-historical origin of the Christmas tree.

Three details of the Urbino image are striking: First, Myrrha the tree nymph has her arms outspread in a way that immediately suggests the posture of someone crucified on a cross. Second, the scarf wrapped around her recalls the serpent wrapped around the tree in the Garden of Eden. Third, Myrrha wears a pointed cap that almost looks like a thorn, recalling the crown of thorns worn by Jesus on Golgotha. It is as if these details are subliminal clues embedded in the overt mythological imagery. The ceramic bowl pictures (symbolizes, if you prefer) an experience, not the literal counterpart to what it shows. This complex image mirrors to us today something that happened to humanity in the past due to a specific capacity for experience (yet to be determined), a capacity which has since been destroyed. If this mythic image is obscure to us today, it is not because we cannot conceive or imagine what it might mean, but because we can no longer experience in a vivid and direct way what it represents.

In short, the Urbino ceramic does not merely display a mythological event, the birth of a man from a tree-woman; it also reveals the humanly lived counterpart to that event: the experience encoded in the mythic image of a tree-woman giving birth to a man.

Crucifixion Caricature

Now, assuming that the Italian artist who made the Urbino artifact faithfully preserved some details of Pagan mythology about Adonis, and allowing that the legend of Adonis predates Christianity by millennia, we can assert that the image on the ceramic bowl represents a mythical event that came to be caricatured in the crucifixion. By caricatured I mean deliberately and perversely distorted. The specific details that have been coopted are flagrant, as noted above: the woman with arms outspread in joy, the billowing scarf, the pointed hat. Of these details, the first and last are transposed into the conventional scenes of crucifixion. The second detail has been coopted for conventional representations of the Christian scenario of the Fall: the serpentine tempter curled around the Tree of Life.

Consider closely how the caricature perverts the value of the original mythic images. The gesture of Myrrha is an expression of joy: she throws out her arms as if to embrace the newborn child, but also to show her exuberance. The serpent-scarf flutters wildly around her. In Pagan myth and art, the serpent represents the life-force with its sinuous currents full of ecstasy. In Gnostic myth, the serpent in the garden of Eden is the instructor and divine benefactor who confers the cognitive ecstasy of Gnosis on the first parents, Adam and Eve. All this imagery is grotesquely redeployed in the religious imagery where Christ on the cross replaces the serpent on the tree. The difference in the psychological impact of the birth of Adonis compared to the crucifixion is obvious: one, the Pagan image, represents ecstasy and birth from the powers of the earth; the other, the Christian image, represents human death-agony as an otherworldly sacrifice.

The crucifixion image borrows and distorts a preexisting mythic image that arose from a certain experience, but the cooptation denies and reverses the values attached to that experience. In my book, I call this tactic counter-mimicry, after the Greek wordantimimon, used in Gnostic texts to describe Archontic mentality. In other words, counter-mimicry copies an image, but converts it to a set of values contrary to its original meaning. The counter-mimicry of the crucifixion displaced the Pagan religion of ecstacy and regeneration in nature and substituted in its place a cult of death and suffering. It made the redemptive power attributed to Christ’s suffering look more powerful than the regenerative force of nature itself.

Gnostics insisted that this is a deviant and dangerous idea. What do you think?

Phylogenetic Memory

So far, so good. But let’s cut to the chase. What is “the humanly lived experience” represented by the birth of Adonis from a tree-woman? Well, there are two answers to that question. First, the mythic image shown above reflects the Pagan religious experience of ecstatic regeneration through immersion in the forces of nature, as suggested above. Those who identified with Adonis were spiritually and somatically reborn. They participated morally, emotionally and psychologically in the regeneration of nature, as if they were an integral part of the natural world and not separate from it, confined to the human world alone, trapped in single-self identity. This experience was available to every person initiated into the rites of Adonis. The Urbino image represents the first-hand experience of those who underwent those rites.

But this mythic image shows another kind of experience as well, something that transcends the realm of individuality. Because myths refer to the long-term evolution of the human species, not only to the specific experience of an individual member of the species, each mythic image is time-intensive. This means that it displays in a static pictorial form a process that evolved over a long time, extending back into prehistory. Take Orion the Hunter, for example. This is the best-known mythological image found in the skies, where it is pictured as a constellation. The mythic image of Orion does not merely represent one human individual who once went hunting, it represents the experience of the hunt as lived by the entire human species over hundreds of thousands of years. Orion is the time-intensive image of an evolutional process undergone by the entire human species. The image is a mnemonic device for recalling that long-term evolutional process to the conscious mind. You could say that a mythic image is an icon of phylogenetic memory. Click the icon of the myth, behold the image, and it brings up the species memory in the form of a mythic narrative.

Phylogenetic, adjectival form of phylogeny: development of the entirety of a species, by contrast to ontogeny, development of the individual of a species. Phylogenetic refers to the experience shared by a phylum. (Linnaean taxonomy describes each living creature by Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. Humanity belongs to the Phylum of Chordata, including all vertebrates with a central nervous system along the back. In evolutionary terms, the human species is defined as a creature with a spine, but in moral terms, many members of the species are totally spineless.)

That myth preserves a record of phylogenetic memory, or long-term species memory, has not been widely considered, as far as I know. I have been trying to get this concept into circulation for a good many years. Perhaps you, patient reader, can now understand why I’ve considered this matter to be of such paramount importance. The heuristic value of this idea is immense, and may be crucial to human survival. (heuristic adj 1 allowing people to learn for themselves. 2 denoting problem-solving techniques that proceed by trial and error. The Penguin Concise English Dictionary, 2001.) If you accept the concept of the mythic image as stated here, you can formulate questions that will lead into the true depth of the mythological material. You can ask, What specific phylogenetic memory does this mythic image or story present? The answer is already half-contained in the question. By knowing what you are asking for, you will be able to develop a rich, deeply resourced response. You can ask what a mythic image or narrative reveals about specific experiences in the evolution of our species over the long term.

Which brings us to the second answer about the mythic image of Adonis born from a tree. This image does not represent a one-time literal event, a boy born from a tree-woman in some remote moment of prehistory; but an actual, lived event that transpired over many eons of time. What event was that? It was the birth of male shamans from women who were trees.

Split-brain Technique

Phylogenetic memory encompasses everything that has happened to the human species, including what brought it to its current stage of biological existence as a two-legged self-conscious animal. Whoever can access the long-term memory of the human species can come to know how the human body was formed from germinal events at the molecular level, how we evolved from a kind of primal plasm into a complex multicellular creature, how we acquired our sense-organs, how the brain developed, how sex originated, how we acquired fingernails, how we came to weep when we are sad, and so on. These are biological and evolutional developments, things that happened to us, rather than actions we performed, like hunting. They are developmental events in the life of our species. But phylogenetic memory also comprises other experiences: how fire was discovered, how the woodsaw was invented, how we learned to make bread. I want to emphasize that phylogenetic memory carries a record of discoveries that humans have made and as well biological developments that the human species has undergone. Both categories of events are retained in the human genome where they can be accessed by shamanic techniques of ecstasy, comparable to the Gnosis of the Mysteries.

Now here’s where the going gets tricky… We are entertaining an amazing concept myth is a record of phylogenetic memory and, at the same time, we are contemplating some mythological material with that concept in mind, in order to observe how the concept can be applied, how it works in practice. This exercise requires the use of the leftbrain (concept) and rightbrain (myth) simultaneously, but it is not always good technique to engage both sides of the brain at once. For instance, we cannot investigate “the birth of male shamans from women who were trees” and remain engaged with the leftbrain concept of phylogenetic memory. That investigation has to be pursued via a narrative, a story-telling process.

The narrative cannot be developed conceptually, even though we are using a concept to intiate it, i.e., to frame the storytelling process.

Even though the mythological material to be elicited through the narration will show how the concept works, the concept has to set the aside, otherwise it hampers or even cripples the narrative. So, the way to proceed from this point on is to elaborate the narrative purely on its own terms. When the myth has been expanded into a set of graphic and palpable memories of species experience, we can return to the framing concept of phylogenetic memory. In the process of expanding the myth, it helps to keep conceptual and critical thinking in suspension.

Just like we do when we go to the movies.

Lament for Tammuz

“In Eanna, high and low, there is weeping,

Wailing for the house of the lord they raise.

The wailing is for the plants; the first lament is ‘they grow not.’

The wailing is for the barley; the ears grow not.

For the habitations and flocks it is; they produce not.

For the perishing wedded ones, for perishing children it is; the dark-headed people create not.

The wailing is for the great river; it brings the flood no more.

The wailing is for the fields of men; the gunū grows no more.

The wailing is for the fish-ponds; the dasuhur fish spawn not.

The wailing is for the cane-brake; the fallen stalks grow not.

The wailing is for the forests; the tamarisks grow not.

The wailing is for the highlands; the masgam trees grow not.

The wailing is for the garden store-house; honey and wine are produced not.

The wailing is for the meadows; the bounty of the garden, the sihtū plants grow not.

The wailing is for the palace; life unto distant days is not.”

________

Wu Men… Selections

10,000

Ten thousand flowers in spring,

the moon in autumn,

a cool breeze in summer,

snow in winter.

If your mind isn’t clouded

by unnecessary things,

this is the best season of your life.

—

The Great Way

The Great Way has no gate;

there are a thousand paths to it.

If you pass through the barrier,

you walk the universe alone.

—

A Monk Asked

A monk asked Chao-chou Ts’ung shen (777-897) (Joshu), “Has the oak tree Buddha nature?”

Chao-chou said, “Yes, it has.”

The monk said, “When does the oak tree attain Buddhahood?”

Chao-Chou said, “Wait until the great universe collapses.”

The monk said, “When does the universe collapse?”

Chao-chou said, “Wait until the oak tree attains Buddhahood.

—

Moon and clouds are the same

Moon and clouds are the same;

mountain and valley are different.

All are blessed; all are blessed.

Is this one? Is this two?

—

One Instant

One Instant is eternity;

eternity is the now.

When you see through this one instant,

you see through the one who sees.

—

(another translation…)

The Great Way has no gate

The Great Way has no gate,

A thousand roads enter it.

When one passes through this gateless gate,

He freely walks between heaven and earth.

—

Twirling a flower,

The snake shows its tail.

Mahakasyapa breaks into a smile,

And people and devas are confounded.

—

Because it’s so very clear,

It takes so long to realize.

If you just know that flame is fire,

You’ll find that your rice is already cooked.

—

There are two primary collections of koans in Zen/Chan Buddhism: the Blue Cliff Records, and the Wu Men Kuan, also known as the Mumonkan. The Mumonkan, first published in 1228, consists of 48 koans compiled by Wu Men Hui-k’ai with his commentary and poetic verse.

Wu Men (also called Mumon) was a head monk of the Lung-hsiang monastery in China.

__________

March 5, 2007

The Horned One…

On The Music Box: Axiom Of Choice – Beyond Denial

Rowan and I saw

‘The Faun’s Labyrinth’ on Sunday..or as it is titled here in the US:

‘Pan’s Labyrinth’. Excellent film, and Rowan and I both recommend it. The Spiritual/Shamanic Journey is well layed out, the harrowing of Hell, The Three Task, The Sacrifice…

This will be one of those films that we will purchase the DVD for the home library. The last few years has seen a reasonable amount of films with the ancient tales, myths and dreams deeply embedded in them… The Brothers Grimm (with that bit of joyousness that Terry Gilliam brings to the mix)… V For Vendetta, with its heroes journey and redemption of the world.

The great themes are there if we but look. Films are the modern dream time, with all of the tales laid out within. It could not be any other way, as we come again and again to the deep wells of remembrance and sleep.

Do your self a favour, see this one. The tale is dark, but the rewards are there if you seek them out…

—

On The Menu:

Updates & Notes

The Obligatory Links…

Pan & Daphnis…

Those Amazing Quantum Honey Bees

At the Foot of Cold Mountain: The Poetry of Han Shan…

________

Updates & Notes:

The second ‘The Invisible College’ PDF Magazine is taking shape. Lots of excitement around here with that project. We are looking for a way to have them physically published in the future…

If you haven’t read it, you can down load it to your left… Tell your friends, and spread the word if you would please!

—

Spring is coming on in earnest here in Portland. It was up to 60f today here. Blue skies, beauty everywhere. We were out in the back yard today, getting it ready for spring (later spring planting) We get freezes up until April 15th, so you have to move with a bit of caution when it comes to the planting side of it all here….

—

Finished ‘Poets on the Peaks’ last night.

A recommended read. It tells the story of Phil Whalen, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac’s times as Fire Watchers in the Cascade Wilderness. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It fills in all kinds of gaps for me regarding the paths the three of them chose with their writings and lives…

It is a must for anyone who finds an affinity with the Beats, and that time of great change and transition. I had a very hard time putting this one down. I read it every night given the chance.. Masterfully done.

You can pick it up through Powells… (Check out the link on our home page…)

Check it out!

—

Have a lovely Monday!

Gwyllm

________

The Links:

Towers point to ancient Sun cult

A talk with Daniel Siebert…!

Opus Dei plans its own film

THE CALL OF THE WEIRD

________

Pan & Daphnis…

Daphnis was a hero from the island of Sicily. His father was Hermes, god of merchants and thieves, and his mother was a Sicilian nymph who was tricked by Hermes into making love to him. When her time came and Daphnis was born she abandoned him to die in a grove of laurels (whence his name) on the Mountain of Hera, to avenge herself on his father. But Hera saw her and took pity on the beautiful infant. She made sure that he was found by some shepherds, who brought him home and raised him as one of their own. From an early age he was renowned for his beauty, and for his delightful songs about the shepherd’s life. His great pride were his herd of cattle, which were of the same stock as those belonging to Helios, the sun god, and of which he took the greatest care.

Many were those who desired and courted this beautiful boy. He was a beloved of the god Apollo himself, and also of Pan, who taught him to play the panpipes. As he grew older it was his turn to fall in love. One day while tending his herd of magic cattle he caught a glimpse of a lovely nymph, Nomia by name, bathing in the river and fell in love with her. At first she ran off, angry to have been seen by human eyes. He did not give up and kept chasing her. In the end she relented, but warned him that if he ever was unfaithful to her she would strike him blind. He meant to respect her wish, but one day Nomia’s rival, another nymph by the name of Chimaera, plied him with wine and then seduced him. The furious Nomia took away his eyesight in revenge, and Daphnis spent the rest of his short life on earth playing the flute and singing his songs which were now sadder and even more beautiful than before.

Soon afterwards Hermes found out about his son’s misfortune, and came to take him up to Mount Olympos. As he flew off he struck the rock with his foot, causing clear water to gush forth. That spring, close by the town of Syracuse, is said to flow to this day and still carries the name of the blinded youth. There the Sicilian shepherds came ever after to offer sacrifices to their hero.

_________

Thanks To Dr. Con For This….

Those Amazing Quantum Honey Bees

Ken Korczak:

Warning! What I am writing about today may fry your brain. If you dont like the thought of your cerebral cortex sizzling like a corndog in a vat of boiling vegetable oil, dont read this column. In fact, if this column does not fry your brain, then your brain is just unfriable. Is unfriable a word? I dont know, but I digress. Now, on with the brain buzz, and you’ll soon understand what I mean by “buzz.”Imagine having the ability to see, with your naked eye, a quark particle spinning in the weird and shadowy quantum world. Imagine being able to perceive subatomic particles winking in and out of existence. What would it be like if you could easily see electrons shimmering in their orbits around atoms? Furthermore, think about what it would be like if you could exist naturally in a realm of six dimensions, rather than being cramped into the three-dimensional world you live in now. What if you could perform a sensational six-dimensional dance?

Well, that may be what the world of the common honey bee is like. If the theories of mathematician Barbara Shipman are correct, honey bees can not only perceive the energies of the subatomic, quantum world directly, but they also use six-dimensional space to communicate with each other. The fact that Shipman stumbled upon this theory is a classic example of what Louis Pasteur called: Chance favoring the prepared mind.Shipman is a mathematician at the University of Rochester, but her father was a bee researcher for the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Shipman would often stop by her fathers office and he would show her the amazing world of honey bees. One aspect of bee behavior which has fascinated and baffled scientists for more than 70 years is the mysterious dance they perform in their hives. The dance — a kind of crazy wing-waggling jitterbug (no pun intended) — communicates to other bees where new sources of yummy flower food can be found. By watching the dance of a scout bee, other bees, called recruits get an exact idea of the direction and distance of where new food can be found.Even though bees were not her field of study, Shipman could never get the mystery of bee dances out of her mind. In the meantime, Shipmans work as a math theorist led her to an area only a select few other mathematicians were working on — something called manifolds. A manifold is a geometric shape described by certain complex math equations. There are an infinite variety of manifold configurations.

They can describe shapes of many dimensions. Shipman was working with a six-dimensional structure called a flag manifold, when suddenly, in one of those eerie moments of scientific coincidence, she realized that the flag manifold very closely resembled the pattern of the honey bee waggle dance.Now, because the flag manifold is a six-dimensional object, it cannot be perceived in our three dimensional world. We can visualize only an approximation of what it looks like by projecting its shadow into two dimensional space. The shadow of an ordinary sphere, for example, projects onto two dimensions as a flat circle. And when you project a sixth-dimensional flag manifold onto two dimensions, it matches exactly the patterns dancing bees make. But two-dimensional bee-dance patterns are not enough to explain how bees interpret these patterns to locate distant sources of food. A good explanation may be that the bees actually perceive all six dimensions. In order to do that, the eye or senses of the bee would need to be able to see subatomic activity directly! When a human scientist tries to detect a quark–by bombarding it with another particle in a high-energy accelerator–the flag manifold geometry is lost. If bees are using quarks as a script for their dance, they must be able to observe the quarks in their natural states.At first, scientists speculated that bees were perceiving their flight directions similar to the way birds follow migration routes. It is commonly accepted that birds sense the earths magnetic fields because they have a mineral called magnetite in their heads. Magnetite helps birds follow terrestrial magnetic fields like a directional beacon. Even though bees have been found to have tiny amounts of magnetite in their bodies, it does not explain the bee dance and communication process. Also, it is unlikely that the two-dimensional pattern of the bee dance is a perfect shadow for a six-dimensional flag manifold unless there is a connection.

What are the implications of bees being able to directly perceive the quantum, subatomic world? For one thing, it means that we have to reevaluate the fundamental nature of bees. One might speculate that bees have a kind of special cosmic ability to transcend three-dimensional space, operate in a multidimensional universe, and straddle multiple levels of time, space and existence. Bees may be living proof that higher dimensions of reality exist physically, and not just in theory. There also may be doorways for entering into those realities — if you have the right equipment. But the bee evidence has much wider implications for quantum mechanics as a whole, which I won’t get into here.I think this bee phenomenon borders on the miraculous. Imagine these amazing creatures — honey bees — plying the quantum oceans, transcending mundane three-dimensional space as they perform their common labors. A bee is like a tiny winged Prometheus, entering the realm of the gods to bring back a wonderful gift to mankind — the sweetness of honey. Furthermore, I cant help but speculate that there may be a way to harness the multidimensional ability of bees to expand our own perceptions and abilities. Can we tap into the bee nervous system to help ourselves more directly experience that which can currently only be described with numbers? Can bees in some way enhance the information we collect from gigantic atom smashers? Can bees become the instrumentality that opens a direct portal for us into higher dimensional realms? Can we create bee sensors to make a quantum beam that will shine into the eldritch spaces between atoms, electrons, protons and quarks? It stings the imagination! Or to paraphrase a great poet: “It sings the body electric!” At the very least, it gives my brain a buzz! Yours?

Ken Korczak: www.starcopywriter.com

____________________

At the Foot of Cold Mountain: The Poetry of Han Shan…

Climbing up the Cold Mountain

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,

The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:

The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,

The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.

The moss is slippery, though there’s been no rain

The pine sings, but there’s no wind.

Who can leap the world’s ties

And sit with me among the white clouds?

—

Born Thirty Years Ago

Thirty years ago I was born into the world.

A thousand, ten thousand miles I’ve roamed.

By rivers where the green grass grows thick,

Beyond the border where the red sands fly.

I brewed potions in a vain search for life everlasting,

I read books, I sang songs of history,

And today I’ve come home to Cold Mountain

To pillow my head on the stream and wash my ears.

—

My Dwelling at TianTai

I divined and chose a distant place to dwell-

T’ien-t’ai: what more is there to say?

Monkeys cry where valley mists are cold;

My grass gate blends with the color of the crags.

I pick leaves to thatch a hut among the pines,

Scoop out a pond and lead a runnel from the spring.

By now I am used to doing without the world.

Picking ferns, I pass the years that are left.

—

I recently hiked to a temple in the clouds

and met some Taoist priests.

Their star caps and moon caps askew

they explained they lived in the wild.

I asked them the art of transcendence;

they said it was beyond compare,

and called it the peerless power.

The elixir meanwhile was the secret of the gods

and that they were waiting for a crane at death,

or some said they’d ride off on a fish.

Afterwards I thought this through

and concluded they were all fools.

Look at an arrow shot into the sky-

how quickly it falls back to earth.

Even if they could become immortals,

they would be like cemetery ghosts.

Meanwhile the moon of our mind shines bright.

How can phenomena compare?

As for the key to immortality,

within ourselves is the chief of spirits.

Don’t follow Lords of the Yellow Turban

persisting in idiocy, holding onto doubts.

—

The layered bloom of hills and streams

Kingfisher shades beneath rose-colored clouds

mountain mists soak my cotton bandanna,

dew penetrates my palm-bark coat.

On my feet are traveling shoes,

my hand holds an old vine staff.

Again I gaze beyond the dusty world-

what more could I want in that land of dreams?

—

Since I came to Cold Mountain

how many thousand years have passed?

Accepting my fate I fled to the woods,

to dwell and gaze in freedom.

No one visits the cliffs

forever hidden by clouds.

Soft grass serves as a mattress,

my quilt is the dark blue sky.

A boulder makes a fine pillow;

Heaven and Earth can crumble and change.

—

March 2, 2007

The Friday Diet….

Friday is here, and I am heading out for some work with Morgan. The new magazine is shaping up and we continue to get feed-back on it. (mostly positive – but some good criticisms as well regarding lay-out etc.) If you have something for the magazine, this would be the time to get it out to me….

Rowan is working away on his part of ‘Guys and Dolls’ at his H.S.. He is choreographing the Cuban fight scene, and is one of the principle dancers. His creativity just keeps ramping up.

Have a good weekend, and enjoy the time with friends and family!

Blessings,

Gwyllm

—

On The Menu:

The Links

Wade Davis on the Ethnosphere

Three Koans

The Poetry of Francois Villon

Francois Villon Biography

Paintings by Edward Burne-Jones

___________

The Links:

Granny finds grenade in groceries

Ancient Prickly Bugs Discovered

Volcano Blows as Space Probe Flies By

Mysterious circles found in Rio Grande

_________________

Wade Davis on the Ethnosphere…

_________________

Three Koans…

A Drop of Water

A Zen master named Gisan asked a young student to bring him a pail of water to cool his bath.

The student brought the water and, after cooling the bath, threw on to the ground the little that was left over.

“You dunce!” the master scolded him. “Why didn’t you give the rest of the water to the plants? What right have you to waste even a drop of water in this temple?”

The young student attained Zen in that instant. He changed his name to Tekisui, which means a drop of water.

—

Your Light May Go Out

A student of Tendai, a philosophical school of Buddhism, came to the Zen abode of Gasan as a pupil. When he was departing a few years later, Gasan warned him: “Studying the truth speculatively is useful as a way of collecting preaching material. But remember that unless you meditate constantly your light of truth may go out.”

—

The Stone Mind

Hogen, a Chinese Zen teacher, lived alone in a small temple in the country. One day four traveling monks appeared and asked if they might make a fire in his yard to warm themselves.

While they were building the fire, Hogen heard them arguing about subjectivity and objectivity. He joined them and said: “There is a big stone. Do you consider it to be inside or outside your mind?”

One of the monks replied: “From the Buddhist viewpoint everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that the stone is inside my mind.”

“Your head must feel very heavy,” observed Hogen, “if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind.”

_________________

The Poetry of Francois Villon

BALLADE OF THE WOMEN OF PARIS

Whilst it is held they have the chat,

the girls of Florence and of Venice,

enough to have it all off pat,

even the old girls whore no menace:

though Lombards, Romans, know their tennis;

Genoa girls, Piedmonts among

Savoie lasses – Ill risk my pennies

Parisian is your only tongue.

They highly prize the skill of chat

in Naples, thats what people say,

and Germans, Prussian girls dont bat

an eyelid when they prattle all day:

Egyptian, Greek and all the way

through Hungary even when sung,

by Spanish, Catalan girls at play –

Parisian is your only tongue.

Breton nor Swiss girls hardly know it,

nor do Toulouse nor Gascon fillies,

two Little Bridge fishwivesd blow it

and girls of Lorraine – theyre just sillies

as are the English and, where the will is,

the Calais girls (are all bells rung?).

No! From Valence the Picardies!

Parisian is your only tongue.

ENVOI

Prince, round the necks of Parisian crumpet

the prize for gabbing should be hung;

through some for Italians blow the trumpet,

Parisian is your only tongue

—

BALLADE: MACQUAIRES RECIPE

In arsenic thats sulphurous and hot;

in orpiment, in saltpetre and quicklime;

in boiling lead which kills them on the spot

and, taken from a lepers limbs, the slime;

in soot and pitch thats been soaked for some time

and mingled with the piss and shit of Jews;

in scrapings from feet and from inside old shoes;

in vipers blood and drugs from venom reaped;

in gall that wolves, foxes and badgers lose –

may all these envious tongues be fried and steeped.

In brain of cat which hunts for fish no more,

black, and so old hes no tooth in his gums;

in spit and slavver of a mastiff hoar,

for what its worth, when maddened, up it comes;

in foam from a broken-winded mule which thumbs

have hacked with good sharp blades about;

and water where rats have plunged arse over snout,

frogs, too, and toads and poisonous beasts all heaped,

lizards and snakes and such fine kinds of trout –

may all these envious tongues be fried and steeped.

In sublimate dangerous to touch which passes

into the belly of a living snake;

in dry blood like that which one sees in masses

in barbers dishes, when the moons full, which take

one a black hue, the other green as a lake;

in cancers and growths and in those steaming vats

in which wet-nurses soak their this-and-thats;

in tiny baths where local whores have dipped

(if youre now lost, youve never used the twats) –

may all these envious tongues be fried and steeped.

Prince, if youve neither colander nor sieve,

pass all these dainty morsels – none forgive –

amongst much muck and fetid trusses heaped,

but stir in pigshit first: and, thus captive,

may all these envious tongues be fried and steeped.

—

BALLADE OF GOOD ADVICE

Whether you hawk your pardons round.

whether card-sharp or play at dice,

or forge your own coin, you’ll be found:

you’ll burn like those whom we despise,

those perjured traitors, faithless spies.

Rob, rape or pillage, break all laws,

where does the loot go you so prize?

Straight to the taverns and the whores.

Chant, rant, bash drums and lutes,

act mad and shameless, play the fool;

prance round or shamble, toot the flutes;

be it in town or city, make it the rule

to make ‘em laugh with farce, or cool

with moralities out of doors.

Well as it goes, there’s always some who’ll

straight to the taverns and the whores.

What kind of shit will you not eat?

Sweat with a fork in mead and field,

muck out the stables for a treat

if pen and ink you cannot wield,

you’ll make enough, a niche it’ll yield.

But whether with hemp or lime your chores,

was it for this your pay’s springheeled

straight to the taverns and the whores?

To cap all this then, take your shoes,

your straight-leg jeans, your gear, don’t pause,

take suits, take shirts, all you can lose

straight to the taverns and the whores.

__________

François Villon (ca. 1431 – after 5 January 1463) was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison. The question “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?”, taken from the Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis and translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”, is one of the most famous lines of translated secular poetry in the English-speaking world. It is worth noticing that 15th Century French was not pronounced like modern French — for instance, Villon is pronounced as spelled and not as “Viyon”.

Francois Montcorbier (Villon) was born to a poor young couple in Paris. Villon’s father died when the poet was very young and Guillaume de Villon, a well to do chaplain who was a professor of ecclesiastical law at the University of Paris, took Villon in. His academic success allowed Villon to enter the university and obtain both a bachelor (1449) and masters degree (1452), though he seemed to spend more time enjoying the liberal freedoms that students were allowed at the time.

Possibly because of poverty, Villon seemed to be drawn toward the sordid element – thieves, defrocked priests and revolutionary student groups. Villon found them in the seedy taverns where he frequently caroused. He engaged in a short romantic affair with a young lady and later received a humiliating thrashing because of it. Villon became bitter toward the rich and was driven deeper into his involvement with the criminal contingent. In June 1455 Villon fatally wounded a priest who had entered a tavern denying God and began quarreling with Villon and his drinking companions. Villon was banished from Paris for the crime. Villon was allowed to return to Paris in 1456 after being pardoned for the killing on grounds of self defense.

The next year Villon was banished again for stealing from the College of Navarre with his criminal compatriots who had formed Coquille, something akin to a small Mafia. Before fleeing Paris, Villon wrote The Legacy, a tongue in cheek poem bequeathing his real and imaginary wealth to various ‘deserving’ people and institutions. The Coquille conducted a crime spree throughout the north of France, robbing mainly churches and clergy, including Villon’s own wealthy uncle. At the same time, Villon continued writing poetry that became popular among his criminal friends because of its use of their lingo and its attacks on many well known people and institutions. However, the authorities began arresting and hanging many of his gang so, in 1457, Villon sought refuge with the Duke of Orleans, a fellow poet and admirer of Villon’s work. Villon was again sent to prison for theft, but he was quickly pardoned on the occasion of the birth of the Duke’s daughter several months later. From this point, Villon lived a vagabond existence of petty theft while wandering through the pleasant French countryside.

He returned to his benefactor the Duke in 1861. As usual, his freedom did not last long. He was imprisoned for a minor crime and yet again pardoned a few months later when the newly crowned King passed through the town where he was imprisoned. Villon returned to Paris where he was arrested several more times for theft and brawling, but was soon released by virtue of some fortunate circumstance. His luck finally ran out when he was arrested for fighting and sentenced to the gallows. While awaiting the noose, Villon composed a brilliant poem about his own execution and the injustice of man. However, a last minute appeal to Parliament got his sentenced reduced to 10 years banishment from Paris in 1863. He was never heard from again. He was 34 years old. His poetry continued to gain popularity in Paris and throughout France where it went into seven printings.

Between times in prison he produced volumes of what are still considered by many to be the finest French lyric verse ever written. His poem, Le Petit Testament (The Small Testament), known also as Le Lais (The Legacy), was composed about 1455, and Villon’s other long poem, Le Grand Testament (The Large Testament), known also simply as Le Testament, soon followed.

The “Testaments” are mock or imaginary wills in which bequests are made alternately with compassion and with irony. For example, to the Holy Trinity, Villon leaves his soul; to the earth, his body; to a Parisian, Denis, some stolen wine; to a madman, his glasses; to a lover, all the women he wants. At least two of Villon’s shorter poems – Ballad of Hanged Men and I Am Francois, They Have Caught Me – were composed in 1462 while under sentance of death.

Some of Villon’s poetry was translated into English by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Swinburne, and, in the 20th century, Ezra Pound. Francois Villon did not leave a large literary legacy (only about 3300 lines). ..

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March 1, 2007

Into Thursday and down the road….

Tis a hurried day… Talk later,

Gwyllm

—

On the Menu:

The Links

MindStates/Mark Pesce

From Scotland: The Red Etin

The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian

Art: Gustave Moreau

_____________

The Links:

Stone Age solutions to modern-day depression

A sight as elusive as a Cheshire cat

Huge ‘Ocean’ Discovered Inside Earth

_____________________

Mind States…!

Last Day For The In-Expensive Tickets For Mind States in Costa Rica!

Get Them Today…!

Mark Pesce… on the Eschaton

————————

Mark Pesce… on the Eschaton prt 2

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From Scotland: The Red Etin

THERE were ance twa widows that lived on a small bit o’ ground, which they rented from a farmer. Ane of them had twa sons, and the other had ane; and by-and- by it was time for the wife that had twa sons to send them away to seeke their fortune. So she told her eldest son ae day to take a can and bring her water from the well, that she might bake a cake for him; and however much or however little water he might bring, the cake would be great or sma’ accordingly; and that cake was to be a’ that she could gie him when he went on his travels.

The lad gaed away wi’ the can to the well, and filled it wi’ water, and then came away hame again; but the can being broken the maist part of the water had run out before he got back. So his cake was very sma’; yet sma’ as it was, his mother asked if he was willing to take the half of it with her blessing, telling him that, if he chose rather to have the hale, he would only get it wi’ her curse. The young man, thinking he might hae to travel a far way, and not knowing when or how he might get other provisions, said he would like to hae the hale cake, com of his mother’s malison what like; so she gave him the hale cake, and her malison alang wi’t. Then he took his brither aside, and gave him a knife to keep till he should come back, desiring him to look at it every morning, and as lang as it continued to be clear, then he might be sure that the owner of it was well; but if it grew dim and rusty, then for certain some ill had befallen him.

So the young man set out to seek his fortune. And he gaed a’ that day, and a’ the next day; and on the third day, in the afternoon, he came up to where a shepherd was sitting with a flock o’ sheep. And he gaed up to the shepherd and asked him wha the sheep belanged to; and the man answered:

“The Red Etin of Ireland Ance lived in Bellygan, And stole King Malcolm’s daughter, The King of fair Scotland. He beats her, he binds her, He lays her on a band; And every day he dings her With a bright silver wand Like Julian the Roman He’s one that fears no man. It’s said there’s ane predestinate To be his mortal foe; But that man is yet unborn And lang may it be so.”

The young man then went on his journey; and he had not gone far when he espied an old man with white locks herding a flock of swine; and he gaed up to him and asked whose swine these were, when the man answered:

“The Red Etin of Ireland”– (Repeat the verses above.)

Then the young man gaed on a bit farther, and came to another very old man herding goats; and when he asked whose goats they were, the answer was:

“The Red Etin of Ireland”– (Repeat the verses again.)

This old man also told him to beware of the next beasts that he should meet, for they were of a very different kind from any he had yet seen.

So the young man went on, and by-and-by he saw a multitude of very dreadfu’ beasts, ilk ane o’ them wi’ twa heads, and on every head four horns. And he was sore frightened, and ran away from them as fast as he could; and glad was he when he came to a castle that stood on a hillock, wi’ the door standing wide to the wa’. And he gaed into the castle for shelter, and there he saw an auld wife sitting beside the kitchen fire. He asked the wife if he might stay there for the night, as he was tired wi’ a lang journey; and the wife said he might, but it was not a good place for him to be in, as it belanged to the Red Etin, who was a very terrible beast, wi’ three heads, that spared no living man he could get hold of. The young man would have gone away, but he was afraid of the beasts on the outside of the castle; so he beseeched the old woman to conceal him as well as she could, and not to tell the Etin that he was there. He thought, if he could put over the night, he might get away in the morning without meeting wi’ the beasts, and so escape. But he had not been long in his hidy-hole before the awful Etin came in; and nae sooner was he in than he was heard crying:

“Snouk but and snouk ben, I find the smell of an earthly man; Be he living, or be he dead, His heart this night shall kitchen[1] my bread.

[1] “Kitchen,” that is, “season.”

The monster soon found the poor young man, and pulled him from his hole. And when he had got him out he told him that if he could answer him three questions his life should be spared. The first was: Whether Ireland or Scotland was first inhabited? The second was: Whether man was made for woman, or woman for man? The third was: Whether men or brutes were made first? The lad not being able to answer one of these questions, the Red Etin took a mace and knocked him on the head, and turned him into a pillar of stone.

On the morning after this happened the younger brither took out the knife to look at it, and he was grieved to find it a’ brown wi’ rust. He told his mother that the time was now come for him to go away upon his travels also; so she requested him to take the can to the well for water, that she might bake a cake for him. The can being broken, he brought hame as little water as the other had done, and the cake was as little. She asked whether he would have the hale cake wi’ her malison, or the half wi’ her blessing; and, like his brither, he thought it best to have the hale cake, come o’ the malison what might. So he gaed away; and everything happened to him that had happened to his brother!

The other widow and her son heard of a’ that had happened frae a fairy, and the young man determined that he would also go upon his travels, and see if he could do anything to relieve his twa friends. So his mother gave him a can to go to the well and bring home water, that she might bake him a cake for his journey. And he gaed, and as he was bringing hame the water, a raven owre abune his head cried to him to look, and he would see that the water was running out. And he was a young man of sense, and seeing the water running out, he took some clay and patched up the holes, so that he brought home enough water to bake a large cake. When his mother put it to him to take the half-cake wi’ her blessing, he took it in preference to having the hale wi’ her malison; and yet the half was bigger than what the other lads had got a’thegither.

So he gaed away on his journey; and after he had traveled a far way he met wi’ an auld woman, that asked him if he would give her a bit of his bannock. And he said he would gladly do that, and so he gave her a piece of the bannock; and for that she gied him a magical wand, that she said might yet be of service to him if he took care to use it rightly. Then the auld woman, who was a fairy, told him a great deal that whould happen to him, and what he ought to do in a’ circumstances; and after that she vanished in an instant out o’ his sight. He gaed on a great way farther, and then he came up to the old man herding the sheep; and when he asked whose sheep these were, the answer was:

“The Red Etin of Ireland Ance lived in Bellygan, And stole King Malcolm’s daughter, The King of fair Scotland. He beats her, he binds her, He lays her on a band; And every day he dings her With a bright silver wand. Like Julian the Roman, He’s one that fears no man, But now I fear his end is near, And destiny at hand; And you’re to be, I plainly see, The heir of all his land.”

(Repeat the same inquiries to the man attending the swine and the man attending the goats, with the same answer in each case.)

When he came to the place where the monstrous beasts were standing, he did not stop nor run away, but went boldly through among them. One came up roaring with open mouth to devour him, when he struck it with his wand, and laid it in an instant dead at his feet. He soon came to the Etin’s castle, where he knocked, and was admitted. The auld woman that sat by the fire warned him of the terrible Etin, and what had been the fate of the twa brithers; but he was not to be daunted. The monster soon came in, saying:

“Snouk but and snouk ben, I find the smell of an earthly man; Be he living, or be he dead, His heart shall be kitchen to my bread.”

He quickly espied the young man, and bade him come forth on the floor. And then he put the three questions to him, but the young man had been told everything by the good fairy, so he was able to answer all the questions. When the Etin found this he knew that his power was gone. The young man then took up the axe and hewed off the monster’s three heads. He next asked the old woman to show him where the King’s daughters lay; and the old woman took him upstairs and opened a great many doors, and out of every door came a beautiful lady who had been imprisoned there by the Etin; and ane o’ the ladies was the King’s daughter. She also took him down into a low room, and there stood two stone pillars that he had only to touch wi’ his wand, when his two friends and neighbors started into life. And the hale o’ the prisoners were overjoyed at their deliverance, which they all acknowledged to be owing to the prudent young man. Next day they a’ set out for the King’s Court, and a gallant company they made. And the King married his daughter to the young man that had delivered her, and gave a noble’s daughter to ilk ane o’ the other young men; and so they a’ lived happily a’ the rest o’ their days.

_______________________

From Ireland: The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian

Open Rose

The moon is my second face, her long cycle

Still locked away. I feel rain

Like a tried-on dress, I clutch it

Like a book to my body.

His head is there when I work,

It signs my letters with a question-mark;

His hands reach for me like rationed air.

Day by day I let him go

Till I become a woman, or even less,

An incompletely furnished house

That came from a different century

Where I am guest at my own childhood.

I have grown inside words

Into a state of unbornness,

An open rose on all sides

Has spoken as far as it can.

—

Ylang-Ylang

Her skin, though there were areas of death,

Was bright compared with the darkness

Working through it. When she wore black,

That rescued it, those regions were rested

Like a town at lighting up time. In a heart-

Casket flickered her heartless jeune fille

Perfume; I was compelled by her sunburnt,

Unripe story and her still schoolgirl hand.

My life, sighed the grass-coloured,

Brandy-inspired carafe, is like a rug

That used to be a leopard, beckoning

To something pink. Yes, I replied, I have

A golf-coat almost as characterless,

Where all is leaf. We began moving over one

Each other in the gentlest act of colour,

Not as far as the one-sided shape of red,

But out of that seriousness, out of the stout

Ruled notebook. She would stream in, her

Sculptors blouse disturbed so by the violence

Of yellow, I would have to thank the light

For warning me of her approach. Not I,

But the weakened blue of my skirt

Wanted the thrown-together change, from vetiver

To last nights ylang-ylang, and back again.

—

The Flower Master

Like foxgloves in the school of the grass moon

We come to terms with shade, with the principle

Of enfolding space. Our scissors in brocade,

We learn the coolness of straight edges, how

To stroke gently the necks of daffodils

And make them throw their heads back to the sun.

We slip the thready stems of violets, delay

The loveliness of the hibiscus dawn with quiet ovals,

Spirals of feverfew like water splashing,

The papery legacies of bluebells. We do

Sea-fans with sea-lavendar, moon-arrangements

Roughly for the festival of moon-viewing.

This black container calls for sloes, sweet

Sultan, dainty nipplewort, in honour

Of a special guest, who summoned to the

Tea ceremony, must stoop to our low doorway,

Our fontanelle, the trout’s dimpled feet.

____________

Medbh McGuckian was born in Belfast on 12 August 1950 and educated at a Dominican convent and Queen’s University, Belfast. She has worked as a teacher and an editor and is a former Writer in Residence at Queen’s University, Belfast (1985-8).

Her first published poems appeared in two pamphlets, Single Ladies: Sixteen Poems and Portrait of Joanna, in 1980, the year in which she received an Eric Gregory Award. In 1981 she co-published Trio Poetry 2 with fellow poets Damian Gorman and Douglas Marshall, and in 1989 she collaborated with Nuala Archer on Two Women, Two Shores. Medbh McGuckian’s first major collection, The Flower Master (1982), which explores post-natal breakdown, was awarded a Rooney prize for Irish Literature, an Ireland Arts Council Award (both 1982) and an Alice Hunt Bartlett Award (1983). She is also the winner of the 1989 Cheltenham Prize for her collection On Ballycastle Beach.

Medbh McGuckian has also edited an anthology, The Big Striped Golfing Umbrella: Poems by Young People from Northern Ireland (1985) for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, written a study of the car in the poetry of Seamus Heaney, entitled Horsepower Pass By! (1999), and has translated into English (with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin) The Water Horse (1999), a selection of poems in Irish by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. A volume of Selected Poems: 1978-1994 was published in 1997, and her latest collection is The Book of the Angel (2004).

She was awarded the 2002 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for her poem ‘She is in the Past, She Has This Grace’.

____________

February 28, 2007

Looking out from Mt. Ararat..

A little bit of something for your day…..

I hope you enjoy!

Gwyllm

_________

On The Menu:

The Links

Alan Stivell..

Story Of The King Who Would See Paradise

A bit of Truth…

Poetry of the Diaspora: Vahan Tekeyan

Paintings: edward burne-jones

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The Links:

Earliest horse figures of Anatolia in Eskişehir

Study: College students get an A in narcissism

Sceptre from Roman emperor exhibited

EU helps witches branch out

___________

Alan Stivell..

________________________

Story Of The King Who Would See Paradise

Once upon a time there was king who, one day out hunting, came upon a fakeer in a lonely place in the mountains. The fakeer was seated on a little old bedstead reading the Koran, with his patched cloak thrown over his shoulders.

The king asked him what he was reading; and he said he was reading about Paradise, and praying that he might be worthy to enter there. Then they began to talk, and, by-and- bye, the king asked the fakeer if he could show him a glimpse of Paradise, for he found it very difficult to believe in what he could not see. The fakeer replied that he was asking a very difficult, and perhaps a very dangerous, thing; but that he would pray for him, and perhaps he might be able to do it; only he warned the king both against the dangers of his unbelief, and against the curiosity which prompted him to ask this thing. However, the king was not to be turned from his purpose, and he promised the fakeer always to provided him with food, if he, in return, would pray for him. To this the fakeer agreed, and so they parted.

Time went on, and the king always sent the old fakeer his food according to his promise; but, whenever he sent to ask him when he was going to show him Paradise, the fakeer always replied: ‘Not yet, not yet!’

After a year or two had passed by, the king heard one day that the fakeer was very ill– indeed, he was believed to be dying. Instantly he hurried off himself, and found that it was really true, and that the fakeer was even then breathing his last. There and then the king besought him to remember his promise, and to show him a glimpse of Paradise. The dying fakeer replied that if the king would come to his funeral, and, when the grave was filled in, and everyone else was gone away, he would come and lay his hand upon the grave, he would keep his word, and show him a glimpse of Paradise. At the same time he implored the king not to do this thing, but to be content to see Paradise when God called him there. Still the king’s curiosity was so aroused that he would not give way.

Accordingly, after the fakeer was dead, and had been buried, he stayed behind when all the rest went away; and then, when he was quite alone, he stepped forward, and laid his hand upon the grave! Instantly the ground opened, and the astonished king, peeping in, saw a flight of rough steps, and, at the bottom of them, the fakeer sitting, just as he used to sit, on his rickety bedstead, reading the Koran!

At first the king was so surprised and frightened that he could only stare; but the fakeer beckoned to him to come down, so, mustering up his courage, he boldly stepped down into the grave.

The fakeer rose, and, making a sign to the king to follow, walked a few paces along a dark passage. Then he stopped, turned solemnly to his companion, and, with a movement of his hand, drew aside as it were a heavy curtain, and revealed–what? No one knows what was there shown to the king, nor did he ever tell anyone; but, when the fakeer at length dropped the curtain, and the king turned to leave the place, he had had his glimpse of Paradise! Trembling in every limb, he staggered back along the passage, and stumbled up the steps out of the tomb into the fresh air again.

The dawn was breaking. It seemed odd to the king that he had been so long in the grave. It appeared but a few minutes ago that he had descended, passed along a few steps to the place where he had peeped beyond the veil, and returned again after perhaps five minutes of that wonderful view! And what WAS it he had seen? He racked his brains to remember, but he could not call to mind a single thing! How curious everything looked too! Why, his own city, which by now he was entering, seemed changed and strange to him! The sun was already up when he turned into the palace gate and entered the public durbar hall. It was full; and there upon the throne sat another king! The poor king, all bewildered, sat down and stared about him. Presently a chamberlain came across and asked him why he sat unbidden in the king’s presence. ‘But I am the king!’ he cried.

‘What king?’ said the chamberlain.

‘The true king of this country,’ said he indignantly.

Then the chamberlain went away, and spoke to the king who sat on the throne, and the old king heard words like ‘mad,’ ‘age,’ ‘compassion.’ Then the king on the throne called him to come forward, and, as he went, he caught sight of himself reflected in the polished steel shield of the bodyguard, and started back in horror! He was old, decrepit, dirty, and ragged! His long white beard and locks were unkempt, and straggled all over his chest and shoulders. Only one sign of royalty remained to him, and that was the signet ring upon his right hand. He dragged it off with shaking fingers and held it up to the king.

‘Tell me who I am,’ he cried; ‘there is my signet, who once sat where you sit–even yesterday!’

The king looked at him compassionately, and examined the signet with curiosity. Then he commanded, and they brought out dusty records and archives of the kingdom, and old coins of previous reigns, and compared them faithfully. At last the king turned to the old man, and said: ‘Old man, such a king as this whose signet thou hast, reigned seven hundred years ago; but he is said to have disappeared, none know whither; where got you the ring?’

Then the old man smote his breast, and cried out with a loud lamentation; for he understood that he, who was not content to wait patiently to see the Paradise of the faithful, had been judged already. And he turned and left the hall without a word, and went into the jungle, where he lived for twenty-five years a life of prayer and meditations, until at last the Angel of Death came to him, and mercifully released him, purged and purified through his punishment.

_______

A bit of Truth…

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Poetry of the Diaspora: Vahan Tekeyan

The Lamp of the Illuminator

In the uncountable array of stars

there is one that is ours alone.

It fixes itself over Arakadz,

different and apart from the rest,

as if another hand hung it in secret

to give hope to Armenian eyes,

lit it from Gregory’s light,

filling it with tears not oil.

Just as the faithful each day

are energized by the sight

of the Ararat crest,

so they are strengthened at night

as the star brightens in their souls

growing, growing into a new sunrise.

—

The Beautiful Ones

The beautiful one is always she who walked past you one day

And anointed your eyes- a divine visitor,

You failed to turn and look back at such beauty,

And you did not wish to meet her again.

The beautiful one is forever, always and ever,

She who grew into grace under the warmth of your eyes,

Who swayed like a flower in the sweet spring winds,

And when you went away, she stayed always fresh in your mind, ever fragrant

And the beautiful one- you know her delightful name-

Is she who might have loved you after all,

Who certainly guessed your love and waited eagerly for you,

But she is one whose heart it`s just as well you did not wound-

Ah, the beautiful ones are only they who through your desires

Came and went away, but who call you now from afar…

—

To the Reader

My soul belongs to me no matter how I offer pieces

to strangers passing by, on every page.

My soul belongs to me, no one can recognize it whole

with its formidable darkness and blinding lights.

Like the unstripped mine for gold, coal, or perhaps lead

the dredging has bared only the first layer

of joys, and the black floodwaters of pain.

A deeper volcano rumbles underneath it all.

My soul is that mine, only partially excavated.

Who knows how many new pains will burrow

and shaft, blast by blast? It belongs to me.

Today 1 regret that so many samples were passed

to onlookers when I intended all the while

to give it whole, only to one or two.

—

Vahan Tekeyan

(1878-1948)

Vahan Tekeyan was known as a perfectionist, because he always looked for the precise word. He was born in Istanbul in 1978 and educated in the Armenian schools there. His first poems were collected and published in 1901. Besides his own books, he published translations of French symbolist poetry and the sonnets of Shakespeare. The sonnet remained his favorite form.

During the 1896 persecutions, Tekeyan left Istanbul for Europe. He returned, but subsequently settled in Egypt, where he was active in Armenian political life and edited the Armenian newspaper, Arev.

His books are “Burdens” (1901), “The Wonderful Rebirth” (1914), “From Midnight Until Dawn” (1918), “Love” (1933), “Armenian Songs” (1943), and “Book of Odes” (1944).

February 27, 2007

If It Is Tuesday…

If I know what love is, it is because of you.

– Herman Hesse

I often assemble the basic body of Turfing at night, but leave the last minute stuff for the morning. The problem is that my writing differs vastly from 11:00pm to 9:00am. Not enough juice to kick it off properly.

I stumbled upon Hesse’s work (again) recently, and it makes me wonder how someone could not re-visit his works over the years. Though he has little cache now, I think he was one of the great ones. His writing certainly had an affect on me. We have included some quotes and extracts from him today, so you can catch his flavour…

We touch on the Count Saint Germain as this is a special day for him….

A visit to Li Bai of the T’ang dynasty rounds it all out nicely.

Here is to your Tuesday,

Gwyllm

On The Tuesday Grill:

The Links

Count St Germain

Slug Love…

A Wee Visit With Herman Hesse…

From The T’ang Paradise: Li Bai

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The Links:

Strewth! Australia rocked by ‘lesbian’ koala revelation

Matrixism…?

Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798 – 2004

ET Cures The Methadone Habit…

The Meth Song (“Hey Scary Looking”)

If A Tree Falls On Mars…

_________

Count St Germain is supposed by some to have died on this day in 1784. He was seen by the composer Rameau and the young Countess Georgy in 1710 and looked about 45. Thirty years later at Louis XV’s court, he still looked about 45, he visited his old friend Mme d’Adhemar – to her great surprise, as she had thought his dead and buried – and told her that he would see her five more times. The last time was before the murder of the Duc du Berri in 1820.

A Life? St. Germain’s background and identity are shrouded in mystery, leading to many speculations about his origin and ancestry. According to Prince Charles of Hesse, St. Germain claimed, toward the end of his life, to be the son of Francis II Rákóczi, the Prince of Transylvania, by Rákóczi’s first wife. This seems to be the prevailing theory. Another theory says St. Germain was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna of Pfalz-Neuburg, the widow of Charles II of Spain; while still another believes him to have been the son of the king of Portugal.

—

St. Germain may have studied in Italy at Siena University, possibly as a protégé of Grand Duke Gian Gastone (the last of the Medici line).

The first “sighting” of St. Germain was in 1710, according to Baron de Gleichen, who says St. Germain was in Venice at that time. Other chronicled appearances include London in 1743 and in Edinburgh in 1745, where he was placed under house arrest for being suspected of espionage during the Jacobite revolution. He was released when no evidence was produced, and soon acquired a reputation as a great violinist–as good as Paganini, according to one account. During this time he met Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In 1746 he disappeared. Horace Walpole, who knew him from about 1745 in London, described him thus: “He sings, plays the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad and not very sensible”.

He reappeared in Versailles in 1758. The old portrait of him dates from these years. He claimed to have had recipes for dyes, and was given quarters in the Chateau de Chambord by Louis XV, with whom he spent a great deal of time, along with Louis’ mistress, Madame de Pompadour. During this time in Paris, St. Germain liberally gave diamonds, of which he had many, as gifts. The Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova says he personally witnessed St. Germain turning silver into gold, but adds that he suspected it was done by sleight of hand. It is said St. Germain sometimes hinted he was centuries old. At the time a mime, who called himself Lord Gower, began to mimic his mannerism in salons, joking that St. Germain had advised Jesus. In 1760 St. Germain left for England through Holland on a mission for Louis XV, when the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Duke of Choiseul, tried to have him arrested.

After that the Count passed through the Netherlands into Russia and apparently was in St Petersburg when the Russian army coup put Catherine the Great on the throne. Later conspiracy theories credit him for causing it. The next year he turned up in the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium), bought land and took the name Surmount. He tried to offer his processestreatments of wood, leather, oil paintto the state. During his negotiationsthat came to nothingwith Belgian minister Karl Cobenzl he hinted at a royal birth. He then disappeared for 11 years.

In 1774 he resurfaced, and apparently tried to present himself to a count in Bavaria as Freiherr Reinhard Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the Count Tsarogy. In 1776 the Count was in Germany, calling himself Chevalier Welldone, and again offered recipescosmetics, wines, liqueurs, treatments of bone, paper and ivory. He alienated King Frederick’s emissaries by his claims of transmutation of gold. To Frederick he claimed to have been a Freemason. He settled in a house of Prince Karl of Hesse-Kassel, governor of Schleswig-Holstein, and studied herbal remedies and chemistry to give to the poor. To him he claimed he was a Francis Rakoczy II, Prince of Transylvania. 1784 is when the Count supposedly died, probably of pneumonia. He left very little behind.

There were rumors of him alive in Paris in 1835, in Milan in 1867, and in Egypt during Napoleon’s campaign. Napoleon III kept a dossier on him but it was destroyed in a fire that gutted the Hotel de Ville in 1871. Theosophist Annie Besant said that she met the Count in 1896. Theosophist C. W. Leadbeater claimed to have met him in Rome in 1926, and said that St. Germain showed him a robe that had been previously owned by a Roman Emperor and that St. Germain told him that one of his residences was a castle in Transylvania. Theosophist Guy Ballard claimed he met the Count on Mt. Shasta and he introduced him to visitors from Venus and published a book series about his channelings; Ballard founded the “I AM” Activity.

On January 28, 1972, ex-convict and lover of singing star Dalida, Richard Chanfray claimed to be the Count of St. Germain on French television. He also claimed that Louis XV was still alive.

-Wikipedia

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Slug Love…

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A Wee Visit With Herman Hesse…

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

—

“You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, single power, a single salvation… and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.”

—

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us

—

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

—

To be able to throw one’s self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman’s smile – that is happiness

—

“So that’s it, thought I. They’ve disfigured this good old wall with an electric sign. Meanwhile I deciphered one or two of the letters as they appeared again for an instant; but they were hard to read even by guess work, for they came with very irregular spaces between them and very faintly, and then abruptly vanished. Whoever hoped for any result from a display like that was not very smart. He was a Steppenwolf, poor fellow. Why have his letters playing on this old wall in the darkest alley of the Old Town on a wet night with not a soul passing by, and why were they so fleeting, so fitful and illegible? But wait, at last I succeeded in catching several words on end. They were:

MAGIC THEATER – ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY

I tried to open the door, but the heavy old latch would not stir. The display too was over. It had suddenly ceased, sadly convinced of its uselessness. I took a few steps back, landing deep into the mud, but no more letters came. The display was over. For a long time I stood waiting in the mud, but in vain.

Then, when I had given up and gone back to the alley, a few colored letters were dropped here and there, reflected on the asphalt in front of me. I read:

FOR MADMEN ONLY!” – from ‘Steppenwolf’

—-

“But out of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one touched his soul. He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always an at all times the same and yet new in every moment! Great be he who would grasp this, understand this! He understood and grasped it not, only felt some idea of it stirring, a distant memory, divine voices.” – from ‘Siddhartha’.

“I’m telling you what I’ve found. Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught. This was what I, even as a young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you’ll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true! That’s like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it’s all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be done differently, there is no other way for him who wants to teach. But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real. Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this often and often again. And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between evil and good, is also a deception.” – from ‘Siddhartha’.

—

“Where does it come from, he asked himself? What is the reason for this feeling of happiness? Does it arise from my good long sleep which has done me so much good? Or from the word Om which I pronounced? Or because I have run away, because my flight is accomplished, because I am at last free again and stand like a child beneath the sky? Ah, how good this flight has been, the liberation! In the place from which I escaped there was always an atmosphere fo pomade, spice, excess and inertia. How I hated that world of riches, carousing and playing! How I hated myself for remaining so long in that horrible world! How I hated myself, thwarted, poisoned and tortured myself, made myself old and ugly. Never again, as I once fondly imagined, will I consider that Siddartha is clever. But one thing I have done well, which pleases me, which I must praise – I have now put an end to that self-detestation, to that foolish empty life. I commend you, Siddartha, that after so many years of folly, you have again had a good idea, that you have accomplished something, that you have again heard the bird in your breast sing and followed it.” – from ‘Siddhartha’.

—

Let’s listen, you’ll hear more.

They listened. Softly sounded the river, singing in many voices. Siddhartha looked into the water, and images appeared to him in the moving water: his father appeared, lonely, mourning for his son; he himself appeared, lonely, he also being tied with the bondage of yearning to his distant son; his son appeared, lonely as well, the boy, greedily rushing along the burning course of his young wishes, each one heading for his goal, each one obsessed by the goal, each one suffering. The river sang with a voice of suffering, longingly it sang, longingly, it flowed towards its goal, lamentingly its voice sang.

Do you hear? Vasudeva’s mute gaze asked. Siddhartha nodded.

Listen better! Vasudeva whispered.

Siddhartha made an effort to listen better. The image of his father, his own image, the image of his son merged, Kamala’s image also appeared and was dispersed, and the image of Govinda, and other images, and they merged with each other, turned all into the river, headed all, being the river, for the goal, longing, desiring, suffering, and the river’s voice sounded full of yearning, full of burning woe, full of unsatisfiable desire. For the goal, the river was heading, Siddhartha saw it hurrying, the river, which consisted of him and his loved ones and of all people, he had ever seen, all of these waves and waters were hurrying, suffering, towards goals, many goals, the waterfall, the lake, the rapids, the sea, and all goals were reached, and every goal was followed by a new one, and the water turned into vapour and rose to the sky, turned into rain and poured down from the sky, turned into a source, a stream, a river, headed forward once again, flowed on once again. But the longing voice had changed. It still resounded, full of suffering, searching, but other voices joined it, voices of joy and of suffering, good and bad voices, laughing and sad ones, a hundred voices, a thousand voices. – from ‘Siddhartha’.

__________

From The T’ang Paradise: Li Bai

Endless Yearning (I)

I am endlessly yearning

To be in Changan,

Insects hum of autumn by the gold brim of the well

A thin frost glistens like little mirrors on my cold mat,

The high lantern flickers, and deeper grows my longing

I lift the shade and, with many a sigh, gaze upon the moon,

Single as a flower, centered from the clouds

Above, I see the blueness and deepness of the sky

Below, I see the greenness and the restlessness of water

Heaven is high, Earth wide, bitter between them flies my sorrows

Can I dream through the gateway, over the mountain?

Endless longing

Breaks my heart.

Endless Yearning (II)

The sun has set, and a mist is in the flowers

And the moon grows very white and people sad and sleepless,

A Zhao harp has just been laid mute on its phoenix holder

And a Shu lute begins to sound its mandarin-duck strings

Since nobody can bear to you the burden of my song

Would that it might follow the spirit wind to Yanran Mountain,

I think of you far away, beyond the blue sky

And my eyes that once were sparkling, are now a well of tears,

Oh, if ever you should doubt this aching of my heart

Here in my bright mirror come back and look at me!

—

A Visit to Sky-Mother Mountain in a Dream

So, longing in my dreams for Wu and Yue

One night I flew over Mirror Lake under the moon,

The moon cast my shadow on the water

And traveled with me all the way to Shanxi,

The lodge of Lord Xie still remained

Where green waters swirled and the cry of apes was shrill,

Donning the shoes of Xie

I climbed the dark ladder of clouds,

Midway, I saw the sun rise from the sea

Heard the Cock of Heaven crow,

And my path twisted through a thousand crags

Enchanted by flowers I leaned against a rock

And suddenly all was dark,

Growls of bears and snarls of dragons echoed

Among the rocks and streams,

The deep forest appalled me, I shrank from the lowering cliffs,

Dark were the clouds, heavy with rain

Waters boiled into misty spray,

Lightening flashed, thunder roared

Peaks tottered, boulders crashed,

And the stone gate of a great cavern

Yawned open,

Below me, a bottomless void of blue

Sun and moon gleaming on terraces of silver and gold,

With rainbows for garments, and winds for horses

The lords of the clouds descended, a mighty host,

Phoenixes circled the chariots, tigers played zithers

As the immortals went by, rank upon rank.

—

On the Way Back to the Old Residence

Traveling to Heaven in dreams

There is another space and dimension in the kettle

Overlook the human Earth,

That is easily withered and rotten.

—

Ling Xu Mountain

Leaving the human world

Going toward the path to Heaven;

Upon Consummation through cultivation,

Then follow the clouds to Heaven,

Caves hidden under pine trees,

Deep and unseen among the peach blossoms…

__________

February 26, 2007

The Monday Light….

(Carey Thompson – Singularity)

This is a bit of a mashup today. The general theme is psychedelics, but it is a bit more than that. I always loved reading Gracie and Zarkoff, so, they are included this time out. A bit of music that is tinged with something else… Tims’ Prayers. Still exuding a potent influence after all these years.

We are introducing Carey Thompsons’ art to Turfing. Truly wonderful stuff. Check it out via google.

Have to Hop.

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Links

Ultravox-Hiroshima Mon Amour

Visible Language MDA & DMT

Psychedelic Prayers: Tims’ Message…

Kraftwerk – We Are The Robots

Art:2 by Carey Thompson….

______________

The Links:

While you slumber, your brain puts the world in order

Strange New Creatures Found in Antarctica

Trees are sacred: message of Sufi shrine miracle

Man Gets 5 Years in Prison, Life Partner

____________________

Ultravox-Hiroshima Mon Amour

___________________

Visible Language MDA & DMT

by Gracie & Zarkov

DOSE : 150 mg oral MDA 40 mg smoked DMT (powder / crystals)

(Copyright March 1985 by Gracie and Zarkov Productions. We believe that in a truly free society the price of packaged information would be driven down to the cost of reproduction and transmission. We, therefore, give blanket permission and encourage photocopy, quotation, reprint or entry into a database of all or part of our articles provided that the copier or quoter does not take credit for our statements.)

We each had taken 150 mg of pure MDA. The differences from MDM are striking: MDA is more hallucinogenic with noticeable closed eye imagery, is a much greater aesthetic enhancer, especially of people and of music; is more euphoric; more ‘drug-like’, a heavier and more obviously body-involved trip. Tactile sensation is more powerful, erotic and noticeable on MDA. Physical effects are more up-front: gastric upset, pupil dilation, water retention, limbic arousal. On the whole, we find MDA a more enjoyable and interesting trip; longer lasting and more sexual/sensual. Our favorite characteristic is that one retains an interesting psychedelic ideation on MDA, rather then the feeling-oriented, but rather idealess thinking of MDM.

That evening we were very taken with the musical enhancement — we are both avid listeners — and had found MDM to actually interfere with our enjoyment of music. MDA goes especially well with second-rate classical music: the lushness and color of Strauss, Lizst, Rimsky-Korsakov, Smetana and other ethnic and minor romantic composers are very compatible with the sensual fantasy aspects of MDA. We were playing Smetana, ‘The Moldau’, a tone poem about the major river in Czechoslovakia.

During the past several weeks, I had had several episodes of allergic reaction which were unusual for me. Possible causes included the spring weather and flowers, gardening, adjustment to the West Coast, and six months of regular DMT use. While the music was playing, I noticed increased allergic symptoms. This is unusual on MDA, which as Andrew Weil points out, is one of the most powerful allergy suppressors around, and so it has always affected me in the past.

Along with the allergic response, I began to note the familiar ‘Goddess-possession’ phenomenon which we had first encountered on MDA-LSD trips, and which led us to our first profound trips and contact experiences. This time it was subtle, perhaps because no LSD was involved. At the same time, a series of flashes, ‘false memories’ or ‘past life’ reminiscences occurred, having to do with rivers and my riverine ancestry, triggered by the content of the music.

This is a characteristic of MDA experience which we had not encountered on MDM, where memories are more personal and less archetypal/symbolic. With MDA memories one can become caught up in an associative web of ancestral material.

During this whole period, I had continuing allergic symptoms. Zarkov felt fine and was having a great time. This dichotomy is even more noticeable since Zarkov is usually the one with allergy problems. I showered off and washed my face but I still felt uncomfortable and uneasy. We have noted on several occasions that allergic reactions had preceded profound contact trips.

About hour 4, I decided to try smoking some DMT. My blood pressure and pulse were only slightly elevated, but I still felt restless and uneasy. The week before I had reset an MDM trip with DMT. The DMT seemed to have had a calming and healing effect.

I smoked about 40 mg in 4-5 tokes.

As it came on, I asked the DMT entities for help and guidance.

I kept my eyes open until the visual changes became overwhelming. The whole room was being transformed into the characteristic DMT ‘crysthanthemum’ pattern. I closed my eyes and fell back into the trance.

The first thing I saw was the ‘visible language’! The words, the shapes, the ‘music’ (the ‘music’ refers to the DMT auditory effects, not music in this reality and the stereo was off during this part of the trip) and the voices all carried the same message: ‘Strong, safe, strong, safe; help, ok, ok, help; safe, safe, alright’! The ‘elves’ appeared. They sang/I saw/read/felt/heard. They are ‘made out’ of the visible language. The message is conveyed by the medium itself in several simultaneous sensory modalities. Vision, heard speech, read language, music, song, images and pictures all happen at once, so that the meaning is multi-dimensional.

For example, if one were to ‘see’ a cat in this state it would be communicated in many ways at once: one would see a picture or cartoon of a cat, made out of writhing, colorful strips or segments which are words — ‘cat, cat, cat, pussy, kitty, pussy, meow, tail, ears, cat, cat, kitty . . .’ and the picture would be accompanied by a musical description of the cat (like ‘Peter and the Wolf,’ only more descriptive and precise) and by voices singing ‘cat, cat, kitty, kitty, meow, puss, kittycat . . .’ which would match the text.

This time I saw the ‘elves’ as multidimensional creatures formed by strands of visible language; they were more creaturely than I had ever seen them before. The message was changing from the initial ‘ok, ok, safe, safe . . .’

The word changing suggests that this was a time-linear process. I don’t think this is the case. I believe that during the trance the whole message and its variations were there at once, from the start. There is a different meaning to time in the DMT state and the notion of linear temporal order that we usualiy believe is not valid or useful. All the information is always immediately there and the idea of linearity comes from our linear habits of attention and the fact that we do not yet know how to see/hear/perceive several messages simultaneously and consciously, so we string them out for perceptual convenience.

The elves were dancing in and out of the multidimensional visible language matrix, ‘waving’ their ‘arms’ and ‘limbs/hands/fingers?’ and ‘smiling’ or ‘laughing,’ although I saw no faces as such. The elves were ‘telling’ me (or I was understanding them to say) that I had seen them before, in early childhood. Memories were flooding back of seeing the elves: they looked just like they do now: evershifting, folding, multidimensional, multicolored (what colors!), always laughing, weaving/waving, showing me things, showing me the visible language they are created/creatures of, teaching me to speak and read. (Are they are linguistic programs made manifest and personified? This throws an entirely new light on Terence McKenna’s remark at Esalen about language being the ‘most alien artifact’ we have!)

Following is a paraphrase of the message content — all conveyed in the multimedia way described earlier (to emphasize, the entire message was conveyed via ‘visible language!’)

They ‘read-protect’ their contact with children. ‘No-no, bye-bye, uh-uh, don’t tell,’ is the phrase they used to keep me from remembering or telling the grown-ups. They come to you when you are a child. My younger brother and I saw them when we were very young. They lived under the bed, they played with us, but they only came out when our parents weren’t around. They showed us things, they showed us meaning and language. My brother say them more clearly (perhaps because he was younger) then I did. They taught us words – I read earlier than normal because of their help.

When I was frightened or anxious, I would crawl under the bed to where it was safe, because the ‘elves’ were there. ‘Bye-bye, uh-uh, don’t tell, we’ll be back,’ they used to sing.

‘I’ve been seeing it all along,’ I thought, ‘the chysthanthemum pattern is the elves is the visible language is the message.’ (however, true visions on DMT, like those on mushrooms, are different from these patterns, they are real, like seeing with ‘normal’ vision; more like a movie or a very vivid dream than like the pattern/cartoon/visible language.)

The personal reality of these creatures seems indisputable during the contact, but that interpretation runs into my normal skepticism when I am out of contact. Is the notion that these are beings merely the obvious interpretation of these phenomena by the human mind? Or is something else going on that we can only understand by interpreting it as an encounter with an alien being?

The visible language and the multidimensional nature of the forms seems so clear, but the relationship of these phenomena to me as an individual and to the human race in a species-history sense is less clear. I am always afraid of repeating the errors of misplaced concreteness (thinking the ‘creatures’ are ‘real’) and the dogmatic fallacy (thinking that I know what I saw). The most honest answer is that I don’t know what I saw (do we ever?), but that the description above is my attempt to communicate some of what I thought I saw.

The encounter felt profound, exhilarating, and filled with warmth, excitement and protection. I was not afraid, but was comforted by the experience.

And, after the encounter had ended, I found my allergic symptoms had disappeared. I was no longer agitated, but felt calm.

The visible language phenomenon was most interesting — I felt curious, excited, and peculiarly self-confident while experiencing it — a childlike delight and a consuming desire to see and know more. I only saw part of what was going on, and I only remember part of what I saw, and I can communicate only a little of what I remember.

When, dear reader, you have similar experiences, try to see/perceive as much as you can, remember as much as you are able (take notes or talk into a recorder) and attempt to write down your trip. It is hard to do, the results are always less than you hope, but we must all try to express these things if we are ever to build a descriptive consensus or even a start at understanding!

Stay High and Stay Free,

Gracie and Zarkov

___________

This was the 3rd or 4th Book of Poetry that I purchased. Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Tim Leary. It all makes perfect sense to me….

Psychedelic Prayers: Tims’ Message…

THE TREE ABOVE THE TREE BELOW

What is above is below

What is without is within

What is to come is in the past

Tall… deep… tree… green… branching… leaf

Root… above… below… thrusting… coiling

Sky… earth… stem… root

Leaf… green… sap

Soil… air

Seed

Soil… visible

Hidden… breathing… sucking

Bud… ooze… sun… damp

Light.. dark… bright… decay… laugh

Tear.. vein.,. rain… mud branch… root

What is above is below

What is without is within

What is to come is in the past

These wooden carvings displayed in her endless shelves

Await

Within each uncut branch

The carver’s knife

—

PREHISTORIC ORIGINS OF DNA

Its rising is not bright

nor its setting dark

Unceasing, continuous

Branching out in roots innumerable

Forever sending forth the serpent coil

of living things

Mysterious as the formless existence

to which it returns

Twisting back

Beyond mind

We say only that it is form from the formless

Life from spiral void

—-

HOMAGE TO THE AWE-FULL SEER

At each beat in the Earth´s rotating rotating

dance there is born ” “…..a momentary

cluster of molecules possessing the transient

ability to know-see-experience its own place in

the evolutionary spiral. Such an organism, such

an event senses exactly where he or she is in

the billion-year-old ballet. They are able to

trace back the history of the deoxyribonucleic

thread of which they are both conductive

element and current. They can experience the

next moment in its million to the millionth

meaning…..Exactly that. Some divine seers are

recognized for this unique capacity. Those that

are recognized are called and killed by various

names.

Most of them are not recognized…..they float

through life like a snowflake kissing the Earth.

no one ever hears them murmur “Ah there” at

the moment of impact. Seers are aware of each

others existence the way each particle in the

hurtling nuclear trapeze is aware of other

particles. They move too fast to give names to

themselves or each other. such people can be

described in terms no more precise or less

foolish than the descriptive equations of

nuclear physics. They have no more or less

meaning in the cultural game of life than

electrons have in a game of chess. They are

present but cannot be perceived or categorized.

they exist at a level beyond the black and

white squares of the game board. The function

of ” ” is to teach. Take an apple and slice it

down the middle….a thin red circle surrounds

the gleaming white meat. In the center is a dark

seed whose function is beyond any of your

games. if you knew how to listen the seed

would hum you a seed song. The divine

incarnates teach like a snowflake caught in the

hand teaches. Once you speak the message you

have lost it. The seed becomes a dried pit, the

snowflake a film of water in your hand. Wise

seers are continually exploding in beautiful

dance. Like a speckled fish dying in your hand

as its eye looks at you unblinking. Like the

virus fragmenting divine beauty in the grasp of

tissue. Now and then the ” ” sings words

beyond rational comprehension. The message

is always the same though the sounds, the

scratched rhumba of inkmarks is always

different. It is like Einstein´s equation felt an

orgasm. The serpent unwinds up the spine,

mushrooms like a lotus sunflare in the skull. if

I tell you that the apple seed message hums the

drone of a Hindu flute will that stop the drone?

The secret of ” ” must always be secret.

Divine sage recognized, message lost.

Snowflake caught, pattern without being

recognized. caught in the act, they melt in

your hand. The message then contained in a

drop of water involves another chase for the infinite.

The sign of ” ” is change andanonymity.

as soon as you invent a symbol

give ” ” a name you assassinate the process

to serve your own ends.

To speak the name of Buddha…Christ…Lao

Tse…except as a sudden ecstatic breath is to

murder the living God, fix him with your

preservative, razor him onto a microscope

slide, sell him for profit in you biological

supply house. The seers have no function but

they produce in others the ecstatic gasp the

uncontrollable visionary laugh.

Too much!

So what!

Why not!

The stark stare of wonder.

Aweful!

Awe-full!

__________

Kraftwerk – We Are The Robots

____________

(Carey Thompson – Synergenesis Lenticular)

February 25, 2007

It’s Those Situationist…

The whole folderol and whoop-de-do about the 1960s was that the crypto-fascist bullshit agenda was damn near overthrown by a bunch of 19 and 20 year olds on campuses scattered around the high tech world. The male dominant agenda is so fragile that any competitor is felt as a deadly foe.Terence McKenna

EARTHRITES RADIO BACK ON THE WEB!

Radio Free EarthRites: Music For The Heart Of The World

Turn On – Paste Into – Your Internet Radio Player!

-o-o-0-0-O Radio Free Earthrites! O-0-0-o-o-

http://87.194.36.124:8000/radio

http://87.194.36.124:8001/radio-low

http://87.194.36.124:8002/spokenword

__________

Heading out for the day…

This edition is dedicated to Morgan & Dale… Elements that are embedded in this entry have long percolated in my head. Thanx to Morgan for reminding me!

Have a good day, and enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Gwyllm

___________

Metropolis Remix

The Guy Sez

Toward a Cultural Ecology of Anarchy

Can Dialectics Break Bricks?

Stéphane Mallarmé: Selected Poems

Art Photos: Fritz Langs’ Metropolis

______________

Metropolis Remix

_________________

The Guy Sez:

In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.

There is nothing more natural than to consider everything as starting from oneself, chosen as the center of the world; one finds oneself thus capable of condemning the world without even wanting to hear its deceitful chatter.

Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

__________________

Toward a Cultural Ecology of Anarchy

From Anarchy and Ecstasy: Visions of Halcyon Days

by John Moore, Aporia Press 1988

The aim of this essay is to subvert, and hence explode, one of the central ordering myths in Western civilization. The subversive action will occur through taking the elements within this myth to their logical conclusion. In the process, I hope to discover the conceptual basis for a new “politics,” or in fact an antipolitics.

The myth selected for this process concerns the act of universal creation and the subsequent fall of humanity. This myth remains of central significance for two reasons. First, it is a common component of the mythic legacy shared by paganism and Christianity, and thus plays a crucial ordering role within Western culture. And, secondly, in addition to offering an account of the structure of the universe and history, it provides an elementary paradigm in defining the nature and significance of obedience and disobedience. It is, then, a totalist explanatory grid, but one which contains within itself elements which can precipitate its collapse.

In order to gain access to this myth, I have decided to focus my analysis on one particular textJohn Milton’s Paradise Lost. This text has been chosen partly for its lucidity, but mainly because it constitutes a major synthesis of the relevant Western myths. In this poem Judaeo-Christian creation myths are explicitly combined with their pagan counterparts. Milton sythesises scriptural interpretations with insights derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, itself a compendium of ancient myths. Moreover, Paradise Lost remains concerned with two interlinked phenomena that are fundamental to our concerns: power and religion.

1. Power

The events in the poem’s narrative remain familiar, and in the present context not entirely relevant. Satan and his cohorts unsuccessfully attempt to depose God through rebellious military action. As a result, they are expelled from Heaven and consigned to Hell. God creates the Earth, and humanity in particular, in order to fill the void left by the expulsion of the fallen angels. Partly as an act of revenge, and partly as the opening shot in a fresh campaign to dethrone God, Satan enters Eden and tempts Adam and Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. As a punishment for this transgression, they are banished from paradise and forced to inhabit a world of sin, temporality, and death.

These events are of secondary significance here. The really important point which emerges from this narrative is the conception of the structure or order of the universe. After the Earth’s creation, the universe is essentially regarded in Manichean terms. Two vast and opposing forcesGod and the Devil, or good and evilfight a battle for universal control, a conflict the outcome of which depends upon enlisting a third element, humanity, into its ranks. The two opposing forces must each win over humanity to its side. Humanity can then be converted into combat troops in the war against the opposing force. Whatever the outcome, however, for humanity the result remains the same. Either victorious force will demand absolute submission and obedience from its former troops.

The significance of this cuneal perspectiveof conceiving the structure of the universe in terms of an inverted trianglecan be seen when we realize that it has been generalized to such an extent that it now comprises the central method of formulating Western reality. The strife is not only between good and evil for the human soul, but (to list just a few examples) between the law and lawlessness for the community; capitalism and communism for the world; ruling class and proletariat for society; the superego and the id for the ego… The list could be extended indefinitely.

In every instance, however, certain shared characteristics are perceptible. The God-Satan-Humanity trio, and all their contemporary analogues, in the cuneal paradigm can be represented as the forces of control, counter-control, and the controlled. The control forces create and command a hierarchical power structure. The forces of counter-control, often a disaffected fragment of the control elite strata, attempt to overthrow the ruling control forces. In order to do this, they ostensibly disabuse the controlled, the victims of the control forces, about their controllers. In order to enlist the support of the controlled, the forces of counter-control may promise liberation from control. But this merely constitutes an illusory enticement. The forces of counter-control are not interested in total revolution, but a coup d’etat; they are not interested in eliminating coercion and hierarchy, but merely with displacing the current controllers and seizing power themselves. The controlled, then, remain victims whether they conform or rebel. And this, because of the universal application of the cuneal paradigm, remains the debilitating impasse of the controlled today. Apparently too weak to break the chains of control on their own, they are doomed to remain pawns in an alternating game of eternal conformity or endlessly betrayed revolt. And this will remain the case until the cuneal paradigm is completely subverted and exploded.

In undertaking this task, an antipolitical reading of Paradise Lost provides many of the requisite materials. Why an antipolitical reading? And what exactly is denoted by that term? By antipolitical I do not mean an approach that pretends it has no ideological dimensions. I do, however, mean an approach that is not political. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines politics as the “science and art of government,” and political as “of the State or its government.” Political praxis, in this definition, thus remains the ideology of governance, and as such it remains appropriate to the shared discursive territory of the forces of control and counter-control. In attempting to transcend that territory, therefore, it is necessary to construct an antipolitics, an anarchic praxis that is more germane for those whose aim is the dissolution, not the seizure, of power.

Once intellectually emancipated from the political obsession with domination and order, fresh vistas and unexpected perspectives are immediately disclosed. In this particular instance, the antipolitical methodology discovers, through a heretical reading of Paradise Lost, the superficiality, fragility and comparative recency of the cuneal paradigm. If the text is considered without political blinkers, it can be readily discovered that the universe does not possess a cuneal structure, but (as a minimum) has a quadruplex form.

In Book Two of the poem, Satan, after consulting with his demonic associates, determines to leave Hell and travel to Earth in order to precipitate the fall of humanity. He persuades the porteress to open the gates of Hell, and we are told:

Before thir eyes in sudden view appear

The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark

Illimitable Ocean without bound,

Without dimension, where length, breadth, highth,

And time and place are lost; where eldest Night

And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold

Eternal Anarchie, amidst the noise

Of endless Warrs, and by confusion stand.

For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce

Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring

Thir embryon Atoms; they around the flag

Of each his faction, in thir several Clanns,

Light-arm’d or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow,

Swarm populous, unnumber’d as the Sands

Of Barca and Cyrene’s torrid soil,

Levied to side with warring Winds, and poise

Thir lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,

Hee rules a moment; Chaos Umpire sits,

And by decision more imbroiles the fray

By which he Reigns; next him high Arbiter

Chance governs all. Into this wild Abyss,

The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,

Of neither Sea, no Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,

But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt

Confus’dly, and which thus must ever fight,

Unless th’ Almighty Maker them ordain

His dark materials to create more Worlds,

Into this wild Abyss the warie fiend

Stood on the brink of Hell and look’d a while.

(Book 2, 11.890-918)

In this passage, Milton combines Christian and pagan elements, the latter explicitly derived from Ovid. But in synthesising these two mythic traditions, he in fact transcends them both. In the Biblical and Ovidian accounts, the divine creative fiat transforms the entire chaos of primordial matter into a structured universe. The divine power is omnific, its creative act does not leave any remainder of chaotic matter. Here, however, Milton supplies a vision of an extant chaos or anarchy. And although his Christian perspective, necessarily a control perspective, obviously limits the pertinence of his representation, some of the remarks he makes are very suggestive.

First, although his imagery remains confined by the political concern with domination, conflict and militarism, it should be noted that, in pointed contrast to Heaven and Hell, there are several personified “rulers” here: eldest Night, Chaos, Anarchy and Chance. Furthermore, as their names indicate, these qualities can hardly be said to rule in any political sense. Chaos and Chance are both characterised as umpires, and by necessity this implies that there are certain codes and rules to be followed. This is not an image of total lawlessness. However, the conjunction of such terms as chaos and chance with the notions of arbitration imply that such rules are not absolute nor imposed, but remain amenable to reform. The contest Chaos and Chance preside over is characterized in military terms, but again this appears a less serious, more ludic, conflict than that between the divine and the demonic forces depicted elsewhere in the poem. While the latter strife remains concerned with the possibilities of eternal subjugation, the warring elements here are involved in a conflict which denies the basis of domination: “To whom these [atoms] most adhere,/Hee rules a moment.” The momentary nature of governance undermines power, and anyway these “subjects” adhere voluntarily, in contrast to the coerced obedience of the control forces.

Secondly, attention should be paid to the structure of the universe as it is revealed in the above passage. Milton characterizes Chaos’s territory as “The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave.” Chaos gave birth, and possibly can bring death, to nature. By nature, Milton designates all creation, including Heaven, Earth and Hell, plus all of their inhabitants. In interpreting this, emphasis should be placed on the word creation. It should be remembered that God (the control force) created both the demons (the forces of counter-control) and humanity (the controlled). They are His creatures, he has called them into being, and determined (indeed preordained) their identities and roleshence His absolute power. But, as this passage renders apparent, He manufactured them from raw materials derived from the primordial territory of Chaos. Essentially, they are composed of chaotic atoms. Metaphorically, then, Chaos could become the grave of nature if the creatures of God began to divest their assigned identities and, through a process of biodegradation, started to remerge with the extant realm of Anarchy. In doing so, they would undergo a total revolutionary transformation; no longer manipulated creations, they would become independent yet collective creators. For we can now see that there are at least four elemental forces within the universe: God-Satan-Humanity-Anarchy; or, the forces of control, counter-control, the controlled, and the uncontrollables. I say at least four because the last component does not possess any unitary coherence. What so appalls Milton about Anarchy is its multiplicity and proliferating capacities. Unlike the other limited and limiting locales, it represents unlimited possibility and potential. It represents a positive anarchy or disorder, rather than the totalitarianism of order, which the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines as “rank, row, class”an inherently hierarchical concept. The positive nature of this anarchy is implicitly recognized by Milton when it is contrasted with Pandaemonium, a term he coined to describe Satan’s capital in Hell. Pandaemonium is the negative aspect of anarchy, anarchy as the site of lawlessness and malificence. Chaos, in contrast, is the positive aspect of anarchy, a site of multiple potentiality.

As Barbara C. Sproul’s anthology Primal Myths: Creating the World indicates, all cosmogoniesnot merely those of the Westremain curiously silent regarding the reasons for the appearance of the control figure, who transforms the anarchic, paradisal and ecologically-integrated “state of nature” into the stratified, oppressive and coercive order of creationthe original State. Marx tried to discern these reasons in the development of material and productive conditions. But Fredy Perlman, in his monumental Against His-story, Against Leviathan!, provides a more convincing explanation. Control figures arise when anarchic communities, immersed in beatific dreams, visions and vocations, inadvertently delegate too much authority to an individual who is temporarily assigned the task of maintaining the (to them) subsidiary and trivial apparatus which sustains material life. The distracted community does not realize until too late that the strong individual gradually accumulates power through continuously performing the disparaged maintenance duties. The individual constructs a hierarchy to facilitate his responsibilities, and this hierarchical institution is eventually employed to enslave the free community. As the institution expands and becomes more impersonal, it gains a momentum of its own and becomes unmanageable, even by its ostensible rulers. Hence, its deistic, absolute powers, which are then projected or displaced onto the cosmos itself.

A version of this process appears in Paradise Lost. Chaos has not been a conscious or militant force, and hence has remained vulnerable to incursions by the divine. This becomes apparent when Chaos describes the structure of the universe to Satan:

I upon my Frontieres here

Keep residence; if all I can will serve,

That little which is left so to defend,

Enroacht on still through our intestine broiles

Weakening the Scepter of old Night; first Hell

Your dungeon stretching far and wide beneath;

Now lately Heaven and Earth, another World

Hung ore my Realm, link’d in a golden Chain

To that side Heav’n from where your Legions fell.

(Book 4, 11.998-1006)

Chaos, absorbed in internal excitements, has failed to prevent the annexation of its territories by the control forces. Such is the disarray that Milton refers to Chaos as a “brok’n foe” (Book 2, 1.1039). And, in fact, even the permission given to Satan to pass through the realm to Earth effectuates a further loss of territory. In the wake of Satan’s track, Sin and Death build an overarching bridge that will allow demons easier access to Earth. And this, of course, occurs with God’s assent. The forces of control in this text are so powerful that even revolt by the counter-control force (Satan) is countenanced and permitted. Rebellion of the counter-control type is not inimical to the control forces: it is allowed because it actually reinforces the power structure.

From an antipolitical perspective, the implications are clear. On the one hand, anarchy must be rejuvenated and become conscious and vigilant. Liberation from all forms of coercion and hierarchy, including its formulation in the cuneal paradigm, can be achieved only through an attentive and sagacious anarchy. On the other hand, techniques must be developed whereby the controlled can experience the psychosocial biodegradation process, with its liberating cathartic effects, and hence regain their forfeited heritage as uncontrollablesthe real paradise lost. Through these two complementary processes, it should be possible to achieve the social ecology that is so desperately needed. But how are these processes to be initiated? Obviously, that is an enormous subject, and one that clearly remains beyond the scope of this essay. However, I will attempt to offer some suggestions which could perhaps be developed.

2. Religion

At the beginning, I indicated that Paradise Lost was important because of its concern with power and religion. So far, I have used the text as a way of exploring notions of power and control, particularly in respect to politics and order. Now, however, I wish to shift my attention to the topic of religion. In the foregoing, I have considered God as a political construct. He emerged as the ultimate totalitarian control force, and on those grounds can and should be utterly repudiated. But this leaves us with a problem, and one which has largely been ignored in anarchist theory: namely, the problem of confronting the ultimate questions of human existence. These are, of course, often characterized as religious or metaphysical issues, and hence not of interest to an atheistic revolutionary movement. Inadvertently, perhaps, anarchist theorists have encouraged this attitude. Bakunin’s God and the State, for example, comprises a thorough analysis of the socio-political function of God. It correctly repudiates the idea of God, but leaves nothing in its place. “Religious” issues constitute a vacuum at the centre of anarchism which limits its appeal and cogency.

In this essay, I have argued for a total shift of allegiance. As opponents of control, we should not assume an adversarial position (like the forces of counter-control), nor identify ourselves with the oppressed (the controlled); rather, we should situate ourselves within the matrix of anarchy, and become uncontrollables. Only then can we develop a liberatory praxis, which simultaneously promotes the disintegration of the entire control complex, and facilitates others to reintegrate within the creative potentialities of anarchy. We should be neither demonic, nor humanist, but anarchic. Our divine principle should not be deistic power, or demonic, Dionysian energies, or human community, but positive and creative chaos (a natural “order” which the advocates of order designate as disorder). Chaos is homologous with ecological order, and social ecology constitutes the specifically human component within that order. It is from this position that we must approach those existential problems that remain so troubling.

One of the major difficulties here remains the lack of an adequate vocabulary. Intrinsically, religionwhich the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines as “human recognition of superhuman controlling power and especially of a personal God entitled to obedience”remains anathema to anarchists. The two elements of this formulation, the emphasis on a superior control force and on unthinking obedience, are clearly unacceptable. All the more so in religions such as Christianity, which not only advocate dangerous delusions such as faith (i.e., belief in and prostration before an authority, without any proof of its existence), but also induce obscenities like worship, pietism, sanctimoniousness, sin, mortification, and the ultimate act of obedience, martyrdom. Given this legacy, the repudiation of religion hardly appears surprising. Nevertheless, the necessity remains for proponents of anarchy to reclaim what, for want of a better word, and despite its antipathetic connotations, can only be termed spirituality. This is necessary if anarchy is to become the integral praxis so manifestly required.

Certain aspects of this spirituality have been explored and designated as an ecological sensibility by Murray Bookchin in The Ecology of Freedom. My concerns in this essay, however, are rather more limited and specific. I am interested in delineating some spiritual techniques which may aid and promote an anarchic revolution. We require, not theology, nor even liberation theology, but a spiritual therapeutics that prefigures and participates in the social shift toward anarchy. Such emancipatory techniques can, I believe, be adapted from the praxis of Zen.

As Fredy Perlman indicates, most religions were, to varying degrees, originally liberation movements. But during the struggle for liberation, their initial ideals were distorted and recuperated to such an extent that they eventually became indistinguishable from the totalitarian ideologies of their oppressors. At the centre of every religion, however, there remains a residue of the original libertarian ideals, which occasionally returns to haunt the doctrine’s predominant authoritarian exponents. For example, Jesus’s non-violent resistance and derogation of private property periodically resurfaces to the consternation of Christian hierarchies. The crucial point here, however, is that in Zen these contradictions are intensified, quite deliberately I believe, to the point of absurdity. In contrast to their religious counterparts, the founders of Zen, presumably cognizant of the bureaucratic tendencies of such doctrines, implanted three techniques at the centre of their praxis which flatly confute the authoritarian debasement and the ensuing scholarly or commercialized industry. Their prognosis proved to be correct, and like its analogues, Zen was deluged by the hierarchical complex. However, submersed as they may be, the basic techniques fulfilled their founders’ desires, and managed to withstand the flood. They remain to be rediscovered and adapted to contemporary needs and circumstances. And, moreover, in terms of the challenges to authority they pose, each of these techniques remains broadly compatible, and can be modified to attune, with anarchic praxis. Just because they have been used to reinforce quietism and passivity in the past does not mean that they cannot now become part of the movement toward total social revolution.

Three techniques are used in order to break dependency at all levelson authority figures, on the authority of doctrines, on the authority of thought itselfand thereby to induce illumination. Taken together, these techniques constitute a potent array of methods for undermining control structures.

The three techniques referred to above are zazen, the koan, and the mentor-neophyte relationship. They all share a common aim, the enlightenment or illumination of an individual, and are linked by the common means of eliminating, at various levels, dependence upon authority.

Zazen is a form of meditation wherein an individual, in time with respiratory rhythms, mentally recites a meaningless word. By repeatedly concentrating in this way, the flow of everyday thought ceases, and the individual is flooded with spiritual illumination and a sense of unity with the universe. At a later phase, thought may be reintroduced in zazen, but only in order to play across the surface of the inner grace (the metaphors used here are of course woefully inadequate). Zazen seeks to stem the logos (significantly the initiator of hierarchical creation in many cosmogonies) and break the authority of meaning through an amphigoric word. Here then, surely, we can discover several points of convergence with anarchic praxisparticularly in terms of the biodegradation process mentioned earlier. Zazen disrupts the psychology of dependence and points toward autonomy. Moreover, this autonomy remains intimately interlinked with a sense of ecological community. In turn, this cracks open the character armour, and allows glimpses into an anarchic future, a universe of free interaction within a reintegrated ecological complex. Zazen staunches the cacophony of internalized coercions and constraints, even those which appear to be self-generated, and thereby transcends the conventional parameters of the self. The sunburst of satori loosens what Perlman terms the Leviathanic integuments. Bliss results, but also the consciousness that this cannot remain a permanent, or for some hardly become a possible, state under the current socio-economic system. There could be no clearer cachet of anarchy. In order to encourage this consciousness, however, it remains necessary to reclaim and recontextualize zazen in ways which will allow people to reorientate themselves in this way. Obviously, as long as such techniques remain enmeshed within the domain of authoritarian religion and mysticism, they cannot become resources in the struggle for total liberation.

Many of the above remarks are also applicable to the two remaining techniques.

A koan is a conundrum, a paradoxical phrase which an individual is assigned to “work on.” Once again, although this time from a different angle, the aim is to explode dependence on logic, rationality, intellect and ultimately meaning, by allowing a person to discover their limitations. A koan cannot be “solved” through ratiocination, and the realization of this, coupled with continued concentration on the text, leads to a moment of insight comparable to that achieved through zazen.

The mentor-neophyte relationship is also designed to eliminate dependence on authority structures, unlike the parallel religious relationship between guru and proselyte, which merely transfers existing dependency. Its characteristic feature remains the so-called direct method, which rejects verbalizationeven the most enigmaticand attempts to break through the orderliness of reason to basic convivial impulses. Zen manifests itself in spontaneous acts, but evaporates once interpretation tries to discern meaning or significance within any action. Regaining the experiences of life’s instantaneousness constitutes its essence. The direct method attempts to propel the neophyte into the flow of life and unmediated experience. Language and ideation are too slow to grasp such instantaneity. Hence, the neophyte must be somehow shocked into abandoning interpretation and other inculcated forms of standardized response. Occasionally, these shock tactics assume the form of tempered violence, but more commonly they consist of unexpected responses and behaviour. When a neophyte asks for elucidation on a profound doctrinal opint, for example, a master may “reply” by undertaking a simple everyday task or leaving the room. Such actions are intended to have a demonstrative, rather than symbolic, effect. Indeed, if the neophyte attempts to interpret the meaning of the action, the momentof direct existential contact and the spiritual illumination which accompanies ithas already been lost, and dependency will continue. However, should the neophyte respond by spontaneously participating in the playful stratagem instigated by the master, the cycle of dependency will be broken. The former no longer needs to rely upon the latter for guidance, for after continued practice the two effectively become equals. The moment of “coming alive,” or becoming existentially sensitive, achieved through the direct method, gradually develops into a perpetual sensibility, and sparkles through passages recording meetings between Zen masters.

In the Zen tradition, these three techniques are used in order to break dependency at all levelson authority figures, on the authority of doctrines, on the authority of thought itselfand thereby to induce illumination. Taken together, these techniques constitute a potent array of methods for undermining control structures. And given that in the Zen tradition they are often coupled with the repudiation of private property, this is clearly something that proponents of anarchy cannot afford to dismiss lightly. This remains particularly true when the parallels between Zen and anarchic praxis are rendered apparent. Zen posits a series of techniques which suggest that all doctrine/ideology is irrelevant. And just as anarchy attempts to relieve us of politics and ideology, leaving the core of independent yet collective creativity, so Zen tries to relieve us of etiolated thought and internalized propaganda, leaving the core of limited experience. And it is at this point, that Zen makes its most significant contribution to the resolution of the existential problems mentioned earlier. Unlike authoritarian religions, which emphasise faith, Zen suggests its irrelevancy. The experience of nirvana may be evidence of an afterlife, or it may be pleasurable sensations caused by electrical impulses on the cortex, or it may be something altogether different. But these are all retrospective judgments, they are not available within the lived experience of nirvana. The information conveyed in that experience is of a totally different order. Faith, like political ideology, remains irrelevant at this level; it does not matter what you believe, the associated experiences of nirvana and anarchy provide the touchstone.

Zen techniques, adapted and recontextualized within anarchic praxis, possess an immense liberatory potential. Of course, they are not sufficient in themselves to precipitate the total revolution toward anarchy. All I have proposed here needs to be complimented by the ideas of theorists like Bookchin and Perlman, and the practice of communities in the process of liberating themselves. Nevertheless, Zen techniques can play an important part. We should not undervalue inner liberation as an accompaniment to social revolutioneven as a spur to social revolution through its exeplary function. One of Emily Dickinson’s deliberately unpunctuated poems reads:

The mob within the heart

Police cannot suppress

The riot given at the first

Is authorized as peace

Uncertified of scene

Or signified of sound

But growing like a hurricane

In a congenial ground.

(Poem 1745)

This poem constitutes a microcosm compared to Milton’s macrocosm. Both consider liberated activity, Milton within universal Anarchy, Dickinson within an individual’s inner anarchy. But whereas the former poet rather negatively depicted a contracting territory, the latter positively represents an expansion of chaos. This expansion begins from within the individual, but an individual whose cramped and unitary self has developed into a plural, unrestrained and riotous mob, which the policewhether psychic or socialcannot suppress. As in Paradise Lost, the keynote remains free and independently-determined activity: there is no authorization, no certification, and no signification. It is as if anarchy has cancelled all social authority, and Zen has cancelled all internalized authority. Hence, we proceed to the anarchic, global and natural energy of the hurricane, already decimating the hierarchical order, and preparing more congenial ground in the individual, social and ecological environments. Dickinson’s untitled poem, not Milton’s pale sequel to his account of the Fall, should be entitled Paradise Regained.

But if Dickinson situates the action of her text “within the heart,” her concerns centre almost entirely on the exterior, in the environments convulsed by a proliferating anarchic energy. The poem does not indicate how it feels to be inside anarchy, to be possessed by a holistic sensibility and a capacity for revelations within the matrix of total liberation. In short, the inferiority of a spiritual conditiona condition characterized by its sense of beatific communityremains unexplained. But for proponents of anarchy, such an exploration becomes a vital necessity. Intimations of the myriad delights available within a renewed earthly paradise could inspire the controlled to discard their assigned identities. And amongst these delights the most fundamental remains the paradisal consciousness itself. The significance of a recontextualized Zen becomes apparent at precisely this juncture. Appropriately reorientated, its techniques could provide individuals with a gloriously expanded consciousness, a prefigurative vision of a social future of permanent revelry and jubilee.

Many have recently talked about the politics of desire. And Raoul Vaneigem has proposed a “politics” of pleasure. Can we now consider an antipolitics of ecstasy and bliss?

From Anarchy and Ecstasy: Visions of Halcyon Days

by John Moore, Aporia Press 1988

____________

Can Dialectics Break Bricks?

_____________

Stéphane Mallarmé: Selected Poems

Sea Breeze

The flesh is sad, Alas! and Ive read all the books.

Lets go! Far off. Lets go! I sense

That the birds, intoxicated, fly

Deep into unknown spume and sky!

Nothing not even old gardens mirrored by eyes

Can restrain this heart that drenches itself in the sea

O nights, or the abandoned light of my lamp,

On the void of paper, that whiteness defends,

No, not even the young woman feeding her child.

I shall go! Steamer, straining at your ropes

Lift your anchor towards an exotic rawness!

A Boredom, made desolate by cruel hope

Still believes in the last goodbye of handkerchiefs!

And perhaps the masts, inviting lightning,

Are those the gale bends over shipwrecks,

Lost, without masts, without masts, no fertile islands…

But, oh my heart, listen to the sailors chant!

—

Funeral Libation (At Gautiers Tomb)

O fatal emblem, you, of our happiness!

Greeting, pale with libation and madness,

Dont think to some hope of magic corridors I offer

My empty cup, where a monster of gold suffers,

Your apparition cannot satisfy me:

Since I myself entombed you in porphyry.

The rite decrees our hands must quench the torch

Against the iron mass of your tombs porch:

None at this simple ceremony should forget,

Those chosen to sing the absence of the poet,

That this monument encloses him entire.

Were it not that his arts glory, full of fire

Till the dark communal moment all of ash,

Returns as proud evenings glow lights the glass,

To the fires of the pure mortal sun!

Marvellous, total, solitary, so that one

Trembles to breathe with mans false pride.

This haggard crowd! We are, it cries,

Our future ghosts, their sad opacity.

But with walls blazoned, mourning, empty,

Ive scorned the lucid horror of a tear,

When, deaf to the sacred verse he does not fear,

One of those passers-by, mute, blind, proud,

Transmutes himself, a guest in his vague shroud,

Into the virgin hero of posthumous waiting.

A vast void carried through the fogs drifting,

By the angry wind of words he did not say,

Nothing, to this Man abolished yesterday:

What is Earth, O you, memories of horizons?

Shrieks the dream: and, a voice whose clarity lessens,

Space, has for its toy this cry: I do not know!

The Master, with eye profound, as he goes,

Pacified the restless miracle of Eden,

Who alone woke, in his voices final frisson,

The mystery of a name for the Lily and the Rose.

Is there anything of this destiny left, or no?

O all of you, forget your darkened faith.

Glorious, eternal genius has no shade.

I, moved by your desire, wish to see

Him, who vanished yesterday in the Ideal

Work that for us the garden of this star creates,

As a solemn agitation in the air, that stays

Honouring this quiet disaster, a stir

Of words, drunken, red, a cup thats clear,

That, rain and diamonds, the crystal gaze

Fixed on these flowers of which none fade,

Isolates in the hour and the light of day!

Thats all thats left already of our true play,

When the pure poets gesture, humble, vast

Must deny the dream, the enemy of his trust:

So that, on the morning of his exalted stay,

When ancient death is for him as for Gautier,

The un-opening of sacred eyes, the being-still,

The solid tomb may rise, and ornament this hill,

The sepulchre where lies the power to blight,

And miserly silence and the massive night.

—

Prose

Hyperbole! From my memory

Triumphantly cant you

Rise today, like sorcery

From an iron-bound book or two:

Since, through science, I inscribe

The hymn of hearts so spiritual

In my work of patience, inside

Atlas, herbal, ritual.

We walked our face

(We were two, I maintain)

Over the many charms of place,

Comparing them, Sister, to yours again.

The era of authoritys troubled

When without design, we say

Of this south that our double

Consciousness has in play

That its site, bed of a hundred irises,

They know if it truly existed,

Bears no name the golden breath

Of the trumpet of summer cited.

Yes, on an isle the air charges

With sight and not with visions

Every flower showed itself larger

Without entering our discussions.

Such flowers, immense, that every one

Usually had as adornment

A clear contour, a lacuna done

To separate it from the garden.

Glories of long-held desire, Ideas

Were all exalted in me, to see

The Iris family appear

Rising to this new duty,

But this sister sensible and fond

Carried her look no further

Than to smile, and as if to understand

I give her my ancient care.

Oh! Let the contentious spirit know

At this hour when we are silent

The stalks of multiple lilies grow

Far too tall for our reason

And not as the riverbank weeps

When its tedious game tells lies

In wishing abundance would reach

Into my young surprise

On hearing the whole sky and the map

Behind my steps, endlessly called to witness,

Even the ebbing wave, that

This country never existed.

The child already learned in roads,

Resigns her ecstasy

Says the word: Anastasius!

Born for parchments eternity,

Before a tomb could laugh

In any clime, her ancestor,

For bearing that name: Pulcheria!

Hidden by the too-high lily-flower.

________