Lusts in her sexual shell compacted .
Upon liberation she re-opened that keyster,
That dear son is why we celebrate Easter!
Showing posts with label Mythology Numerology etc.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mythology Numerology etc.. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Ishtar
Lusts in her sexual shell compacted .
Upon liberation she re-opened that keyster,
That dear son is why we celebrate Easter!
Thursday, January 16, 2014
The Monolith
One pernicious myth, perhaps just hubris, is that humans are the apex consciousness on our planet, even our galaxy. Never mind that we still do not understand consciousness, we believe, as children believe, we are the best at it. Wander through the Museum of Natural History to get the picture. Human evolution is the supreme act, the pinnacle story of life Earth, look there go the giant dinosaurs, inferior because they died out.
Call it the standard model. Sense a certain house-proud disregard for the other more primitive beasts. Witness our evolution, up from the apes. Dioramas of early human societies, displayed in the same manner as collected bison, and creatures from Africa and South America.
Astronomers have more or less proven, by means of mathematical probability, that other life forms not only exist, but actually are very prevalent in the universe, simply because the universe is so large and the abundance of other solar systems and planets so great.
It is also a mathematical certainty that life forms exist which surpass us in age, history, technological and intellectual might. They may not even be carbon or water based life forms! Those that are confident of the existence of extraterrestrial life know this in their guts. Others know it from first hand experience, claiming to have been contacted directly, or abducted. For Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke in the late 1960's these were ground-breaking ideas.
What would contact with a higher level of consciousness feel like? How would we describe it? What would we see? Would the visitor leave signs, or a token that it had visited? I'll second what many before me have written and say the black monolith stands as a reminder left by a superior consciousness, that man has arrived at some stage of evolution, be it tool-making or space-travel . . . or life outside of time and space.
One might consider this notion another way. If the monolith is a sign of the passing presence of a superior intelligence, are we simply noticing it when we are ready to? In other words is the monolith put there for us to notice then, or now? On another axis, what evidence of superior life forms are we currently oblivious of, simply because our minds cannot recognize them as living?
And what if that alien consciousness does not live within three dimensions, like us, but rather exists in multiple dimensions? They would not be visible to us at all, unless, either intentionally or as a side effect of their presence, they left some sort of sign, like a crystal.
Hence that perfect black rock.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
The 'I Ching': Events in Norway
It's almost a zero-security country, an idyll of peace until Anders Breivik exploded a bomb in downtown Oslo, and simultaneously went on a killing spree on a remote island with a high powered rifle.
Norway is an exporter of peace to the rest of the world. The world owes a debt to Norway's consistent adherence to peaceful principles, amongst a global rabble of feuding nations. Norway recently contributed to NATO aggressions against Libya, causing many to assume the bomb attack came from a radical Islamic group, such as Al Queda.
But no. The heinous attack came from within. While Breivik's lawyer argues his client's insanity, Norway and the world are puzzled. Why? How could hate distort perceptions so radically, as to turn aggression inwards. Since the event, it has been learned that other cells, and individuals like Breivik are working to accomplish similar ends, in Norway, and throughout Europe.
I thought I would consult the 'I Ching', that bottomless well of Taoist wisdom, on what Norway's response should be, after this terrible series of events.
-:-
For those not familiar with the 'I Ching', there's a description of methodology at the end of this post. Much about this great work is available on-line as well.
Here is the first hexagram obtained, in answer to my anxiety about the Norway attacks:
The 'I Ching' shows water, as a metaphor for abysmal anguish, and the circumstances of terrible events.
'Hexagrams' are the heart of the 'I Ching'. They are pictures assembled out of chance coin tosses, composed of six lines. The straight yang lines are lines of light, signifying the creative aspect. The broken yin lines signify darkness, receptivity. It's how these lines combine with each other that the 64 hexagrams are generated.
Each hexagram is composed of two trigrams, pictures made with three lines, an upper and a lower. In this case #29, The Abysmal, or 'Water' is composed of two trigrams for water, which looks a little like a river running between two banks. Water over water, makes the reading doubly powerful.
The Judgement
The Abysmal repeated.
If you are sincere, you have success in your heart.
And whatever you do succeeds. [ fr. the 'I Ching', R.Wilhelm translation, Princeton Univ. Press]
How ironic that the 'I Ching' plunges into the image of water, the day after this horrible tragedy. At least 76 innocents, most of them children, were murdered on Utøya island. Many died trying to swim to safety. At the same time at least 7 died in a bomb attack in the capital.
Water, a symbol of life, is also a symbol of darkness, death, and treachery.
For Norway, water is a symbol of life. Of fjords, lakes, snow, ice. Water means life. The sea. Fish. On it's own "Water" as a first reading for Norway, is exactly what Norway is, a land of water, and mountains. Water is part of Norway's truth.
For Norway, water is a symbol of life. Of fjords, lakes, snow, ice. Water means life. The sea. Fish. On it's own "Water" as a first reading for Norway, is exactly what Norway is, a land of water, and mountains. Water is part of Norway's truth.
The 'I Ching' says that Norway's truth is challenged, by the abysmal aspect of human nature, but that if Norway remains sincere as a nation of peace, it will get through this terrible crisis. Water is patient, pure of heart, truthful to itself. Water never lies. So the heart of Norway is truthful, and if it remains sincere in this, will succeed.
Violence invites us to join in violence. The invitation of reactionaries is to become reactionary in defense. Here the 'I Ching' warns against violating the inner truth of water, saying the only course is Norway's peaceful inner nature.
The Image
Water flows on uninterruptedly and reaches its goal'
The image of the Abysmal repeated.
Thus the superior man walks in lasting virtue.
And carries on the business of teaching. [Ibid.]
Richard Wilhelm the translator of this edition, comments on his bit of translation:
"Water reaches its goal by flowing continually. It fills up every depression before it flows on. The superior man follows its example." [Ibid.]
"Water reaches its goal by flowing continually. It fills up every depression before it flows on. The superior man follows its example." [Ibid.]
The true peaceful nature of Norway is being tested. Peaceful determination must fill every depression, move through the pain of loss and suffering, yet remain true to its inner nature. Being a peaceful nation means being peaceful even in response to violent acts.
Here is the reading for the change line:
Here is the reading for the change line:
Six at the beginning means:
Repetition of the Abysmal.
In the abyss, one falls into a pit.
Misfortune. [Ibid.]
The world is in grief. Norway is in terrible pain. What causes man to commit such terrible acts against fellow men, against innocents? This is a pit, the very essence of the Abysmal. This is Norway acting against herself, turning her water into self-destruction.
But the true 'pit', the one that brings misfortune, is the inappropriate response to such terror. What will this lead to?
But the true 'pit', the one that brings misfortune, is the inappropriate response to such terror. What will this lead to?
Since the first line, a 6 in the first place changes, to a closed line, the second reading becomes:
In the philosophy of the 'I Ching', future influences enter the hexagram from the bottom, and move upwards. So now a lake enters the picture, the 'Abysmal' leads to 'Limitation'.
What sort of limitation?
What sort of limitation?
The two trigrams of this image are K'an above, or Water, (which we covered) and below, Tui, the Joyous, expressed through the image of a Lake. One can see the lake in the lower three lines, a broken line over two solid. The image of the Abysmal, which is associated with the second son, is being softened by the addition of Tui, a Lake, or the youngest daughter, who stands for joy.
The 'Abysmal' Water, which is infinite, pours into a lake, which is finite, but expresses joy.
The 'Abysmal' Water, which is infinite, pours into a lake, which is finite, but expresses joy.
The Judgment
Limitation. Success.
Galling limitation must not be persevered to. [Ibid.]
Wilhelm interprets:
"Limitations are troublesome, but they are effective. If we live economically in normal times, we are prepared for times of want. To be sparing saves us from humiliation. Limitation are also indispensable in the regulation of world conditions. . . In the same way, economy, by setting fixed limits upon expenditures acts to preserve property and prevent injury to the people." [Ibid.]
The 'I Ching' counsels here that limitations, or perhaps a tightening of laws and regulations by a fearful leadership, is not the correct response. Limitations are indispensable in the regulations of world conditions, but too much regulations pose a threat to the true nature of a people:
"But in limitation we must observe due measure. If a man should seek to impose galling limitations upon his own nature, it would be injurious. And if he should go too far in imposing limitations on others, they would rebel. Therefor it is necessary to set limits even upon limitation." [Ibid.]
The Image
Water over lake: the image of limitation.
Thus the superior man
Creates number and measure
And examines the nature of virtue and correct conduct. [Ibid.]
"A lake is something limited. Water is inexhaustible . . . In human life too the individual achieves significance through discrimination and the setting of limits. Therefor what concerns us here is the problem of clearly defining these discriminations, which are, so to speak, the backbone of morality." [Ibid.]
The 'I Ching' makes a case against the fearful imposition of limitations, that might undermine the morality of the Norwegian people. An aberrant situation must not endanger the whole, through an inappropriate response.
The threat from terrorist acts of violence, is not the loss of life, though tragic, but society's own response to such acts.
Senseless violence is on the rise. Governments and peoples must make the correct response to violence, and not destroy themselves in the process.
**********
Determining the Reading:
The Image
Water over lake: the image of limitation.
Thus the superior man
Creates number and measure
And examines the nature of virtue and correct conduct. [Ibid.]
"A lake is something limited. Water is inexhaustible . . . In human life too the individual achieves significance through discrimination and the setting of limits. Therefor what concerns us here is the problem of clearly defining these discriminations, which are, so to speak, the backbone of morality." [Ibid.]
The 'I Ching' makes a case against the fearful imposition of limitations, that might undermine the morality of the Norwegian people. An aberrant situation must not endanger the whole, through an inappropriate response.
The threat from terrorist acts of violence, is not the loss of life, though tragic, but society's own response to such acts.
Senseless violence is on the rise. Governments and peoples must make the correct response to violence, and not destroy themselves in the process.
**********
Determining the Reading:
While tossing the coins, I'm thinking seriously about recent events in Oslo and on Utøya island, wondering what the global, and Norwegian response should be. I shook three ordinary pennies all at once, and tossed them six times:
1st Toss - 6, Three Tails. ___ ___. This is a change line. Yin becomes Yang for the second reading.
2nd Toss - 7, Two Heads, one Tail. Yang, ______.
3rd Toss - 8, Two Tails, one Head,. Yin, ___ ___.
4th Toss - 8, Yin, ___ ___.
5th Toss - 7, Yang, ______.
6th Toss - 8, Yin, ___ ___.
The oracle is consulted through tossing coins, or dividing 49 yarrow sticks to generate 'hexagrams' or pictures made with six lines, which are either 'yin' or 'yang'.
Today I'm using the 3 coin method. where heads = 2, and tails = 3. Each toss of three coins leads to one of the following four results:
2, 2, and 2 or 6, is an yin line, that changes to yang. ___ ___ becomes _____.
2, 2, and 3 or 7 is a yang line. ______.
3, 3, and 2 or 8 is yin. ___ ___
3, 3, and 3 or 9, is yang, that changes to yin. _______ becomes ___ ___.
The first toss creates the first line that is at the bottom of the hexagram. The second toss creates the line just above it. Change lines are typically recorded as ___o___ (yang changing to yin) or ___ x___ (yin changing to yang).
**********
Thursday, July 14, 2011
12 and 7, with 36 Tea-bowls
I love numbers, for their beauty. The Golden Section, π, e, Euler's constant - all are exquisitely tuned to the complexity of this magnificent universe.
In the end it may seem all numbers are just that, numbers, abstractions. While the first copy of any 'number' will never be 'found', the truths in numbers are always being discovered, for their character, and the way they exert enormous power over all creation.
The obvious and apparent meanings of numbers is comprehended by every life form, in the way that DNA counts molecules, or feathers on a bird regenerate, or the nucleus of every cell divides. The chemistry of all life functions according to a mathematics that is more complex than we can possibly realize. Life understands probability, statistics, algebra, and set theory, heuristics, calculus, trigonometry and topology better than the best minds on this planet. For numbers are the language of nature, and we as students of that language, are engaged in a game of catch-up.
Number are tied to recognition, and cognition. Every thought in our brains is determined by the count and pulse of discrete electrons, signals where count and level are of paramount significance.
Numeracy is the parent of literacy. Neither are confined to the specific, but are universal abstractions of language, which at root underpin all existence.
And so, in my project to 'give away' 36 tea-bowls, I've reached the number 12, one of my favorite numbers, and so am moved to digress on the importance of the number 12 in medieval Europe.
-:-
Émile Mâle writes in his famous work, "The Gothic Image", that the number 12, the product of 3 x 4:
"is in the mystic sense, to infuse matter with spirit".
Jesus's 12 Apostles, composed by multiplying 3, the number of the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, times the 4, the number of ancient elements, Fire, Air, Earth and Water, (also the number of Evangelists, Matthew, John, Mark, and Luke, and the 4 Cardinal Directions, upon which all Christian architecture was rigorously oriented after the 11th Century) yields 12, the pivotal Gothic number.
Mâle continues with the number 7, which is the sum of 3 + 4:
"Seven - composed of four, the number of the body, and of three, the number of the soul - pre-eminently the number of humanity, and expresses the union of man's double nature."
He counts Seven Virtues, the Seven Ages of Life, the Seven Sacraments. the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Petitions of the Paternoster, and the seven known Planets, including the Sun.
"Seven thus represents the harmony of man's nature, but it also expresses the harmonious relation of man to the universe."
-:-
I dwell on early Christian numerology, in order to make a point about a recent art project - the structured giving away of 36 tea-bowls, in return for sharing a cup of tea.
Artists are the greatest enemies of their own work. The same math that allows for a faultless conversion of the Amazon rain forest into beef grazing land for chain hamburgers, also cheapens the artistic statement of the day. No art is effective which is not in some way revolutionary.
The key moment neglected by almost all artists, is the completion of their work through first use.
A sale is not the same as use. Selling is not the same as using. A careful look at leading markets for art in today's world reveals that much of what's purchased, by museums and collectors, sits in storage.
How much is produced and purchased in this world that is never used? How much is wasted? How much of this earth's slim layer of life are we converting into excess production, including art, and then finding ways to destroy that excess. Garbage dumps, landfills, and museums, unfortunately are filled with trash.
Art prospers because of this excess. Unfortunately the mass of artistic production is exactly that - an expression of wasteful practices by a species that does not yet know itself.
The fundamental artistic problem is how to initiate the process of consumption. Almost without exception, material objects begin their life of abuse via a sale.
A more vile word was never spoken. 'Sale' should mean only what it originally meant, and that is 'salary' or salt. Speaking of salt, let's examine a vessel of another sort. A ship that sailed the salty seas:
Ships are vessels, ships had sails, but ships, being expensive, are not wasted. Ships are not built to be wasted. They cannot be. They are too large, too costly. People don't buy 'extra ships'. Millionaires will have an extra car or two. But even billionaires will have not purchase extra 'ships'. Imelda Marcos who had thousand pairs of shoes, did not own one extra 'ship'.
Why?
A ship is completed by its launch, when it is set afloat, before being finished. This occurs after the keel is laid, and the hull erected. Every vessel that is created to this day is launched, after a ritual sacrifice. The breaking of a bottle of spirits, at very least. Even the most humble harbor cruiser, is launched in this manner.
In ancient times only after animals were sacrificed, wine spilled and drunk, was a vessel slid from the beach into the water. This was a birth, itself a crucial moment. The launch foretold its future life.
Openings to the water I stopped;
I searched for cracks and the wanting parts I fixed:
Three sari of bitumen I poured over the outside;
To the gods I caused oxen to be sacrificed. (Anonymous Babylonian writer, Wikipedia)
Any vessel, whether a navigable vessel at sea, or a pottery vessel held by the hands, originally was sacred.
Wares we eat from are sacred because they keep us healthy. Pottery was perhaps the first and most important of all technological advances. It elevated man from eating contaminated food, to the place where he could protect himself from infection and disease. It enabled cooking and preservation of what sustains us.
In the beginning, it was costly and difficult to make. It consumed fire. Took time and huge effort.
Every item produced from our planet's skin and bones, from its lifeforms, wood, animal hides, bones, flesh, or minerals, was initiated into use via ritual, all else was waste and without meaning.
The world over, kiln firings were blessed. Modern American modern potters today keep a 'kiln god', that sits above the kiln door.
The Indian rural potter in sings:
"Clay, I am kneading you."
[then as the voice of the clay]
"Soon I'll be kneading you!"
Handmade cups and bowls frankly are not required by this modern world. These are easily supplied by industry, even to the world's poorest.
Nor are paintings or poems needed.
What is needed is a new standard for understanding and making peace with our fellow human beings, and a mystic's respect for nature. Paintings, poems, or pots, that incorporate such ideals, are needed, because what we've all lost is that respect for the planet that gives us life.
What craftsmen and artists ultimately make, are not tea-bowls or paintings or poems, but honesty.
So I invite you to join me for an hour of honest talk. That will be the ritual for launching each new vessel.
I'll make the bowl and host the tea. You make the effort to attend. Invite yourself by saying 'this is the bowl I'd like to drink from'.
It was the same for Sen no Rikyu in 16th Century Japan, the father of the Japanese tea ceremony, chanoyu.
If use completes a bowl, or a ship, then is the earth we live on is now 'completed' by human use? If so do you approve of how we are finishing that work?
What consequence was earth's evolution, if use proves to its destruction?
When tea or food is shared, and an implement is used, even a simple bowl will change form. It gathers light, through correct use. This is the meaning of ritual. Energy is directed towards appropriate action.
Christmas, the last symbol of Christian gift, long ago deteriorated into an economic sludge-fest, dreaded by nearly all but cash-starved corporations.
The mythos of modern male-dominated mathematics examines matter, materia, 'substance from which something is made,', perhaps from mater 'origin, source, mother,, in economic terms, rather than spiritual.
The pater-mythological use of numbers ascended during the post-medieval Christian era, while the mystic's use of number declined, beginning with Roman repression of pagan centers of knowledge, such as the Pythian Oracle at Delphi, the burning of non-Christian libraries, and the repression of Jewish and Sufi mysticism.
Homo-sapiens stripped number of mystical significance, in favor of a Galilean and Newtonian scientific model, where theories are vindicated by numeric results, void of symbol.
That revolution, while it empowered technology to further dominate nature around us, forever transformed attitudes towards life, and earth, from a relationship of awe and respect, to one of disregard, even disgust.
Numeracy today expresses economic fact, rather than spiritual wealth. This degrades our world, and ourselves. Is it any wonder that the environment has become exactly how we imagine it, something to use up?
Bring on the mathematics of soul and spirit. Abandon the myth of commerce!
******
Here follows my matrix of 36 tea-bowls. 6 x 6 is 36. A square, a semi-perfect number, a triangular number.
5 of it's 6 rows begin with prime numbers, the other begins with 25, which is also a square.
The second row starts with 7, ends with 12.
The obvious and apparent meanings of numbers is comprehended by every life form, in the way that DNA counts molecules, or feathers on a bird regenerate, or the nucleus of every cell divides. The chemistry of all life functions according to a mathematics that is more complex than we can possibly realize. Life understands probability, statistics, algebra, and set theory, heuristics, calculus, trigonometry and topology better than the best minds on this planet. For numbers are the language of nature, and we as students of that language, are engaged in a game of catch-up.
Number are tied to recognition, and cognition. Every thought in our brains is determined by the count and pulse of discrete electrons, signals where count and level are of paramount significance.
Numeracy is the parent of literacy. Neither are confined to the specific, but are universal abstractions of language, which at root underpin all existence.
And so, in my project to 'give away' 36 tea-bowls, I've reached the number 12, one of my favorite numbers, and so am moved to digress on the importance of the number 12 in medieval Europe.
-:-
Émile Mâle writes in his famous work, "The Gothic Image", that the number 12, the product of 3 x 4:
"is in the mystic sense, to infuse matter with spirit".
Jesus's 12 Apostles, composed by multiplying 3, the number of the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, times the 4, the number of ancient elements, Fire, Air, Earth and Water, (also the number of Evangelists, Matthew, John, Mark, and Luke, and the 4 Cardinal Directions, upon which all Christian architecture was rigorously oriented after the 11th Century) yields 12, the pivotal Gothic number.
Mâle continues with the number 7, which is the sum of 3 + 4:
"Seven - composed of four, the number of the body, and of three, the number of the soul - pre-eminently the number of humanity, and expresses the union of man's double nature."
He counts Seven Virtues, the Seven Ages of Life, the Seven Sacraments. the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Petitions of the Paternoster, and the seven known Planets, including the Sun.
"Seven thus represents the harmony of man's nature, but it also expresses the harmonious relation of man to the universe."
-:-
I dwell on early Christian numerology, in order to make a point about a recent art project - the structured giving away of 36 tea-bowls, in return for sharing a cup of tea.
Artists are the greatest enemies of their own work. The same math that allows for a faultless conversion of the Amazon rain forest into beef grazing land for chain hamburgers, also cheapens the artistic statement of the day. No art is effective which is not in some way revolutionary.
The key moment neglected by almost all artists, is the completion of their work through first use.
A sale is not the same as use. Selling is not the same as using. A careful look at leading markets for art in today's world reveals that much of what's purchased, by museums and collectors, sits in storage.
How much is produced and purchased in this world that is never used? How much is wasted? How much of this earth's slim layer of life are we converting into excess production, including art, and then finding ways to destroy that excess. Garbage dumps, landfills, and museums, unfortunately are filled with trash.
Art prospers because of this excess. Unfortunately the mass of artistic production is exactly that - an expression of wasteful practices by a species that does not yet know itself.
The fundamental artistic problem is how to initiate the process of consumption. Almost without exception, material objects begin their life of abuse via a sale.
A more vile word was never spoken. 'Sale' should mean only what it originally meant, and that is 'salary' or salt. Speaking of salt, let's examine a vessel of another sort. A ship that sailed the salty seas:
Ships are vessels, ships had sails, but ships, being expensive, are not wasted. Ships are not built to be wasted. They cannot be. They are too large, too costly. People don't buy 'extra ships'. Millionaires will have an extra car or two. But even billionaires will have not purchase extra 'ships'. Imelda Marcos who had thousand pairs of shoes, did not own one extra 'ship'.
Why?
A ship is completed by its launch, when it is set afloat, before being finished. This occurs after the keel is laid, and the hull erected. Every vessel that is created to this day is launched, after a ritual sacrifice. The breaking of a bottle of spirits, at very least. Even the most humble harbor cruiser, is launched in this manner.
In ancient times only after animals were sacrificed, wine spilled and drunk, was a vessel slid from the beach into the water. This was a birth, itself a crucial moment. The launch foretold its future life.
Openings to the water I stopped;
I searched for cracks and the wanting parts I fixed:
Three sari of bitumen I poured over the outside;
To the gods I caused oxen to be sacrificed. (Anonymous Babylonian writer, Wikipedia)
Any vessel, whether a navigable vessel at sea, or a pottery vessel held by the hands, originally was sacred.
Wares we eat from are sacred because they keep us healthy. Pottery was perhaps the first and most important of all technological advances. It elevated man from eating contaminated food, to the place where he could protect himself from infection and disease. It enabled cooking and preservation of what sustains us.
In the beginning, it was costly and difficult to make. It consumed fire. Took time and huge effort.
Every item produced from our planet's skin and bones, from its lifeforms, wood, animal hides, bones, flesh, or minerals, was initiated into use via ritual, all else was waste and without meaning.
The world over, kiln firings were blessed. Modern American modern potters today keep a 'kiln god', that sits above the kiln door.
The Indian rural potter in sings:
"Clay, I am kneading you."
[then as the voice of the clay]
"Soon I'll be kneading you!"
Handmade cups and bowls frankly are not required by this modern world. These are easily supplied by industry, even to the world's poorest.
Nor are paintings or poems needed.
What is needed is a new standard for understanding and making peace with our fellow human beings, and a mystic's respect for nature. Paintings, poems, or pots, that incorporate such ideals, are needed, because what we've all lost is that respect for the planet that gives us life.
What craftsmen and artists ultimately make, are not tea-bowls or paintings or poems, but honesty.
So I invite you to join me for an hour of honest talk. That will be the ritual for launching each new vessel.
I'll make the bowl and host the tea. You make the effort to attend. Invite yourself by saying 'this is the bowl I'd like to drink from'.
It was the same for Sen no Rikyu in 16th Century Japan, the father of the Japanese tea ceremony, chanoyu.
If use completes a bowl, or a ship, then is the earth we live on is now 'completed' by human use? If so do you approve of how we are finishing that work?
What consequence was earth's evolution, if use proves to its destruction?
When tea or food is shared, and an implement is used, even a simple bowl will change form. It gathers light, through correct use. This is the meaning of ritual. Energy is directed towards appropriate action.
Christmas, the last symbol of Christian gift, long ago deteriorated into an economic sludge-fest, dreaded by nearly all but cash-starved corporations.
The mythos of modern male-dominated mathematics examines matter, materia, 'substance from which something is made,', perhaps from mater 'origin, source, mother,, in economic terms, rather than spiritual.
The pater-mythological use of numbers ascended during the post-medieval Christian era, while the mystic's use of number declined, beginning with Roman repression of pagan centers of knowledge, such as the Pythian Oracle at Delphi, the burning of non-Christian libraries, and the repression of Jewish and Sufi mysticism.
Homo-sapiens stripped number of mystical significance, in favor of a Galilean and Newtonian scientific model, where theories are vindicated by numeric results, void of symbol.
That revolution, while it empowered technology to further dominate nature around us, forever transformed attitudes towards life, and earth, from a relationship of awe and respect, to one of disregard, even disgust.
Numeracy today expresses economic fact, rather than spiritual wealth. This degrades our world, and ourselves. Is it any wonder that the environment has become exactly how we imagine it, something to use up?
Bring on the mathematics of soul and spirit. Abandon the myth of commerce!
******
Here follows my matrix of 36 tea-bowls. 6 x 6 is 36. A square, a semi-perfect number, a triangular number.
5 of it's 6 rows begin with prime numbers, the other begins with 25, which is also a square.
The second row starts with 7, ends with 12.
*******
Sunday, July 3, 2011
The Riddle and the Sphinx
"Oedipus and the Sphinx", [an 1864 canvas by French Painter Gustav Moreau] was exhibited in Britian after exploration of the Upper Nile by adventurers Burton and Speke. The Nile's source concealed mysteries, mysteries worth adventuring for by sons of prosperous nations. All knew the Nile held precious clues regarding the birth of man.
All Europe competed to discover the Nile source, and so gain an understanding of man's origins. Early expeditions failed disastrously, forging a history of lucky survivors who though partially defeated by disease, hunger, or native warriors, supplied facts of geography which Western nations simply did not have. The greatest of English explorers to Africa, David Livingstone died of illness and never made it home at all.
Moreau's sphinx, a creature older than the pyramids, retains her pagan roots. She confronts Oedipus as would an alien, more in a state of mental confusion, than monster. She is bare-breasted, a winged seductress, with an undersized lion's rear, guarding passage to the City of Thebes. Her strangeness and directness are alarming. She touches his heart, pushes on his genitals, and seems to have perplexed him with a stare:
"What walks on four legs in the morning,
two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?"
 |
| Gustav Moreau, Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1864 |
"A thing there is whose voice is one;
So mutable a thing is none
That moves in earth or sky or sea.
When on most feet this thing doth go,
Its strength is weakest and its pace most slow."
(Athenaeus' rendering of the Riddle of the Sphinx)
Even today it stops the breath.
Moreau's Symbolist and Oriental Sphinx presents Oedipus as western consciousness, sexually conflicted, yet well behaved. His seduction by the Sphinx is an assault on Logos by the ancient imagination, portrayed as an unconscious sexual force.
Moreau didn't break artistic ground with this piece. His life work was poetic and allegorical, akin to the pre-Raphaelite painters, or poets of an earlier era. He excavated metaphor, and ancient patterns of expression as an illustrator. Drawn to psychological subjects with Classical origins, he visited the roots of civilization as a romantic traveller within a Mediterranean crucible. For his fidelity to subject we can be grateful; Moreau's work remains a powerful psychological portrayal of the 19th Century mind confronting its archaic past.
Riddles are ubiquitous as they speak in visions and dreams. Most profoundly they are found as deeply formed metaphors, devices within the self for securing unconscious content in vaults difficult or impossible to spring using logic. Those stumped by riddles are usually hyper-aware and overtly conscious. Ruled by Logos the intelligent mind thinks too hard, and is blinded by abstract forms of language.
Mariano Sigman, neurologist, wrote of this linguistic divide:
"Julian Jayne['s] . . . wild and radical hypothesis: that only 3,000 years ago, humans were what today we would call schizophrenics. And he made this claim based on the fact that the first humans . . . behaved consistently, in different traditions and in different places of the world, as if they were hearing and obeying voices that they perceived as coming from the Gods, or from the muses ... what today we would call hallucinations." [TED Talk, Mariano Sigman, February 2016]
Schizophrenics, it turns out, don't have problems solving riddles. The riddle, like the problem given by a dream, or a poem, strides both sides of an abyss, using language devised by the mind, to access subconscious treasure. Thus riddles are the poetic equivalent of a lock. The solution, or key, akin to a combination or computer password, contains the information necessary to access material lies behind and below. Were we able to measure its tumblers, we'd be able to construct the key.
So the riddle sits and waits for the solver. Riddles want to be solved. And yet when riddles are solved, inexorably, the guardian of the conundrum becomes self-destructive, angry and vindictive. The demons that guard riddles are perpetually jealous of those bringing a solution. That jealousy arises from foresight, that the contents will become known, the secrets wills be liberated. The guardian becomes defunct, and useless.
Hermes finds a way; no container is ever perfect enough to contain a secret forever. A gap remains in every fort. The ancient God of leakage, of spoilage and theft personifies a universal force that remains true at every level of physics. Whether a black hole leaking information, or a quantum photon 'tunneling' past an uncrossable barrier, the Sphinx is engaged in a task she will someday be stripped of forever, once the conundrum is solved. When the wall between East and West Berlin fell there was an increase in suicides by border agents of the East German Republic. The agents of a jealous state become useless when truth escapes.
Solutions, prophesies, oracles, and prognostications were often administered in the Ancient world via structured verse. The Pythian Oracle at Delphi spoke in riddles, though her answers never absolute, were forever open to interpretation:
Two Roman senators visiting Delphi asked the oracle, 'Which of us shall be the first to rule Rome?"
The oracle's answer: "The first to kiss his Mother shall rule."
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| Delphic Priestess (1891) by John Collier |
Brutus became President of the First Republic.
Consider the painting "Delphic Priestess" (1891) by John Collier. Even in the late 19th Century scholars were aware of the psychedelic trances inspired by ethylene gasses that emanated from the cracked earth at Delphi. The Temple of Apollo was built over the largest of these fissures, and may explain how the Pythian virgins achieved their metaphoric states of mind, enabling access to pagan consciousness with unerring brilliance.
Note how the priestess seems to be hovering in the air, but her body melds into the structure of a tall stool, which has the carved feet of a cat. Vapors seep like seductive ether into her cave-like place of work. With four cat feet, has the oracle become our Sphinx? She towers above her supplicants, ready to pronounce fate upon whomever asks, and pays.
The subtlety and candor of Delphic oracular statements were famous:
When King Croesus paid a high fee to Delphi and then sent to the oracle asking "Will my monarchy last?" the Pythia answered:
"Whenever a mule shall become sovereign king of the Medians, then, Lydian Delicate-Foot, flee . . and think not to stand fast, nor shame to be chicken-hearted."
Meaning?
Croesus thought it impossible that a mule should be king of the Medes, and thus believed that he . . . would never be out of power. He thus decided to [join] . . . with certain Greek city states and attack Persia. . . However, it was he, not the Persians, who was defeated, fulfilling the prophecy but not his interpretation of it. He apparently forgot that Cyrus, the victor, was half Mede (by his mother), half Persian (by his father) and therefore could be considered a mule. [fr. Wikipedia]
Ancient oracular statements typically were composed in pentameter or hexameter. In later years, during the Roman Empire, prophetic statements were delivered in prose.
The I Ching employs a metaphoric riddle-like structure, though the I Ching derives power from a reflective answer resident in our own hearts. The I Ching unlocks answer buried in the subconscious via a provocative but ambiguous reading, that uses a principle of synchronicity to depict an exact moment in time. To interpret the I Ching, the accomplished student must develop his or her own knowledge and familiarity with the text.
Here is one such passage from the I Ching:
"Pushing Upward,
Has supreme success.
One must see the great man.
Fear not.
Departure toward the south
Brings good fortune."
['I Ching', Richard Wilhelm translation, Princeton University Press]
Metaphor enters the context from the small 'change-lines', used to generate a gigantic number of possible readings. An example of a change-line reading:
"Six in the third place means, the fox's tail becomes wet crossing the stream - no blame."
The Bible also references classic riddles such as the famous one by Sampson:
"Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet."
(Riddle of Sampson from Book of Judges 14:12-20)
I'd like to note here that the Bible is comparatively a modern work. It's not pagan in style of authorship or viewpoint, hence riddles, and anything pagan was left aside by its authors.
Nevertheless there are those that argue that the Bible is rife with codes, hidden paradoxes, and layered meaning. As a work of literature, the Bible is intensely metaphoric, particularly the Old Testament as well as the Gospel pronouncements of Jesus, which are constructed with a riddle-like simplicity.
"Let he that is free of sin cast the first stone."
Not a riddle, but similar. It forces concentration, and stops the listener from acting.
From a mythological perspective, a riddle stands guard, preventing the impure of heart from passing deeper into the dangers of the subconscious. For if the mind and heart cannot be loosened enough to solve a riddle, then it is grasping at the effects of consciousness, rather than appreciating their source.
The Muse does not want her language worshipped. Rather, she wants her language used to worship her. This is the demand of all poetry, and the subtle difference between the pagan and the modern mind.
Grasping at light leads to darkness. One so motivated cannot be receptive to metaphor, or deeper understanding. Perhaps this explains why children are uniquely superior to adults when solving riddles. I speak of metaphor outside of its common modern use that means a poetic 'device'.
Metaphor is more than this. Robert Graves wrote, "Metaphor is poetry and poetry is metaphor'. Metaphor is the first language, (the Muse would argue the only language) both at birth and forever after, because it gives birth to all other languages.
A riddle's strength derives from metaphoric structure. Great poems are riddles in some sense, because they organize content metaphorically, not factually. Robert Graves implied that poetry was the code of the Goddess, recognizing that poesy was her language. The metaphors it spoke of were hers, not ours.
The riddle-demanding Sphinx voice seems to be associated with cultures that have enjoyed a massive and very quick rise to consciousness through the medium of written language.
In other writings I've explored how consciousness is really the gift of selectivity, of forgetting, more than a totality of knowing. Consciousness masks out material. Focusing-in is made possible by a commensurate loss of awareness. Most of us think this way at work, as we drive through the requirements of our day. Logos unleashed without any lifelines into the Pagan, or primitive, follows almost unwittingly, our darkest myths, and so leads to Fascism, and crimes against humanity. All the perpetrators of demonic acts throughout history were heavily armed by Logos. They were behaving, logically.
So most of us are perplexed but enchanted by riddles, dreams, and by poems, as well as the teachings of great teachers such as Jesus, the Buddha, whom, to a modern mind, also might seem to speak in 'riddles':
What's logic to a heart that's making sense
But tragic to the art of making amends?
Mythologies, fairy tales, and folklore, abound with beings that transform from one creature into another, sphinxes, griffons, unicorns, krakens, all represent 'still-frames' of a transformative energy.
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1 of 64 Yoginis, Hirapur, Madya Pradesh, India
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When modern authors speak of being 'stung', or 'bitten', we are metaphorically projecting energies borrowed from the animal kingdom onto human nature, while also acknowledging the power of the animal or pagan mind to draw us back into earlier modes of thought.
Graves traces an Irish mythic creature that flies as a bird into the water, becomes a fish, and then emerges as a horde of insects, changing form many times. This is indeed what all life does, in an endless transformation and exchange of form and energy. Some 'creatures' express that transformative power, as a sort of 'pagan-still-frame', much like the Yogini-cult sculptures of the Divine Feminine with alligator heads, donkey-heads, snake-heads, that stand to this day in central India.
Sphinx-like clearly means 'cat-like'.
Here's Ferdinand Knopff's painting "The Carresses" treating the same topic:
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| Ferdinand Knopff, 'The Caresses', Royal Museum Fine Arts, Belgium |
What riddle would the Pharaohs have been asked?
What dread riddle, what Tarot sign demanded,
Puzzled what dead Pharaoh, from Orion first landed?
Knopff's sphinx is portrayed as a cheetah-woman. The cheetah, which only kills prey by asphyxiation, has claws that are too short and ineffective to do much except grasp. Chased down at blinding speed, the prey must be dispatched by clamping the jaws on the throat. Knowing this, Knopff puts his sphinx dangerously close to Oedipus' jugular.
The linguistic connection between sphinx and. asphyxiate, serves the metaphor of the Sphinx as 'one who stops the breath'.
To stop, or to die, means to stop breathing. This implies how the riddle may be solved. Keep breathing!
For if one continues to breathe, and relaxes, one may just solve the riddle. Tensing up is like asphyxiation. Logos, logic, intellectual concentration, are threats to the vital force.
Viewed by our Mythos, our collective subconscious, modern Logos appears as an interlocutor, a well-armed parasite, or aberrant growth. Indeed from an evolutionary perspective, there is much to mistrust in one who uses solely logic. Logic as a method of thinking must have for thousands of years been regarded the way biologists currently see invasive species, as a pervasive menace.
That distrust is the subject of many parodies, one of the most notable the performance by Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove in Kubrick's great film of the same name. His character, an eerie premonition of Dr. Henry Kissinger, employs Nazi-like logic during a time of atomic crisis. He's a caricature of a man ripped apart by battles with himself. His left hand, presumably ruled by the 'right' hemisphere of his brain, constantly tries to strangle him, while the other hand fights it down. These antics, a slapstick evocation of Thomas Jefferson's anguish, 'My Head and My Heart', amuses his followers, who view them as indicators of superior intelligence.
For the Ancient Greeks, all creation flowed from the Muse. The male-led pantheon of Gods and Goddesses, speak of the nine Muses who were the original Muse's nine granddaughters. Zeus also descends from the Muse, hence no miracle that 'Muse' and 'Zeus' sound alike.
MoSES, and JeSUS also.
Same sounds again. Greek myth is clear on this, in language that Zeus himself imitated when he puts Aires, God of War in his place saying "I dangle you as an imperceptibly small fish on a string and can do with you whatever I like."
So the fighting mind, Logos, which is so prone to becoming emotionally motivated, is dangled from a string by our subconscious. We live as pariahs to what we don't understand, and what most of us by what we have forgotten.
Greek Mythology is also very clear on the transition of power from Goddess worship to God worship,. The sexuality of the Sphinx also underwent a transformation. The typical Egyptian sphinx was male, an androsphinx, the later Greek sphinx was female.
When bronze developed as a fighting metal, and iron was being used to make cauldrons and tripods for cooking, the transition occurred. Men were better equipped to wage war, or to pound metals at the forge. Written language took the place of oral culture. Stories of heroes, are written, for the first time. Writing favors Logos.
Hera, Zeus's wife,, is virtually discounted by Greek Myth as a nasty wife getting in the great man's way. Parvati, wife of Shiva, in India, is more equally represented, and embodies qualities of the original Godess, Kali, and Shakti-ma.
Transition to male dominance also meant the driving of certain Goddesses and practices into the forest. Artemis, Apollo's sister, went in the forest where she delivered children, tended the sick and wounded. It would be the 16th Century before men would reclaim medicine from the feminine, when witch-hunts were conducted throughout Europe and America. Today the archetypal doctor is male, in ancient times healers were women.
A riddle is a safety bridge, it allows a return from explorations of the unconscious via the mysterious, then back again to the conscious, if you're lucky enough to have solved it. If unsolved, you remain stuck at the doorway, brain short-circuited, confused, either terrified or delighted, for that is the objective of most riddles, to create the phenomena of mystery, sans the desolation brought on by certainty.
One might go mad seeking a solution. One might proceed too hastily, with ego, once a solution is found. It is but one fork in the road.
So with poetry. A good riddle may rhyme, or weave mystery in verse. Rhyme is a metaphoric ally, in that what sounds alike may often mean alike.
The spoken or inscribed riddle is the conscious end of a dream or unconscious conundrum. It may represent a singularity (something unsolvable), but if not every riddle per se has at least one solution, but if you think clearly about the simpler version of the Oedipal riddle, you quickly realize that:
The riddle's calling transforms a man,
From a crawling babe, to a walking cane.
A day as metaphor for a lifetime was the riddle, reflected by the Pharaoh's lifetime as metaphor for eternity. These are metaphors of time and space. Assuring the afterlife of the Pharaoh, gave assurance to the people of Egypt of eternal richness, fertility of the Nile, and continuance of the royal throne.
The mystery extends, to ancient advanced mathematics. Great Greek geometers learned their basics in the Nile Valley.
"Whose feet are 4, and 2, and 3."
4 legs, (crawling) 2 legs, (walking) 3 legs, (hobbling), in turn become the feet or dimensions of a scalene triangle, a recognized unit of Greek geometry, an indispensable tool to the pyramid architects.
The calculation of angles in the scalene triangle, of unequal sides, requires advanced trigonometry. This was developed in Egypt when mathematics fostered a mystical connection with the study of time and space. The mysterium may actually be the truest knowledge, because it births all other concrete forms. The source, that which is unknown is the parent of all else. The mysterium is the carrier, for without a mythos, knowledge cannot pass.
The shuttering of the Western pagan mind was completed in 389 AD during the reign of Christian Emperor Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over united Rome. He ordered that all pagan temples be closed, and with them the Pythian Oracle at Delphi.
The last statement from the Oracle was no riddle:
Tell the king; the fair wrought house has fallen.
No shelter has Apollo, nor sacred laurel leaves;
The fountains are now silent; the voice is stilled.
It is finished.
Is this what our inner Sphinx may wanted all along, since whatever fails, falls to her?
-:-
[I want to credit my good friend Natasha Rabin, for initiating a conversation between us about sphinxes and riddles, and calling my attention to the connection between the words 'sphinx' and 'asphyxiate'. Also thanks to our mutual good friend and my muse Niki Rubin, who shares many exceptional cat-like qualities.]
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Poetry, both Ways, Manners all ways.
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Pūtanā, with infant Krishna
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I've had my coffee, Both Kali, and coffee, cultivate opposites, madness and logic, divinity and profanity, theory and poetry, sanity, and the insane.
The 'Muse Poems' are works in progress. If you read them, over time you will notice they change, even minute to minute, or day to day. Much of this is in your own mind.
How do I make these changes and stay true to the original?
Poets here may soon understand what I am doing. I hope so.
What criteria do I use? Stay true the sound. I hear a sound, then I say it again and again so I don't lose the thread. So it changes.
She makes poetry, loves poetry, wants offerings of poetry.
She loves beauty. She loves honesty.
The Sun doesn't ask for its light back! Share what you have!
If you go empty-handed you die. Your people die.
Our society is cut off from ancestors, from parents. So it is cut off from nature, our parent's parent, our ancestor's ancestor. Who is the mother of Nature? This is the one I'm writing about.
Children speak to their parents do they not? Why then as children of this universe, have we forgotten how to talk to them? Parents listen to everything we say to them as little pearls. If we are rude, they correct us. Yet they treasure what we say in innocence.
How much effort has this civilization expended to insulate itself from what is wild? Rubber gloves, little vials of antiseptic everywhere, weapons, security procedures, global terror.
What is apparent most of all is fear. Are we are a race of children afraid of vengeful parents? Arrogant adolescents possessing terrible technologies. We fly airplanes into the night sky terrified as we do it!?
The earth and sky created us and look how we've shown our gratitude! We ought to be afraid!
But not afraid of wildness! We're afraid of the dark! At one time as a race, we almost didn't survive. The human population narrowed to a few hundred individuals. In the wild world, survival is not guaranteed. Now almost in draconian compensation, we've paved the earth and eliminated most of our living competitors.
Tigers roam our imagination,
Whales bellow in our dreams.
Birds flit about our nation,
Yet we long for what she means.
And we are just now learning, that survival is even less certain. Perhaps this will make us open to the concept that wildness is always there, always around us, and never can be defeated or civilized.
We are all, wild creatures. The structure of our minds is wild, but with a fresh coat of progress paint. That is all. Scrape off the paint, we're wild. And will always be.
How can wildness be understood?
There's a language for speaking to the wild, and listening to it. That is poetry. Poetry is the mother of all languages, not just poetic English, or poetic human language.
It is the mother of the language of birds.
At root, poetry is really the rules of language, or the rules of existence. It's there, in everything. In atoms, photons. Those last two words are just language.
Poetry as sweet as a black photon cloud,
How much can you put into poetry for her? There is nothing that she (and again I say she because my choices are only, he, she or it, and if I want to be polite I use a name!
Be polite!
There are rules, grammar, for dealing with those that are more powerful than you.
So, when men of science and medicine go home after, they are wise to keep the lights down in the house, . . . write poetry, . . . pray, or paint with dark colors.
Poets here may soon understand what I am doing. I hope so.
In the case of the 'Muse Poems' the poem is the sound. Not the meaning.
Poems, like myths, aspire to be crystals, providing visions from any viewpoint. All language is this. Poetry is the root. Anything non-poetic, perishes, and the last line to break, is poetry.
What criteria do I use? Stay true the sound. I hear a sound, then I say it again and again so I don't lose the thread. So it changes.
Go to where it is wild and listen!
She will not speak if you don't listen.
She will not share if you are not open.
She will not give advice if you are not willing to take it.
If you do not bring a gift, she will destroy a piece of you.
She will be mute if you are noisy,
The only sounds you will hear,
She will not speak if you don't listen.
She will not share if you are not open.
She will not give advice if you are not willing to take it.
If you do not bring a gift, she will destroy a piece of you.
She will be mute if you are noisy,
The only sounds you will hear,
Are the sounds of your own Death.
What is Death? All our bodies die, wear out. But that is not the death I speak of.
The death I speak of in these poems is the death of light.
Kali absorbs the photons of all those who don't share light.
She passes the photons on of those who do. This is basic physics.
When we do not return light to darkness, we allow it to become dark again, as a flashlight beamed into damp conifers at night. When we become hoarders of light, we ourselves become dark matter. If we don't give off light, or pass light that we are given, we become dark. We rush to her. She takes us.
I was speaking with Niki about this yesterday. She's glowing these days. Giving off so much light. What should she do do with it?
Give it away. Never hoard light! Give it to those that need it. This is a universal principle. Modern Homo sapiens has forgotten this.
My rhyming works are a way of carrying song back to her as a gift. Sometimes she giggles, but most of the time she shouts! She derides. She hits me hard, with huge pieces of wood. I have been at work and been slugged by her. It is devastating. Three weeks ago she slugged me. Sent me reeling down the stairs, headfirst into a brick wall. I thought I had died.
What is Death? All our bodies die, wear out. But that is not the death I speak of.
The death I speak of in these poems is the death of light.
Kali absorbs the photons of all those who don't share light.
She passes the photons on of those who do. This is basic physics.
When we do not return light to darkness, we allow it to become dark again, as a flashlight beamed into damp conifers at night. When we become hoarders of light, we ourselves become dark matter. If we don't give off light, or pass light that we are given, we become dark. We rush to her. She takes us.
I was speaking with Niki about this yesterday. She's glowing these days. Giving off so much light. What should she do do with it?
Give it away. Never hoard light! Give it to those that need it. This is a universal principle. Modern Homo sapiens has forgotten this.
My rhyming works are a way of carrying song back to her as a gift. Sometimes she giggles, but most of the time she shouts! She derides. She hits me hard, with huge pieces of wood. I have been at work and been slugged by her. It is devastating. Three weeks ago she slugged me. Sent me reeling down the stairs, headfirst into a brick wall. I thought I had died.
Not yet.
No bump, even on the head. No collapsed vertebrae. She must still have work for me to do.
She makes poetry, loves poetry, wants offerings of poetry.
We are all little Red Riding Hoods picnic baskets to the WOLF!
She loves beauty. She loves honesty.
Her rough talk, flushed a lie
Hawked a thrush, in winter rye.
She is ruthless. Have you ever noticed that those with the most trouble in their lives, lack manners?
She is ruthless. Have you ever noticed that those with the most trouble in their lives, lack manners?
Manners are ritual! Why does she enjoy rhyme? Why does she enjoy free verse?
She hears the rhyme in both free verse and rhymed verse. She is a-Mused by our rhymes, but looks for logic and then breaks it. Hide your logic well! She'll break it anyway, but loves finding it first.
Rhyme is linguistic metaphor, that is her language. Logos is a place for discovering this. In this way the poetic facility is itself starved to hear poetry.
So while I may explain all I want here about these principals, it is all Logos. She would burn it in a flash. Tackle shop to a fisherman. Equipment to a seeker of beauty.
Bring Her a poem! In it, disguise a wish for something. Try that. You'll be amazed! Share with me your results!
She hears the rhyme in both free verse and rhymed verse. She is a-Mused by our rhymes, but looks for logic and then breaks it. Hide your logic well! She'll break it anyway, but loves finding it first.
Rhyme is linguistic metaphor, that is her language. Logos is a place for discovering this. In this way the poetic facility is itself starved to hear poetry.
So while I may explain all I want here about these principals, it is all Logos. She would burn it in a flash. Tackle shop to a fisherman. Equipment to a seeker of beauty.
Bring Her a poem! In it, disguise a wish for something. Try that. You'll be amazed! Share with me your results!
So we may become a nation of poets, if we are wise.
I compose poems so that I might approach her. When she speaks back to me, I write down what she says, vowing that I'll try to understand it later.
The Sun doesn't ask for its light back! Share what you have!
If you go empty-handed you die. Your people die.
Our society is cut off from ancestors, from parents. So it is cut off from nature, our parent's parent, our ancestor's ancestor. Who is the mother of Nature? This is the one I'm writing about.
Children speak to their parents do they not? Why then as children of this universe, have we forgotten how to talk to them? Parents listen to everything we say to them as little pearls. If we are rude, they correct us. Yet they treasure what we say in innocence.
How much effort has this civilization expended to insulate itself from what is wild? Rubber gloves, little vials of antiseptic everywhere, weapons, security procedures, global terror.
What is apparent most of all is fear. Are we are a race of children afraid of vengeful parents? Arrogant adolescents possessing terrible technologies. We fly airplanes into the night sky terrified as we do it!?
Does our technology frighten Her?
Not for a nanosecond. We could exploit every doomsday device on this planet simultaneously, and make it glow like a spark from a blacksmith's hammer, and our nearest stellar neighbors would carry on.
The night would remain calm.
Our spark's light would engrave a text as a footnote.
But all would be calm at night, as it always has been.
The earth and sky created us and look how we've shown our gratitude! We ought to be afraid!
But not afraid of wildness! We're afraid of the dark! At one time as a race, we almost didn't survive. The human population narrowed to a few hundred individuals. In the wild world, survival is not guaranteed. Now almost in draconian compensation, we've paved the earth and eliminated most of our living competitors.
Tigers roam our imagination,
Whales bellow in our dreams.
Birds flit about our nation,
Yet we long for what she means.
And we are just now learning, that survival is even less certain. Perhaps this will make us open to the concept that wildness is always there, always around us, and never can be defeated or civilized.
We are all, wild creatures. The structure of our minds is wild, but with a fresh coat of progress paint. That is all. Scrape off the paint, we're wild. And will always be.
How can wildness be understood?
There's a language for speaking to the wild, and listening to it. That is poetry. Poetry is the mother of all languages, not just poetic English, or poetic human language.
It is the mother of the language of birds.
At root, poetry is really the rules of language, or the rules of existence. It's there, in everything. In atoms, photons. Those last two words are just language.
Poetry as sweet as a black photon cloud,
Words that flee to her electrons wild.
No matter where we start our fire, it will go out one day, but ignite somewhere else.
The fire, any fire, any light is not our fire! Not our light. Not our doing.
Understand your wildness, and know how to get along with it. Float with its wavelength, see its light, feel its vibration.
Kali likes poetry. Poetry goes both ways, a shared language, for speaking with wildness. Make poetry for Kali, about anything, and she will like it.
The fire, any fire, any light is not our fire! Not our light. Not our doing.
Understand your wildness, and know how to get along with it. Float with its wavelength, see its light, feel its vibration.
Kali likes poetry. Poetry goes both ways, a shared language, for speaking with wildness. Make poetry for Kali, about anything, and she will like it.
How much can you put into poetry for her? There is nothing that she (and again I say she because my choices are only, he, she or it, and if I want to be polite I use a name!
Be polite!
There are rules, grammar, for dealing with those that are more powerful than you.
Consider what you live inside!
I prefer the personification she because I want to live and die in a woman's arms not a man's! If you want to die in a man's arms by all means use he! She'll love it!
I prefer the personification she because I want to live and die in a woman's arms not a man's! If you want to die in a man's arms by all means use he! She'll love it!
So love is the basis of all manners.
My uncle, only once, told my father about his experiences in World War II, during the Battle of the Bulge. He spent long nights listening to the men around him dying. They called for their mothers, wives, and girlfriends before they went. Howling moaning, calling for them. He said they all did.
I haven't been able to think of a she bigger than Kali, and less concerned with our individual survival than Kali.
I use her name to describe the feminine principle that recycles life. She takes you and me and makes food out of us for this divine illusion that is life. We all eat, and we are all eaten.
I will often refer to Artemis, or Her ( Hera ), or Aphrodite, Maggie, or Mary. I'll call her the names of my Muses, Kate, Niki, Layna, Kayla Jo, Rainbow, Raven, A___, R____, Ami.
My uncle, only once, told my father about his experiences in World War II, during the Battle of the Bulge. He spent long nights listening to the men around him dying. They called for their mothers, wives, and girlfriends before they went. Howling moaning, calling for them. He said they all did.
I haven't been able to think of a she bigger than Kali, and less concerned with our individual survival than Kali.
I use her name to describe the feminine principle that recycles life. She takes you and me and makes food out of us for this divine illusion that is life. We all eat, and we are all eaten.
I will often refer to Artemis, or Her ( Hera ), or Aphrodite, Maggie, or Mary. I'll call her the names of my Muses, Kate, Niki, Layna, Kayla Jo, Rainbow, Raven, A___, R____, Ami.
The Divine Feminine has many names.
The Yogini Cult (India) celebrated names of the divine feminine, and erected an understanding of her rmany faces that were as much a projection of conscious light as they were an excavation of subconscious dark.
Science cannot find a quiet place. It is so bright and loud in our labs, and hospitals!
The Yogini Cult (India) celebrated names of the divine feminine, and erected an understanding of her rmany faces that were as much a projection of conscious light as they were an excavation of subconscious dark.
Science cannot find a quiet place. It is so bright and loud in our labs, and hospitals!
So, when men of science and medicine go home after, they are wise to keep the lights down in the house, . . . write poetry, . . . pray, or paint with dark colors.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
05/03/2006 - "East" , Aesthetics after, what she meant
KNB wanted very much to work with me, so I made a late appointment on an evening that I already had scheduled earlier work.
When she arrived I noticed she was quite pretty through the face. I liked her immensely. She was witty intelligent, and understanding of the project. We smoked quite a lot of weed together after making the initial drawing, and then went to the pile of words to finish the piece.
Words were drawn randomly from the pot, in groups. I would call out to her, "Pick 5 words", and then she would read them to me after a little arranging first to give it the most meaning. "Pick 7 words". Neither she nor I wrote the poem, though I did the writing on the drawing. She assisted, and drew the words from the inexhaustable supply.
Sometimes the words made no sense at all so I would exploit the alliterative facility to round them into meaning.
In a few instances where there was a word that K___ just didn't understand, I'd let her draw another.
In the middle of the poem there's a comment, "Daddy needs his smoke."
We got up to go smoke!
This was an incredible moment, I felt I had tapped a reservoir of meaning, all knowledge, all that was original. I also felt that there was a limitless flow - the only danger was that the crude radio I've devised to tune this energy in, would somehow fail, or drift off station, and that I would never hear this voice again.
Here are my thoughts on meaning:
Aesthetic after observation / He said it after observation
[Observe her first - then apply an aesthetic. Observation might lead to an aesthetic ideal being false or worse, ugly. Aesthetics, or the philosophy of beauty and art, may be viewed as scientific theories, indulged until facts emerge that prove them wrong, or, make them unwearable. She's saying, if you use aesthetic judgements, make genuine observations first. So we expand understanding by pulling on the tight fitting clothes of our theories.]
"Think, feel subject, follow no hate"
[This is yogic universal love. Study, and love, but follow nothing motivated by anything less than love. So far so good.]
"Night appears Pregnant"
]How could the divine feminine be anything but pregnant? The existence of all existence is born in the Divine, and conceived within her.]
"Sculpt, assist her, then health, clever character the finger, must thou impression."
[I seem to be getting the advice go with my own hands as an implement of creation.]
"Mother is like Peace, like angry wild howl. Paint my differences."
[Paint all the faces of Kali. Love all aspects of Her.]
When it came time to assign her initials to the work, I asked K____ what her real name was. She was incredibly surprised the reading had spotted her lie.
She told me her real initials, LB reluctantly. I wrote it in.
LB wasn't willing to lie to Her.
[How am I changing the words? The poem is sound, silly sense arranges to thought, if emanating from a light producing activity. Right wood, right ghee. Think right thoughts, hear right sounds.]
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