Http://www.nidsci.org/articles/price-williams.html)

In this fascinating paper, the author compared many shamanic descriptions of strange lights, sky spirits, and “little men,” to the modern phenomenon of UFO abductions. In fact, toward the end of his paper I read where Professor Price-Williams had learned from a colleague that “on the island in the middle of Lake Titicaca… ‘little men’ are said to live side by side with ordinary people.” Puno (the site of some of the dwarfish ufonaut accounts from 1965) is located on the shore of that sacred Incan lake.

Coincidence? Or do some moderns understandably have a difficult time telling the difference between the mythic “little men” who have lived “side by side” with their “primitive” forefathers and the “modern” notion of extraterrestrial visitors coming to their planet?

How do we discern what is real, what is delusion; what is truth, what is deception? The old questions – the ancient mysteries – continue to haunt and puzzle us. When will we finally become sophisticated enough to discern the objective reality that lurks within the shadows of our mythologies and religious beliefs, our fears and superstitions? When will we finally become truly liberated and live in a New Age of enlightenment and understanding, instead of living the way the vast majority of us do by simply paying lip service to such ideologies?

——————

Poetry: George Meredith (1828-1909)







Dirge in Woods.

A wind sways the pines,

And below

Not a breath of wild air;

Still as the mosses that glow

On the flooring and over the lines

Of the roots here and there.

The pine-tree drops its dead;

They are quiet, as under the sea.

Overhead, overhead

Rushes life in a race,

As the clouds the clouds chase;

And we go,

And we drop like the fruits of the tree,

Even we,

Even so.

————-

Outer and Inner.

I.

From twig to twig the spider weaves

At noon his webbing fine.

So near to mute the zephyr’s flute

That only leaflets dance.

The sun draws out of hazel leaves

A smell of woodland wine.

I wake a swarm to sudden storm

At any step’s advance.

II.

Along my path is bugloss blue,

The star with fruit in moss;

The foxgloves drop from throat to top

A daily lesser bell.

The blackest shadow, nurse of dew,

Has orange skeins across ;

And keenly red is one thin thread

That flashing seems to swell.

III.

My world I note ere fancy comes,

Minutest hushed observe:

What busy bits of motioned wits

Through antlered mosswork strive;

But now so low the stillness hums,

My springs of seeing swerve,

For half a wink to thrill and think

The woods with nymphs alive.

IV.

I neighbour the invisible

So close that my consent

Is only asked for spirits masked

To leap from trees and flowers.

And this because with them I dwell

In thought, while calmly bent

To read the lines dear Earth designs

Shall speak her life on ours.

V.

Accept, she says; it is not hard

In woods; but she in towns

Repeats, accept; and have we wept,

And have we quailed with fears,

Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward

We have whom knowledge crowns;

Who see in mould the rose unfold,

The soul through blood and tears.

———-

Night of Frost in May.

With splendour of a silver day,

A frosted night had opened May:

And on that plumed and armoured night,

As one close temple hove our wood,

Its border leafage virgin white.

Remote down air an owl halloed.

The black twig dropped without a twirl;

The bud in jewelled grasp was nipped;

The brown leaf cracked with a scorching curl;

A crystal off the green leaf slipped.

Across the tracks of rimy tan,

Some busy thread at whiles would shoot;

A limping minnow-rillet ran,

To hang upon an icy foot.

In this shrill hush of quietude,

The ear conceived a severing cry.

Almost it let the sound elude,

When chuckles three, a warble shy,

From hazels of the garden came,

Near by the crimson-windowed farm.

They laid the trance on breath and frame,

A prelude of the passion-charm.

Then soon was heard, not sooner heard

Than answered, doubled, trebled, more,

Voice of an Eden in the bird

Renewing with his pipe of four

The sob: a troubled Eden, rich

In throb of heart: unnumbered throats

Flung upward at a fountain’s pitch,

The fervour of the four long notes,

That on the fountain’s pool subside

Exult and ruffle and upspring:

Endless the crossing multiplied

Of silver and of golden string.

There chimed a bubbled underbrew

With witch-wild spray of vocal dew.

It seemed a single harper swept

Our wild wood’s inner chords and waked

A spirit that for yearning ached

Ere men desired and joyed or wept.

Or now a legion ravishing

Musician rivals did unite

In love of sweetness high to sing

The subtle song that rivals light;

From breast of earth to breast of sky:

And they were secret, they were nigh:

A hand the magic might disperse;

The magic swung my universe.

Yet sharpened breath forbade to dream,

Where all was visionary gleam;

Where Seasons, as with cymbals, clashed;

And feelings, passing joy and woe,

Churned, gurgled, spouted, interflashed,

Nor either was the one we know:

Nor pregnant of the heart contained

In us were they, that griefless plained,

That plaining soared; and through the heart

Struck to one note the wide apart:–

A passion surgent from despair;

A paining bliss in fervid cold;

Off the last vital edge of air,

Leaping heavenward of the lofty-souled,

For rapture of a wine of tears

As had a star among the spheres

Caught up our earth to some mid-height

Of double life to ear and sight,

She giving voice to thought that shines

Keen-brilliant of her deepest mines;

While steely drips the rillet clinked,

And hoar with crust the cowslips swelled.

Then was the lyre of Earth beheld,

Then heard by me: it holds me linked;

Across the years to dead-ebb shores

I stand on, my blood-thrill restores.

But would I conjure into me

Those issue notes, I must review

What serious breath the woodland drew;

The low throb of expectancy;

How the white mother-muteness pressed

On leaf and meadow-herb; how shook,

Nigh speech of mouth, the sparkle-crest

Seen spinning on the bracken crook.

—–

George Meredith: A contemporary biography

Mr George Meredith, who recently has been addressed in a dedication as “The Prince of Celtdom,” is rather the sovereign of contemporary English literature. Although of Welsh descent and sympathies, and with a nature pre-eminently Celtic in its distinguishing characteristics Mr Meredith was born in Hampshire on February 12, 1828. Part of his early education was received in Germany, and after his return to England it was intended that he should pursue the legal profession: an intention set aside on account of an irresistible bias toward literature. His first published writings were in verse: and now this early little book, Poems, published in his twentythird year (1851) is one of the rarest treasures for the bibliophile. It is dedicated to Thomas Love Peacock, whose intellectual influence upon the young writer is obvious. In 1850 the poet married the daughter of Peacock, but it was not till a year or two later that he definitely set himself to the profession of literature as also a means of livelihood. It is characteristic of him that his first prose book should be one of his most individual writings; for The Shaving of Shagpat might have been written at almost any period of its author’s career. A fascinating, and perplexing production it must indeed have seemed at that time, published as it was in a year which, with the exception of two radically distinct American works of pre-eminent note, Longfellow’s Hiawatha and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, was a singularly barren one. The fantasy has always remained a favourite with staunch Meredithians. It was followed two years later by the somewhat akin Farina;and two years passed again before that first important work appeared which so profoundly affected the minds and imagination of Mr Meredith’s contemporaries–the now famous Ordeal of Richard Feverel, (1859). Since that date Mr Meredith has given us what many consider the greatest literary legacy of our time; and unquestionably he has had no compeer in brilliant delineation of life at white heat. It is unnecessary to specify the works of an author with which all lovers of literature must be familiar; but a word must be added as to the delight which the reading world has known this year in the publication of The Amazing Marriage, one of the most brilliant and vivid of all Mr Meredith’s romances, and, in its display of his characteristic quality at his best, ranking with Harry Richmond, The Egoist, and Diana of the Crossways. As a poet George Meredith is less widely known, or, rather, is less widely accepted. There are, nevertheless, many who regard his poetic achievement as perhaps the most essential part of what he has given us. In depth of thought, in clarity of vision, and in remarkable expressional subtlety, often, –if not invariably, set forth in a lyric utterance whose only fault is that of an occasional apparent incoherence due to rapidity of thought and eagerness of rhythmic emotion–he stands here, as in all else, alone. From that extraordinarily powerful study of contemporary life, expressed emotionally and rhythmically in singularly convincing verse, Modern Love, to his latest volume, The Empty Purse, there is a range of rhythmic and lyric beauty which may well be a challenge to posterity to redeem the relative neglect of the mass of Mr Meredith’s contemporaries. I am not of those who consider Mr Meredith’s least popular poems as mere cryptic utterances in verse; for everywhere I find the lyric spirit,–hampered, at times, it is true, by a wind-rush of images, and by a sudden drove of unshepherded words. But who could read “Love in the Valley,” “The Lark Ascending,” “The Woods of Westermain, “The South-Wester,” “The Hymn to Colour,” to mention five only, without recognising that here indeed we have one of the great poets of our time. The poems by which, owing to the gracious courtesy of Mr Meredith–who has consented to forego for once his great objection to the appearance of any of his poems in miscellaneous collections–he is here repre. sented, are from his later volumes. The “Dirge in Woods,” “Outer and Inner,” and the superb “Hymn to Colour,” are from A Reading of Earth (1888), the volume which contains “Hard Weather,” “The South-Wester,” “The Thrush in February,” “The Appeasement of Demeter,” “Woodland Peace,” the noble ode “Meditation under Stars,” and that flawless and memorable sonnet, “Winter Heavens.” The “Night of Frost in May” is from the volume entitled The Empty Purse (1892). MrMeredith’s other volume of poetry, the favourite with most of his readers, is Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883). This book includes “TheWoods of Westermain,” “The Day of the Daughter of Hades,” “The Lark Ascending,” “Phoebus with Admetus,” “Melampus,” “Love in a Valley,” and the group of sonnets beginning with “Lucifer in Starlight,” and ending with “Time and Sentiment.”