Thursday 30 September 2010
Wednesday 29 September 2010
Tuesday 28 September 2010
Techne-Mystics
Britain and Ireland have a habit of giving birth to people of a strong, economically productive people of a scientific mindset with one foot in the mystical traditions of old. This is true even today…
Stephen Hawking, probing string theory, the geometry of black holes and the first few nanoseconds of the Big Bang, who speaks of coming to know the Mind of God…
Issac Newton, the formulator of optics, gravitation, calculus and elementary mechanics, who considered his life’s greatest work to be a twelve volume treatise on the esoteric of Solomon’s Temple…
John Dee, a mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, who sought visions with angels in order to learn their language…
James Joyce, who desired to accurately and artistically model the human mind as a city on a single day, and who broke down the language barriers between consciousness and dream…
Jeremy Narby, a cultural anthropologist specialising in native Amazonian societies who examined the connections between shamanism and science and who sought an answer to McKenna’s challenge: Nature is alive and talking to us.
Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA and a molecular biologist through to the final moments of his life, who asked: At what point would a machine have a soul? At what point did biological life gain the experience of ‘having a soul’...? and spoke in later life of biochemical theology...
Charles Darwin, who as he uncovered the workings of evolutionary nature, released endless phrases such as the ‘web of life’ which have become a foundation for a new ecological way of living...
Stephen Hawking, probing string theory, the geometry of black holes and the first few nanoseconds of the Big Bang, who speaks of coming to know the Mind of God…
Issac Newton, the formulator of optics, gravitation, calculus and elementary mechanics, who considered his life’s greatest work to be a twelve volume treatise on the esoteric of Solomon’s Temple…
John Dee, a mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, who sought visions with angels in order to learn their language…
James Joyce, who desired to accurately and artistically model the human mind as a city on a single day, and who broke down the language barriers between consciousness and dream…
Jeremy Narby, a cultural anthropologist specialising in native Amazonian societies who examined the connections between shamanism and science and who sought an answer to McKenna’s challenge: Nature is alive and talking to us.
Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA and a molecular biologist through to the final moments of his life, who asked: At what point would a machine have a soul? At what point did biological life gain the experience of ‘having a soul’...? and spoke in later life of biochemical theology...
Charles Darwin, who as he uncovered the workings of evolutionary nature, released endless phrases such as the ‘web of life’ which have become a foundation for a new ecological way of living...
Monday 20 September 2010
Sunday 19 September 2010
Thursday 16 September 2010
Stolen Child by W.B. Yeats
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen chetries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With afacry, hand in hand,
For the world's morefull of weeping than you
can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's morefully of weeping than you
can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,.
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To to waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For to world's morefully of weeping than you
can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For be comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
from a world more full of weeping than you
can understand.
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen chetries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With afacry, hand in hand,
For the world's morefull of weeping than you
can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's morefully of weeping than you
can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,.
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To to waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For to world's morefully of weeping than you
can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For be comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
from a world more full of weeping than you
can understand.
Wednesday 15 September 2010
More random vocalising...
Tombstones, consecrated ground that you can't dig, Roman burials in the City of London (the unconscious soul of the economic heart of that city is a lead-lined coffin containing a Romano-British princess...), Jorvik and Constantines elevation to the purple at York.... yew trees, oak trees, cup and ring marks on stones...
And some sacred speakers of these islands - Ireland, Britain and the rest - Tolkien who made Middle Earth, Graves who evoked the White Goddess, Blake who envisioned Jerusalem the Kingdom, Joyce who went down and down into the soul (riverrun, past Eve's and Adam's...), Aneirin of course the first native teller of these islands we have, Julian of Norwich for she saw the face of God as Pure Love...
And some sacred speakers of these islands - Ireland, Britain and the rest - Tolkien who made Middle Earth, Graves who evoked the White Goddess, Blake who envisioned Jerusalem the Kingdom, Joyce who went down and down into the soul (riverrun, past Eve's and Adam's...), Aneirin of course the first native teller of these islands we have, Julian of Norwich for she saw the face of God as Pure Love...
Tuesday 14 September 2010
Something Random...
Elves, leprechauns, little people, shadow folk, dancers in the grass, the whispers on the wind of the people from the past. Don’t build a road here, the elves live there…
“And I, who knows the wisdom of the unhewn dolmen…”
Amargin, Llew, Gwydion (Three Dying Gods of the Islands of Britain) Arianrhod and Bran the oldest of them all, and the syllable Dan… Danae, mother of Perseus, a pre-Greek word (read: Minoan), the Danaans, Danube, Donau, Danmark, Don the Welsh Mother (ap Don), Don Valley, Tuatha de Danann… something came from the Aegean this way in the early Bronze Age….someone…
“And did those hills in ancient times…”
They say that Jesus came to Glastonbury, they say the grail found its way here, but the wells and holy waters are remembered from older times. A chalice. Sulis Minerva at Aquae Sulis Bath… you had a vision there once…
“Yo, mate, put that fuckin’ blade away, this is chalice country…”
What’s that inventive energy that drove Stephenson, Brunel, Newton, Watson & Crick, Darwin, Maxwell? We had a revolution in 1381, another in 1649 and France calls itself the Mother? What’s this earthy, sweary energy that insists on a playful and healthy disrespect for authority and chides anyone who forgets where they came from? Don’t you be puttin’ on airs and graces, mind!
“The Christian tradition, which in the West is now our only living sacred tradition…”
Not here, not here, we never completely Christianised. I feel sorry for Rome. Just when they’d ticked Britain off the list for converting the Celts, the pagan Saxons came and knocked everything to bits. So they started again. Ticked it off again, whereupon the pagan Vikings came along… you get the point. We never completely converted. In Wiltshire, Lancashire, anywhere far away from the centres, people were still dancing maypole and raising altars to pagan gods…
“there is an image of Darvel Gadarn within the saide diosece, in whome the people have so greate confidence, hope, and truste, that they cumme dayly a pilgramage unto hym, somme with kyne, other with oxen or horsis, and the reste withe money…”
…that was in 1538. I think of the Welsh hero Hu Gardarn and all the –caster and –chester towns with the names of Celtic gods and heroes… Man(awydan), Llan, Don (the Mother of Gwydion), Sil (the eye goddess of Silbury) and so on…
Green Man, Robin Hood (Hu again), Black Annis, it wasn’t until the 1600s that we finally completed conversion and within 100 years we were deconstructing and destroying that, first with Deism, then with Evolution, then with Atheism…?
What’s the energy here? We became the whole world, as British as curry and chips. Punjabi road signs, the biggest Somali community outside Africa, more people going regularly to mosque than to churches I’m sure. Everyone’s coming from everywhere to be here, and it’s not just because of the money…
What’s the energy here…?
“And I, who knows the wisdom of the unhewn dolmen…”
Amargin, Llew, Gwydion (Three Dying Gods of the Islands of Britain) Arianrhod and Bran the oldest of them all, and the syllable Dan… Danae, mother of Perseus, a pre-Greek word (read: Minoan), the Danaans, Danube, Donau, Danmark, Don the Welsh Mother (ap Don), Don Valley, Tuatha de Danann… something came from the Aegean this way in the early Bronze Age….someone…
“And did those hills in ancient times…”
They say that Jesus came to Glastonbury, they say the grail found its way here, but the wells and holy waters are remembered from older times. A chalice. Sulis Minerva at Aquae Sulis Bath… you had a vision there once…
“Yo, mate, put that fuckin’ blade away, this is chalice country…”
What’s that inventive energy that drove Stephenson, Brunel, Newton, Watson & Crick, Darwin, Maxwell? We had a revolution in 1381, another in 1649 and France calls itself the Mother? What’s this earthy, sweary energy that insists on a playful and healthy disrespect for authority and chides anyone who forgets where they came from? Don’t you be puttin’ on airs and graces, mind!
“The Christian tradition, which in the West is now our only living sacred tradition…”
Not here, not here, we never completely Christianised. I feel sorry for Rome. Just when they’d ticked Britain off the list for converting the Celts, the pagan Saxons came and knocked everything to bits. So they started again. Ticked it off again, whereupon the pagan Vikings came along… you get the point. We never completely converted. In Wiltshire, Lancashire, anywhere far away from the centres, people were still dancing maypole and raising altars to pagan gods…
“there is an image of Darvel Gadarn within the saide diosece, in whome the people have so greate confidence, hope, and truste, that they cumme dayly a pilgramage unto hym, somme with kyne, other with oxen or horsis, and the reste withe money…”
…that was in 1538. I think of the Welsh hero Hu Gardarn and all the –caster and –chester towns with the names of Celtic gods and heroes… Man(awydan), Llan, Don (the Mother of Gwydion), Sil (the eye goddess of Silbury) and so on…
Green Man, Robin Hood (Hu again), Black Annis, it wasn’t until the 1600s that we finally completed conversion and within 100 years we were deconstructing and destroying that, first with Deism, then with Evolution, then with Atheism…?
What’s the energy here? We became the whole world, as British as curry and chips. Punjabi road signs, the biggest Somali community outside Africa, more people going regularly to mosque than to churches I’m sure. Everyone’s coming from everywhere to be here, and it’s not just because of the money…
What’s the energy here…?
Monday 13 September 2010
Listen...
I have danced upon
Ariadne’s threshing floor,
Nine nights awake
I have seen Her Eyes
Upon the sacred mountain;
I have heard her Voice
I have five times walked
The hallowed halls of Atlantis
Long before the Flood
I have sat with learned folk
Around a harvest fire
Listened, and been burned…
I have heard the Sacred Voice
Of that most Sacred Island,
And now it is time…
…To listen to my home
Ariadne’s threshing floor,
Nine nights awake
I have seen Her Eyes
Upon the sacred mountain;
I have heard her Voice
I have five times walked
The hallowed halls of Atlantis
Long before the Flood
I have sat with learned folk
Around a harvest fire
Listened, and been burned…
I have heard the Sacred Voice
Of that most Sacred Island,
And now it is time…
…To listen to my home
Saturday 11 September 2010
This Is Not Nationalism!
This is not some kind of nationalistic intent, nor is it a kind of rural conservative smack-of-leather-on-willow nostalgia for the past. It does not aim to celebrate Britain or the United Kingdom or its constituent nations. It will not reflect the wistful romanticism of Morris traditions or the New Age fantasies of 'Celtic' (allegedly) shamanism. This isn’t the kind of Middle Class pursuit of the healthy walk across the moors… it’s not that kind of love of the landscape. Although walks across moors will be part of what I do… It will delve into the past but will not be limited by that past: it will aim to leap forward into the future.
It will depict Britannia, but she won't be the symbol of Empire nor the original Brigantia of Celtic tradition, but something more modern for today... Her Imperial image was always of Athena and given that Athena's origins lie in Libya (Neith) i always felt it was most appropriate to depict her as black.
There will be mushrooms. There will be hip-hop, trance and psytrance. And electronic noodling about. There will be Industrial Heritage alongside 'Dark Satanic Mills'. Of course DNA will be there, but so will the rivers. There will be MDMA in clubs and free parties. There will be Henges and Inner City Blocks. The techne is creative and productive, but somewhere under there is a visionary intent.
These islands used to be sacred. If you were a druid or any kind of holy man in Western Europe who wanted to learn about more ancient traditions free from Roman influence, you came here.
There will be Avalon, not Eleusis or Heaven. The Place of Apples. Nine nights awake, Amathaon whispers the Name of Names. There will be ley lines and crop circles and aliens in Warminster town.
This is not nationalism. This is a serious and soulfelt attempt to wind these islands into the visionary nexus that many folks around the world are seeking to create and which, for some reason, Britain lags behind despite its unique ingredients, experiences and elements. Some places seem to readily open themselves up to new World Ages (California, for example), others seem ready to drag energy away such that there is only violence (Jerusalem).
But the suspicion I have at present is that this landscape wants to be asked. It doesn't want to give readily. It wants to be asked by someone who loves it, not for the politics or for nostalgia but simply for love. And I do love this land. So I will ask.
It will depict Britannia, but she won't be the symbol of Empire nor the original Brigantia of Celtic tradition, but something more modern for today... Her Imperial image was always of Athena and given that Athena's origins lie in Libya (Neith) i always felt it was most appropriate to depict her as black.
There will be mushrooms. There will be hip-hop, trance and psytrance. And electronic noodling about. There will be Industrial Heritage alongside 'Dark Satanic Mills'. Of course DNA will be there, but so will the rivers. There will be MDMA in clubs and free parties. There will be Henges and Inner City Blocks. The techne is creative and productive, but somewhere under there is a visionary intent.
These islands used to be sacred. If you were a druid or any kind of holy man in Western Europe who wanted to learn about more ancient traditions free from Roman influence, you came here.
There will be Avalon, not Eleusis or Heaven. The Place of Apples. Nine nights awake, Amathaon whispers the Name of Names. There will be ley lines and crop circles and aliens in Warminster town.
This is not nationalism. This is a serious and soulfelt attempt to wind these islands into the visionary nexus that many folks around the world are seeking to create and which, for some reason, Britain lags behind despite its unique ingredients, experiences and elements. Some places seem to readily open themselves up to new World Ages (California, for example), others seem ready to drag energy away such that there is only violence (Jerusalem).
But the suspicion I have at present is that this landscape wants to be asked. It doesn't want to give readily. It wants to be asked by someone who loves it, not for the politics or for nostalgia but simply for love. And I do love this land. So I will ask.
Friday 10 September 2010
A Vision At Museum Ludwig, Cologne (with Dali's Help)
Here is what true art should do: in the Ludwig Museum, Koln, after spending 10 minutes closely inspecting the work and the confounding of perception it engendered, all of a sudden this painting physically threw me back twenty feet when I saw what I had missed: the Hidden Sacred!I do not exaggerate. It physically threw my body across the gallery in a profound sacred moment. This is what art should do: confound, physically move, transcend.
It was the first, but not the last, sacred moment that took place on Fri Sept 3rd...
...and it continued. Five minutes, or perhaps an eternity, later I began to approach this sacred work of art with arms out. My good friend Katarina was sitting behind me watching me and as I got closer, in her view I lined up with the Christ figure almost perfectly.
She told me to raise a hand a little higher, and with a mind barely able to comprehend what was happening, I obeyed. "Raise the other hand a little higher, yes, that's it. Perfect."
And Katarina had put me into the painting. I became this painted Christ. I hung there for a few moments.... until the spell gently broke and I finally sat down with eyes opened. This is what art should do...
Twelve Apostles Stone Circle
A vision of the Twelve Apostles Stone Circle on Ilkley Moor when I visited three years ago: several of the stones had fallen down and one had been split clean in half. This sacred place withiew across Leeds and Bradford felt neglected and isolated. It could have acted as a kind of energetic custodian of these two cities but instead the energy felt like it was bleeding out of the broken stone and into the frozen sky...Rachel Chapple's list of sites
Words from Rachel Chapple. Visiting all of these could be a real adventure...
"You will hear the traces of our fingerprints whispering to you whilst you follow the ordinary water that flows from the Red Lady of Paviland, Gough's Cave and Creswell Crags, through the Mendips, Star Carr and Oronsay, whilst you pause at Sweet Track on the Somerset Levels, and ponder the Cursus and Maes Howe, and after the henges at Avebury and Silbury Hill, listen patiently at Cissbury and Grimes Graves before continuing onto Banthan and Mount Batten, and beyond..."
Great list! I would add... See eye to eye with the ravens at the Tower of London and stand there wondering where Bran's head is buried, go back to West Kennet and Swallowhead Spring, Adam's Grave and Mother's Jam... and of course the Twelve Apostles on Ilkley Moor... seek out the inscribed stones...
"You will hear the traces of our fingerprints whispering to you whilst you follow the ordinary water that flows from the Red Lady of Paviland, Gough's Cave and Creswell Crags, through the Mendips, Star Carr and Oronsay, whilst you pause at Sweet Track on the Somerset Levels, and ponder the Cursus and Maes Howe, and after the henges at Avebury and Silbury Hill, listen patiently at Cissbury and Grimes Graves before continuing onto Banthan and Mount Batten, and beyond..."
Great list! I would add... See eye to eye with the ravens at the Tower of London and stand there wondering where Bran's head is buried, go back to West Kennet and Swallowhead Spring, Adam's Grave and Mother's Jam... and of course the Twelve Apostles on Ilkley Moor... seek out the inscribed stones...
Remembering Avalon...
Notes from a brief online conversation with Daniel Mirante...
...the energy enfolded within this island is hard to translate
...it is ancient, it is a bit neglected right now
...the trememdous creativity of this island is currently channeled away from visionary experience and integrated consciousness, towards 'productive' and 'rational' modes
...DNA, Classical Mechanics, Industrial revolutions, innovation, the World Wide Web all conceived
...William Blake as a kind of 'founder' of visionary art... why is his poetry so beloved and his art ignored?
...my intuition that this island is a female energy, belonging to the Mother
...Blake, Graves and Tolkien as sacred speakers of this island here
British spirituality keywords…
...Magic mushrooms, Celtic design, long barrows, standing stones
...Druids, ley lines, Michael & Mary lines (Paul the Plumber), crop circles
...The New Age (in the 90s and now Britain’s a bit jaded with it!) centred upon Glastonbury
Ancient Places...
...Glastonbury, Men-a-Tol, Carn Brea, Avebury, Stonehenge, Salisbury Moor, Ilkley Moor, Gypsy Races, Edinburgh, Callanish, Mt Suilven (the British Yiouchtas!), Newgrange in Ireland
Modern Places...
...Brighton, Manchester, London
Britain, along with Germany and Israel, were really the only places that really seemed to get the 5th circuit opening activation of MDMA in the 90s – this is relevant. 5th circuit in the Timothy Leary sense. Why did America, usually so ahead in such things, really not get the hedonic-hedonistic, ecstatic, touchy-feely aspects of this phenomenon and remain hooked on being cool and being seen to be stylish? And yet, Burning Man, which superceded the whole activation? Why did Britain 'get it' in the 90s, but fails to get it now, and didn't develop it further? See my random reminiscence-slash-essay Ecstasy Generation from 2005
Seeking the Voice of the Land… largely I have spent several years seeking and finding the Voice of the Land of Crete in the Minoan Honey project… I should now return to my early-twenties British mythology notes and vision/dream reports and seek the Voice in this island. Mushroom visions and quests may help. Get up onto Ilkley Moor. Go to the Twelve Apostles stone circle, walk there from home.
...the energy enfolded within this island is hard to translate
...it is ancient, it is a bit neglected right now
...the trememdous creativity of this island is currently channeled away from visionary experience and integrated consciousness, towards 'productive' and 'rational' modes
...DNA, Classical Mechanics, Industrial revolutions, innovation, the World Wide Web all conceived
...William Blake as a kind of 'founder' of visionary art... why is his poetry so beloved and his art ignored?
...my intuition that this island is a female energy, belonging to the Mother
...Blake, Graves and Tolkien as sacred speakers of this island here
British spirituality keywords…
...Magic mushrooms, Celtic design, long barrows, standing stones
...Druids, ley lines, Michael & Mary lines (Paul the Plumber), crop circles
...The New Age (in the 90s and now Britain’s a bit jaded with it!) centred upon Glastonbury
Ancient Places...
...Glastonbury, Men-a-Tol, Carn Brea, Avebury, Stonehenge, Salisbury Moor, Ilkley Moor, Gypsy Races, Edinburgh, Callanish, Mt Suilven (the British Yiouchtas!), Newgrange in Ireland
Modern Places...
...Brighton, Manchester, London
Britain, along with Germany and Israel, were really the only places that really seemed to get the 5th circuit opening activation of MDMA in the 90s – this is relevant. 5th circuit in the Timothy Leary sense. Why did America, usually so ahead in such things, really not get the hedonic-hedonistic, ecstatic, touchy-feely aspects of this phenomenon and remain hooked on being cool and being seen to be stylish? And yet, Burning Man, which superceded the whole activation? Why did Britain 'get it' in the 90s, but fails to get it now, and didn't develop it further? See my random reminiscence-slash-essay Ecstasy Generation from 2005
Seeking the Voice of the Land… largely I have spent several years seeking and finding the Voice of the Land of Crete in the Minoan Honey project… I should now return to my early-twenties British mythology notes and vision/dream reports and seek the Voice in this island. Mushroom visions and quests may help. Get up onto Ilkley Moor. Go to the Twelve Apostles stone circle, walk there from home.
Three Island Women
And into the new visionary nexus, there are three sacred women
Of great potential who have not yet been merged:
The island of Britain with Avalonian Fields whispering the future,
The Minoan island of Crete, that last bastion of partnership,
The isles of Malta, her Megalithic stones calling to remembrance...
Of great potential who have not yet been merged:
The island of Britain with Avalonian Fields whispering the future,
The Minoan island of Crete, that last bastion of partnership,
The isles of Malta, her Megalithic stones calling to remembrance...
The Voice...
After online conversations with several people, including a brief one with visionary artist Daniel Mirante, I am feeling as if Britain could do with a visionary push. Culturally, it seems focussed on the critical, the contextual and the conceptual - all mind-stuff, and all good for innovation. But for envisioning, for giving birth to something sacred and numinous, well, that seems to be forgotten here, but in Europe, in the USA and in the Far East, they seem to appreciate this kind of thing.
And so I'm feeling the call that this land, Britain, wants to be heard again. A sacred voice. I think Britain needs to see its visionary land-voice expressed and I am wondering if I have the capability to do it... even to see it...
I am thinking of an art work, large and multi-panelled. I am thinking of engaging with the teacher plants of this land to hear this voice. I am thinking of visiting megalithic sites and reading William Blake again. I am thinking this could take years to create.... patiently...
This is the Voice Project, an attempt to hear, express and envision the Sacred Voice of this land...
And so I'm feeling the call that this land, Britain, wants to be heard again. A sacred voice. I think Britain needs to see its visionary land-voice expressed and I am wondering if I have the capability to do it... even to see it...
I am thinking of an art work, large and multi-panelled. I am thinking of engaging with the teacher plants of this land to hear this voice. I am thinking of visiting megalithic sites and reading William Blake again. I am thinking this could take years to create.... patiently...
This is the Voice Project, an attempt to hear, express and envision the Sacred Voice of this land...
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