KEYS (10k)
2 Peter J Carroll
1 Saichō
1 Longchenpa
1 Digha Nikaya
1 Sri Aurobindo
1 Plato
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
21 J K Rowling
7 Benedict Jacka
3 Joanne Harris
3 Edgar Lee Masters
2 Sri Aurobindo
2 Peter J Carroll
2 Marilyn Johnson
2 Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
2 Francois de La Rochefoucauld
2 Brian Godawa
2 Antonin Artaud
2 Anonymous
| 1:He is a stranger to the magical arts and divination and necromancy, to exorcisms and other analogous practices. He takes no part in the accomplishment of any prayer or religious ceremony. ~ Digha Nikaya, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS |
2:Saichō's Prayer
So long as I have not attained the stage where my six faculties are pure, I will not venture out into the world.
So long as I have not realized the absolute, I will not acquire any special skills or arts (e.g. medicine, divination, calligraphy, etc.)
So long as I have not kept all the precepts purely, I will not participate in any lay donor's Buddhist meetings.
So long as I have not attained wisdom (lit. hannya 般若), I will not participate in worldly affairs unless it be to benefit others.
May any merit from my practice in the past, present and future be given not to me, but to all sentient beings so that they may attain supreme enlightenment. ~ Saichō,#KEYS |
3:''He is a great spirit,151 Socrates. All spirits are intermediate between god and mortal''.
''What is the function of a spirit?'' I asked.
''Interpreting and conveying all that passes between gods and humans: from humans, petitions and sacrificial offerings, and from gods, instructions and the favours they return. Spirits, being intermediary, fill the space between the other two, so that all are bound together into one entity. It is by means of spirits that all divination can take place, the whole craft of seers and priests, with their sacrifices, rites and spells, and all prophecy and magic. Deity and humanity are completely separate, but through the mediation of spirits all converse and communication from gods to humans, waking and sleeping, is made possible. The man who is wise in these matters is a man of the spirit,152 whereas the man who is wise in a skill153 or a manual craft,154 which is a different sort of expertise, is materialistic.155 These spirits are many and of many kinds, and one of them is Love''. ~ Plato, Symposium, 202e,#KEYS |
4:To prepare for Astral Magic a temple or series of temples needs to be erected on the plane of visualized imagination. Such temples can take any convenient form although some magicians prefer to work with an exact simulacrum of their physical temple. The astral temple is visualized in fine detail and should contain all the equipment required for ritual or at least cupboards where any required instruments can be found.
Any objects visualized into the temple should always remain there for subsequent inspection unless specifically dissolved or removed. The most important object in the temple is the magician's image of himself working in it. At first it may seem that he is merely manipulating a puppet of himself in the temple but with persistence this should give way to a feeling of actually being there. Before beginning Astral Magic proper, the required temple and instruments together with an image of the magician moving about in it should be built up by a repeated series of visualizations until all the details are perfect. Only when this is complete should the magician begin to use the temple. Each conjuration that is performed should be planned in advance with the same attention to detail as in Ritual Magic. The various acts of astral evocation, divination, enchantment, invocation and illumination take on a similar general form to the acts of Ritual Magic which the magician adapts for astral work. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Kaos [T2],#KEYS |
5:Countless books on divination, astrology, medicine and other subjects
Describe ways to read signs. They do add to your learning,
But they generate new thoughts and your stable attention breaks up.
Cut down on this kind of knowledge - that's my sincere advice.
You stop arranging your usual living space,
But make everything just right for your retreat.
This makes little sense and just wastes time.
Forget all this - that's my sincere advice.
You make an effort at practice and become a good and knowledgeable person.
You may even master some particular capabilities.
But whatever you attach to will tie you up.
Be unbiased and know how to let things be - that's my sincere advice.
You may think awakened activity means to subdue skeptics
By using sorcery, directing or warding off hail or lightning, for example.
But to burn the minds of others will lead you to lower states.
Keep a low profile - that's my sincere advice.
Maybe you collect a lot of important writings,
Major texts, personal instructions, private notes, whatever.
If you haven't practiced, books won't help you when you die.
Look at the mind - that's my sincere advice.
When you focus on practice, to compare understandings and experience,
Write books or poetry, to compose songs about your experience
Are all expressions of your creativity. But they just give rise to thinking.
Keep yourself free from intellectualization - that's my sincere advice.
In these difficult times you may feel that it is helpful
To be sharp and critical with aggressive people around you.
This approach will just be a source of distress and confusion for you.
Speak calmly - that's my sincere advice.
Intending to be helpful and without personal investment,
You tell your friends what is really wrong with them.
You may have been honest but your words gnaw at their heart.
Speak pleasantly - that's my sincere advice.
You engage in discussions, defending your views and refuting others'
Thinking that you are clarifying the teachings.
But this just gives rise to emotional posturing.
Keep quiet - that's my sincere advice.
You feel that you are being loyal
By being partial to your teacher, lineage or philosophical tradition.
Boosting yourself and putting down others just causes hard feelings.
Have nothing to do with all this - that's my sincere advice.
~ Longchenpa, excerpts from 30 Pieces of Sincere Advice
,#KEYS |
6:SLEIGHT OF MIND IN ILLUMINATION
Only those forms of illumination which lead to useful behaviour changes deserve to be known as such. When I hear the word "spirituality", I tend to reach for a loaded wand. Most professionally spiritual people are vile and untrustworthy when off duty, simply because their beliefs conflict with basic drives and only manage to distort their natural behaviour temporarily. The demons then come screaming up out of the cellar at unexpected moments.
When selecting objectives for illumination, the magician should choose forms of self improvement which can be precisely specified and measured and which effect changes of behaviour in his entire existence. Invocation is the main tool in illumination, although enchantment where spells are cast upon oneselves and divination to seek objectives for illumination may also find some application.
Evocation can sometimes be used with care, but there is no point in simply creating an entity that is the repository of what one wishes were true for oneself in general. This is a frequent mistake in religion. Forms of worship which create only entities in the subconscious are inferior to more wholehearted worship, which, at its best, is pure invocation. The Jesuits "Imitation of Christ" is more effective than merely praying to Jesus for example.
Illumination proceeds in the same general manner as invocation, except that the magician is striving to effect specific changes to his everyday behaviour, rather than to create enhanced facilities that can be drawn upon for particular purposes. The basic technique remains the same, the required beliefs are identified and then implanted in the subconscious by ritual or other acts. Such acts force the subconscious acquisition of the beliefs they imply.
Modest and realistic objectives are preferable to grandiose schemes in illumination.
One modifies the behaviour and beliefs of others by beginning with only the most trivial demands. The same applies to oneselves. The magician should beware of implanting beliefs whose expression cannot be sustained by the human body or the environment. For example it is possible to implant the belief that flight can be achieved without an aircraft. However it has rarely proved possible to implant this belief deeply enough to ensure that such flights were not of exceedingly short duration. Nevertheless such feats as fire-walking and obliviousness to extreme pain are sometimes achieved by this mechanism.
The sleight of mind which implants belief through ritual action is more powerful than any other weapon that humanity possesses, yet its influence is so pervasive that we seldom notice it. It makes religions, wars, cults and cultures possible. It has killed countless millions and created our personal and social realities. Those who understand how to use it on others can be messiahs or dictators, depending on their degree of personal myopia. Those who understand how to apply it to themselves have a jewel beyond price if they use it wisely; otherwise they tend to rapidly invoke their own Nemesis with it. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Kaos,#KEYS |
7:EVOCATION
Evocation is the art of dealing with magical beings or entities by various acts which create or contact them and allow one to conjure and command them with pacts and exorcism. These beings have a legion of names drawn from the demonology of many cultures: elementals, familiars, incubi, succubi, bud-wills, demons, automata, atavisms, wraiths, spirits, and so on. Entities may be bound to talismans, places, animals, objects, persons, incense smoke, or be mobile in the aether. It is not the case that such entities are limited to obsessions and complexes in the human mind. Although such beings customarily have their origin in the mind, they may be budded off and attached to objects and places in the form of ghosts, spirits, or "vibrations," or may exert action at a distance in the form of fetishes, familiars, or poltergeists. These beings consist of a portion of Kia or the life force attached to some aetheric matter, the whole of which may or may not be attached to ordinary matter.
Evocation may be further defined as the summoning or creation of such partial beings to accomplish some purpose. They may be used to cause change in oneself, change in others, or change in the universe. The advantages of using a semi-independent being rather than trying to effect a transformation directly by will are several: the entity will continue to fulfill its function independently of the magician until its life force dissipates. Being semi-sentient, it can adapt itself to a task in that a non-conscious simple spell cannot. During moments of the possession by certain entities the magician may be the recipient of inspirations, abilities, and knowledge not normally accessible to him.
Entities may be drawn from three sources - those which are discovered clairvoyantly, those whose characteristics are given in grimoires of spirits and demons, and those which the magician may wish to create himself.
In all cases establishing a relationship with the spirit follows a similar process of evocation. Firstly the attributes of the entity, its type, scope, name, appearance and characteristics must be placed in the mind or made known to the mind. Automatic drawing or writing, where a stylus is allowed to move under inspiration across a surface, may help to uncover the nature of a clairvoyantly discovered being. In the case of a created being the following procedure is used: the magician assembles the ingredients of a composite sigil of the being's desired attributes. For example, to create an elemental to assist him with divination, the appropriate symbols might be chosen and made into a sigil such as the one shown in figure 4.
A name and an image, and if desired, a characteristic number can also be selected for the elemental.
Secondly, the will and perception are focused as intently as possible (by some gnostic method) on the elemental's sigils or characteristics so that these take on a portion of the magician's life force and begin autonomous existence. In the case of preexisting beings, this operation serves to bind the entity to the magician's will.
This is customarily followed by some form of self-banishing, or even exorcism, to restore the magician's consciousness to normal before he goes forth.
An entity of a low order with little more than a singular task to perform can be left to fulfill its destiny with no further interference from its master. If at any time it is necessary to terminate it, its sigil or material basis should be destroyed and its mental image destroyed or reabsorbed by visualization. For more powerful and independent beings, the conjuration and exorcism must be in proportion to the power of the ritual which originally evoked them. To control such beings, the magicians may have to re-enter the gnostic state to the same depth as before in order to draw their power. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null, #KEYS |
*** WISDOM TROVE *** |
| 1:For language, as Richard Trench pointed out long ago, is often “wiser, not merely than the vulgar, but even than the wisest of those who speak it. Sometimes it locks up truths which were once well known, but have been forgotten. In other cases it holds the germs of truths which, though they were never plainly discerned, the genius of its framers caught a glimpse of in a happy moment of divination.” ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove |
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M *** |
| 1:Do not practice divination or seek omens. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 2:Divination is the ketchup of shamanism. ~ S Kelley Harrell M Div, #NFDB |
| 3:Bibliomancy: "Divination by jolly well Looking It Up. ~ Marilyn Johnson, #NFDB |
| 4:Divination is a means of telling ourselves what we already know. ~ Joanne Harris, #NFDB |
| 5:It’s never too early to think about the future, so I’d recommend Divination. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 6:Divination reflects a desire to know and control the future by removing uncertainty. ~ Soong Chan Rah, #NFDB |
| 7:My definition of divination is to see and know yourself with clarity, not see or know the future. Tarot ~ Benebell Wen, #NFDB |
8:And suddenly my precognition flared.
My divination magic might have been dulled but my reactions weren't. ~ Benedict Jacka,#NFDB |
| 9:That's what they should teach us here. How girls' brains work... It would be more useful than divination, anyway. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 10:That's what they should teach us here. How girls' brains work... It would be more useful than divination, anyway... ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 11:Penetration has an air of divination; it pleases our vanity more than any other quality of the mind. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB |
| 12:Divination is turning out to be much more trouble than I could have foreseen, never having studied the subject myself. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 13:A novel should be an act of divination by entrails, not a careful record of a game of pat-ball on some vicarage lawn! ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB |
| 14:Divination is one of the most imprecise branches of magic. I shall not conceal from you that I have very little patience with it. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 15:So requisite is the use of Astrology to the Arts of Divination, as it were the Key that opens the door of all their Mysteries. ~ Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, #NFDB |
| 16:A career in divination either meant one weathered the fits and starts, or fashioned fail-safes for consistent results and became a fraud. ~ Leanna Renee Hieber, #NFDB |
| 17:Divination of true nature. Of motivation. Of desirous hearts. I saw the whole world in a flash and I recognized it at once: We want what we want. ~ Jess Walter, #NFDB |
| 18:Divination was his least favorite subject, apart from Potions. Professor Trelawney kept predicting Harry’s death, which he found extremely annoying. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 19:That’s what they should teach us here, he thought, turning over on to his side, how girls’ brains work … it’d be more useful than Divination, anyway … ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 20:That’s what they should teach us here, he thought, turning over onto his side, how girls’ brains work . . . it’d be more useful than Divination anyway. . ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 21:eleven types of magic found in the real world that are in Harry Potter, including divination, outer-body experience, and traveling through space and time. ~ Melissa Anelli, #NFDB |
| 22:That’s what they should teach us here, he thought, turning over onto his side, how girls’ brains work . . . it’d be more useful than Divination anyway. . . . ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 23:The fathers who contrived and passed the Consititution were wise in their generation; as time passes, we come more and more to realize their powers of divination. ~ Learned Hand, #NFDB |
| 24:Now, everybody, I suppose, is aware that in recent years the silly business of divination by dreams has ceased to be a joke and has become a very serious science. ~ Arthur Machen, #NFDB |
| 25:Divination magic works by sensing probabilities. To me, potential futures appear as lines of light against the darkness - the brighter and more vivid, the more likely. ~ Benedict Jacka, #NFDB |
| 26:A tainted society has invented psychiatry to defend itself against the investigations of certain superior intellects whose faculties of divination would be troublesome. ~ Antonin Artaud, #NFDB |
| 27:Members of the Order take vows of literacy, obstinancy and bibliomancy. Bibliomancy? It's defined for us a little further down: "Divination by jolly well Looking It Up. ~ Marilyn Johnson, #NFDB |
| 28:Harry groaned, looking down. Divination was his least favorite subject, apart from Potions. Professor Trelawney kept predicting Harry’s death, which he found extremely annoying. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 29:Harry James Potter has achieved: Astronomy A Care of Magical Creatures E Charms E Defense Against the Dark Arts O Divination P Herbology E History of Magic D Potions E Transfiguration E ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 30:He is a stranger to the magical arts and divination and necromancy, to exorcisms and other analogous practices. He takes no part in the accomplishment of any prayer or religious ceremony. ~ Digha Nikaya, #NFDB |
| 31:If you knew enough Greek, she thought, you could assemble a word that meant divination via the pattern of grease left on a paper plate by broasted potatoes. But it would be a long word. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB |
| 32:If in any divination the Tenth Card should be a Court Card, it shews that the subject of the divination falls ultimately into the hands of a person represented by that card, and its end depends mainly on him. ~ A E Waite, #NFDB |
| 33:The gods always spoke ambivalently, and sometimes they even changed their minds in the middle of your asking them a question. Divination was a matter of ascertaining the future through inherently unreliable methods. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB |
| 34:The art of tea-leaf reading—or tasseomancy—is an ancient one. The practice spread from the Orient to Europe with the trade and consumption of tea. Of course, it borrows much from other ancient forms of divination. ~ Emily Arsenault, #NFDB |
| 35:Curiosity was first excited by fancy (and the fancy of primitive man... was far more active and vigorous than ours), and when it found itself baffled by a natural reaction, it had recourse to divination. ~ Encyclopedia Brittanica (1875), #NFDB |
| 36:Not only are magical texts among the oldest surviving pieces of literature, but many scholars and anthropologists suggest that it was the need to record spells and divination results that stimulated the very birth of writing. ~ Judika Illes, #NFDB |
| 37:It was the hushed daybreak of the Roman revelation in particular that he could usually best recover – the way that there above all, where the princes and popes had been before him, his divination of his faculty had gone to his head. He ~ Henry James, #NFDB |
| 38:The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld, #NFDB |
| 39:Somewhere in the world there must be a cult of divination centered on the interpretation of cranial sutures, but he couldn’t recall any from his Cultural Anthro classes. Papua New Guinea maybe. They were big into cranial curation there. ~ Scott Nicolay, #NFDB |
| 40:The whole world is an omen and a sign. Why look so wistfully in a corner? Man is the Image of God. Why run after a ghost or a dream? The voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste unheard, unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleatings of cattle. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB |
| 41:Professor Trelawney broke into hysterical sobs during Divination and announced to the startled class, and a very disapproving Umbridge, that Harry was not going to suffer an early death after all, but would live to a ripe old age, become Minister of Magic, and have twelve children. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
42:Divination is a mirror, reflecting what is here and here,” Kezia would tell her, pointing to Nettie’s heart and head. Nettie nodded like a solemn student.
“Whatever the cards show you, always trust the words that well inside you. The truth is waiting to be heard. Never doubt it. ~ Gwendolyn Womack,#NFDB |
| 43:Sybill Trelawney, Divination teacher,’” Harry read. “How’re we supposed to get up there?” As though in answer to his question, the trapdoor suddenly opened, and a silvery ladder descended right at Harry’s feet. Everyone got quiet. “After you,” said Ron, grinning, so Harry climbed the ladder first. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
44:So, Harry,' said Dumbledore quietly. "Before you got lost in my thoughts, you wanted to tell me something.'
'Yes,' said Harry. 'Professor - I was in Divination just now, and - er - I fell asleep.'
He hesitated here, wondering if a reprimand was coming, but Dumbledore merely said, 'Quite understandable. Continue. ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB |
| 45:The Astronomy theory paper on Wednesday morning went well enough. Harry was not convinced he had got the names of all Jupiter’s moons right, but was at least confident that none of them was inhabited by mice. They had to wait until evening for their practical Astronomy; the afternoon was devoted instead to Divination. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 46:I’ll use my divination and look into the future. Hey, you know what, I’m seeing the future right now. If I stand here and wait, then in three minutes a train’s going to come. And after that, another train’s going to come. Here, I’ll let you guess what’s going to happen afterwards. I’ll give you a hint—there’s a train. ~ Benedict Jacka, #NFDB |
| 47:Besides knowing which sacrifices, incantations or magical rituals to perform in order to appease deities or otherwise turn away evil (which could originate from the gods themselves or from demons), priests often practiced divination to sort out the variables, such as why the gods reacted as they did and what would placate them. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 48:The ancients could communicate with the gods in two ways. First, it was (and is) possible to go into a trance and visit the gods in their celestial retreats, as the great shamans have always done. More easily, and less dangerously, they could let the gods speak through code, that is, divination, using dice, entrails, bird patterns, yarrow sticks, cards. ~ Rachel Pollack, #NFDB |
| 49:Every instinct I had was shouting to stay away (...) I wasn't responsible for her and it wasn't my fault she was hurt. And she'd just tried to . . . actually I didn't know what she'd tried to do. My divination magic can only see what my own senses would perceive and all I could see down that path was darkness. For all I knew taking her hand would mean we'd both end up dead. ~ Benedict Jacka, #NFDB |
| 50:This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.War is god. ~ Cormac McCarthy, #NFDB |
| 51:When you need something to be true, you will look for patterns; you connect the dots like the stars of a constellation. Your brain abhors disorder. You see faces in clouds and demons in bonfires. Those who claim the powers of divination hijack these natural human tendencies. They know they can depend on you to use subjective validation in the moment and confirmation bias afterward. ~ David McRaney, #NFDB |
| 52:Ariovistus did not come to an engagement, he discovered this to be the reason--that among the Germans it was the custom for their matrons to pronounce from lots and divination whether it were expedient that the battle should be engaged in or not; that they had said, "that it was not the will of heaven that the Germans should conquer, if they engaged in battle before the new moon. ~ Gaius Julius Caesar, #NFDB |
| 53:Divination can only predict what can be predicted. Some things are truly random, or so close that it makes no difference (...) But there's another thing that can't be predetermined - thought. Free will is one of the points at which divination magic breaks downs. If a person hasn't made a choice, then no magic can see beyond it. You can see probabilities, but they're no more than guesses, wisps that fade as fast as they appear. ~ Benedict Jacka, #NFDB |
| 54:Divination is great for avoiding danger but it also lets you see every possible fate in vivid detail. In the process of dodging those shots, I'd seen exactly what would have happened if I hadn't dodged them and I'd gotten to watch myself torn apart by high-velocity bullets over and over again. It's gruesome and it's one hell of a mental shock if you're not prepared for it. I stuffed my hands into my pockets to stop them shaking. ~ Benedict Jacka, #NFDB |
| 55:Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology, phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of distant planets. This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway. ~ James J Kilpatrick, #NFDB |
| 56:A ‘true’ magic circle is the growing of ears to hear the stars and voices to speak the language of the dead. It is building nerve endings that let you caress the spines of demons. It is opening eyes that can see angels dancing between subatomic particles. It is having a portable research lab and postal address in this world and the next. Divination, enchantment, malefica, prayer. These all blur into the right action in the opportune moment. ~ Gordon White, #NFDB |
57:If I do I will secure for you ringside seats." Remus busies himself with looking busy. "Perhaps your future lies in the fine art of divination."
"Now that," Sirius says, "is a flat-out ridiculous waste of time."
"You're only saying that," Remus replies vaguely, "because you only ever see drapery in your crystal ball."
"The professor says they're veils," Sirius mutters. "There's no need to bring that rubbish up again, now is there. ~ Jaida Jones,#NFDB |
| 58:The Watchers spread out over all the land, claiming their peoples and unveiling secrets to the sons of men — dark occult secrets that humanity should never have known. They taught mankind the ways of sorcery and alchemy, incantations and the cutting of magical roots, casting of spells and the arts of divination, necromancy, and astrology. Elohim fast became a distant memory for mankind as they worshipped and served the creation instead of the Creator. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB |
| 59:All these delusions of Divination have their root and foundation from Astrology. For whether the lineaments of the body, countenance, or hand be inspected, whether dream or vision be seen, whether marking of entrails or mad inspiration be consulted, there must be a Celestial Figure first erected, by the means of whole indications, together with the conjectures of Signs and Similitudes, they endeavour to find out the truth of what is desired. ~ Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, #NFDB |
| 60:He used his intellect as he used his legs: to carry him somewhere else. He studied astrology, astronomy, botany, chemistry, numerology, fortification, divination, organ building, metallurgy, medicine, perspective, the kabbala, toxicology, philosophy, and jurisprudence. He kept his interest in anatomy and did a dissection whenever he could get hold of a body. He learned Arabic, Catalan, Polish, Icelandic, Basque, Hungarian, Romany, and demotic Greek. ~ Sylvia Townsend Warner, #NFDB |
| 61:The teachers were of course forbidden from mentioning the interview by Educational Decree Number Twenty-six, but they found ways to express their feelings about it all the same. [...] and Professor Trelawney broke into hysterical sobs during Divination and announced to the startled class, and a very disapproving Umbridge, that Harry was not going to suffer an early death after all, but would live to a ripe old age, become Minister for Magic and have twelve children ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 62:Host of heaven” was a term that referred to astronomical bodies that were also considered to be gods or members of the divine council.[8] The Encyclopedia Judaica notes that, “in many cultures the sky, the sun, the moon, and the known planets were conceived as personal gods. These gods were responsible for all or some aspects of existence. Prayers were addressed to them, offerings were made to them, and their opinions on important matters were sought through divination.”[9] ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB |
| 63:If Sybill Trelawney’s post as Divination teacher required her to predict danger, employment as the Care of Magical Creatures teacher put you right in the middle of it. Rubeus Hagrid adored the beasts in his care, from his forbidden dragon to his arachnid friend Aragog. The man in the job before Hagrid – Silvanus Kettleburn – also loved magical beasts. He also, presumably, loved having the full use of all his limbs – something he certainly did not have by the time he retired. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 64:Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB |
| 65:Because the future was a constantly changing thing. Ephemeral and entropic, meaning that it was impossible to predict with any type of accuracy, because the mere act of divination changed ones perception and thereby changed the predicted future. But it was possible to guide. To shepherd the future in a general direction. This was, and always had been, the unicorn’s purpose. Its sole purpose. And, although it knew not the intimate details of the coming future, it did know one thing for certain… It ~ Craig Zerf, #NFDB |
| 66:When the waiter brought the cheese-board, there was a large carrot carved in the shape of a mermaid sitting between the Dolcelatte and the Pecorino. Teo could have sworn that the carrot-mermaid flexed her tail and plunged her little hand inside a smelly Gorgonzola. 'Tyromancy, ye know,' remarked the mermaid. 'The Ancient Art of Divination by Cheese.' Then she pulled her tiny hand out and inspected the green cheese-mold on her tiny fingers. 'Lackaday!' she moaned. 'Stinking! It goes poorly for Venice and Teodora, it do! ~ Michelle Lovric, #NFDB |
| 67:The highest reach of science is, one may say, an inventive power, a faculty of divination, akin to the highest power exercised in poetry; therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterised by energy may well be eminent in science; and we have Newton. Shakspeare [sic] and Newton: in the intellectual sphere there can be no higher names. And what that energy, which is the life of genius, above everything demands and insists upon, is freedom; entire independence of all authority, prescription and routine, the fullest room to expand as it will. ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB |
| 68:The question that perplexed him was how to get back the something he had lost. That something lost to modern man, call it soul, call it harmony, call it God. By withdrawing from the world and giving himself up to the magic carpet of learning, he entered, as he said, the rose garden of knowledge, esoterica, dream divination and trance. With careful study he arrived at a simple observation, which is the analogy of opposites and from that he hit upon the idea of combining ancient medicine with modern science, a synthesis of old and new, the one enriched by the other. ~ Edna O Brien, #NFDB |
| 69:As an antidote I read Jung and Herman Hesse, and learned about the collective unconscious. Divination is a means of telling ourselves what we already know. What we fear. There are no demons but a collection of archetypes every civilization has in common. The fear of loss – Death. The fear of displacement – the Tower. The fear of transience – the Chariot. And yet Mother died. I put the cards away tenderly into their scented box. Goodbye, Mother. This is where our journey stops. This is where we stay to face whatever the wind brings us. I shall not read the cards again. ~ Joanne Harris, #NFDB |
| 70:Art and poetry cannot do without one another. Yet the two words are far from being synonymous. By Art I mean the creative or producing, work-making activity of the human mind. By Poetry I mean, not the particular art which consists in writing verses, but a process both more general and more primary: that intercommunication between the inner being of things and the inner being of the human Self which is a kind of divination (as was realized in ancient times; the Latin vates was both a poet and a diviner). Poetry, in this sense, is the secret life of each and all of the arts. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB |
| 71:Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius Tyaneus represents the latter as informing King Phraotes that "the Oneiropolists, or Interpreters of Visions, are wont never to interpret any vision till they have first enquired the time at which it befell; for, if it were early, and of the morning sleep, they then thought that they might make a good interpretation thereof... in that the soul was then fitted for divination, and disincumbered. But if in the first sleep, or near midnight, while the soul was as yet clouded and drowned in libations, they, being wise, refused to give any interpretation. ~ Anna Kingsford, #NFDB |
72:Jonathan Swift Somers
After you have enriched your soul
To the highest point,
With books, thought, suffering, the understanding of many personalities,
The power to interpret glances, silences,
The pauses in momentous transformations,
The genius of divination and prophecy;
So that you feel able at times to hold the world
In the hollow of your hand;
Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers
Into the compass of your soul,
Your soul takes fire,
And in the conflagration of your soul
The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear -Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision
Life does not fiddle.
~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB |
| 73:This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within his range, direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf, he can grow and become small; and he can at times vanish and come unknown. ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB |
| 74:They encouraged the public festivals which humanize the manners of the people. They managed the arts of divination, as a convenient instrument of policy; and they respected as the firmest bond of society, the useful persuasion, that, either in this or in a future life, the crime of perjury is most assuredly punished by the avenging gods.9 But whilst they acknowledged the general advantages of religion, they were convinced, that the various modes of worship contributed alike to the same salutary purposes; and that, in every country, the form of superstition, which had received the sanction of time and experience, was the best adapted to the climate, and to its inhabitants. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB |
75:Saichō's Prayer
So long as I have not attained the stage where my six faculties are pure, I will not venture out into the world.
So long as I have not realized the absolute, I will not acquire any special skills or arts (e.g. medicine, divination, calligraphy, etc.)
So long as I have not kept all the precepts purely, I will not participate in any lay donor's Buddhist meetings.
So long as I have not attained wisdom (lit. hannya 般若), I will not participate in worldly affairs unless it be to benefit others.
May any merit from my practice in the past, present and future be given not to me, but to all sentient beings so that they may attain supreme enlightenment. ~ Saichō,#NFDB |
76:Jump Rope
There is menace
in its relentless course, round and round,
describing an ellipsoid,
an airy prison in which a young girl
is incarcerated.
Whom will she marry? Whom will she love?
The rope, like a snake,
has the gift of divination,
yet reveals only a hint, a single initial.
But what if she never misses?
Is competence its own reward?
Will the rope never strike her ankle,
love's bite? The enders turn and turn,
two-handed as their arms tire,
their enchantments exhausted.
It hurts to watch her now,
flushed and scowling,
her will stronger than her limbs,
her braids lashing her shoulders
with each small success.
Submitted by Venus
~ Connie Wanek,#NFDB |
77:This is why a tainted society has invented psychiatry to defend itself against the investigations of certain superior intellects whose faculties of divination would be troublesome.
No, van Gogh was not mad, but his paintings were bursts of Greek fire, atomic bombs, whose angle of vision would have been capable of seriously upsetting the spectral conformity of the
bourgeoisie.
In comparison with the lucidity of van Gogh, psychiatry is no better than a den of apes who are themselves obsessed and persecuted and who possess nothing to mitigate the most appalling states of anguish and human suffocation but a ridiculous terminology. To a man, this whole gang of pected scoundrels and patented quacks are all erotomaniacs. ~ Antonin Artaud,#NFDB |
| 78:The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think. It’s an extraordinary declaration, asserting that the unknown need not be turned into the known through false divination or the projection of grim political or ideological narratives; it’s a celebration of darkness, willing – as that “I think” indicates—to be uncertain even about its own assertion. Most people are afraid of the dark. Literally when it comes to children, while many adults fear, above all, the darkness that is the unknown, the unseeable, the obscure. And yet the night in which distinctions and definitions cannot be readily made is the same night in which love is made, in which things merge, change, become enchanted, aroused, impregnated, possessed, released, renewed. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB |
| 79:Have you ever seen an anthill?" he said at last. "A machine of tiny marchers. Too much motion, you cannot make out the aims in it. But take something away from that anthill – a stone, a leaf, a dead caterpillar – and the ants scurry. You see which ones you have sabotaged, which ones are disturbed and scuttling to prop something in its place. That is what I do. That is kleptomancy. Divination by theft. Find something that is important, something on which you suspect many plans rely, and remove it. Then sit and watch. That’s why stealing you will help, even if you know nothing. Right now, the people who want to use you and the people who want you dead will be in a race to find you before the other does. People in a hurry often show their hand by mistake. ~ Frances Hardinge, #NFDB |
| 80:Imam Mawlūd mentions next the concept of divination and foreboding (taṭayyur). When the pre-Islamic Arabs needed to decide upon something, they would run toward a flock of birds. If the flock veered to the left, they took this to be a bad omen; if to the right, it was a good omen. Foreboding is blatant superstition. The Arabic word mutaṭayyir Arabic refers to someone who is a pessimist, who always sees the worst in any given situation. Imam Mawlūd says that superstition is lack of knowledge that everything belongs to God. All affairs are His. Having a good opinion of God produces a view of Him that is impregnable to negative thoughts and behaviors that thrive in the soil of disbelief. To hang on to superstitions is to have a negative understanding of the reality of God and His authority and presence. ~ Hamza Yusuf, #NFDB |
| 81:Even by Harry’s low standards in Divination, the exam went very badly. He might as well have tried to see moving pictures on the desktop as in the stubbornly blank crystal ball; he lost his head completely during tea-leaf reading, saying it looked to him as though Professor Marchbanks would shortly be meeting a round, dark, soggy stranger, and rounded off the whole fiasco by mixing up the life and head lines on her palm and informing her that she ought to have died the previous Tuesday. ‘Well, we were always going to fail that one,’ said Ron gloomily as they ascended the marble staircase. He had just made Harry feel rather better by telling him how he had told the examiner in detail about the ugly man with a wart on his nose in his crystal ball, only to look up and realise he had been describing his examiner’s reflection. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 82:Perhaps it is only in childhood that books have any deep influence on our lives. In later life we admire, we are entertained, we may modify some views we already hold, but we are more likely to find in books merely a confirmation of what it is in our minds already; as in a love affair it is our own features that we see reflected flatteringly back. But in childhood all books are books of divination, telling us about the future, and like the fortune teller who sees a long journey in the cards or death by water they influence the future. I suppose that is why books excited us so much. What do we ever get nowadays from reading to equal the excitement and the revelation in those first fourteen years? . . . It is in those early years that I would look for the crisis, the moment when life took a new slant in its journey towards death. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB |
83:Forecasting what a living creature will do is much harder. Free will is one of the points at which divination breaks down: if someone hasn't made a choice then no divination magic can see beyond it. You can see the branching futures, see the consequences of each, but the final decision is always theirs.
But while everyone has free will, one of the odd things you learn as a diviner is that not everyone actually uses it. A surprising number of people don't make choices, not most of the time anyway - they just react on predefined patterns until something happens to shake them out of it. A thoughtful person, though, someone who makes decisions based on what they hear and think and see - to a diviner's eye they look totally different. By looking at the shape of someone's futures, I can actually make a pretty good guess at what kind of person they are. ~ Benedict Jacka,#NFDB |
84:He hardly heard what Professor McGonagall was telling them about Animagi (wizards who could transform at will into animals), and wasn’t even watching when she transformed herself in front of their eyes into a tabby cat with spectacle markings around her eyes.
“Really, what has got into you all today?” said Professor McGonagall, turning back into herself with a faint pop, and staring around at them all. “Not that it matters, but that’s the first time my transformation’s not got applause from a class.”
Everybody’s heads turned toward Harry again, but nobody spoke. Then Hermione raised her hand. “Please, Professor, we’ve just had our first Divination class, and we were reading the tea leaves, and —”
“Ah, of course,” said Professor McGonagall, suddenly frowning. “There is no need to say any more, Miss Granger. Tell me, which of you will be dying this year? ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB |
| 85:He found Ron and Hermione in the Great Hall, already halfway through an early lunch. “I did it — well, kind of!” Ron told Harry enthusiastically when he caught sight of him. “I was supposed to be Apparating to outside Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop and I overshot it a bit, ended up near Scrivenshaft’s, but at least I moved!” “Good one,” said Harry. “How’d you do, Hermione?” “Oh, she was perfect, obviously,” said Ron, before Hermione could answer. “Perfect deliberation, divination, and desperation or whatever the hell it is — we all went for a quick drink in the Three Broomsticks after and you should’ve heard Twycross going on about her — I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t pop the question soon —” “And what about you?” asked Hermione, ignoring Ron. “Have you been up at the Room of Requirement all this time?” “Yep,” said Harry. “And guess who I ran into up there? Tonks!” “Tonks?” repeated Ron and Hermione together, ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
| 86:Attack the silence of Pythagoras, and the Orphic beans, and that preposterous brag, "Himself has spoken." Attack the "Ideas" of Plato, and the transbodiment and circulation of our souls, and the reminiscences, and the unlovely loves of lovely bodies, though directed to the beloved's soul. Attack the atheism of Epicurus, and his atoms, and his doctrine of pleasure, unworthy of a philosopher; or Aristotle's petty Providence, and his artificial system, and his discourses about the mortality of the soul, and the exclusively human focus his teaching. Attack the haughtiness of the Stoa, or the greed and vulgarity of the Cynic. Attack for me the emptiness that is full of absurdities - all that stuff about the gods and the sacrifices and the idols and the demons, whether beneficent or malignant, and all the tricks that people play with divination, the calling up of gods or of souls, and the power of stars. ~ Gregory of Nazianzus, #NFDB |
87:What You Should Know to be a Poet"
all you can know about animals as persons.
the names of trees and flowers and weeds.
the names of stars and the movements of planets
and the moon.
your own six senses, with a watchful elegant mind.
at least one kind of traditional magic:
divination, astrology, the book of changes, the tarot;
dreams.
the illusory demons and the illusory shining gods.
kiss the ass of the devil and eat sh*t;
fuck his horny barbed cock,
fuck the hag,
and all the celestial angels
and maidens perfum’d and golden-
& then love the human: wives husbands and friends
children’s games, comic books, bubble-gum,
the weirdness of television and advertising.
work long, dry hours of dull work swallowed and accepted
and lived with and finally lovd. exhaustion,
hunger, rest.
the wild freedom of the dance, extasy
silent solitary illumination, entasy
real danger. gambles and the edge of death. ~ Gary Snyder,#NFDB |
88:''He is a great spirit,151 Socrates. All spirits are intermediate between god and mortal''.
''What is the function of a spirit?'' I asked.
''Interpreting and conveying all that passes between gods and humans: from humans, petitions and sacrificial offerings, and from gods, instructions and the favours they return. Spirits, being intermediary, fill the space between the other two, so that all are bound together into one entity. It is by means of spirits that all divination can take place, the whole craft of seers and priests, with their sacrifices, rites and spells, and all prophecy and magic. Deity and humanity are completely separate, but through the mediation of spirits all converse and communication from gods to humans, waking and sleeping, is made possible. The man who is wise in these matters is a man of the spirit,152 whereas the man who is wise in a skill153 or a manual craft,154 which is a different sort of expertise, is materialistic.155 These spirits are many and of many kinds, and one of them is Love''. ~ Plato, Symposium, 202e,#NFDB |
| 89:Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and ignorance of the future—the doom of man upon this sphere, and for which he shews his antipathy by his love of life, his longing for abundance, and his craving curiosity to pierce the secrets of the days to come. The first has led many to imagine that they might find means to avoid death, or, failing in this, that they might, nevertheless, so prolong existence as to reckon it by centuries instead of units. From this sprang the search, so long continued and still pursued, for the elixir vitæ, or water of life, which has led thousands to pretend to it and millions to believe in it. From the second sprang the absurd search for the philosopher's stone, which was to create plenty by changing all metals into gold; and from the third, the false sciences of astrology, divination, and their divisions of necromancy, chiromancy, augury, with all their train of signs, portents, and omens. ~ Charles Mackay, #NFDB |
90:My shamans have read the sands. They have learned much of your future. (...)’
Gamet was scowling. ‘I do not wish to offend, Warchief, but I hold little faith in divination. No mortal—no god—can say we are doomed, or destined. The future remains unknown, the one thing we cannot force a pattern upon.’
(...)
‘Do you not see patterns in history, Fist? Are you blind to the cycles we all suffer through? Look upon this desert, this wasteland you cross. Yours is not the first empire that would claim it. And what of the tribes? Before the Khundryl, before the Kherahn Dhobri and the Tregyn, there were the Sanid, and the Oruth, and before them there were others whose names have vanished. Look upon the ruined cities, the old roads. The past is all patterns, and those patterns remain beneath our feet, even as the stars above reveal their own patterns—for the stars we gaze upon each night are naught but an illusion from the past.’ He raised the jug again and studied it for a moment. ‘Thus, the past lies beneath and above the present, Fist. This is the truth my shamans embrace, the bones upon which the future clings like muscle. ~ Steven Erikson,#NFDB |
91:The Colorful Rose
You are not troubled with solving enigmas
O, beautiful Rose! nor do you have sublime feelings in your heart
Though you ornament the assembly, still you flower apart
In life's assembly I am not permitted such comforts
In my garden I am the complete orchestra of longing
While your life is devoid of love's passionate warmth
To pluck you from the branch is not my custom
I am not blinded by mere appearances
O, colorful rose this hand is not your tormentor
I am no callous flower picker!
I am no intern to analyze you with scientific eyes
Like a lover, I see you with nightingales' eyes
Despite your innumerable tongues, you have chosen silence
What secrets, O Rose, lie concealed in your bosom?
Like me you're a leaf from the garden of Ñër
Far from the garden I am, far from the garden we both are
You are content, but I am a scattered fragrance
Pierced by the sword of love in my quest
This turmoil within me might be a means of fulfillment
This torment, a source of illumination
My frailty might be the beginning of strength
My envy might mirror the cup of divination
My constant vigil is a world-illuminating candle
And teaches this steed, the human intellect, to gallop
~ Allama Muhammad Iqbal,#NFDB |
| 92:I haven’t got a clue what this lot’s supposed to mean,” he said, staring down at a long list of calculations. “You know,” said Ron, whose hair was on end because of all the times he had run his fingers through it in frustration, “I think it’s back to the old Divination standby.” “What — make it up?” “Yeah,” said Ron, sweeping the jumble of scrawled notes off the table, dipping his pen into some ink, and starting to write. “Next Monday,” he said as he scribbled, “I am likely to develop a cough, owing to the unlucky conjunction of Mars and Jupiter.” He looked up at Harry. “You know her — just put in loads of misery, she’ll lap it up.” “Right,” said Harry, crumpling up his first attempt and lobbing it over the heads of a group of chattering first years into the fire. “Okay … on Monday, I will be in danger of — er — burns.” “Yeah, you will be,” said Ron darkly, “we’re seeing the skrewts again on Monday. Okay, Tuesday, I’ll … erm …” “Lose a treasured possession,” said Harry, who was flicking through Unfogging the Future for ideas. “Good one,” said Ron, copying it down. “Because of … erm … Mercury. Why don’t you get stabbed in the back by someone you thought was a friend?” “Yeah … cool …” said Harry, scribbling it down, “because … Venus is in the twelfth house.” “And on Wednesday, I think I’ll come off worst in a fight.” “Aaah, I was going to have a fight. Okay, I’ll lose a bet.” “Yeah, you’ll be betting I’ll win my fight. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB |
93:To prepare for Astral Magic a temple or series of temples needs to be erected on the plane of visualized imagination. Such temples can take any convenient form although some magicians prefer to work with an exact simulacrum of their physical temple. The astral temple is visualized in fine detail and should contain all the equipment required for ritual or at least cupboards where any required instruments can be found.
Any objects visualized into the temple should always remain there for subsequent inspection unless specifically dissolved or removed. The most important object in the temple is the magician's image of himself working in it. At first it may seem that he is merely manipulating a puppet of himself in the temple but with persistence this should give way to a feeling of actually being there. Before beginning Astral Magic proper, the required temple and instruments together with an image of the magician moving about in it should be built up by a repeated series of visualizations until all the details are perfect. Only when this is complete should the magician begin to use the temple. Each conjuration that is performed should be planned in advance with the same attention to detail as in Ritual Magic. The various acts of astral evocation, divination, enchantment, invocation and illumination take on a similar general form to the acts of Ritual Magic which the magician adapts for astral work. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Kaos [T2],#NFDB |
| 94:The mythological hero setting forth from his common-day hut or castle is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There, he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother battle, dragon battle, offering, charm) or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifiction). Beyond this threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamilir yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give him magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divination (apotheosis), or again - if the powers have remained unfriendly to him - his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft), intrinsically, it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformational flight). At the return threshold, the transcendental powers must remain behind;; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (resurrection, return). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir, eternal life). ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB |
95:But psychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology has arisen in Germany, carried on by experimental methods, asking of course every moment for introspective data, but eliminating their uncertainty by operating on a large scale and taking statistical means. This method taxes patience to the utmost, and could hardly have arisen in a country whose natives could be bored. Such Germans as Weber, Fechner, Vierordt, and Wundt obviously cannot ; and their success has brought into the field an array of younger experimental psychologists, bent on studying the elements of the mental life, dissecting them out from the gross results in which they are embedded, and as far as possible reducing them to quantitative scales. The simple and open method of attack having done what it can, the method of patience, starving out, and harassing to death is tried ; the Mind must submit to a regular siege, in which minute advantages gained night and day by the forces that hem her in must sum themselves up at last into her overthrow. There is little of the grand style about these new prism, pendulum, and chronograph-philosophers. They mean business, not chivalry. What generous divination, and that superiority in virtue which was thought by Cicero to give a man the best insight into nature, have failed to do, their spying and scraping, their deadly tenacity and almost diabolic cunning, will doubtless some day bring about.
No general description of the methods of experimental psychology would be instructive to one unfamiliar with the instances of their application, so we will waste no words upon the attempt. ~ William James,#NFDB |
96:The failure of Hellenism has been, largely, a matter of organization. Rome never tried to impose any sort of worship upon the countries it conquered and civilized; in fact, quite the contrary, Rome was eclectic. All religions were given an equal opportunity and even Isis—after some resistance—was worshipped at Rome. As a result we have a hundred important gods and a dozen mysteries. Certain rites are—or were—supported by the state because they involved the genius of Rome. But no attempt was ever made to coordinate the worship of Zeus on the Capitol with, let us say, the Vestals who kept the sacred fire in the old forum. As time passed our rites became, and one must admit it bluntly, merely form, a reassuring reminder of the great age of the city, a token gesture to the old gods who were thought to have founded and guided Rome from a village by the Tiber to world empire. Yet from the beginning, there were always those who mocked. A senator of the old Republic once asked an auger how he was able to get through a ceremony of divination without laughing. I am not so light-minded, though I concede that many of our rites have lost their meaning over the centuries; witness those temples at Rome where certain verses learned by rote are chanted year in and year out, yet no one, including the priests, knows what they mean, for they are in the early language of the Etruscans, long since forgotten.
As the religious forms of the state became more and more rigid and perfunctory, the people were drawn to the mystery cults, many of them Asiatic in origin. At Eleusis or in the various caves of Mithras, they were able to get a vision of what this life can be, as well as a foretaste of the one that follows. There are, then, three sorts of religious experiences. The ancient rites, which are essentially propitiatory. The mysteries, which purge the soul and allow us to glimpse eternity. And philosophy, which attempts to define not only the material world but to suggest practical ways to the good life, as well as attempting to synthesize (as Iamblichos does so beautifully) all true religion in a single comprehensive system. ~ Gore Vidal,#NFDB |
97:Countless books on divination, astrology, medicine and other subjects
Describe ways to read signs. They do add to your learning,
But they generate new thoughts and your stable attention breaks up.
Cut down on this kind of knowledge - that's my sincere advice.
You stop arranging your usual living space,
But make everything just right for your retreat.
This makes little sense and just wastes time.
Forget all this - that's my sincere advice.
You make an effort at practice and become a good and knowledgeable person.
You may even master some particular capabilities.
But whatever you attach to will tie you up.
Be unbiased and know how to let things be - that's my sincere advice.
You may think awakened activity means to subdue skeptics
By using sorcery, directing or warding off hail or lightning, for example.
But to burn the minds of others will lead you to lower states.
Keep a low profile - that's my sincere advice.
Maybe you collect a lot of important writings,
Major texts, personal instructions, private notes, whatever.
If you haven't practiced, books won't help you when you die.
Look at the mind - that's my sincere advice.
When you focus on practice, to compare understandings and experience,
Write books or poetry, to compose songs about your experience
Are all expressions of your creativity. But they just give rise to thinking.
Keep yourself free from intellectualization - that's my sincere advice.
In these difficult times you may feel that it is helpful
To be sharp and critical with aggressive people around you.
This approach will just be a source of distress and confusion for you.
Speak calmly - that's my sincere advice.
Intending to be helpful and without personal investment,
You tell your friends what is really wrong with them.
You may have been honest but your words gnaw at their heart.
Speak pleasantly - that's my sincere advice.
You engage in discussions, defending your views and refuting others'
Thinking that you are clarifying the teachings.
But this just gives rise to emotional posturing.
Keep quiet - that's my sincere advice.
You feel that you are being loyal
By being partial to your teacher, lineage or philosophical tradition.
Boosting yourself and putting down others just causes hard feelings.
Have nothing to do with all this - that's my sincere advice.
~ Longchenpa, excerpts from 30 Pieces of Sincere Advice
,#NFDB |
| 98:Red: Maintaining health, bodily strength, physical energy, sex, passion, courage, protection, and defensive magic. This is the color of the element of fire. Throughout the world, red is associated with life and death, for this is the color of blood spilled in both childbirth and injury. Pink: Love, friendship, compassion, relaxation. Pink candles can be burned during rituals designed to improve self-love. They’re ideal for weddings and for all forms of emotional union. Orange: Attraction, energy. Burn to attract specific influences or objects. Yellow: Intellect, confidence, divination, communication, eloquence, travel, movement. Yellow is the color of the element of air. Burn yellow candles during rituals designed to heighten your visualization abilities. Before studying for any purpose, program a yellow candle to stimulate your conscious mind. Light the candle and let it burn while you study. Green: Money, prosperity, employment, fertility, healing, growth. Green is the color of the element of earth. It’s also the color of the fertility of the earth, for it echoes the tint of chlorophyll. Burn when looking for a job or seeking a needed raise. Blue: Healing, peace, psychism, patience, happiness. Blue is the color of the element of water. This is also the realm of the ocean and of all water, of sleep, and of twilight. If you have trouble sleeping, charge a small blue candle with a visualization of yourself sleeping through the night. Burn for a few moments before you get into bed, then extinguish its flame. Blue candles can also be charged and burned to awaken the psychic mind. Purple: Power, healing severe diseases, spirituality, meditation, religion. Purple candles can be burned to enhance all spiritual activities, to increase your magical power, and as a part of intense healing rituals in combination with blue candles. White: Protection, purification, all purposes. White contains all colors. It’s linked with the moon. White candles are specifically burned during purification and protection rituals. If you’re to keep but one candle on hand for magical purposes, choose a white one. Before use, charge it with personal power and it’ll work for all positive purposes. Black: Banishing negativity, absorbing negativity. Black is the absence of color. In magic, it’s also representative of outer space. Despite what you may have heard, black candles are burned for positive purposes, such as casting out baneful energies or to absorb illnesses and nasty habits. Brown: Burned for spells involving animals, usually in combination with other colors. A brown candle and a red candle for animal protection, brown and blue for healing, and so on. ~ Scott Cunningham, #NFDB |
99:Glorious France
You have become a forge of snow-white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
They pass through meteor changes with a song
Which to all islands and all continents
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child,
Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme
Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths
Of seventy years.
These are not all of life,
O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder
Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead
Clog the ensanguined ice. But life to these
Prophetic and enraptured souls in vision,
And the keen ecstasy of faded strife,
And divination of the loss as gain,
And reading mysteries with brightened eyes
In fiery shock and dazzling pain before
The orient splendour of the face of Death,
As a great light beside a shadowy sea;
And in a high will's strenuous exercise,
Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength
And is no more afraid, and in the stroke
Of azure lightning when the hidden essence
And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth
And mystical significance in time
Are instantly distilled to one clear drop
Which mirrors earth and heaven.
This is life
Flaming to heaven in a minute's span
When the breath of battle blows the smouldering spark.
And across these seas
We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling
137
To cities, happiness, or daily toil
For daily bread, or trail the long routine
Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine
Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup
Empty and ringing by the finished feast;
Or have it shaken from your hand by sight
Of God against the olive woods.
As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees
With sacred joy first heard the voices, then
Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field
Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire,
Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived
The dream and known the meaning of the dream,
And read its riddle: how the soul of man
May to one greatest purpose make itself
A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup
Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall
Turns sweet to soul's surrender.
And you say:
Take days for repitition, stretch your hands
For mocked renewal of familiar things:
The beaten path, the chair beside the window,
The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep,
And waking to the task, or many springs
Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields The prison-house grows close no less, the feast
A place of memory sick for senses dulled
Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time
Grown weary cries Enough!
~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB |
100:O Glorious France
You have become a forge of snow-white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
They pass through meteor changes with a song
Which to all islands and all continents
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child,
Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme
Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths
Of seventy years.
These are not all of life,
O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder
Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead
Clog the ensanguined ice. But life to these
Prophetic and enraptured souls in vision,
And the keen ecstasy of faded strife,
And divination of the loss as gain,
And reading mysteries with brightened eyes
In fiery shock and dazzling pain before
The orient splendour of the face of Death,
As a great light beside a shadowy sea;
And in a high will's strenuous exercise,
Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength
And is no more afraid, and in the stroke
Of azure lightning when the hidden essence
And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth
And mystical significance in time
Are instantly distilled to one clear drop
Which mirrors earth and heaven.
This is life
Flaming to heaven in a minute's span
When the breath of battle blows the smouldering spark.
And across these seas
We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling
232
To cities, happiness, or daily toil
For daily bread, or trail the long routine
Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine
Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup
Empty and ringing by the finished feast;
Or have it shaken from your hand by sight
Of God against the olive woods.
As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees
With sacred joy first heard the voices, then
Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field
Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire,
Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived
The dream and known the meaning of the dream,
And read its riddle: how the soul of man
May to one greatest purpose make itself
A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup
Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall
Turns sweet to soul's surrender.
And you say:
Take days for repitition, stretch your hands
For mocked renewal of familiar things:
The beaten path, the chair beside the window,
The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep,
And waking to the task, or many springs
Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields -The prison-house grows close no less, the feast
A place of memory sick for senses dulled
Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time
Grown weary cries Enough!
~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB |
101:Retroduction To American History
Cats walk the floor at midnight; that enemy of fog,
The moon, wraps the bedpost in receding stillness; sleep
Collects all weary nothings and lugs away the towers,
The pinnacles of dust that feed the subway.
What stiff unhappy silence waits on sleep
Struts like an officer; tongues next-door bewitch
Themselves with divination; I like a melancholy oaf
Beg the nightly pillow with impossible loves.
And abnegation folds hands, crossed like the knees
Of the complacent tailor, stitches cloaks of mercy
To the backs of obsessions.
Winter like spring no less
Tolerates the air; the wild pheasant meets innocently
The gun; night flouts illumination with meagre impudence.
In such serenity of equal fates, why has Narcissus
Urged the brook with questions? Merged with the element
Speculation suffuses the meadow with drops to tickle
The cow's gullet; grasshoppers drink the rain.
Antiquity breached mortality with myths.
Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates
A cornice on the Third National Bank. Vocabulary
Becomes confusion, decoration a blight; the Parthenon
In ..Tennessee stucco, art for the sake of death. Now
(The bedpost receding in stillness) you brush your teeth
'Hitting on all thirty-two;' scholarship pares
The nails of Catullus, sniffs his sheets, restores
His 'passionate underwear;' morality disciplines the other
Person; every son-of-a-bitch is Christ, at least Rousseau;
Prospero serves humanity in steam-heated universities, three
Thousand dollars a year. Simplicity, Flamineo, is obscene;
Sunlight topples indignant from the hill.
In every railroad station everywhere every lover
Waits for his train. He cannot hear. The smoke
Thickens. Ticket in hand, he pumps his body
Toward lower six, for one more terse ineffable trip,
His very eyeballs fixed in disarticulation. The berth
Is clean; no elephants, vultures, mice or spiders
59
Distract him from nonentity: his metaphors are dead.
More sanitation is enough, enough remains: dreams
Do not end lucidities beyond the stint of thought.
For intellect is a mansion where waste is without drain;
A corpse is your bedfellow, your great-grandfather dines
With you this evening on a cavalry horse. Intellect
Connives with heredity, creates fate as Euclid geometry
By definition:
The sunlit bones in your house
Are immortal in the titmouse,
They trip the feet of grandma
Like an afterthought each day.
These unseen sunlit bones,
They may be in the cat
That startles them in grandma
But look at this or that
They meet you every way.
For Pelops' and Tantalus' successions were at once simpler,
If perplexed, and less subtle than you think. Heredity
Proposes love, love exacts language, and we lack
Language. When shall we speak again? When shall
The sparrow dusting the gutter sing? When shall
This drift with silence meet the sun? When shall I wake?
~ Allen Tate,#NFDB |
102:SLEIGHT OF MIND IN ILLUMINATION
Only those forms of illumination which lead to useful behaviour changes deserve to be known as such. When I hear the word "spirituality", I tend to reach for a loaded wand. Most professionally spiritual people are vile and untrustworthy when off duty, simply because their beliefs conflict with basic drives and only manage to distort their natural behaviour temporarily. The demons then come screaming up out of the cellar at unexpected moments.
When selecting objectives for illumination, the magician should choose forms of self improvement which can be precisely specified and measured and which effect changes of behaviour in his entire existence. Invocation is the main tool in illumination, although enchantment where spells are cast upon oneselves and divination to seek objectives for illumination may also find some application.
Evocation can sometimes be used with care, but there is no point in simply creating an entity that is the repository of what one wishes were true for oneself in general. This is a frequent mistake in religion. Forms of worship which create only entities in the subconscious are inferior to more wholehearted worship, which, at its best, is pure invocation. The Jesuits "Imitation of Christ" is more effective than merely praying to Jesus for example.
Illumination proceeds in the same general manner as invocation, except that the magician is striving to effect specific changes to his everyday behaviour, rather than to create enhanced facilities that can be drawn upon for particular purposes. The basic technique remains the same, the required beliefs are identified and then implanted in the subconscious by ritual or other acts. Such acts force the subconscious acquisition of the beliefs they imply.
Modest and realistic objectives are preferable to grandiose schemes in illumination.
One modifies the behaviour and beliefs of others by beginning with only the most trivial demands. The same applies to oneselves. The magician should beware of implanting beliefs whose expression cannot be sustained by the human body or the environment. For example it is possible to implant the belief that flight can be achieved without an aircraft. However it has rarely proved possible to implant this belief deeply enough to ensure that such flights were not of exceedingly short duration. Nevertheless such feats as fire-walking and obliviousness to extreme pain are sometimes achieved by this mechanism.
The sleight of mind which implants belief through ritual action is more powerful than any other weapon that humanity possesses, yet its influence is so pervasive that we seldom notice it. It makes religions, wars, cults and cultures possible. It has killed countless millions and created our personal and social realities. Those who understand how to use it on others can be messiahs or dictators, depending on their degree of personal myopia. Those who understand how to apply it to themselves have a jewel beyond price if they use it wisely; otherwise they tend to rapidly invoke their own Nemesis with it. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Kaos,#NFDB |
103:Verses Inspired By 'My Old Black Pipe'
Aye ! Many a sport old Homer names.
By Achilles held ' at his little games ',
On the banks of the swift Scamander ;
And Pindar sings the Olympian deeds
Of the ivory car and the milk-white steeds
Of Catullus or Lysander.
How clouds of dust aloft were spurn'd
By wheels that grazed the goals as they turn'd
Till the bright sparks flicker'd redly ;
How the strains of mingled mirth and fury,
That swell'd in the chant of ' Morituri ',
Proclaimed when the sports were deadly.
Ah ! little we cared for classic lore,
When Greek was a task and Latin a bore,
In school-days that are deemed of yore ;
And who will venture to chide us,
If better we loved the play-field green,
And the black-thorn hedge that served as a screen
In the mills that settled our boyish spleen,
From the tutor's eyes to hide us ?
Who envies the bygone days of old ?
They never were half so good as we're told ;
Their loss is not worth bewailing.
We have seen young Camel's slashing stride,
And Archer's rush, and Mormon's pride ;
And the deer-like bound of Ingleside,
At ' five-foot-three ' of a paling.
We've seen how the side of Falcon bled,
And the hopes of Arinna's backers fled
When the Rose of Denmark shot ahead,
And never again they caught her.
How false were the shouts of ' Barwon's first ! '
When she came 'from the distance home' with a burst,
And the favourite's friends devoutly cursed
Old Premier's gamest daughter.
314
What cheers for King Alfred's white-faced son
Were heard when the Western chase was done,
And the judge's verdict given ;
While Vandyke fell in the beaten ranks,
And the red spots showed on the mare's great flanks
How vainly the steel was driven.
And with anxious longing we wait the day,
When the prads must strip for the coming fray,
To be criticized in rotation ;
But to spot the winner we well not try,
For a mist obscures our mental eye,
And we have not the power of prophecy,
Nor the spirit of divination.
Yet in fancy's glass we may scan the course,
And hear the bookmaker's challenge hoarse,
The odds incessantly dunning ;
We may watch the starter's signal fall,
And the nags may picture, one and all,
For a Cup in a cluster running.
And mark, as they sweep before the stand
How Ebor is going well in hand,
And Banker is pulling double ;
How longer each moment grows the tail,
As one by one the outsiders fail,
To get into grief and trouble.
How Trainor pulls out of Waldock's track,
And Morrison steadies the Caulfield crack,
While up on the right comes the rose and black
Like an eagle that scents the plunder ;
How round the turn they jostle and crush,
And Simpson clears his whip for a rush,
And then on the crowd comes a lull and a hush
And then a roar like thunder.
And when Beaufort collars the Western pet,
Then Greek meets Greek, unconquered yet,
And the tug of war commences ;
315
As stride for stride, with the stoke of one,
Like greyhounds running with couples on
Together they fly their fences.
There ' Vates ' and ' Rhyming Richard ' too,
Can tell much better than I or you
What nags are likely the trick to do,
Nor will I their judgement sneer at ;
If the gift of second sight were mine,
I'd make a fortune, and then ' I'd shine ',
But I haven't got it, and so I'll sign
' Qui Meruit Palmam Ferat '.
~ Adam Lindsay Gordon,#NFDB |
| 104:Controversy remains about what kind of ceremony is carried out in Ge 15:9–21. What/whom do the pieces represent (possibilities: sacrifice for oath, God if he reneges, nations already as good as dead, Israelites in slavery)? Whom do the birds of prey represent (nations seeking to seize available land, e.g., Ge 14, or to plunder Israel)? Whom do the implements represent (God and/or Abram)? These issues cannot currently be resolved, but a few observations can help identify some of the possible connections with the ancient world. Before we look at the options, a word is in order about what this is not. 1. It is not a sacrifice. There is no altar, no offering of the animals to deity and no ritual with the carcasses, the meat or the blood. 2. It is not divination. The entrails are not examined and no meal is offered to deity. 3. It is not an incantation. No words are spoken to accompany the ritual and no efficacy is sought—Abram is asleep. The remaining options are based on where animals are ritually slaughtered in the ancient world when it is not for the purposes of sacrifice, divination or incantation. Option 1: A covenant ceremony or, more specifically, a royal land grant ceremony. In this case the animals typically are understood as substituting for the participants or proclaiming a self-curse if the stipulations are violated. Examples of the slaughter of animals in such ceremonies but not for sacrificial purposes are numerous. In tablets from Alalakh, the throat of a lamb is slit in connection to a deed executed between Abba-El and Yarimlim. In a Mari text, the head of a donkey is cut off when sealing a formal agreement. In an Aramaic treaty of Sefire, a calf is cut in two with the explicit statement that such will be the fate of the one who breaks the treaty. In Neo-Assyrian literature, the head of a spring lamb is cut off in a treaty between Ashurnirari V and Mati’ilu, not for sacrifice but explicitly as an example of punishment. The strength of these examples lies in the contextual connection to covenant. The weakness is that only one animal is killed in these examples, and there is no passing through the pieces and no torch and firepot. Furthermore, there are significant limitations regarding the efficacy of a divine self-curse. Option 2: Purification. The “torch” (Ge 15:17) is a portable, handheld object for bringing light. The “smoking firepot” (15:17) can refer to a number of different vessels used to heat things (e.g., an oven for food, a kiln for pottery). Here the two items are generally assumed to be associated with God, but need not be symbolic representations of him. These implements are occasionally used symbolically to represent deities in ancient Near Eastern literature, but usually sun-gods (e.g., Shamash) or fire-gods (e.g., Girru/Gibil). Gibil and Kusu are often invoked together as divine torch and censer in a wide range of cultic ceremonies for purification. Abram would have probably been familiar with the role of Gibil and Kusu in purification rituals, so that function would be plausibly communicated to him by the presence of these implements. Yet in a purification role, neither the torch nor the censer ever pass between the pieces of cut-up animals in the literature available to us. Further weakness is in the fact that Yahweh doesn’t need purification and Abram is a spectator, not a participant, so neither does he. In the Mesopotamian Hymn to Gibil (the torch), the god purifies the objects used in the ritual, but the only objects in the ritual in Ge 15 are the dead animals, and it is difficult to understand why they would need to be purified. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
105:EVOCATION
Evocation is the art of dealing with magical beings or entities by various acts which create or contact them and allow one to conjure and command them with pacts and exorcism. These beings have a legion of names drawn from the demonology of many cultures: elementals, familiars, incubi, succubi, bud-wills, demons, automata, atavisms, wraiths, spirits, and so on. Entities may be bound to talismans, places, animals, objects, persons, incense smoke, or be mobile in the aether. It is not the case that such entities are limited to obsessions and complexes in the human mind. Although such beings customarily have their origin in the mind, they may be budded off and attached to objects and places in the form of ghosts, spirits, or "vibrations," or may exert action at a distance in the form of fetishes, familiars, or poltergeists. These beings consist of a portion of Kia or the life force attached to some aetheric matter, the whole of which may or may not be attached to ordinary matter.
Evocation may be further defined as the summoning or creation of such partial beings to accomplish some purpose. They may be used to cause change in oneself, change in others, or change in the universe. The advantages of using a semi-independent being rather than trying to effect a transformation directly by will are several: the entity will continue to fulfill its function independently of the magician until its life force dissipates. Being semi-sentient, it can adapt itself to a task in that a non-conscious simple spell cannot. During moments of the possession by certain entities the magician may be the recipient of inspirations, abilities, and knowledge not normally accessible to him.
Entities may be drawn from three sources - those which are discovered clairvoyantly, those whose characteristics are given in grimoires of spirits and demons, and those which the magician may wish to create himself.
In all cases establishing a relationship with the spirit follows a similar process of evocation. Firstly the attributes of the entity, its type, scope, name, appearance and characteristics must be placed in the mind or made known to the mind. Automatic drawing or writing, where a stylus is allowed to move under inspiration across a surface, may help to uncover the nature of a clairvoyantly discovered being. In the case of a created being the following procedure is used: the magician assembles the ingredients of a composite sigil of the being's desired attributes. For example, to create an elemental to assist him with divination, the appropriate symbols might be chosen and made into a sigil such as the one shown in figure 4.
A name and an image, and if desired, a characteristic number can also be selected for the elemental.
Secondly, the will and perception are focused as intently as possible (by some gnostic method) on the elemental's sigils or characteristics so that these take on a portion of the magician's life force and begin autonomous existence. In the case of preexisting beings, this operation serves to bind the entity to the magician's will.
This is customarily followed by some form of self-banishing, or even exorcism, to restore the magician's consciousness to normal before he goes forth.
An entity of a low order with little more than a singular task to perform can be left to fulfill its destiny with no further interference from its master. If at any time it is necessary to terminate it, its sigil or material basis should be destroyed and its mental image destroyed or reabsorbed by visualization. For more powerful and independent beings, the conjuration and exorcism must be in proportion to the power of the ritual which originally evoked them. To control such beings, the magicians may have to re-enter the gnostic state to the same depth as before in order to draw their power. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null, #Tulpa #Servitor #Thoughtform,#NFDB |
| 106:And barbarians were inventors not only of philosophy, but almost of every art. The Egyptians were the first to introduce astrology among men. Similarly also the Chaldeans. The Egyptians first showed how to burn lamps, and divided the year into twelve months, prohibited intercourse with women in the temples, and enacted that no one should enter the temples from a woman without bathing. Again, they were the inventors of geometry. There are some who say that the Carians invented prognostication by the stars. The Phrygians were the first who attended to the flight of birds. And the Tuscans, neighbours of Italy, were adepts at the art of the Haruspex. The Isaurians and the Arabians invented augury, as the Telmesians divination by dreams. The Etruscans invented the trumpet, and the Phrygians the flute. For Olympus and Marsyas were Phrygians. And Cadmus, the inventor of letters among the Greeks, as Euphorus says, was a Phoenician; whence also Herodotus writes that they were called Phoenician letters. And they say that the Phoenicians and the Syrians first invented letters; and that Apis, an aboriginal inhabitant of Egypt, invented the healing art before Io came into Egypt. But afterwards they say that Asclepius improved the art. Atlas the Libyan was the first who built a ship and navigated the sea. Kelmis and Damnaneus, Idaean Dactyli, first discovered iron in Cyprus. Another Idaean discovered the tempering of brass; according to Hesiod, a Scythian. The Thracians first invented what is called a scimitar (arph), -- it is a curved sword, -- and were the first to use shields on horseback. Similarly also the Illyrians invented the shield (pelth). Besides, they say that the Tuscans invented the art of moulding clay; and that Itanus (he was a Samnite) first fashioned the oblong shield (qureos). Cadmus the Phoenician invented stonecutting, and discovered the gold mines on the Pangaean mountain. Further, another nation, the Cappadocians, first invented the instrument called the nabla, and the Assyrians in the same way the dichord. The Carthaginians were the first that constructed a triterme; and it was built by Bosporus, an aboriginal. Medea, the daughter of Æetas, a Colchian, first invented the dyeing of hair. Besides, the Noropes (they are a Paeonian race, and are now called the Norici) worked copper, and were the first that purified iron. Amycus the king of the Bebryci was the first inventor of boxing-gloves. In music, Olympus the Mysian practised the Lydian harmony; and the people called Troglodytes invented the sambuca, a musical instrument. It is said that the crooked pipe was invented by Satyrus the Phrygian; likewise also diatonic harmony by Hyagnis, a Phrygian too; and notes by Olympus, a Phrygian; as also the Phrygian harmony, and the half-Phrygian and the half-Lydian, by Marsyas, who belonged to the same region as those mentioned above. And the Doric was invented by Thamyris the Thracian. We have heard that the Persians were the first who fashioned the chariot, and bed, and footstool; and the Sidonians the first to construct a trireme. The Sicilians, close to Italy, were the first inventors of the phorminx, which is not much inferior to the lyre. And they invented castanets. In the time of Semiramis queen of the Assyrians, they relate that linen garments were invented. And Hellanicus says that Atossa queen of the Persians was the first who composed a letter. These things are reported by Seame of Mitylene, Theophrastus of Ephesus, Cydippus of Mantinea also Antiphanes, Aristodemus, and Aristotle and besides these, Philostephanus, and also Strato the Peripatetic, in his books Concerning Inventions. I have added a few details from them, in order to confirm the inventive and practically useful genius of the barbarians, by whom the Greeks profited in their studies. And if any one objects to the barbarous language, Anacharsis says, "All the Greeks speak Scythian to me." [...] ~ Clement of Alexandria, #NFDB |
107:The Givers Of Life
I.
WHO called us forth out of darkness and gave us the gift of life,
Who set our hands to the toiling, our feet in the field of strife?
Darkly they mused, predestined to knowledge of viewless things,
Sowing the seed of wisdom, guarding the living springs.
Little they reckoned privation, hunger or hardship or cold,
If only the life might prosper, and the joy that grows not old.
With sorceries subtler than music, with knowledge older than speech,
Gentle as wind in the wheat-field, strong as the tide on the beach,
Out of their beauty and longing, out of their raptures and tears,
In patience and pride they bore us, to war with the warring years.
2.
Who looked on the world before them, and summoned and chose our sires,
Subduing the wayward impulse to the will of their deep desires?
Sovereigns of ultimate issues under the greater laws,
Theirs was the mystic mission of the eternal cause;
Confident, tender, courageous, leaving the low for the higher,
Lifting the feet of the nations out of the dust and the mire;
Luring civilization on to the fair and new,
Given God's bidding to follow, having God's business to do.
3.
Who strengthened our souls with courage, and taught us the ways of Earth?
Who gave us our patterns of beauty, our standards of flawless worth?
Mothers, unmilitant, lovely, moulding our manhood then,
Walked in their woman's glory, swaying the might of men.
They schooled us to service and honor, modest and clean and fair, —
The code of their worth of living, taught with the sanction of prayer.
They were our sharers of sorrow, they were our makers of joy,
Lighting the lamp of manhood in the heart of the lonely boy.
Haloed with love and with wonder, in sheltered ways they trod,
Seers of sublime divination, keeping the truce of God.
4.
Who called us from youth and dreaming, and set ambition alight,
And made us fit for the contest, —men, by their tender rite?
Sweethearts above our merit, charming our strength and skill
To be the pride of their loving, to be the means of their will.
If we be the builders of beauty, if we be the masters of art,
Theirs were the gleaming ideals, theirs the uplift of the heart.
Truly they measure the lightness of trappings and ease and fame,
165
For the teeming desire of their yearning is ever and ever the same:
To crown their lovers with gladness, to clothe their sons with delight,
And see the men of their making lords in the best man's right.
Lavish of joy and labor, broken only by wrong,
These are the guardians of being, spirited, sentient and strong.
Theirs is the starry vision, theirs the inspiriting hope,
Since Night, the brooding enchantress, promised that day should ope.
5.
Lo, we have built and invented, reasoned, discovered and planned,
To rear us a palace of splendor, and make us a heaven by hand.
We are shaken with dark misgiving, as kingdoms rise and fall;
But the women who went to found them are never counted at all.
Versed in the soul's traditions, skilled in humanity's lore,
They wait for their crown of rapture, and weep for the sins of war.
And behold they turn from our triumphs, as it was in the first of days,
For a little heaven of ardor and a little heartening of praise.
These are the rulers of kingdoms beyond the domains of state,
Martyrs of all men's folly, over-rulers of fate.
These we will love and honor, these we will serve and defend,
Fulfilling the pride of nature, till nature shall have an end.
6.
This is the code unwritten, this is the creed we hold,
Guarding the little and lonely, gladdening the helpless and old,—
Apart from the brunt of the battle our wondrous women shall bide,
For the sake of a tranquil wisdom and the need of a spirit's guide.
Come they into assembly, or keep they another door,
Our makers of life shall lighten the days as the years of yore.
The lure of their laughter shall lead us, the lilt of their words shall sway.
Though life and death should defeat us, their solace shall be our stay.
Veiled in mysterious beauty, vested in magical grace,
They have walked with angels at twilight and looked upon glory's face.
Life we will give for their safety, care for their fruitful ease,
Though we break at the toiling benches or go down in the smoky seas.
This is the gospel appointed to govern a world of men,
Till love has died, and the echoes have whispered the last Amen.
~ Bliss William Carman,#NFDB |
108:The Falls Of The Chaudiere, Ottawa
I have laid my cheek to Nature's, placed my puny hand in hers,
Felt a kindred spirit warming all the life-blood of my face,
Moved amid the very foremost of her truest worshippers,
Studying each curve of beauty, marking every minute grace;
Loved not less the mountain cedar than the flowers at its feet,
Looking skyward from the valley, open-lipped as if in prayer,
Felt a pleasure in the brooklet singing of its wild retreat,
But I knelt before the splendour of the thunderous Chaudiere.
All my manhood waked within me, every nerve had tenfold force,
And my soul stood up rejoicing, looking on with cheerful eyes,
Watching the resistless waters speeding on their downward course,
Titan strength and queenly beauty diademed with rainbow dyes.
Eye and ear, with spirit quickened, mingled with the lovely strife,
Saw the living Genius shrined within her sanctuary fair,
Heard her voice of sweetness singing, peered into her hidden life,
And discerned the tuneful secret of the jubilant Chaudiere:
'Within my pearl-roofed shell,
Whose floor is woven with the iris bright,
Genius and Queen of the Chaudiere I dwell,
As in a world of immaterial light.
My throne, an ancient rock,
Marked by the foot of ages long-departed,
My joy, the cataract's stupendous shock,
Whose roll is music to the grateful-hearted.
I've seen the eras glide
With muffled tread to their eternal dreams,
While I have lived in vale and mountain side,
With leaping torrents and sweet purling streams.
The Red-Man's active life;
His love, pride, passions, courage, and great deeds;
His perfect freedom, and his thirst for strife;
His swift revenge, at which the memory bleeds:
The sanguinary years,
141
When sullen Terror, like a raging Fate,
Swept down the stately tribes like slaughtered deers,
And war and hatred joined to decimate
The remnants of the race,
And spread decay through centuries of painNo more I mark their sure, avenging pace,
And forests wave where war-whoops shook the plain.
Their deeds I envied not.
The royal tyrant on his purple throne,
I, in secluded grove or shady grot,
Had purer joys than he had ever known,
God made the ancient hills,
The valleys and the solemn wildernesses,
The merry-hearted and melodious rills,
And strung with diamond dews the pine-trees' tresses;
But man's hand built the palace,
And he that reigns therein is simply man;
Man turns God's gifts to poison in the chalice
That brimmed with nectar in the primal plan.
Here I abide aloneThe wild Chaudiere's eternal jubilee
Has such sweet divination in its tone,
And utters nature's truest prophecy
In thunderings of zeal!
I've seen the Atheist in terror start,
Awed to contrition by the strong appeal
That waked conviction in his doubting heart:
'Teachers speak throughout all nature,
From the womb of Silence born,
Heed ye not their words, O Scoffer?
Flinging back thy scorn with scorn!
To the desert spring that leapeth,
Pulsing, from the parched sod,
Points the famished trav'ler, saying'Brothers, here, indeed, is God!'
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From the patriarchal fountains,
Sending forth their tribes of rills,
From the cedar-shadowed lakelets
In the hearts of distant hills,
Whispers softer than the moonbeams
Wisdom's gentle heart have awed,
Till its lips approved the cadence'Surely here, indeed, is God!'
Lo! o'er all, the Torrent Prophet,
An inspired Demosthenes,
To the Doubter's soul appealing,
Louder than the preacher-seas:
Dreamer! wouldst have nature spurn thee
For a dumb, insensate clod?
Dare to doubt! and these shall teach thee
Of a truth there lives a God!'
By day and night, for hours,
I watch the cataract's impulsive leap,
Refreshed and gladdened by the cheering showers
Wrung from the passion of the seething deep.
Pleased when the buried waves
Emerge again, like incorporeal hosts
Rising, white-sheeted, from their gloomy graves,
As if the depths had yielded up their ghosts.
And when the midnight storm
Enfolds the welkin in its robe of clouds,
Through the dim vapours of the cauldron swarm
The sheeted spectres in their whitest shrouds,
By the lightning's flash betrayed.
These gather from the insubstantial vapour
The lunar rainbows, which by them are madeWoven with moonbeams by some starry taper,
To decorate the halls
Of my fair palace, whence I'm pained to see
Thy human brethren watch the waterfalls-
143
Not with such rev'rence as I've found in thee:
Too many with an eye
To speculation and the worldling's dreams;
Others, who seek from nature no reply,
Nor read the oral language of the streams.
But of the few who loved
The beautiful with grateful heart and soul,
Who looked on nature fondly, and were moved
By one sweet glance, as by the mighty whole:
Of these, the thoughtful few,
Thou wert the first to seek the inner temple,
And stand before the Priestess. Thou wert true
To nature and thyself. Be thy example
The harbinger of times
When the Chaudiere's imposing majesty
Will awe the spirits of the heartless mimes
To worship God in truth, with nature's constancy.'
Still I heard the mellow sweetness of her voice at intervals,
Mingling with the fall of waters, rising with the snowy spray,
Ringing through the sportive current like the joy of waterfalls,
Sending up their hearty vespers at the calmy close of day.
Loath to leave the scene of beauty, lover-like I stayed, and stayed,
Folding to my eager bosom memories beyond compare;
Deeper, stronger, more enduring than my dreams of wood and glade,
Were the eloquent appeals of the magnificent Chaudiere.
E'en the solid bridge is trembling, whence I look my last farewell,
Dizzy with the roar and trampling of the mighty herd of waves,
Speeding past the rocky Island, steadfast as a sentinel,
Towards the loveliest bay that ever mirrored the Algonquin Braves.
Soul of Beauty! Genius! Spirit! Priestess of the lovely strife!
In my heart thy words are shrined, as in a sanctuary fair;
Echoes of thy voice of sweetness, rousing all my better life,
Ever haunt my wildest visions of the jubilant Chaudiere.
~ Charles Sangster,#NFDB |
109:Merlin
“Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see,
So far beyond the faint edge of the world?
D’ye look to see the lady Vivian,
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons
That have another king more fierce than ours?
Or think ye that if ye look far enough
And hard enough into the feathery west
Ye’ll have a glimmer of the Grail itself?
And if ye look for neither Grail nor lady,
What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?”
So Dagonet, whom Arthur made a knight
Because he loved him as he laughed at him,
Intoned his idle presence on a day
To Gawaine, who had thought himself alone,
Had there been in him thought of anything
Save what was murmured now in Camelot
Of Merlin’s hushed and all but unconfirmed
Appearance out of Brittany. It was heard
At first there was a ghost in Arthur’s palace,
But soon among the scullions and anon
Among the knights a firmer credit held
All tongues from uttering what all glances told—
Though not for long. Gawaine, this afternoon,
Fearing he might say more to Lancelot
Of Merlin’s rumor-laden resurrection
Than Lancelot would have an ear to cherish,
Had sauntered off with his imagination
To Merlin’s Rock, where now there was no Merlin
To meditate upon a whispering town
Below him in the silence.—Once he said
To Gawaine: “You are young; and that being so,
Behold the shining city of our dreams
And of our King.”—“Long live the King,” said Gawaine.—
“Long live the King,” said Merlin after him;
“Better for me that I shall not be King;
Wherefore I say again, Long live the King,
And add, God save him, also, and all kings—
All kings and queens. I speak in general.
184
Kings have I known that were but weary men
With no stout appetite for more than peace
That was not made for them.”—“Nor were they made
For kings,” Gawaine said, laughing.—“You are young,
Gawaine, and you may one day hold the world
Between your fingers, knowing not what it is
That you are holding. Better for you and me,
I think, that we shall not be kings.”
Gawaine,
Remembering Merlin’s words of long ago,
Frowned as he thought, and having frowned again,
He smiled and threw an acorn at a lizard:
“There’s more afoot and in the air to-day
Than what is good for Camelot. Merlin
May or may not know all, but he said well
To say to me that he would not be King.
Nor more would I be King.” Far down he gazed
On Camelot, until he made of it
A phantom town of many stillnesses,
Not reared for men to dwell in, or for kings
To reign in, without omens and obscure
Familiars to bring terror to their days;
For though a knight, and one as hard at arms
As any, save the fate-begotten few
That all acknowledged or in envy loathed,
He felt a foreign sort of creeping up
And down him, as of moist things in the dark,—
When Dagonet, coming on him unawares,
Presuming on his title of Sir Fool,
Addressed him and crooned on till he was done:
“What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?”
“Sir Dagonet, you best and wariest
Of all dishonest men, I look through Time,
For sight of what it is that is to be.
I look to see it, though I see it not.
I see a town down there that holds a king,
And over it I see a few small clouds—
Like feathers in the west, as you observe;
And I shall see no more this afternoon
Than what there is around us every day,
185
Unless you have a skill that I have not
To ferret the invisible for rats.”
“If you see what’s around us every day,
You need no other showing to go mad.
Remember that and take it home with you;
And say tonight, ‘I had it of a fool—
With no immediate obliquity
For this one or for that one, or for me.’”
Gawaine, having risen, eyed the fool curiously:
“I’ll not forget I had it of a knight,
Whose only folly is to fool himself;
And as for making other men to laugh,
And so forget their sins and selves a little,
There’s no great folly there. So keep it up,
As long as you’ve a legend or a song,
And have whatever sport of us you like
Till havoc is the word and we fall howling.
For I’ve a guess there may not be so loud
A sound of laughing here in Camelot
When Merlin goes again to his gay grave
In Brittany. To mention lesser terrors,
Men say his beard is gone.”
“Do men say that?”
A twitch of an impatient weariness
Played for a moment over the lean face
Of Dagonet, who reasoned inwardly:
“The friendly zeal of this inquiring knight
Will overtake his tact and leave it squealing,
One of these days.”—Gawaine looked hard at him:
“If I be too familiar with a fool,
I’m on the way to be another fool,”
He mused, and owned a rueful qualm within him:
“Yes, Dagonet,” he ventured, with a laugh,
“Men tell me that his beard has vanished wholly,
And that he shines now as the Lord’s anointed,
And wears the valiance of an ageless youth
Crowned with a glory of eternal peace.”
Dagonet, smiling strangely, shook his head:
“I grant your valiance of a kind of youth
186
To Merlin, but your crown of peace I question;
For, though I know no more than any churl
Who pinches any chambermaid soever
In the King’s palace, I look not to Merlin
For peace, when out of his peculiar tomb
He comes again to Camelot. Time swings
A mighty scythe, and some day all your peace
Goes down before its edge like so much clover.
No, it is not for peace that Merlin comes,
Without a trumpet—and without a beard,
If what you say men say of him be true—
Nor yet for sudden war.”
Gawaine, for a moment,
Met then the ambiguous gaze of Dagonet,
And, making nothing of it, looked abroad
As if at something cheerful on all sides,
And back again to the fool’s unasking eyes:
“Well, Dagonet, if Merlin would have peace,
Let Merlin stay away from Brittany,”
Said he, with admiration for the man
Whom Folly called a fool: “And we have known him;
We knew him once when he knew everything.”
“He knew as much as God would let him know
Until he met the lady Vivian.
I tell you that, for the world knows all that;
Also it knows he told the King one day
That he was to be buried, and alive,
In Brittany; and that the King should see
The face of him no more. Then Merlin sailed
Away to Vivian in Broceliande,
Where now she crowns him and herself with flowers
And feeds him fruits and wines and many foods
Of many savors, and sweet ortolans.
Wise books of every lore of every land
Are there to fill his days, if he require them,
And there are players of all instruments—
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols; and she sings
To Merlin, till he trembles in her arms
And there forgets that any town alive
Had ever such a name as Camelot.
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So Vivian holds him with her love, they say,
And he, who has no age, has not grown old.
I swear to nothing, but that’s what they say.
That’s being buried in Broceliande
For too much wisdom and clairvoyancy.
But you and all who live, Gawaine, have heard
This tale, or many like it, more than once;
And you must know that Love, when Love invites
Philosophy to play, plays high and wins,
Or low and loses. And you say to me,
‘If Merlin would have peace, let Merlin stay
Away from Brittany.’ Gawaine, you are young,
And Merlin’s in his grave.”
“Merlin said once
That I was young, and it’s a joy for me
That I am here to listen while you say it.
Young or not young, if that be burial,
May I be buried long before I die.
I might be worse than young; I might be old.”—
Dagonet answered, and without a smile:
“Somehow I fancy Merlin saying that;
A fancy—a mere fancy.” Then he smiled:
“And such a doom as his may be for you,
Gawaine, should your untiring divination
Delve in the veiled eternal mysteries
Too far to be a pleasure for the Lord.
And when you stake your wisdom for a woman,
Compute the woman to be worth a grave,
As Merlin did, and say no more about it.
But Vivian, she played high. Oh, very high!
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols,—and her love.
Gawaine, farewell.”
“Farewell, Sir Dagonet,
And may the devil take you presently.”
He followed with a vexed and envious eye,
And with an arid laugh, Sir Dagonet’s
Departure, till his gaunt obscurity
Was cloaked and lost amid the glimmering trees.
“Poor fool!” he murmured. “Or am I the fool?
With all my fast ascendency in arms,
188
That ominous clown is nearer to the King
Than I am—yet; and God knows what he knows,
And what his wits infer from what he sees
And feels and hears. I wonder what he knows
Of Lancelot, or what I might know now,
Could I have sunk myself to sound a fool
To springe a friend.… No, I like not this day.
There’s a cloud coming over Camelot
Larger than any that is in the sky,—
Or Merlin would be still in Brittany,
With Vivian and the viols. It’s all too strange.”
And later, when descending to the city,
Through unavailing casements he could hear
The roaring of a mighty voice within,
Confirming fervidly his own conviction:
“It’s all too strange, and half the world’s half crazy!”—
He scowled: “Well, I agree with Lamorak.”
He frowned, and passed: “And I like not this day.”
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,#NFDB |
110:The Ghost - Book I
With eager search to dart the soul,
Curiously vain, from pole to pole,
And from the planets' wandering spheres
To extort the number of our years,
And whether all those years shall flow
Serenely smooth, and free from woe,
Or rude misfortune shall deform
Our life with one continual storm;
Or if the scene shall motley be.
Alternate joy and misery,
Is a desire which, more or less.
All men must feel, though few confess.
Hence, every place and every age
Affords subsistence to the sage,
Who, free from this world and its cares,
Holds an acquaintance with the stars,
From whom he gains intelligence
Of things to come some ages hence,
Which unto friends, at easy rates.
He readily communicates.
At its first rise, which all agree on,
This noble science was Chaldean;
That ancient people, as they fed
Their flocks upon the mountain's head,
Gazed on the stars, observed their motions,
And suck'd in astrologic notions,
Which they so eagerly pursue,
As folks are apt whate'er is new,
That things below at random rove,
Whilst they're consulting things above;
And when they now so poor were grown,
That they'd no houses of their own,
They made bold with their friends the stars,
And prudently made use of theirs.
To Egypt from Chaldee it travell'd,
And Fate at Memphis was unravell'd:
The exotic science soon struck root,
And flourish'd into high repute.
Each learned priest, oh strange to tell!
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Could circles make, and cast a spell;
Could read and write, and taught the nation
The holy art of divination.
Nobles themselves, for at that time
Knowledge in nobles was no crime,
Could talk as learned as the priest,
And prophesy as much, at least.
Hence all the fortune-telling crew,
Whose crafty skill mars Nature's hue,
Who, in vile tatters, with smirch'd face,
Run up and down from place to place,
To gratify their friends' desires,
From Bampfield Carew, to Moll Squires,
Are rightly term'd Egyptians all;
Whom we, mistaking, Gypsies call.
The Grecian sages borrow'd this,
As they did other sciences,
From fertile Egypt, though the loan
They had not honesty to own.
Dodona's oaks, inspired by Jove,
A learned and prophetic grove,
Turn'd vegetable necromancers,
And to all comers gave their answers.
At Delphos, to Apollo dear,
All men the voice of Fate might hear;
Each subtle priest on three-legg'd stool,
To take in wise men, play'd the fool.
A mystery, so made for gain,
E'en now in fashion must remain;
Enthusiasts never will let drop
What brings such business to their shop;
And that great saint we Whitefield call,
Keeps up the humbug spiritual.
Among the Romans, not a bird
Without a prophecy was heard;
Fortunes of empires often hung
On the magician magpie's tongue,
And every crow was to the state
A sure interpreter of Fate.
Prophets, embodied in a college
(Time out of mind your seat of knowledge;
For genius never fruit can bear
178
Unless it first is planted there,
And solid learning never falls
Without the verge of college walls)
Infallible accounts would keep
When it was best to watch or sleep,
To eat or drink, to go or stay,
And when to fight or run away;
When matters were for action ripe,
By looking at a double tripe;
When emperors would live or die,
They in an ass's skull could spy;
When generals would their station keep,
Or turn their backs, in hearts of sheep.
In matters, whether small or great,
In private families or state
As amongst us, the holy seer
Officiously would interfere;
With pious arts and reverend skill
Would bend lay bigots to his will;
Would help or injure foes or friends,
Just as it served his private ends.
Whether in honest way of trade
Traps for virginity were laid;
Or if, to make their party great,
Designs were form'd against the state,
Regardless of the common weal,
By interest led, which they call zeal,
Into the scale was always thrown
The will of Heaven to back their own.
England--a happy land we know,
Where follies naturally grow,
Where without culture they arise
And tower above the common size;
England, a fortune-telling host,
As numerous as the stars, could boast,-Matrons, who toss the cup, and see
The grounds of Fate in grounds of tea,
Who, versed in every modest lore,
Can a lost maidenhead restore,
Or, if their pupils rather choose it,
Can show the readiest way to lose it;
Gypsies, who every ill can cure,
179
Except the ill of being poor,
Who charms 'gainst love and agues sell,
Who can in hen-roost set a spell,
Prepared by arts, to them best known,
To catch all feet except their own,
Who, as to fortune, can unlock it
As easily as pick a pocket;
Scotchmen, who, in their country's right,
Possess the gift of second-sight,
Who (when their barren heaths they quit,
Sure argument of prudent wit,
Which reputation to maintain,
They never venture back again)
By lies prophetic heap up riches,
And boast the luxury of breeches.
Amongst the rest, in former years,
Campbell (illustrious name!) appears,
Great hero of futurity,
Who, blind, could every thing foresee,
Who, dumb, could every thing foretell,
Who, Fate with equity to sell,
Always dealt out the will of Heaven
According to what price was given.
Of Scottish race, in Highlands born,
Possess'd with native pride and scorn,
He hither came, by custom led,
To curse the hands which gave him bread.
With want of truth, and want of sense,
Amply made up by impudence
(A succedaneum, which we find
In common use with all mankind);
Caress'd and favour'd too by those
Whose heart with patriot feelings glows,
Who foolishly, where'er dispersed,
Still place their native country first;
(For Englishmen alone have sense
To give a stranger preference,
Whilst modest merit of their own
Is left in poverty to groan)
Campbell foretold just what he would,
And left the stars to make it good,
On whom he had impress'd such awe,
180
His dictates current pass'd for law;
Submissive, all his empire own'd;
No star durst smile, when Campbell frown'd.
This sage deceased,--for all must die,
And Campbell's no more safe than I,
No more than I can guard the heart,
When Death shall hurl the fatal dart,-Succeeded, ripe in art and years,
Another favourite of the spheres;
Another and another came,
Of equal skill, and equal fame;
As white each wand, as black each gown,
As long each beard, as wise each frown,
In every thing so like, you'd swear
Campbell himself was sitting there:
To all the happy art was known,
To tell our fortunes, make their own.
Seated in garret,--for, you know,
The nearer to the stars we go
The greater we esteem his art,-Fools, curious, flock'd from every part;
The rich, the poor, the maid, the married,
And those who could not walk, were carried.
The butler, hanging down his head,
By chambermaid, or cookmaid led,
Inquires, if from his friend the Moon
He has advice of pilfer'd spoon.
The court-bred woman of condition,
(Who, to approve her disposition
As much superior as her birth
To those composed of common earth,
With double spirit must engage
In every folly of the age)
The honourable arts would buy,
To pack the cards, and cog a die.
The hero--who, for brawn and face,
May claim right honourable place
Amongst the chiefs of Butcher-row:
Who might, some thirty years ago,
If we may be allow'd to guess
At his employment by his dress,
Put medicines off from cart or stage,
181
The grand Toscano of the age;
Or might about the country go
High-steward of a puppet-show,-Steward and stewardship most meet,
For all know puppets never eat:
Who would be thought (though, save the mark!
That point is something in the dark)
The man of honour, one like those
Renown'd in story, who loved blows
Better than victuals, and would fight,
Merely for sport, from morn to night:
Who treads like Mavors firm, whose tongue
Is with the triple thunder hung,
Who cries to Fear, 'Stand off--aloof,'
And talks as he were cannon-proof;
Would be deem'd ready, when you list,
With sword and pistol, stick and fist,
Careless of points, balls, bruises, knocks,
At once to fence, fire, cudgel, box,
But at the same time bears about,
Within himself, some touch of doubt,
Of prudent doubt, which hints--that fame
Is nothing but an empty name;
That life is rightly understood
By all to be a real good;
That, even in a hero's heart,
Discretion is the better part;
That this same honour may be won,
And yet no kind of danger run-Like Drugger comes, that magic powers
May ascertain his lucky hours;
For at some hours the fickle dame,
Whom Fortune properly we name,
Who ne'er considers wrong or right,
When wanted most, plays least in sight,
And, like a modern court-bred jilt,
Leaves her chief favourites in a tilt.
Some hours there are, when from the heart
Courage into some other part,
No matter wherefore, makes retreat,
And Fear usurps the vacant seat;
Whence, planet-struck, we often find
182
Stuarts and Sackvilles of mankind.
Farther, he'd know (and by his art
A conjurer can that impart)
Whether politer it is reckon'd
To have, or not to have, a second;
To drag the friends in, or alone
To make the danger all their own;
Whether repletion is not bad,
And fighters with full stomachs mad;
Whether, before he seeks the plain,
It were not well to breathe a vein;
Whether a gentle salivation,
Consistently with reputation,
Might not of precious use be found,
Not to prevent, indeed, a wound,
But to prevent the consequence
Which oftentimes arises thence,
Those fevers, which the patient urge on
To gates of death, by help of surgeon;
Whether a wind at east or west
Is for green wounds accounted best;
Whether (was he to choose) his mouth
Should point towards the north or south;
Whether more safely he might use,
On these occasions, pumps or shoes;
Whether it better is to fight
By sunshine or by candlelight;
Or, lest a candle should appear
Too mean to shine in such a sphere,
For who could of a candle tell
To light a hero into hell;
And, lest the sun should partial rise
To dazzle one or t'other's eyes,
Or one or t'other's brains to scorch,
Might not Dame Luna hold a torch?
These points with dignity discuss'd,
And gravely fix'd,--a task which must
Require no little time and pains,
To make our hearts friends with our brains,-The man of war would next engage
The kind assistance of the sage,
Some previous method to direct,
183
Which should make these of none effect.
Could he not, from the mystic school
Of Art, produce some sacred rule,
By which a knowledge might be got
Whether men valiant were, or not;
So he that challenges might write
Only to those who would not fight?
Or could he not some way dispense
By help of which (without offence
To Honour, whose nice nature's such
She scarce endures the slightest touch)
When he, for want of t'other rule,
Mistakes his man, and, like a fool,
With some vain fighting blade gets in,
He fairly may get out again?
Or should some demon lay a scheme
To drive him to the last extreme,
So that he must confess his fears,
In mercy to his nose and ears,
And like a prudent recreant knight,
Rather do anything than fight,
Could he not some expedient buy
To keep his shame from public eye?
For well he held,--and, men review,
Nine in ten hold the maxim too,-That honour's like a maidenhead,
Which, if in private brought to bed,
Is none the worse, but walks the town,
Ne'er lost, until the loss be known.
The parson, too, (for now and then
Parsons are just like other men,
And here and there a grave divine
Has passions such as yours and mine)
Burning with holy lust to know
When Fate preferment will bestow,
'Fraid of detection, not of sin,
With circumspection sneaking in
To conjurer, as he does to whore,
Through some bye-alley or back-door,
With the same caution orthodox
Consults the stars, and gets a pox.
The citizen, in fraud grown old,
184
Who knows no deity but gold,
Worn out, and gasping now for breath,
A medicine wants to keep off death;
Would know, if that he cannot have,
What coins are current in the grave;
If, when the stocks (which, by his power,
Would rise or fall in half an hour;
For, though unthought of and unseen,
He work'd the springs behind the screen)
By his directions came about,
And rose to par, he should sell out;
Whether he safely might, or no,
Replace it in the funds below?
By all address'd, believed, and paid,
Many pursued the thriving trade,
And, great in reputation grown,
Successive held the magic throne.
Favour'd by every darling passion,
The love of novelty and fashion,
Ambition, avarice, lust, and pride,
Riches pour'd in on every side.
But when the prudent laws thought fit
To curb this insolence of wit;
When senates wisely had provided,
Decreed, enacted, and decided,
That no such vile and upstart elves
Should have more knowledge than themselves;
When fines and penalties were laid
To stop the progress of the trade,
And stars no longer could dispense,
With honour, further influence;
And wizards (which must be confess'd
Was of more force than all the rest)
No certain way to tell had got
Which were informers, and which not;
Affrighted sages were, perforce,
Obliged to steer some other course.
By various ways, these sons of Chance
Their fortunes labour'd to advance,
Well knowing, by unerring rules,
Knaves starve not in the land of fools.
Some, with high titles and degrees,
185
Which wise men borrow when they please,
Without or trouble, or expense,
Physicians instantly commence,
And proudly boast an Equal skill
With those who claim the right to kill.
Others about the country roam,
(For not one thought of going home)
With pistol and adopted leg,
Prepared at once to rob or beg.
Some, the more subtle of their race,
(Who felt some touch of coward grace,
Who Tyburn to avoid had wit,
But never fear'd deserving it)
Came to their brother Smollett's aid,
And carried on the critic trade.
Attach'd to letters and the Muse,
Some verses wrote, and some wrote news;
Those each revolving month are seen,
The heroes of a magazine;
These, every morning, great appear
In Ledger, or in Gazetteer,
Spreading the falsehoods of the day,
By turns for Faden and for Say.
Like Swiss, their force is always laid
On that side where they best are paid:
Hence mighty prodigies arise,
And daily monsters strike our eyes;
Wonders, to propagate the trade,
More strange than ever Baker made,
Are hawk'd about from street to street,
And fools believe, whilst liars eat.
Now armies in the air engage,
To fright a superstitious age;
Now comets through the ether range,
In governments portending change;
Now rivers to the ocean fly
So quick, they leave their channels dry;
Now monstrous whales on Lambeth shore
Drink the Thames dry, and thirst for more;
And every now and then appears
An Irish savage, numbering years
More than those happy sages could
186
Who drew their breath before the flood;
Now, to the wonder of all people,
A church is left without a steeple;
A steeple now is left in lurch,
And mourns departure of the church,
Which, borne on wings of mighty wind,
Removed a furlong off we find;
Now, wrath on cattle to discharge,
Hailstones as deadly fall, and large,
As those which were on Egypt sent,
At once their crime and punishment;
Or those which, as the prophet writes,
Fell on the necks of Amorites,
When, struck with wonder and amaze,
The sun, suspended, stay'd to gaze,
And, from her duty longer kept,
In Ajalon his sister slept.
But if such things no more engage
The taste of a politer age,
To help them out in time of need
Another Tofts must rabbits breed:
Each pregnant female trembling hears,
And, overcome with spleen and fears,
Consults her faithful glass no more,
But, madly bounding o'er the floor,
Feels hairs all o'er her body grow,
By Fancy turn'd into a doe.
Now, to promote their private ends,
Nature her usual course suspends,
And varies from the stated plan
Observed e'er since the world began.
Bodies--which foolishly we thought,
By Custom's servile maxims taught,
Needed a regular supply,
And without nourishment must die-With craving appetites, and sense
Of hunger easily dispense,
And, pliant to their wondrous skill,
Are taught, like watches, to stand still,
Uninjured, for a month or more,
Then go on as they did before.
The novel takes, the tale succeeds,
187
Amply supplies its author's needs,
And Betty Canning is at least,
With Gascoyne's help, a six months' feast.
Whilst, in contempt of all our pains,
The tyrant Superstition reigns
Imperious in the heart of man,
And warps his thoughts from Nature's plan;
Whilst fond Credulity, who ne'er
The weight of wholesome doubts could bear,
To Reason and herself unjust,
Takes all things blindly upon trust;
Whilst Curiosity, whose rage
No mercy shows to sex or age,
Must be indulged at the expense
Of judgment, truth, and common sense,
Impostures cannot but prevail;
And when old miracles grow stale,
Jugglers will still the art pursue,
And entertain the world with new.
For them, obedient to their will,
And trembling at their mighty skill,
Sad spirits, summon'd from the tomb,
Glide, glaring ghastly, through the gloom;
In all the usual pomp of storms,
In horrid customary forms,
A wolf, a bear, a horse, an ape,
As Fear and Fancy give them shape,
Tormented with despair and pain,
They roar, they yell, and clank the chain.
Folly and Guilt (for Guilt, howe'er
The face of Courage it may wear,
Is still a coward at the heart)
At fear-created phantoms start.
The priest--that very word implies
That he's both innocent and wise-Yet fears to travel in the dark,
Unless escorted by his clerk.
But let not every bungler deem
Too lightly of so deep a scheme;
For reputation of the art,
Each ghost must act a proper part,
Observe Decorum's needful grace,
188
And keep the laws of Time and Place;
Must change, with happy variation,
His manners with his situation;
What in the country might pass down,
Would be impertinent in town.
No spirit of discretion here
Can think of breeding awe and fear;
'Twill serve the purpose more by half
To make the congregation laugh.
We want no ensigns of surprise,
Locks stiff with gore, and saucer eyes;
Give us an entertaining sprite,
Gentle, familiar, and polite,
One who appears in such a form
As might an holy hermit warm,
Or who on former schemes refines,
And only talks by sounds and signs,
Who will not to the eye appear,
But pays her visits to the ear,
And knocks so gently, 't would not fright
A lady in the darkest night.
Such is our Fanny, whose good-will,
Which cannot in the grave lie still,
Brings her on earth to entertain
Her friends and lovers in Cock-lane.
~ Charles Churchill,#NFDB |
111:or Callistratus. Similarly, the hero in The Acharnians complains about Cleon
"dragging me into court" over "last year's play" but here again it is not clear if
this was said on behalf of ~ Aristophanes
or Callistratus, either of whom might
have been prosecuted by Cleon.
Comments made by the Chorus on behalf of ~ Aristophanes
in The Clouds have
been interpreted as evidence that he can have been hardly more than 18 years
old when his first play The Banqueters was produced. The second parabasis in
Wasps appears to indicate that he reached some kind of temporary
accommodation with Cleon following either the controversy over The Babylonians
or a subsequent controversy over The Knights.[ It has been inferred from
statements in The Clouds and Peace that ~ Aristophanes
was prematurely bald.
We know that ~ Aristophanes
was probably victorious at least once at the City
Dionysia (with Babylonians in 427)and at least three times at the Lenaia, with
Acharnians in 425, Knights in 424, and Frogs in 405. Frogs in fact won the
unique distinction of a repeat performance at a subsequent festival. We know
that a son of ~ Aristophanes
, Araros, was also a comic poet and he could have
been heavily involved in the production of his father's play Wealth II in s is also
thought to have been responsible for the posthumous performances of the now
lost plays Aeolosicon II and Cocalus, and it is possible that the last of these won
the prize at the City Dionysia in 387. It appears that a second son, Philippus, was
twice victorious at the Lenaia and he could have directed some of Eubulus’
comedies.A third son was called either Nicostratus or Philetaerus, and a man by
the latter name appears in the catalogue of Lenaia victors with two victories, the
first probably in the late 370s.
Plato's The Symposium appears to be a useful source of biographical information
about ~ Aristophanes
, but its reliability is open to doubt. It purports to be a record
of conversations at a dinner party at which both ~ Aristophanes
and Socrates are
guests, held some seven years after the performance of The Clouds, the play in
which Socrates was cruelly caricatured. One of the guests, Alcibiades, even
quotes from the play when teasing Socrates over his appearance and yet there is
no indication of any ill-feeling between Socrates and ~ Aristophanes
. Plato's
~ Aristophanes
is in fact a genial character and this has been interpreted as
evidence of Plato's own friendship with him (their friendship appears to be
corroborated by an epitaph for ~ Aristophanes
, reputedly written by Plato, in which
the playwright's soul is compared to an eternal shrine for the Graces). Plato was
only a boy when the events in The Symposium are supposed to have occurred
and it is possible that his ~ Aristophanes
is in fact based on a reading of the plays.
For example, conversation among the guests turns to the subject of Love and
~ Aristophanes
explains his notion of it in terms of an amusing allegory, a device
he often uses in his plays. He is represented as suffering an attack of hiccoughs
and this might be a humorous reference to the crude physical jokes in his plays.
He tells the other guests that he is quite happy to be thought amusing but he is
wary of appearing ridiculous. This fear of being ridiculed is consistent with his
declaration in The Knights that he embarked on a career of comic playwright
warily after witnessing the public contempt and ridicule that other dramatists had
incurred.
~ Aristophanes
survived The Peloponnesian War, two oligarchic revolutions and two
democratic restorations; this has been interpreted as evidence that he was not
actively involved in politics despite his highly political plays. He was probably
appointed to the Council of Five Hundred for a year at the beginning of the fourth
century but such appointments were very common in democratic tes, in the trial
leading up to his own death, put the issue of a personal conscience in those
troubled times quite succinctly:
"...he who will really fight for the right, if he would live even for a little while,
must have a private station and not a public one.
~ Aristophanes
the Poet
The language in ~ Aristophanes
' plays, and in Old Comedy generally, was valued
by ancient commentators as a model of the Attic dialect. The orator Quintilian
believed that the charm and grandeur of the Attic dialect made Old Comedy an
example for orators to study and follow, and he considered it inferior in these
respects only to the works of
A full appreciation of ~ Aristophanes
' plays requires an understanding of the poetic
forms he employed with virtuoso skill, and of their different rhythms and
associations. There were three broad poetic forms: iambic dialogue, tetrameter
verses and lyrics:
Iambic dialogue: ~ Aristophanes
achieves an effect resembling natural speech
through the use of the iambic hexameter (corresponding to the effects achieved
by English poets such as
based on words that are similar rather than identical, and it has been observed
that there could be more of them than scholars have yet been able to identify.
Others are based on double meanings. Sometimes entire scenes are constructed
on puns, as in The Acharnians with the Megarian farmer and his pigs: the
Megarian farmer defies the Athenian embargo against Megarian trade, and tries
to trade his daughters disguised as pigs, except "pig" was ancient slang for
"vagina". Since the embargo against Megara was the pretext for the
Peloponnesian War, ~ Aristophanes
naturally concludes that this whole mess
happened because of "three cunts".
It can be argued that the most important feature of the language of the plays is
imagery, particularly the use of similes, metaphors and pictorial expressions. In
'The Knights', for example, the ears of a character with selective hearing are
represented as parasols that open and close.In The Frogs, Aeschylus is said to
compose verses in the manner of a horse rolling in a sandpit. Some plays feature
revelations of human perfectibility that are poetic rather than religious in
character, such as the marriage of the hero Pisthetairos to Zeus's paramour in
The Birds and the 'recreation' of old Athens, crowned with roses, at the end of
The Knights.
~ Aristophanes
and Old Comedy
The Greek word for 'comedy' (komoidía) derives from the words for 'revel' and
'song' (komos and ode) and according to Aristotle comic drama actually
developed from song. The first, official comedy at the City Dionysia was not
staged until 487/6 BC, by which time tragedy had already been long established
there. The first comedy at the Lenaia was staged later still, only about 20 years
before the performance there of The Acharnians, the first of ~ Aristophanes
'
surviving plays. According to Aristotle, comedy was slow to gain official
acceptance because nobody took it seriously yet, only sixty years after comedy
first appeared at 'The City Dionysia', ~ Aristophanes
observed that producing
comedies was the most difficult work of tition at the Dionysian festivals needed
dramatic conventions for plays to be judged, but it also fuelled innovations.
Developments were quite rapid and Aristotle was able to distinguish between
'old' and 'new' comedy by 330 BC. The trend from Old Comedy to New Comedy
saw a move away from highly topical concerns with real individuals and local
issues towards generalized situations and stock characters. This was partly due
to the internationalization of cultural perspectives during and after the
Peloponnesian War. For ancient commentators such as Plutarch, New Comedy
was a more sophisticated form of drama than Old Comedy. However Old Comedy
was in fact a complex and sophisticated dramatic form incorporating many
approaches to humour and entertainment. In ~ Aristophanes
' early plays, the
genre appears to have developed around a complex set of dramatic conventions
and these were only gradually simplified and abandoned.
The City Dionysia and the Lenaia were celebrated in honour of Dionysus, a god
who represented Man's darker nature (Euripides' play The Bacchae offers the
best insight into 5th Century ideas about this god). Old Comedy can be
understood as a celebration of the exuberant sense of release inherent in his
worship It was more interested in finding targets for satire than in any kind of
advocacy. During the City Dionysia, a statue of the god was brought to the
theatre from a temple outside the city and it remained in the theatre throughout
the festival, overseeing the plays like a privileged member of the audience.[102]
In The Frogs, the god appears also as a dramatic character and he enters the
theatre ludicrously disguised as Hercules. He observes to the audience that every
time he is on hand to hear a joke from a comic dramatist like Phrynichus (one of
~ Aristophanes
' rivals) he ages by more than a year. The scene opens the play and
it is a reminder to the audience that nobody is above mockery in Old Comedy —
not even its patron god and its practitioners! Gods, artists, politicians and
ordinary citizens were legitimate targets, comedy was a kind of licensed
buffoonery and there was no legal redress for anyone who was slandered in a
play. There were some limits to the scope of the satire, but they are not easily
defined. Impiety could be punished in 5th century Athens but absurdities implicit
in traditional religion were open to ridicule. The polis was not allowed to be
slandered but, as stated in the biography section of this article, that could
depend on who was in the audience and which festival was involved.
For convenience, Old Comedy, as represented by ~ Aristophanes
' early plays, is
analysed below in terms of three broad characteristics — topicality, festivity and
complexity. Dramatic structure contributes to the complexity of ~ Aristophanes
'
plays. However it is associated with poetic rhythms and meters that have little
relevance to English translations and it is therefore treated in a separate section.
Influence and legacy
The tragic dramatists, Sophocles and Euripides, died near the end of the
Peloponnesian War and the art of tragedy thereafter ceased to develop, yet
comedy did continue to develop after the defeat of Athens and it is possible that
it did so because, in ~ Aristophanes
, it had a master craftsman who lived long
enough to help usher it into a new age. Indeed, according to one ancient source
(Platonius, c.9th Century AD), one of ~ Aristophanes
's last plays, Aioliskon, had
neither a parabasis nor any choral lyrics (making it a type of Middle Comedy),
while Kolakos anticipated all the elements of New Comedy, including a rape and
a recognition scene. ~ Aristophanes
seems to have had some appreciation of his
formative role in the development of comedy, as indicated by his comment in
Clouds that his audience would be judged by other times according to its
reception of his plays. Clouds was awarded third (i.e. last) place after its original
performance and the text that has come down to the modern age was a
subsequent draft that ~ Aristophanes
intended to be read rather than circulation of
his plays in manuscript extended their influence beyond the original audience,
over whom in fact they seem to have had little or no practical influence: they did
not affect the career of Cleon, they failed to persuade the Athenians to pursue an
honourable peace with Sparta and it is not clear that they were instrumental in
the trial and execution of Socrates, whose death probably resulted from public
animosity towards the philosopher's disgraced associates (such as Alcibiades),
exacerbated of course by his own intransigence during the plays, in manuscript
form, have been put to some surprising uses — as indicated earlier, they were
used in the study of rhetoric on the recommendation of Quintilian and by
students of the Attic dialect in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries AD. It is possible
that Plato sent copies of the plays to Dionysius of Syracuse so that he might
learn about Athenian life and government.
Latin translations of the plays by Andreas Divus (Venice 1528) were circulated
widely throughout Europe in the Renaissance and these were soon followed by
translations and adaptations in modern languages. Racine, for example, drew Les
Plaideurs (1668) from The Wasps.
winged."
Drama
1909: Wasps, original Greek, Cambridge University undergraduate production,
music by Vaughan Williams;
2004, July–October: The Frogs (musical), adapted by Nathan Lane, music and
lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, performed at The Vivian Beaumont Theatre
Broadway;
1962-2006: various plays by students and staff, Kings College London, in the
original Greek:Frogs 1962,1971,1988; Thesmophoriazusae 1965, 1974, 1985;
Acharnians 1968, 1992, 2004; Clouds 1977, 1990; Birds 1982, 2000;
Ecclesiazusae 2006; Peace 1970; Wasps 1981
2002: Lysistrata, adapted by Robert Brustein, music by Galt McDermot,
performed by American Repertory Theatre, Boston U.S.A.;
10
2008, May–June: Frogs, adapted by David Greenspan, music by Thomas
Cabaniss, performed by Classic Stage Company, New York, U.S.A.
Literature
The romantic poet, Percy Shelley, wrote a comic, lyrical drama (Swellfoot the
Tyrrant) in imitation of ~ Aristophanes
' play The Frogs after he was reminded of
the Chorus in that play by a herd of pigs passing to market under the window of
his lodgings in San Giuliano, Italy.
~ Aristophanes
(particularly in reference to The Clouds) is mentioned frequently by
the character Menedemos in the Hellenic Traders series of novels by H N
Turteltaub.
A liberal version of the comedies have been published in comic book format,
initially by "Agrotikes Ekdoseis" during the 1990s and republished over the years
by other companies. The plot was written by Tasos Apostolidis and the sketches
were of George Akokalidis. The stories feature either ~ Aristophanes
narrating
them, directing the play, or even as a character inside one of his stories.
Electronic Media
The Wasps, radio play adapted by David Pountney, music by Vaughan Williams,
recorded 26–28 July 2005, Albert Halls, Bolten, in association with BBC, under
Halle label;
Acropolis Now is a comedy radio show for the BBC set in Ancient Greece. It
features ~ Aristophanes
, Socrates and many other famous Greeks. (Not to be
confused with the Australian sitcom of the same name.) ~ Aristophanes
is
characterised as a celebrity playwright, and most of his plays have the title
formula: One of Our [e.g] Slaves has an Enormous Knob (a reference to the
exaggerated appendages worn by Greek comic actors)
~ Aristophanes
Against the World was a radio play by Martyn Wade and broadcast
on BBC Radio 4. Loosely based on several of his plays, it featured Clive Merrison
as ~ Aristophanes
.
In The Odd Couple, Oscar and Felix are on Password, and when the password is
bird, Felix’s esoteric clue is "~ Aristophanes
" because of his play The Birds. During
the commercial break (having failed to guess the password and lost the round),
Oscar orders Felix not to give any more Greek clues and angrily growls,
"~ Aristophanes
is ridiculous"! Then when it's Oscar’s turn to give the clue on the
11
team’s next shot, the password is ridiculous and Oscar angrily growls
"~ Aristophanes
", to which Felix gleefully responds, "Ridiculous!"
Music
Satiric Dances for a Comedy by ~ Aristophanes
is a three-movement piece for
concert band composed by Norman Dello Joio. It was commissioned in
commemoration of the Bicentennial of April 19, 1775 (the start of the American
Revolutionary War) by the Concord (Massachusetts) Band. The commission was
funded by the Town of Concord and assistance was given by the Eastern National
Park and Monument Association in cooperation with the National Park Service.
12
A Parody On Euripides's Lyric Verse
Halcyons ye by the flowing sea
Waves that warble twitteringly,
Circling over the tumbling blue,
Dipping your down in its briny dew,
Spi-i-iders in corners dim
Spi-spi-spinning your fairy film,
Shuttles echoing round the room
Silver notes of the whistling loom,
Where the light-footed dolphin skips
Down the wake of the dark-prowed ships,
Over the course of the racing steed
Where the clustering tendrils breed
Grapes to drown dull care in delight,
Oh! mother make me a child again just for to-night!
I don't exactly see how that last line is to scan,
But that's a consideration I leave to our musical man.
~ Aristophanes,#NFDB |
A book was published in 1997 which changed the way the world looked at prediction. This book was The Bible Code written by Michael Drosnin (which was followed by The Bible Code 2: The Countdown in 2002). In The Bible Code, Drosnin tells us of a code that exists within the Holy Bible (written 3000 years ago) which predicts events that (in retrospect) have already happened, are happening now, and are still to happen. The Code was deciphered by an Israeli mathematician (Dr Eliyahu Rips), using a computer-programmed 'skip sequence', which, after eliminating all spaces between words, then looked for key words encoded in the text. Book 2 opens with the predicted destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001. A third book, The Bible Code: The Quest was scheduled to be released in October 2007. It was eventually released in October 2010 under a new subtitle of Saving the World. The whole concept of a code hidden within the text of the Bible is by no means new. Sir Isaac Newton, also convinced of its existence, was still searching for a Bible Code when he died.
