Turfing

“LSD burst over the dreary domain of the constipated bourgeoisie like the angelic herald of a new psychedelic millennium. We have never been the same since, nor will we ever be, for LSD demonstrated, even to skeptics, that the mansions of heaven and gardens of paradise lie within each and all of us.”
- Terence McKenna

Hello,

It’s been a couple of weeks of being away from Turfing. I take it that I needed a break, or, that I was getting a bit too much into the ease of EarthRites over at Tumblr. I have found myself perusing the web way too much looking for images to paste here and there. I need less time, not more time at the terminal. So, I will probably be taking up Turfing a bit more again. In the end, it is most satisfying for me on several levels. The search for poetry first, a story, a link, quotes and the images. It is more of a project, less hasty.
~~
Bicycle Day Past:

This entry was originally meant for Bicycle Day. I have thought long and hard about what the meaning of it is to me at least personally. I have described my first experience of course, but words being what they are, and memory being malleable I think at best one can only approach it in symbolic gestures.

I think that there is an opportunity here for some community building. Perhaps we should start organizing Bike Rides & Picnics for both 4/19-4/20? Establishing these two dates as holidays would help anchor the year and begin a new cycle, along with the reestablishment of Equinoxes and Cross Quarter Days (which is happening, would help us develop a calendar for the emerging culture. My question is why it isn’t progressing more quickly.

We have several other Holidays to consider:
November 22nd – The Ascension Of Aldous Huxley whilst dosed.
January 14th – Anniversary Of The Human Be in. When the tribes first consciously gathered.
September 19 – The Founding Of The League Of Spiritual Discovery
You get the idea. We could start a new calendar, based on both lunar and solar aspects, with it’s own holidays. A step in the direction of a new civilization.

Oh yeah Happy Beltane!
Blessings,
Gwyllm
~~
On The Menu:
Hermann Hesse Quotes From Siddhartha
Danielle Dax _ The Jesus Egg That Wept (side a)
Using LSD to Imprint the Tibetan-Buddhist Experience
Danielle Dax _ The Jesus Egg That Wept (side b)

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Hermann Hesse Quotes From Siddhartha:
“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else. Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
~~
“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
~~
“I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha.” He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.”
~~
“He lost his Self a thousand times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to it. Although Siddhartha fled from the Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable; the hour was inevitable when he would again find himself in sunshine or in moonlight, in shadow or in rain, and was again Self and Siddhartha, again felt the torment of the onerous life cycle.”
~~
“…and the vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his heart was not still.”
~~~~~
Danielle Dax _ The Jesus Egg That Wept (side a)

~~~
Rumi Poetry

(Coleman Barks Translated!)

(big bang – pure fractal flame by Cory Ench)

Look at love
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love

look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life

why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how the unknown merges into the known

why think seperately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last

look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs

look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once

the wolf and the lamb
the lion and the deer
far away yet together

look at the unity of this
spring and winter
manifested in the equinox

you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me

be like sugarcane
sweet yet silent
don’t get mixed up with bitter words

my beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be
~~

come on sweetheart
let’s adore one another
before there is no more
of you and me

a mirror tells the truth
look at your grim face
brighten up and cast away
your bitter smile

a generous friend
gives life for a friend
let’s rise above this
animalistic behavior
and be kind to one another

spite darkens friendships
why not cast away
malice from our heart

once you think of me
dead and gone
you will make up with me
you will miss me
you may even adore me

why be a worshiper of the dead
think of me as a goner
come and make up now

since you will come
and throw kisses
at my tombstone later
why not give them to me now
this is me
that same person

i may talk too much
but my heart is silence
what else can i do
i am condemned to live this life
~~

i’ve come again
like a new year
to crash the gate
of this old prison

i’ve come again
to break the teeth and claws
of this man-eating
monster we call life

i’ve come again
to puncture the
glory of the cosmos
who mercilessly
destroys humans

i am the falcon
hunting down the birds
of black omen
before their flights

i gave my word
at the outset to
give my life
with no qualms
i pray to the Lord
to break my back
before i break my word

how do you dare to
let someone like me
intoxicated with love
enter your house

you must know better
if i enter
i’ll break all this and
destroy all that

if the sheriff arrives
i’ll throw the wine
in his face
if your gatekeeper
pulls my hand
i’ll break his arm

if the heavens don’t go round
to my heart’s desire
i’ll crush its wheels and
pull out its roots

you have set up
a colorful table
calling it life and
asked me to your feast
but punish me if
i enjoy myself
~~

what tyranny is this
you mustn’t be afraid of death
you’re a deathless soul
you can’t be kept in a dark grave
you’re filled with God’s glow

be happy with your beloved
you can’t find any better
the world will shimmer
because of the diamond you hold

when your heart is immersed
in this blissful love
you can easily endure
any bitter face around

in the absence of malice
there is nothing but
happiness and good times
don’t dwell in sorrow my friend
~~~~~~

Using LSD to Imprint the Tibetan-Buddhist Experience
by Dr. Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

A Guide to Successful Psychedelic Experience

Having read this preparatory manual one can immediately recognize symptoms and experiences that might otherwise be terrifying, only because of lack of understanding. Recognition is the key word. Recognizing and locating the level of consciousness. This guidebook may also be used to avoid paranoid trips or to regain transcendence if it has been lost. If the experience starts with light, peace, mystic unity, understanding, and continues along this path, then there is no need to remember the manual or have it reread to you. Like a road map, consult it only when lost, or when you wish to change course.
~~
Planning a Session

What is the goal? Classic Hinduism suggests four possibilities:
Increased personal power, intellectual understanding, sharpened insight into self and culture, improvement of life situation, accelerated learning, professional growth.
Duty, help of others, providing care, rehabilitation, rebirth for fellow men.
Fun, sensuous enjoyment, esthetic pleasure, interpersonal closeness, pure experience.
Trancendence, liberation from ego and space-time limits; attainment of mystical union.
The manual’s primary emphasis on the last goal does not preclude other goals – in fact, it guarantees their attainment because illumination requires that the person be able to step out beyond problems of personality, role, and professional status. The initiate can decide beforehand to devote their psychedelic experience to any of the four goals.

In the extroverted transcendent experience, the self is ecstatically fused with external objects (e.g., flowers, other people). In the introverted state, the self is ecstatically fused with internal life processes (lights, energy waves, bodily events, biological forms, etc.). Either state may be negative rather than positive, depending on the voyager’s set and setting. For the extroverted mystic experience, one would bring to the session candles, pictures, books, incense, music, or recorded passages to guide the awareness in the desired direction. An introverted experience requires eliminating all stimulation: no light, no sound, no smell, no movement.

The mode of communication with other participants should also be agreed on beforehand, to avoid misinterpretations during the heightened sensitivity of ego transcendence.

If several people are having a session together, they should at least be aware of each other’s goals. Unexpected or undesired manipulations can easily “trap” the other voyagers into paranoid delusions.

Preparation

Psychedelic chemicals are not drugs in the usual sense of the word. There is no specific somatic or psychological reaction. The better the preparation, the more ecstatic and relevatory the session. In initial sessions with unprepared persons, set and setting – particularly the actions of others – are most important. Long-range set refers to personal history, enduring personality, the kind of person you are. Your fears, desires, conflicts, guilts, secret passions, determine how you interpret and manage any psychedelic session. Perhaps more important are the reflex mechanisms, defenses, protective maneuvers, typically employed when dealing with anxiety. Flexibility, basic trust, philosophic faith, human openness, courage, interpersonal warmth, creativity, allow for fun and easy learning. Rigidity, desire to control, distrust, cynicism, narrowness, cowardice, coldness, make any new situation threatening. Most important is insight. The person who has some understanding of his own machinery, who can recognize when he is not functioning as he would wish, is better able to adapt to any challenge – even the sudden collapse of his ego.
Immediate set refers to expections about the session itself. People naturally tend to impose personal and social perspectives on any new situation. For example, some ill-prepared subjects unconsciously impose a medical model on the experience. They look for symptoms, interpret each new sensation in terms of sickness/health, and, if anxiety develops, demand tranquilizers. Occasionally, ill-planned sessions end in the subject demanding to see a doctor.

Rebellion against convention may motivate some people who take the drug. The naive idea of doing something “far out” or vaguely naughty can cloud the experience.

LSD offers vast possibilities of accelerated learning and scientific- scholarly research, but for initial sessions, intellectual reactions can become traps. “Turn your mind off” is the best advice for novitiates. After you have learned how to move your consciousness around – into ego loss and back, at will – then intellectual exercises can be incorporated into the psychedelic experience. The objective is to free you from your verbal mind for as long as possible.

Religious expectations invite the same advice. Again, the subject in early sessions is best advised to float with the stream, stay “up” as long as possible, and postpone theological interpretations.

Recreational and esthetic expectations are natural. The psychedelic experience provides ecstatic moments that dwarf any personal or cultural game. Pure sensation can capture awareness. Interpersonal intimacy reaches Himalayan heights. Esthetic delights – musical, artistic, botanical, natural – are raised to the millionth power. But ego-game reactions – “I am having this ecstasy. How lucky I am!” – can prevent the subject from reaching pure ego loss.

Some Practical Recommendations

The subject should set aside at least three days: a day before the experience, the session day, and a follow-up day. This scheduling guarantees a reduction in external pressure and a more sober commitment. Talking to others who have taken the voyage is excellent preparation, although the hallucinatory quality of all descriptions should be recognized. Observing a session is another valuble preliminary.
Reading books about mystical experience and of others’ experiences is another possibility (Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, and Gordon Wasson have written powerful accounts). Meditation is probably the best preparation. Those who have spent time in a solitary attempt to manage the mind, to eliminate thought and reach higher stages of concentration, are the best candidates for a psychedelic session. When the ego loss occurs, they recognize the process as an eagerly awaited end.

The Setting

First and most important, provide a setting removed from one’s usual interpersonal games, and as free as possible from unforseen distractions and intrusions. The voyager should make sure that he will not be disturbed; visitors or a phone call will often jar him into hallucinatory activity. Trust in the surroundings and privacy are necessary.
The day after the session should be set aside to let the experience run its natural course and allow time for reflection and meditation. A too-hasty return to game involvements will blur the clarity and reduce the potential for learning. It is very useful for a group to stay together after the session to share and exchange experiences.

Many people are more comfortable in the evening, and consequently their experiences are deeper and richer. The person should choose the time of day that seems right. Later, he may wish to experience the difference between night and day sessions. Similarly, gardens, beaches, forests, and open country have specific influences that one may or may not wish. The essential thing is to feel as comfortable as possible, whether in one’s living room or under the night sky. Familiar surroundings may help one feel confident in hallucinatory periods. If the session is held indoors, music, lighting, the availablility of food and drink, should be considered beforehand. Most people report no hunger during the height of the experience, then later on prefer simple ancient foods like bread, cheese, wine, and fresh fruit. The senses are wide open, and the taste and smell of a fresh orange are unforgetable.

In group sessions, people usually will not feel like walking or moving very much for long periods, and either beds or mattresses should be provided. One suggestion is to place the heads of the beds together to form a star pattern. Perhaps one may want to place a few beds together and keep one or two some distance apart for anyone who wishes to remain aside for some time. The availability of an extra room is desirable for someone who wishes to be in seclusion.

The Psychedelic Guide

With the cognitive mind suspended, the subject is in a heightened state of suggestibility. For initial sessions, the guide possesses enormous power to move consciousness with the slightest gesture or reaction.
The key here is the guide’s ability to turn off his own ego and social games, power needs, and fears – to be there, relaxed, solid, accepting, secure, to sense all and do nothing except let the subject know his wise presence.

A psychedelic session lasts up to twelve hours and produces moments of intense, intense, INTENSE reactivity. The guide must never be bored, talkative, intellectualizing. He must remain calm during long periods of swirling mindlessness. He is the ground control, always there to receive messages and queries from high-flying aircraft, ready to help negotiate their course and reach their destination. The guide does not impose his own games on the voyager. Pilots who have their own flight plan, their own goals, are reassured to know that an expert is down there, available for help. But if ground control is harboring his own motives, manipulating the plane towards selfish goals, the bond of security and confidence crumbles.

To administer psychedelics without personal experience is unethical and dangerous. Our studies concluded that almost every negative LSD reaction has been caused by the guide’s fear, which augmented the transient fear of the subject. When the guide acts to protect himself, he communicates his concern. If momentary discomfort or confusion happens, others present should not be sympathetic or show alarm but stay calm and restrain their “helping games.” In particular, the “doctor” role should be avoided.

The guide must remain passively sensitive and intuitively relaxed for several hours – a difficult assignment for most Westerners. The most certain way to maintain a state of alert quietism, poised in ready flexability, is for the guide to take a low dose of the psychedelic with the subject. Routine procedure is to have one trained person participating in the experience, and one staff member present without psychedelic aid. The knowledge that one experienced guide is “up” and keeping the subject company is of inestimable value: the security of a trained pilot flying at your wingtip; the scuba diver’s security in the presence of an expert companion.

The less experienced subject will more likely impose hallucinations. The guide, likely to be in a state of mindless, blissful flow, is then pulled into the subject’s hallucinatory field and may have difficulty orienting himself. There are no familiar fixed landmarks, no place to put your foot, no solid concept upon which to base your thinking. All is flux. Decisive action by the subject can structure the guide’s flow if he has taken a heavy dose.

The psychedelic guide is literally a neurological liberator, who provides illumination, who frees men from their lifelong internal bondage. To be present at the moment of awakening, to share the ecstatic revelation when the voyager discovers the wonder and awe of the divine life-process, far outstrips earthly game ambitions. Awe and gratitude – rather than pride – are the rewards of this new profession.

The Period of Ego Loss or Non-Game Ecstasy

Success implies very unusual preparation in consciousness expansion, as well as much calm, compassionate game playing (good karma) on the part of the participant. If the participant can see and grasp the idea of the empty mind as soon as the guide reveals it – that is to say, if he has the power to die consciously – and, at the supreme moment of quitting the ego, can recognize the ecstasy that will dawn upon him and become one with it, then all bonds of illusion are broken asunder immediately: the dreamer is awakened into reality simultaneously with the mighty achievement of recognition.
It is best if the guru from whom the participant received guiding instructions is present. But if the guru cannot be present, then another expert. But if the guru cannot be present, then another experienced person, or a person the participant trusts, should be available to read this manual without imposing any of his own games. Thereby the participant will be put in mind of what he had previosly heard of the experience.

Liberation is the nervous system devoid of mental-conceptual redundancy. The mind in its conditioned state, limited to words and ego games, is continuously in thought-formation activity. The nervous system in a state of quiescence, alert, awake but not active, is comparable to what Buddhists call the highest state of dhyana (deep meditation). The conscious recognition of the Clear Light induces an ecstatic condition of consciousness such as saints and mystics of the West have called illumination.

The first sign is the glimpsing of the “Clear Light of Reality, the infallible mind of the pure mystic state” – an awareness of energy transformations with no imposition of mental categories.

The duration of this state varies, depending on the individual’s experience, security, trust, preparation, and the surroundings. In those who have a little practical experience of the tranquil state of non-game awareness, this state can last from 30 minutes to several hours. Realization of what mystics call the “Ultimate Truth” is possible, provided that the person has made sufficient preparation beforehand. Otherwise he cannot benefit now, and must wander into lower and lower conditions of hallucinations until he drops back to routine reality.

It is important to remember that the consciousness-expansion is the reverse of the birth process, the ego-loss experiencee being a temporary ending of game life, a passing from one state of consciousness into another. Just as an infant must wake up and learn from experience the nature of this world, so a person must wake up in this new brilliant world of consciousness expansion and become familiar with its own peculiar conditions.

In those heavily dependant on ego games, who dread giving up control, the illuminated state endures only for a split second. In some, it lasts as long as the time taken for eating a meal. If the subject is prepared to diagnose the symptoms of ego-loss, he needs no outside help at this point. The person about to give up his ego should be able to recognize the Clear Light. If the person fails to recognize the onset of ego-loss, he may complain of strange bodily symptoms that show he has not reached a liberated state:
Bodily pressure
Clammy coldness followed by feverish heat
Body disintegrating or blown to atoms
Pressure on head and ears
Tingling in extremities
Feelings of body melting or flowing like wax
Nausea
Trembling or shaking, beginning in pelvic region and spreading up torso.
The guide or friend should explain that the symptoms indicate the onset of ego-loss. These physical reactions are signs heralding transcendence: avoid treating them as symptoms of illness. The subject should hail stomach messages as a sign that consciousness is moving around in the body. Experience the sensation fully, and let consciousness flow on to the next phase. It is usually more natural to let the subject’s attention move from the stomach and concentrate on breathing and heartbeat. If this does not free him from nausea, the guide should move the consciousness to external events – music, walking in the garden, etc. As a last resort, heave.

The physical symptoms of ego-loss, recognized and understood, should result in peaceful attainment of illumination. The simile of a needle balanced and set rolling on a thread is used by the lamas to elucidate this condition. So long as the needle retains its balance, it remains on the thread. Eventually, however, the pull of the ego or external stimulation affects it, and it falls. In the realm of the Clear Light, similarly, a person in the ego-transcendent state momentarily enjoys a condition of perfect equilibrium and oneness. Unfamiliar with such an ecstatic non-ego state, the average consciousness lacks the power to function in it. Thoughts of personality, individualized being, dualism, prevent the realization of nirvana (the “blowing out of the flame” of fear or selfishness). When the voyager is clearly in a profound ego-transcendent ecstasy, the wise guide remains silent.
~~~~~~

~~~~~~
“I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.” – Hermann Hesse (from Siddhartha)

This past week, a friend and fellow artist past away. Joe Cotter, perhaps one of the best muralist we have seen in a generation died quietly at home up in Eagle Creek.

A couple of weeks before, McMenamins hosted a party for him, as he was their artist in residence for many years. Hundreds came to celebrate Joe’s life and art.

I want to celebrate Joe for his tenacity, in the struggle for muralist to have the right to have their art on the city walls of our city. Joe, along with Mark Meltzer and Joanne Oleksiak fought the good fight. Joe’s superb focus won the day; he attended every meeting at city hall, followed through from the beginning to the end of the struggle. With his humor, and great attention to detail he took City Hall on and held on to the tail of the tiger until it gave up and gave muralist a fighting chance to do their work without corporations interference, and with a lessening of the imposed strictures that had strangled the muralist community. His efforts to get the Mirador Mural uncovered and to open up new vistas for muralist will not be forgotten.

He was an artist through and through, as well as an activist for many a good cause and he shall be missed. Without Joe’s work and devotion, we faced an uphill battle. With his efforts, he shortened the way, with joy, and that wonderful smile.

You can see his art all over town, and at McMenamins in many locations. Here are 2 links to get you started with his story and his art.
Oregon Live Article
The Sprial Gallery

Thank You Joe, for your art, your love of our community, your wonderful sense of humor.

Gwyllm

On The Menu:
Joe Cotter (video)
Peter Gabriel – Don’t Break This Rhythm
Red Pine Translations
The Angel of Death Calls
Peter Gabriel – Across The River
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Joe Cotter

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Peter Gabriel – Don’t Break This Rhythm

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Red Pine Translations
(Bill Porter)

Crossing the Yangtze
Ding Xianzhi fl. 713-741

My oars of cassia I gaze from midstream
The sky and waves and both shores are clear
The treeline parts at the Yangtze ferry
Hills rise up from the Junzhou walls
The edge of the sea is dark and silent
A chill wind comes from the river’s cold
Again I hear maple leaves falling
The brittle sounds of another autumn
~~

Following the Rhymes of Ziyou’s Bathing
Su Shi 1036-1101

A thousand brush strokes and my hair is clean,
The wind does a better job than a hot bath.
Holding one’s breath unclogs the myriad pores,
And a dry bath dispels any noxious vapors.
If then one relaxes and abstains from conversation,
In tranquility one sees heaven and earth return.
Now and then I gather kindling and fresh water,
In hopes of leisurely soaking my limbs.
However, I cannot fnd anyone to build me a tub,
And how can a tiny basin do the thick?
The old chicken lies in the dust and dung,
The weary nag rolls in the mud and sand,
And then shakes its mane with a spray of saliva.
Defilement and purity, each has its particular nature,
Living in the moment, I bathe in whatever way I can.
Cloud-mother gems are as transparent as Sichuan silk,
And Chi bamboo is as glossy as painted glass.
Sometimes one can come to realization in dreams,
And thus gradually the unripe can become mature.
The Suramgama Sutra lies at the foot of my bed,
Often I sit up to read its marvelous words.
Reversing the stream, return to the luminous Buddha-nature,
And renounce that which I once looked forward to.
I still do not understand the Chan of Yangshan,
But I know a little about the predictions of Jizhu.
A serene mind will be achieved naturally,
By nourishing it rather that strictly overseeing it.
~~

Eating Bamboo-shoots
Bai Juyi 772-846

My new Province is a land of bamboo-groves:
Their shoots in spring fill the valleys and hills.
The mountain woodman cuts an armful of them
And brings them down to sell at the early market.
Things are cheap in proportion as they are common;
For two farthings I buy a whole bundle.
I put the shoots in a grat earthen pot
And heat them up along with boiling rice.
The purple skins broken–like and old brocade;
The white skin opened–like new pearls.
Now every day I eat them recklessly;
For a long time I have not touched meat.
All the time I was living at Luoyang
They could not give me enought to suit my taste.
Now I can have as many shoots as I please;
For each breath of the south-wind makes a new bamboo!
~~

Evening
Ho Chi Minh 1890-1969

Weary birds return to the forest
seeking their home trees,
Isolated clouds
ever so slowly
scud the heavens.
A mountain village girl
grinds a measure of grain,
When the measure is ground
the stove glows red.
~~
The Angel of Death Calls
Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani

Evelyn De Morgan – The Angel of Death (1890)

A certain king once went on a trip to one of his provinces. He set out on his journey, dressed in a sumptuous array and puffed up with pride. A man poorly dressed approached and greeted him from the side of the road; but the king would not answer. The man caught the bridles of the king’s horse and none of the king’s soldiers could make him let go. The king cried: “Let go of the bridle!” The man said: “First grant me my request.” The king said: “Release the bridle and I promise to hear your request.” The man said: “No, you must hear it right away,” and he pulled harder on the reins. The king said: “What is your request?” The man replied: “Let me whisper it in your ear, for it is a secret.” The king leaned down and the man whispered to him: “I am the Angel of Death.”

The king’s face became pale and he stammered: “Let me go home and bid farewell to my family, and wrap up my affairs.” But Azra’il said: “By the One Who sent me, you will never see your family and your wealth in this world again!” He took his soul there and then, and the king fell from his horse like a wooden log.

The Angel of Death went on his way and saw a believer walking by himself on the road. The angel greeted him, and he gave back his greeting. The angel said: “I have a message for you.” “Yes, my brother, what is it?” “I am the Angel of Death.” The believer’s face brightened with a big smile. “Welcome, welcome!” He said. “As God is my witness, I was waiting for you more impatiently than for anyone else.”

“O my brother!” the Angel of Death said, “perhaps you have a matter that you wish to settle first, so go and take care of it, for there is no rush.”

“As God is my witness,” the believer said: “there is nothing I wish more dearly than to meet my Lord.” The angel said: “Choose the way in which you would like me to take your soul, for so I have been ordered to ask you.”

The believer said: “Then let me pray two cycles of prayer, and take my soul while I am kneeling in prostration.”
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Unveiling The Mural (Gwyllm & Rowan)

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Peter Gabriel – Across The River – (original from ’82)

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Joe Cotter At The Unveiling Of The Mirador Mural

The door to the invisible must be visible. Rene Daumal in Mount Analogue

(John Duncan – Sleeping Princess)

~~
Saturday:
The sun is shining, the dog is asleep on the porch, and the house empty again from visitors.

I sit listening to music and writing away on the Turf as Mary flutters in and out of the room. I look out the window, and the sun plays across the bamboo.

Let me know if you can think of something better than those moments when the earth is yawning awake, vibrating with life up and down the spheres. Our local wren has returned to the back yard; she does her beautiful dance upon the sod, as she twitches to and fro with excitement. The squirrels chase each other, or should I say a pack of males pursue the female one across the fence, up on the roof, over to the tree, around the tree three times, back to the fence…

Life is renewed, again and again. It is a fountain of joy, of love, of beingness. We are all within this beautiful moment called now.
(There is a vibrancy in these mid spring moments. Life spirals along, within that old wind of eternal change!)

Lots in this entry. Good music, beautiful art, wonderful poetry. Sit back, relax and hopefully enjoy!

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
Earth Rites!
~~
On The Menu:
The Links
Solar Fields – Sol (Remix)
René Daumal Quotes
Leonard Cohen Poems
Charon
Tripswitch – Stereogram (Solar Fields Remix)
Art: John Duncan & John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope
~~~~~~~~~~~
The Links:
Darkness
Rare animal-shaped mounds discovered in Peru
From foraging to farming: the 10,000-year revolution
Light
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Solar Fields – Sol (Remix)

~~~~~~~~~~~~

René Daumal Quotes:

“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”

“Philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks.”

“It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content…it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble, and from babble to confusion.”

“A knife is neither true nor false, but anyone impaled on its blade is in error.”
― Mount Analogue: A Tale of Non-Euclidean and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures

“I am dead because I have no desire,
I have no desire because I think I possess,
I think I possess because I do not try to give;
Trying to give, I see that I have nothing,
Seeing that I have nothing, I try to give myself,
Trying to give myself, I see that I am nothing,
Seeing that I am nothing, I desire to become,
Desiring to become, I live.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Leonard Cohen Poems

Poem 17 (“I perceived the outline of your breasts …”) from “The Energy of Slaves”

I perceived the outline of your breasts
through your Hallowe’en costume
I knew you were falling in love with me
because no other man could perceive
the advance of your bosom into his imagination
It was a rupture of your unusual modesty
for me and me alone
through which you impressed upon my shapeless hunger
the incomparable and final outline of your breasts
like two deep fossil shells
which remained all night long and probably forever
~~

The Next One (“Things are better in Milan …)” from “Death of a Lady’s Man”

Things are better in Milan.
Things are a lot better in Milan.
My adventure has sweetened.
I met a girl and a poet.
One of them was dead
and one of them was alive.
The poet was from Peru
and the girl was a doctor.
She was taking antibiotics.
I will never forget her.
She took me into a dark church
consecrated to Mary.
Long live the horses and the sandles.
The poet gave me back my spirit
which I had lost in prayer.
He was a great man out of the civil war.
He said his death was in my hands
because I was the next one
to explain the weakness of love.
The poet was Cesar Vallejo
who lies at the floor of his forehead.
Be with me now great warrior
whose strength depends solely
on the favours of a woman.
~~

Song (“I almost went to bed …”) from “The Spice-Box of Earth”

I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater
and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I’d
never been your lover
~~

I Long to Hold Some Lady from “The Spice Box of Earth”

I long to hold some lady
For my love is far away,
And will not come tomorrow
And was not here today.

There is no flesh so perfect
As on my lady’s bone,
And yet it seems so distant
When I am all alone:
As though she were a masterpiece
In some castled town,
That pilgrims come to visit
And priests to copy down.
Alas, I cannot travel
To a love I have so deep
Or sleep too close beside
A love I want to keep.
But I long to hold some lady,
For flesh is warm and sweet.
Cold skeletons go marching
Each night beside my feet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Charon
Author: Lord Dunsany

(Charon & Psyche – John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope)

Charon leaned forward and rowed. All things were one with his weariness.

It was not with him a matter of years or of centuries, but of wide floods of time, and an old heaviness and a pain in the arms that had become for him part of the scheme that the gods had made and was of a piece with Eternity.

If the gods had even sent him a contrary wind it would have divided all time in his memory into two equal slabs.

So grey were all things always where he was that if any radiance lingered a moment among the dead, on the face of such a queen perhaps as Cleopatra, his eyes could not have perceived it.

It was strange that the dead nowadays were coming in such numbers. They were coming in thousands where they used to come in fifties. It was neither Charon’s duty nor his wont to ponder in his grey soul why these things might be. Charon leaned forward and rowed.

Then no one came for a while. It was not usual for the gods to send no one down from Earth for such a space. But the gods knew best.

Then one man came alone. And the little shade sat shivering on a lonely bench and the great boat pushed off. Only one passenger: the gods knew best. And great and weary Charon rowed on and on beside the little, silent, shivering ghost.

And the sound of the river was like a mighty sigh that Grief in the beginning had sighed among her sisters, and that could not die like the echoes of human sorrow failing on earthly hills, but was as old as time and the pain in Charon’s arms.

Then the boat from the slow, grey river loomed up to the coast of Dis and the little, silent shade still shivering stepped ashore, and Charon turned the boat to go wearily back to the world. Then the little shadow spoke, that had been a man.

“I am the last,” he said.

No one had ever made Charon smile before, no one before had ever made him weep.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tripswitch – Stereogram (Solar Fields Remix)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(John Duncan – Happiness)

Where man sees but withered leaves,
God sees sweet flowers growing.
~Albert Laighton

(Paolo Veronese – Venus & Adonis)

~~

Since I celebrate the old calendar, (much to my families dismay of having to hear me going on one more time about the new fangled calendar we live with) I do not celebrate the Equinox as the beginning but to the middle of spring. Colour me peculiar, and rightly so, but I will stick with the old reckonings just the same. Who has not found sweet buds growing so much earlier on, I ask you? No, these are strange days for the season. Every tree is now bursting into flower locally, since the end of January for some, and we have snow ringed about us whilst the rest of the country is wallowing in heat.

It is strange, but not to be unexpected.

I have assembled this entry around spring, and looking back to last year I found that the alignment is nearly the same for this entry as for that entry. I must stop repeating myself, it becomes habit.

The centre of this edition is ‘The Vigil Of Venus’ supposedly composed by Catallus, and most excellently translated by Thomas Parnell. Read it in the spirit of Parnell’s time, and enjoy. It is a bit of wonder. I have included some music, and an article on the Seasonal Rites.

Cheers,
Gwyllm
~~
On The Menu:
Brendan Perry – The Carnival Is Over
The Links
The Vigil Of Venus
Seasonal Rites: The Spring Festival
Robin Guthrie – Neil’s Theme
Artist: Various
~~~~~

Brendan Perry – The Carnival Is Over (Live on KEXP)

~~~~~

The Links:
500 Fairytales
Capitalism: A Ghost Story
Neolithic horned cairns near Caithness wind farm scanned
Real ‘Flying Saucer’ Plans Date Back To The 19th Century
~~~~~

The Vigil Of Venus
(Translated by Thomas Parnell)

Written In The Time Of Julius Caesar, And By Some Ascribed To Catullus

Let those love now, who never lovd before ;
Let those who always lovd, now love the more.
The spring 1 , the new, the warbling spring appears,
The youthful season of reviving years ;
In spring the loves enkindle mutual heats,
The feather’d nation choose their tuneful mates,
The trees grow fruitful with descending rain
And drest in differing greens adorn the plain.
She comes ; to-morrow Beauty’s empress roves
Through walks that winding run within the groves ;
She twines the shooting myrtle into bowers,
And ties their meeting tops with wreaths of flowers,

Then rais’d sublimely on her easy throne,
From Nature’s powerful dictates draws her own.

Let those love now, who never lovd before ;
Let those who ahvays lovd, now love the more.

‘Twas on that day which saw the teeming flood
Swell round, impregnate with celestial blood ;
Wandering in circles stood the finny crew,
The midst was left a void expanse of blue ;
There parent Ocean work’d with heaving throes,
And dropping wet the fair Dione rose

Let those love now, who never lovd before ;
Let those who ahvays lov’d, now love the more.

She paints the purple year with varied show,
Tips the green gem, and makes the blossom glow;

She makes the turgid buds receive the breozo,
Expand to leaves, and shade the naked trees :
When gathering’ damps the misty nights diffuse,
She sprinkles all the morn with balmy dews ;
Blight trembling pearls depend at every spray,
And kept from falling, seem to fall away.
A glossy freshness hence the rose receives,
And blushes sweet through all her silken leaves ;
(The drops descending’ through the silent night,
While stars serenely roll their g’olden light,)
Close till the morn, her humid veil she holds ;
Then deck’d with virgin pomp the flower unfolds.
Soon Avill the morning blush : ye maids ! prepare,
In rosy garlands bind your flowing hair :
‘Tis Venus’ plant : the blood fair Venus shed,
O’er the gay beauty pour’d immortal red ;
From Love’s soft kiss a sweet ambrosial smell
Was taught for ever on the leaves to dwell ;

From gems, from flames, from orient rays of light,
The richest lustre makes her purple bright ;
And she to-morrow weds ; the sporting- gale
Unties her zone, she bursts the verdant veil ;
Through all her sweets the rifling lover flies,
And as he breathes, her glowing fires arise.

Let those love now, who never lov’d before ;
Let those who always lovd, now love the more.

Now fair Dione to the myrtle grove
Sends the gay Nymphs, and sends her tender Love.
And shall they venture ? Is it safe to go,
While Nymphs have hearts, and Cupid wears a bow ?
Yes, safely venture, ’tis his mother’s will ;

He walks unarm’d and undesigning ill,
His torch extinct, his quiver useless hung,
His arrows idle, and his bow unstrung’.
And yet, ye Nymphs, beware, his eyes have charms,
and Love that’s naked, still is Love in arms.

Let those love now, who never lov’d before ;
Let those who always lov’d, now love the more.

From Venus’ bower to Delia’s lodge repairs
A virgin train complete with modest airs :
” Chaste Delia, grant our suit ! or shun the wood,
Nor stain this sacred lawn with savage blood.
Venus, O Delia ! if she could persuade,
Would ask thy presence, might she ask a maid.”
Here cheerful quires for three auspicious nights
With songs prolong the pleasurable rites :
Here crowds in measures lightly-decent rove,
Or seek by pairs the covert of the grove,
Where meeting greens for arbours arch above,
And mingling flowerets strew the scenes of love.

Here dancing Ceres shakes her golden sheaves :
Here Bacchus revels, deck’d Avith viny leaves :
Here wit’s enchanting- God in laurel crown’d
Wakes all the ravish’d Hours with silver sound.
Ye fields, ye forests, own Dione’s reign,
And, Delia, huntress Delia, shun the plain.

Let those love now, ivho never lovd before ;
Let those ivho always lovd, now love the more.

Gay with the bloom of all her opening year,
The Queen at Hybla bids her throne appear ;
And there presides ; and there the favourite band,
Her smiling Graces, share the great command.
Now, beauteous Hybla, dress thy flowery beds
With all the pride the larish season sheds ;
Now all thy colours, all thy fragrance yield,
And rival Enna’s aromatic field.

To fill the presence of the gentle court
From every quarter rural Nymphs resort,
From woods, from mountains, from their humble
vales,

From waters curling with the wanton gales.
Pleas’d with the joyful train, the laughing Queen
In circles seats them round the bank of green ;
And “lovely girls,” she whispers, “guard your hearts ;
My boy, though stript of arms, abounds in arts.”

Let those love now, ivho never lovd before ;
Let those who always lovd, now love the more.

Let tender grass in shaded alleys spread,
Let early flowers erect their painted head.
To-morrow’s glory be to-morrow seen,
That day old Ether wedded Earth in green.

The Vernal Father bid the spring appear,
In clouds he coupled to produce the year ;
The sap descending o’er her bosom ran,
And all the various sorts of soul began.
By wheels unknown to sight, by secret veins
Distilling life, the fruitful goddess reigns,
Through all the lovely realms of native day,
Through all the circled land, the circling sea ;
With fertile seed she fill’d the pervious earth,
And ever fix’d the mystic ways of birth.

Let those love now, who never lov’d before ;
Let those who ahoays lov’d, now love the more.

‘Twas she the parent, to the Latian shore
Through various dangers Troy’s remainder bore :

She won Lavinia for her warlike son,
And winning- her, the Latian empire won.
She gave to Mars the maid, whose honour’d womb
Swell’d with the founder of immortal Rome :
Decoy’d by shows the Sabine dames she led,
And taught our vigorous youth the means to wed.
Hence sprung- the Romans, hence the race divine,
Through which great Caesar draws his Julian line.

Let those love now, who never loved before ;
Let those who always lov’d, now love the more.

In rural seats the soul of Pleasure reigns ;
The life of Beauty fills the rural scenes ;
E’en Love, if fame the truth of Love declare,
Drew first the breathings of a rural air.
Some pleasing meadow pregnant Beauty prest,
She laid her infant on its flowery breast ;
From nature’s sweets he sipp’d the fragrant dew,

He smil’d, he kiss’d them, and by kissing grew.
Let those love now, who never lovd before ;
Let those tvho always lov’d, now love the more.

Now bulls o’er stalks of broom extend their side?,
Secure of favours from their lowing brides.
Now stately rams their fleecy consorts lead,
Who bleating follow through the wandering shade.
And now the Goddess bids the birds appear,
Raise all their music, and salute the year.
Then deep the swan begins, and deep the song
Runs o’er the water where he sails along ;
While Philomela tunes a treble strain,
And from the poplar charms the listening plain.
We fancy love express’d at every note,

It melts, it warbles, in her liquid throat :
Of barbarous Tereus she complains no more,
But sings for pleasure, as for grief before ;
And still her graces rise, her airs extend,
And all is silence till the Siren end.

How long- in coming is my lovely spring ?
And when shall I , and when the swallow sing ?
Sweet Philomela, cease ; or here I sit,
And silent lose my rapturous hour of wit :
‘Tis gone, the fit retires, the flames decay,
My tuneful Phoebus flies averse away.
is own Amycle thus, as stories run,
But once was silent, and that once undone.

Let those love now, who never lovd before ;
Let those who always lovd, now love the more.

~~~~~~~

Seasonal Rites: The Spring Festival
by Jane Harrison

(Arnold Bocklin – Pan Chasing A Nymph)
We have seen in the last chapter that whatever interests primitive man, whatever makes him feel strongly, he tends to re-enact. Any one of his manifold occupations, hunting, fighting, later ploughing and sowing, provided it be of sufficient interest and importance, is material for a dromenon or rite. We have also seen that, weak as he is in individuality, it is not his private and personal emotions that tend to become ritual, but those that are public, felt and expressed officially, that is, by the whole tribe or community. It is further obvious that such dances, when they develop into actual rites, tend to be performed at fixed times. We have now to consider when and why. The element of fixity and regular repetition in rites cannot be too strongly emphasized. It is a factor of paramount importance, essential to the development from ritual to art, from dromenon to drama.

The two great interests of primitive man are food and children. As Dr. Frazer has well said, if man the individual is to live he must have food; if his race is to persist he must have children. “To live and to cause to live, to eat food and to beget children, these were the primary wants of man in the past, and they will be the primary wants of men in the future so long as the world lasts.” Other things may be added to enrich and beautify human life, but, unless these wants are first satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things, therefore, food and children, were what men chiefly sought to procure by the performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons. They are the very foundation-stones of that ritual from which art, if we are right, took its rise. From this need for food sprang seasonal, periodic festivals. The fact that festivals are seasonal, constantly recurrent, solidifies, makes permanent, and as already explained (p. 42), in a sense intellectualizes and abstracts the emotion that prompts them.

The seasons are indeed only of value to primitive man because they are related, as he swiftly and necessarily finds out, to his food supply. He has, it would seem, little sensitiveness to the æsthetic impulse of the beauty of a spring morning, to the pathos of autumn. What he realizes first and foremost is, that at certain times the animals, and still more the plants, which form his food, appear, at certain others they disappear. It is these times that become the central points, the focuses of his interest, and the dates of his religious festivals. These dates will vary, of course, in different countries and in different climates. It is, therefore, idle to attempt a study of the ritual of a people without knowing the facts of their climate and surroundings. In Egypt the food supply will depend on the rise and fall of the Nile, and on this rise and fall will depend the ritual and calendar of Osiris. And yet treatises on Egyptian religion are still to be found which begin by recounting the rites and mythology of Osiris, as though these were primary, and then end with a corollary to the effect that these rites and this calendar were “associated” with the worship of Osiris, or, even worse still, “instituted by” the religion of Osiris. The Nile regulates the food supply of Egypt, the monsoon that of certain South Pacific islands; the calendar of Egypt depends on the Nile, of the South Pacific islands on the monsoon.

In his recent Introduction to Mathematics 1 Dr. Whitehead has pointed out how the “whole life of Nature is dominated by the existence of periodic events.” The rotation of the earth produces successive days; the path of the earth round the sun leads to the yearly recurrence of the seasons; the phases of the moon are recurrent, and though artificial light has made these phases pass almost unnoticed to-day, in climates where the skies are clear, human life was largely influenced by moonlight. Even our own bodily life, with its recurrent heart-beats and breathings, is essentially periodic. 2 The presupposition of periodicity is indeed fundamental to our very conception of life, and but for periodicity the very means of measuring time as a quantity would be absent.

Periodicity is fundamental to certain departments of mathematics, that is evident; it is perhaps less evident that periodicity is a factor that has gone to the making of ritual, and hence, as we shall see, of art. And yet this is manifestly the case. All primitive calendars are ritual calendars, successions of feast-days, a patchwork of days of different quality and character recurring; pattern at least is based on periodicity. But there is another and perhaps more important way in which periodicity affects and in a sense causes ritual. We have seen already that out of the space between an impulse and a reaction there arises an idea or “presentation.” A “presentation” is, indeed, it would seem, in its final analysis, only a delayed, intensified desire–a desire of which the active satisfaction is blocked, and which runs over into a “presentation.” An image conceived “presented,” what we call an idea is, as it were, an act prefigured.

Ritual acts, then, which depend on the periodicity of the seasons are acts necessarily delayed. The thing delayed, expected, waited for, is more and more a source of value, more and more apt to precipitate into what we call an idea, which is in reality but the projected shadow of an unaccomplished action. More beautiful it may be, but comparatively bloodless, yet capable in its turn of acting as an initial motor impulse in the cycle of activity. It will later (p. 70) be seen that these periodic festivals are the stuff of which those faded, unaccomplished actions and desires which we call gods–Attis, Osiris, Dionysos–are made.

To primitive man, as we have seen, beast and bird and plant and himself were not sharply divided, and the periodicity of the seasons was for all. It will depend on man’s social and geographical conditions whether he notices periodicity most in plants or animals. If he is nomadic he will note the recurrent births of other animals and of human children, and will connect them with the lunar year. But it is at once evident that, at least in Mediterranean lands, and probably everywhere, it is the periodicity of plants and vegetation generally which depends on moisture, that is most striking. Plants die down in the heat of summer, trees shed their leaves in autumn, all Nature sleeps or dies in winter, and awakes in spring.

Sometimes it is the dying down that attracts most attention. This is very clear in the rites of Adonis, which are, though he rises again, essentially rites of lamentation. The details of the ritual show this clearly, and specially as already seen in the cult of Osiris. For the “gardens” of Adonis the women took baskets or pots filled with earth, and in them, as children sow cress now-a-days, they planted wheat, fennel, lettuce, and various kinds of flowers, which they watered and tended for eight days. In hot countries the seeds sprang up rapidly, but as the plants had no roots they withered quickly away. At the end of the eight days they were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis and thrown with them into the sea or into springs. The “gardens” of Adonis became the type of transient loveliness and swift decay.

“What waste would it be,” says Plutarch, 1″what inconceivable waste, for God to create man, had he not an immortal soul. He would be like the women who make little gardens, not less pleasant than the gardens of Adonis in earthen pots and pans; so would our souls blossom and flourish but for a day in a soft and tender body of flesh without any firm and solid root of life, and then be blasted and put out in a moment.”

Celebrated at midsummer as they were, and as the “gardens” were thrown into water, it is probable that the rites of Adonis may have been, at least in part, a rain-charm. In the long summer droughts of Palestine and Babylonia the longing for rain must often have been intense enough to provoke expression, and we remember (p. 19) that the Sumerian Tammuz was originally Dumuzi-absu, “True Son of the Waters.” Water is the first need for vegetation. Gardens of Adonis are still in use in the Madras Presidency. 1 At the marriage of a Brahman “seeds of five or nine sorts are mixed and sown in earthen pots which are made specially for the purpose, and are filled with earth. Bride and bridegroom water the seeds both morning and evening for four days; and on the fifth day the seedlings are thrown, like the real gardens of Adonis, into a tank or river.”

Seasonal festivals with one and the same intent–the promotion of fertility in plants, animals and man–may occur at almost any time of the year. At midsummer, as we have seen, we may have rain-charms; in autumn we shall have harvest festivals; in late autumn and early winter among pastoral peoples we shall have festivals, like that of Martinmas, for the blessing and purification of flocks and herds when they come in from their summer pasture. In midwinter there will be a Christmas festival to promote and protect the sun’s heat at the winter solstice. But in Southern Europe, to which we mainly owe our drama and our art, the festival most widely celebrated, and that of which we know most, is the Spring Festival, and to that we must turn. The spring is to the Greek of to-day the “ánoixis,” “the Opening,” and it was in spring and with rites of spring that both Greek and Roman originally began their year. It was this spring festival that gave to the Greek their god Dionysos and in part his drama.

In Cambridge on May Day two or three puzzled and weary little boys and girls are still to be sometimes seen dragging round a perambulator with a doll on it bedecked with ribbons and a flower or two. That is all that is left in most parts of England of the Queen of the May and Jack-in-the-Green, though here and there a maypole survives and is resuscitated by enthusiasts about folk-dances. But in the days of “Good Queen Bess” merry England, it would seem, was lustier. The Puritan Stubbs, in his Anatomie of Abuses, 1 thus describes the festival:

“They have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe havyng a sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen draw home this Maiepoole (this stinckying idoll rather), which is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bound round aboute with stringes from the top to the bottome, and sometyme painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, women, and children, following it with great dovotion. And thus beyng reared up, with handkerchiefes and flagges streaming on the toppe, they strewe the ground about, binde greene boughs about it, set up summer haules, bowers, and arbours hard by it. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leap and daunce aboute it, as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles, whereof this is a perfect patterne or rather the thyng itself.”

The stern old Puritan was right, the may-pole was the perfect pattern of a heathen “idoll, or rather the thyng itself.” He would have exterminated it root and branch, but other and perhaps wiser divines took the maypole into the service of the Christian Church, and still 1 on May Day in Saffron Walden the spring song is heard with its Christian moral–

“A branch of May we have brought you,
And at your door it stands;
It is a sprout that is well budded out,
The work of our Lord’s hands.”
The maypole was of course at first no pole cut down and dried. The gist of it was that it should be a “sprout, well budded out.” The object of carrying in the May was to bring the very spirit of life and greenery into the village. When this was forgotten, idleness or economy would prompt the villagers to use the same tree or branch year after year. In the villages of Upper Bavaria Dr. Frazer 2 tells us the maypole is renewed once every three, four, or five years. It is a fir-tree fetched from the forest, and amid all the wreaths, flags, and inscriptions with which it is bedecked, an essential part is the bunch of dark green foliage left at the top, “as a memento that in it we have to do, not with a dead pole, but with a living tree from the greenwood.”

At the ritual of May Day not only was the fresh green bough or tree carried into the village, but with it came a girl or a boy, the Queen or King of the May. Sometimes the tree itself, as in Russia, is dressed up in woman’s clothes; more often a real man or maid, covered with flowers and greenery, walks with the tree or carries the bough. Thus in Thuringia, 1 as soon as the trees begin to be green in spring, the children assemble on a Sunday and go out into the woods, where they choose one of their playmates to be Little Leaf Man. They break branches from the trees and twine them about the child, till only his shoes are left peeping out. Two of the other children lead him for fear he should stumble. They take him singing and dancing from house to house, asking for gifts of food, such as eggs, cream, sausages, cakes. Finally, they sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food. Such a Leaf Man is our English Jack-in-the-Green, a chimney-sweeper
who, as late as 1892, was seen by Dr. Rouse walking about at Cheltenham encased in a wooden framework covered with greenery.

The bringing in of the new leafage in the form of a tree or flowers is one, and perhaps the simplest, form of spring festival. It takes little notice of death and winter, uttering and emphasizing only the desire for the joy in life and spring. But in other and severer climates the emotion is fiercer and more complex; it takes the form of a struggle or contest, what the Greeks called an agon. Thus on May Day in the Isle of Man a Queen of the May was chosen, and with her twenty maids of honour, together with a troop of young men for escort. But there was not only a Queen of the May, but a Queen of Winter, a man dressed as a woman, loaded with warm clothes and wearing a woollen hood and fur tippet. Winter, too, had attendants like the Queen of the May. The two troops met and fought; and which-ever Queen was taken prisoner had to pay the expenses of the feast.

In the Isle of Man the real gist of the ceremony is quite forgotten, it has become a mere play. But among the Esquimaux there is still carried on a similar rite, and its magical intent is clearly understood. In autumn, when the storms begin and the long and dismal Arctic winter is at hand, the central Esquimaux divide themselves into two parties called the Ptarmigans and the Ducks. The ptarmigans are the people born in winter, the ducks those born in summer. They stretch out a long rope of sealskin. The ducks take hold of one end, the ptarmigans of the other, then comes a tug-of-war. If the ducks win there will be fine weather through the winter; if the ptarmigans, bad. This autumn festival might, of course, with equal magical intent be performed in the spring, but probably autumn is chosen because, with the dread of the Arctic ice and snow upon them, the fear of winter is stronger than the hope of spring.

The intense emotion towards the weather, which breaks out into these magical agones, or “contests,” is not very easy to realize. The weather to us now-a-days for the most part damps a day’s pleasuring or raises the price of fruit and vegetables. But our main supplies come to us from other lands and other weathers, and we find it hard to think ourselves back into the state when a bad harvest meant starvation. The intensely practical attitude of man towards the seasons, the way that many of these magical dramatic ceremonies rose straight out of the emotion towards the food-supply, would perhaps never have been fully realized but for the study of the food-producing ceremonies of the Central Australians.

The Central Australian spring is not the shift from winter to summer, from cold to heat, but from a long, arid, and barren season to a season short and often irregular in recurrence of torrential rain and sudden fertility. The dry steppes of Central Australia are the scene of a marvellous transformation. In the dry season all is hot and desolate, the ground has only patches of wiry scrub, with an occasional parched acacia tree, all is stones and sand; there is no sign of animal life save for the thousand ant-hills. Then suddenly the rainy season sets in. Torrents fill the rivers, and the sandy plain is a sheet of water. Almost as suddenly the rain ceases, the streams dry up, sucked in by the thirsty ground, and as though literally by magic a luxuriant vegetation bursts forth, the desert blossoms as a rose. Insects, lizards, frogs, birds, chirp, frisk and chatter. No plant or animal can live unless it live quickly. The struggle for existence is keen and short.

It seems as though the change came and life was born by magic, and the primitive Australian takes care that magic should not be wanting, and magic of the most instructive kind. As soon as the season of fertility approaches he begins his rites with the avowed object of making and multiplying the plants, and chiefly the animals, by which he lives; he paints the figure of the emu on the sand with vermilion drawn from his own blood; he puts on emu feathers and gazes about him vacantly in stupid fashion like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the chrysalis of a Witchetty grub–his favourite food, and drags his body through it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling to promote its birth. Here, difficult and intricate though the ceremonies are, and uncertain in meaning as many of the details must probably always remain, the main emotional gist is clear. It is not that the Australian wonders at and admires the miracle of his spring, the bursting of the flowers and the singing of birds; it is not that his heart goes out in gratitude to an All-Father who is the Giver of all good things; it is that, obedient to the push of life within him, his impulse is towards food. He must eat that he and his tribe may grow and multiply. It is this, his will to live, that he utters and represents.

The savage utters his will to live, his intense desire for food; but it should be noted, it is desire and will and longing, not certainty and satisfaction that he utters. In this respect it is interesting to note that his rites and ceremonies, when periodic, are of fairly long periods. Winner and summer are not the only natural periodic cycles; there is the cycle of day and night, and yet among primitive peoples but little ritual centres round day and night. The reason is simple. The cycle of day and night is so short, it recurs so frequently, that man naturally counted upon it and had no cause to be anxious. The emotional tension necessary to ritual was absent. A few peoples, e. g. the Egyptians, have practised daily incantations to bring back the sun. Probably they had at first felt a real tension of anxiety, and then–being a people hidebound by custom–had gone on from mere conservatism. Where the sun returns at a longer interval, and is even, as among the Esquimaux, hidden for the long space of six months, ritual inevitably arises. They play at cat’s-cradle to catch the ball of the sun lest it should sink and be lost for ever.

Round the moon, whose cycle is long, but not too long, ritual very early centred, but probably only when its supposed influence on vegetation was first surmised. The moon, as it were, practises magic herself; she waxes and wanes, and with her, man thinks, all the vegetable kingdom waxes and wanes too, all but the lawless onion. The moon, Plutarch 1 tells us, is fertile in its light and contains moisture, it is kindly to the young of animals and to the new shoots of plants. Even Bacon 2 held that observations of the moon with a view to planting and sowing and the grafting of trees were “not altogether frivolous.” It cannot too often be remembered that primitive man has but little, if any, interest in sun and moon and heavenly bodies for their inherent beauty or wonder; he cares for them, he holds them sacred, he performs rites in relation to them mainly when he notes that they bring the seasons, and he cares for the seasons mainly because they bring him food. A season is to him as a Hora was at first to the Greeks, the fruits of a season, what our farmers would call “a good year.”

The sun, then, had no ritual till it was seen that he led in the seasons; but long before that was known, it was seen that the seasons were annual, that they went round in a ring; and because that annual ring was long in revolving, great was man’s hope and fear in the winter, great his relief and joy in the spring. It was literally a matter of death and life, and it was as death and life that he sometimes represented it, as we have seen in the figures of Adonis and Osiris.

Adonis and Osiris have their modern parallels, who leave us in no doubt as to the meaning of their figures. Thus on the 1st of March in Thüringen a ceremony is performed called “Driving out the Death.” The young people make up a figure of straw, dress it in old clothes, carry it out and throw it into the river. Then they come back, tell the good news to the village, and are given eggs and food as a reward. In Bohemia the children carry out a straw puppet and burn it. While they are burning it they sing–
“Now carry we Death out of the village,
The new Summer into the village,
Welcome, dear Summer,
Green little corn.”

In other parts of Bohemia the song varies; it is not Summer that comes back but Life.

“We have carried away Death,
And brought back Life.”
In both these cases it is interesting to note that though Death is dramatically carried out, the coming back of Life is only announced, not enacted.

Often, and it would seem quite naturally, the puppet representing Death or Winter is reviled and roughly handled, or pelted with stones, and treated in some way as a sort of scapegoat. But in not a few cases, and these are of special interest, it seems to be the seat of a sort of magical potency which can be and is transferred to the figure of Summer or Life, thus causing, as it were, a sort of Resurrection. In Lusatia the women only carry out the Death. They are dressed in black themselves as mourners, but the puppet of straw which they dress up as the Death wears a white shirt. They carry it to the village boundary, followed by boys throwing stones, and there tear it to pieces. Then they cut down a tree and dress it in the white shirt of the Death and carry it home singing.

So at the Feast of the Ascension in Transylvania. After morning service the girls of the village dress up the Death; they tie a threshed-out sheaf of corn into a rough copy of a head and body, and stick a broomstick through the body for arms. Then they dress the figure up in the ordinary holiday clothes of a peasant girl–a red hood, silver brooches, and ribbons galore. They put the Death at an open window that all the people when they go to vespers may see it. Vespers over, two girls take the Death by the arms and walk in front; the rest follow. They sing an ordinary church hymn. Having wound through the village they go to another house, shut out the boys, strip the Death of its clothes, and throw the straw body out of the window to the boys, who fling it into a river. Then one of the girls is dressed in the Death’s discarded clothes, and the procession again winds through the village. The same hymn is sung. Thus it is clear that the girl is a sort of resuscitated Death. This resurrection aspect, this passing of the old into the new, will be seen to be of great ritual importance when we come to Dionysos and the Dithyramb.

These ceremonies of Death and Life are more complex than the simple carrying in of green boughs or even the dancing round maypoles. When we have these figures, these “impersonations,” we are getting away from the merely emotional dance, from the domain of simple psychological motor discharge to something that is very like rude art, at all events to personification. On this question of personification, in which so much of art and religion has its roots, it is all-important to be clear.

In discussions on such primitive rites as “Carrying out the Death,” “Bringing in Summer,” we are often told that the puppet of the girl is carried round, buried, burnt; brought back, because it “personifies the Spirit of Vegetation,” or it “embodies the Spirit of Summer.” The Spirit of Vegetation is “incarnate in the puppet.” We are led, by this way of speaking, to suppose that the savage or the villager first forms an idea or conception of a Spirit of Vegetation and then later “embodies” it. We naturally wonder that he should perform a mental act so high and difficult as abstraction.

A very little consideration shows that he performs at first no abstraction at all; abstraction is foreign to his mental habit. He begins with a vague excited dance to relieve his emotion. That dance has, probably almost from the first, a leader; the dancers choose an actual person, and he is the root and ground of personification. There is nothing mysterious about the process; the leader does not “embody” a previously conceived idea, rather he begets it. From his personality springs the personification. The abstract idea arises from the only thing it possibly can arise from, the concrete fact. Without perception there is no conception. We noted in speaking of dances (p. 43) how the dance got generalized; how from many commemorations of actual hunts and battles there arose the hunt dance and the war dance. So, from many actual living personal May Queens and Deaths, from many actual men and women decked with leaves, or trees dressed up as men and women, arises the Tree Spirit, the Vegetation Spirit, the Death.

At the back, then, of the fact of personification lies the fact that the emotion is felt collectively, the rite is performed by a band or chorus who dance together with a common leader. Round that leader the emotion centres. When there is an act of Carrying-out or Bringing-in he either is himself the puppet or he carries it. Emotion is of the whole band; drama doing tends to focus on the leader. This leader, this focus, is then remembered, thought of, imaged; from being perceived year by year, he is finally conceived; but his basis is always in actual fact of which he is but the reflection.

Had there been no periodic festivals, personification might long have halted. But it is easy to see that a recurrent perception helps to form a permanent abstract conception. The different actual recurrent May Kings and “Deaths,” because they recur, get a sort of permanent life of their own and become beings apart. In this way a conception, a kind of daimon, or spirit, is fashioned, who dies and lives again in a perpetual cycle. The periodic festival begets a kind of not immortal, but perennial, god.

Yet the faculty of conception is but dim and feeble in the mind even of the peasant to-day; his function is to perceive the actual fact year by year, and to feel about it. Perhaps a simple instance best makes this clear. The Greek Church does not gladly suffer images in the round, though she delights in picture-images, eikons. But at her great spring festival of Easter she makes, in the remote villages, concession to a strong, perhaps imperative, popular need; she allows an image, an actual idol, of the dead Christ to be laid in the tomb that it may rise again. A traveller in Eubœa 1 during Holy Week had been struck by the genuine grief shown at the Good Friday services. On Easter Eve there was the same general gloom and despondency, and he asked an old woman why it was. She answered: “Of course I am anxious; for if Christ does not rise to-morrow, we shall have no corn this year.”

The old woman’s state of mind is fairly clear. Her emotion is the old emotion, not sorrow for the Christ the Son of Mary, but fear, imminent fear for the failure of food. The Christ again is not the historical Christ of Judæa, still less the incarnation of the Godhead proceeding from the Father; he is the actual figure fashioned by his village chorus and laid by the priests, the leaders of that chorus, in the local sepulchre.

So far, then, we have seen that the vague emotional dance tends to become a periodic rite, performed at regular intervals. The periodic rite may occur at any date of importance to the food-supply of the community, in summer, in winter, at the coming of the annual rains, or the regular rising of a river. Among Mediterranean peoples, both in ancient days and at the present time, the Spring Festival arrests attention. Having learnt the general characteristics of this Spring Festival, we have now to turn to one particular case, the Spring Festival of the Greeks. This is all-important to us because, as will be seen, from the ritual of this and kindred festivals arose, we believe, a great form of Art, the Greek drama.
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Footnotes
52:1 Chapter XII: “Periodicity in Nature.”
52:2 Ibid.
55:1 De Ser. Num. 17.
56:1 Frazer, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris,3 p. 200.
58:1 Quoted by Dr. Frazer, The Golden Bough,2 p. 203.
59:1 E. K. Chambers, The Mediæval Stage, I, p. 169.
59:2 The Golden Bough,2 p. 205.
60:1 The Golden Bough,2 p. 213.
61:1 Resumed from Dr. Frazer, Golden Bough,2 II, p. 104.
66:1 De Is. et Os., p. 367.
66:2 De Aug. Scient., III, 4.
73:1 J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folk-lore and Ancient Religion, p. 573.
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Robin Guthrie – Neil’s Theme

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Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems. – Rainer Maria Rilke
Alexandre Cabanel – The Birth Of Venus